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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.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Russian official predicts only 10 launches for 2019-2020

How the mighty have fallen: A Russian official yesterday predicted that they will only do a total of 10 launches for the two year period from 2019 to 2020.

“Five launches are envisaged for 2019. Five launches of manned and resupply ships, and also of a nodal module are planned for 2020,” the vice-premier said at a meeting held at the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation on the problems of piloted cosmonautics in the process of fulfilling long-term space exploration programs. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words reveal a second tidbit, namely that they apparently will not be launching the Nauka module to ISS in 2019, as previously announced.

In a related story, a Russian space official also confirmed that they will definitely cease flying American astronauts on Soyuz in April 2019, as per the NASA-Russian contract.

The second story does not mention the Soyuz flight seats that Boeing owns, obtained as part of the settlement of the Sea Launch partnership. I wonder about their status. Are the Russians going to block them? I also suspect that this second story might be a negotiating effort by the Russian government to press NASA into buying more flights, something NASA has so far not done.

Either way, the first story essentially places Russian in the bottom echelon of space-launch nations, ranking comparable to what India and Japan have been doing in recent years. Both these countries however expect to up their numbers, which makes Russia’s space future look even more dismal.

For the entire history of space, beginning with Sputnik, the Soviet Union/Russia had consistently dominated the world in annual launches. For them to have fallen so far tells us much about the failed socialist and centralized policies of the Putin government. They do not work. They never work. In fact, they cannot work.

Will someone please tell this fact to both the American Democratic Party, and the many people who continue to vote for its new socialist agenda?

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

  • pzatchok

    Watch the Manned SpaceX launches get the go ahead real fast now.

    With out the US the Russian space program would have died many years ago. Many.

    Propping them up was a wrong headed political maneuver.
    Paying another nation to do what we should have been doing is and was wrong.

  • geoffc

    Nauka is less nodal, but OM is much more nodal. I wonder if perhaps he meant the OM?

  • commodude

    pzatchok,

    Didn’t you get the memo? With the end of the cold war the Soviets (Russians, whatever) are our friends and we have to help them.

    Globalism, like communism and socialism, is a fine theory, however, it fails in practicality.

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