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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.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent independent analysis you don’t find elsewhere. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn’t influenced by donations by established companies or political movements. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:

 

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September 20, 2023 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

  • First satellite built in Hong Kong successfully completed
  • This satellite is the first in a proposed 360 satellite constellation for “communications and remote sensing,” with the first launch planned for November. I suspect the Chinese government’s take-over of Hong Kong, including the crushing of freedoms there, includes maintaining close control of this project as well.

 

No political column from me today. I needed a break.

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

3 comments

  • Doubting Thomas

    The non fuel volume of Starship is approximately the size of ISS. Couple the full scale LIFE module with Starship which would contain the stuff that goes INTO the inflatable module and you have about 2X the size of the ISS in a single launch instead of the 80 launches over 12 years to get ISS built up.

    I still like the idea of a Starship “space station” that goes up for some time, comes back down un-crewed and gets reconfgured for another research mission.

    I also like a Starship that plays the role in real life of the Patrol Rocket Ship (PRS) Randolph training rookie space cadets in Heinlein’s “Space Cadet”. I hope the future gets here before I depart. I guess it depends on the US Fish and Wildlife Department….sigh.

  • Jeff Wright

    Some are not happy until they get us back in the caves again

  • Ray Van Dune

    “I still like the idea of a Starship “space station” that goes up for some time, comes back down un-crewed and gets reconfgured for another research mission.”

    The SLSS, or Single Launch Space Station, is an overdue great idea enabled by Starship! It can linger in low Earth orbit, then take on fuel for lunar trips, and perhaps even land there. Once it is off the surface of the Earth, the sky’s the limit… um, the floor actually!

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