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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

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September 1, 2023 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

  • The Perseverance team posts another dumb tweet making believe the rover is some cute person
  • The tweet includes an image looking towards the western rim of Jezero Crater, but they don’t tell us that. Instead, the tweet says: “I’ve had a great time here poking around the ancient riverbed. Gonna wrap up a few tasks and hit the road soon. What’s over this next rise? Let’s find out”

    Jay writes, “I really don’t care for them to make Perseverance sound like a person. Don’t get me wrong, it is a marvelous piece of engineering, but it is not a person. I know they do this to make Mars more interesting to the general public.”

    I say, “Why are you insulting my intelligence?” Not only isn’t Perseverance a person, to make believe it is on the stupid assumption that is the only way anyone will become interested reveals your utter contempt for the general public. Please stop!

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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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

9 comments

  • Ray Van Dune

    Desch says “These are pretty typical cosmic spherules.”

    Dr. Loeb stated flatly that the spherules exhibited totally atypical isotopic ratios.

    Which is it: Loeb is mistaken, or Desch can’t read.

  • Questioner

    Mr. Zimmerman: I want to correct you. The planned Chinese manned lunar mission seems to be more similar to the Soviet moon landing mission profile, although you can’t immediately tell from the short video.

    The difference is that the Chinese lunar lander consists of practically only one rocket stage and not two rocket stages like the US model LEM. This Chinese lunar lander lands on and also takes off from the moon with just this single rocket stage. Much of the braking for landing the lunar lander from lunar orbit, as with the Soviet variant, is provided by a special rocket stage that is not an integral part of the lunar lander and is separated prior to the final landing phase performed by the lander alone (after this rocket stage has done its job). I’m assuming it’s the same rocket stage that was used to slow the entire Chinese manned lunar spacecraft assembly into lunar orbit.

  • Questioner

    Here is the Soviet mission profile to explain my comment above.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw61OW4WEo0

  • Jeff Wright

    The crasher stage.

    I see another successful Falcon mission at Vandy…Tranche 0

  • siriusactuary

    “The skepticism is good. The sense of strong hostility I sense is not.”

    Absolutely agree. It is apparent on Twitter (err, X) that Loeb has alienated much of the scientific community – or at least those whose tweets I see. That said, I do not know how many of the *obvious* steps Loeb has taken, but I am aware that it is certainly more than zero.

  • Col Beausabre

    Perseverence is not a person” Still ANOTHER bigoted, right wing piece of drivel, Of course (insert pronoun of your choisc) is a person, unlike those deplorable MAGAs. We in the DNC will add granting citizenship to robots to our 2024cplatform. FREE THE ROBOTS !!

  • David Ross

    For those (like me) who can’t read thread on X-Twitter, here is an unroll of Steve Desch:
    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1697538023666397513.html

  • Col Beausabre

    Another successful mission by the CIA and Mossad working together “Top Russian Space Scientist Dies Under Mysterious Circumstances” https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OfEgtTxxU2I?feature=share

  • Ian C.

    David,

    There’s also nitter, which lets you read X/Twitter w/o being logged in. You can search for keywords and accounts or go to a post directly by replacing twitter.com like this:

    https://nitter.net/SpaceX/status/1698567498923389162

    In case that domain is down, there are more nitter instances:

    https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances

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