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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.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

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Russian filmmakers safely return to Earth

Capitalism in space: A Russian Soyuz capsule safely returned three Russian astronauts to Earth today, including the two filmmakers that spent the last twelve days filming scenes on ISS for a movie.

Russian actress Yulia Peresild and producer Klim Shipenko landed with cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy of the Russian federal space corporation Roscosmos on Sunday (Oct. 17). The three descended aboard the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft to a touchdown at 12:35 a.m. EDT (0435 GMT or 10:35 a.m. local time) on the steppe of Kazakhstan.

The landing concluded 191 days in space for Novitskiy, who wrapped up his stay on the station by playing a bit part in the movie Peresild and Shipenko were there to film. A joint production of Roscosmos, the Russian television station Channel One and the studio Yellow, Black and White, “Вызов” (“Challenge” in English) follows the story of a surgeon (Peresild) who is launched to the station to perform emergency surgery on a cosmonaut (Novitskiy).

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

11 comments

  • George C

    Such rescue mission movies are never by the book routine. There always has to be extra elements of drama such as equipment failures. I wonder if they were filming the crew of ISS when the return capsule problem happened?

  • Glad they are back safe and the thruster issues did not cause them problems.

  • Gary

    I wonder if their presence and filming had anything to do with the “accidental” booster firing. Could they have been staging a shot which went wrong?

  • wayne

    Armageddon (1998)
    Russian Cosmonaut scene (“…this is how we fix problem…”)
    https://youtu.be/OIh78GiTqrE
    1:52

  • Mark

    Wayne – can you provide a film clip from the upcoming movie The Challenge, about a Russian doctor, played by Yulia Peresild, who travels to the space station to treat a sick cosmonaut?

    While I hope the rumor is true that the recent new ISS clothing regulations involve tank tops, I state unequivocally and for the record that I have the utmost respect for the film work of Russian actress Yulia Peresild. Peresild starred in The Edge which was nominated for the 2010 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
    Yulia is also in ‘The Golden Horde’ which I just recently added to my Prime streaming watchlist. ‘The Golden Horde’ is about ancient Russia under Tatar-Mongol rule.
    And I bet I’m not the only one on BtB wondering if pictures featuring Zero-g eye candy will soon leak out of Roscosmos. Let’s Go Russia!

  • Patrick Underwood

    Mark: I congratulate you on your impeccable aesthetic judgment.

  • Questioner

    Finally – after a long time – a pretty woman in space again.

  • John hare

    Questioner, towards the end of a six month mission, Phylis Diller would start looking good.

  • Ray Van Dune

    In high school my much more worldly friend told me that with the lights out, they are all movie stars. I have never verified this, but apparently my friend made a valiant effort to do so.

  • Edward

    Gary asked: “Could they have been staging a shot which went wrong?

    In this case, they were performing a routine checkout of the spacecraft before putting a crew into flight, and it had nothing to do with the film project. Think of it as a pilot walk around or a pilot checklist. The problem was that the thrusters would not respond to the command to shut down. A routine procedure became exciting, which is usually a bad thing.

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