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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

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Russian filmmakers describe their experience of filming a movie in space

Capitalism in space: The Russian actress Yulia Peresild and her director Klim Shipenko — who spent twelve days on ISS filming scenes for a science fiction movie — gave a press conference yesterday, describing their experience and what they accomplished.

They shot more than 30 hours worth of footage which will later be edited down to about 30 minutes. “We’ve shot everything we planned,” Shipenko said from the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center outside Moscow.

The 38-year-old US-educated film director said cinema was ready to conquer space. “Cinema is looking for new forms. The cosmos is also ready to welcome various experimentalists,” said Shipenko.

He said his stint on the ISS was full of professional discoveries and added that he would never have been able to shoot on Earth what he had shot in space.

Both regretted that their work scheduled on ISS was so busy that they did not have enough time to look at the views out the station’s windows.

When this movie is finished I wonder if it will get a distribution deal in the west. I certainly would like to see it, and I am certain many other Americans will feel the same.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • Gary

    Bob, it doesn’t have to get a distribution deal per se. There are so many outlets – Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Youtube, etc. – that almost anything on film gets an audience. We’ll have a chance to see it for sure.

  • V-Man

    Science-fiction? Apart from the storyline (a doc flies to ISS to treat a sick cosmonaut), what is fiction here? They shot on location. :)

    (We’re going to have to re-think the whole SF labeling once we have spaceships and colonies on other planets…)

  • geoffc

    I found the Big Bang Theory’s Soyuz, and ISS models to be surprisingly well done. I am not good enough to find specific mistakes, but it seemed like their mockups were pretty good.

    Curious to see how reality compares.

  • Edward

    The article calls it the “world’s first movie in space,” but I would argue that the documentary Blue Planet fits that description better:
    https://www.si.edu/imax/movie/blue-planet

    Then there is Alan Shepard’s flight in Freedom 7, in which motion pictures of him were taken:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xd9kg-fJ9g#t=245 (~17 minutes relevant)

    However, this movie, the Russian’s “Challenge,” is the first full length movie with a plot. Although I expected “Hollywood” to shoot footage in space, I did not expect this to happen this soon after commercial manned spacecraft became operational. Commercial manned space is expanding much faster than I expected, and I thought I was too optimistic.

    V-Man,
    I suppose this depends upon how you define science fiction.
    https://www.dictionary.com/browse/science-fiction

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction

    Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers.

    I think that the movie “Marooned” was generally thought to be science fiction despite virtually everything existing at that time (the orbital lab was still a few years away).
    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064639/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

    geoffc wrote: “I found the Big Bang Theory’s Soyuz, and ISS models to be surprisingly well done. I am not good enough to find specific mistakes, but it seemed like their mockups were pretty good.

    They had worked hard to make their Soyuz set realistic. Even their real-life astronaut was impressed.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmvWgcXVLcQ#t=330 (5 minutes are relevant)

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