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Readers!

 

My July fund-raising campaign to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black is now over. I want to thank all those who so generously donated or subscribed, especially those who have become regular supporters. I can't do this without your help. I also find it increasingly hard to express how much your support means to me. God bless you all!

 

The donations during this year's campaign were sadly less than previous years, but for this I blame myself. I am tired of begging for money, and so I put up the campaign announcement at the start of the month but had no desire to update it weekly to encourage more donations, as I have done in past years. This lack of begging likely contributed to the drop in donations.

 

No matter. I am here, and here I intend to stay. If you like what I do and have not yet donated or subscribed, please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:

 

4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
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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.


September 3, 2025 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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

  • Max

    $4.84 million in a grant from the Texas Space Commission (TSC) to develop and test highly specialized simulants of Moon dirt, or regolith.

    Why simulate lunar soil when the moon is just over there?
    Now that the Draco engines have been used to move the space station, perhaps SpaceX can demonstrate a lunar landing/sample return mission of about 500 pounds of real lunar regolith? Use that $4.8 million to purchase 5 pounds of the real thing! The rest of the return mission regolith can be sold as a commodity to collectors and University science investigators which will probably pay for the entire mission. (The proof of concept alone with success will stick it in the eye of Congress and former NASA administrators)

  • Jeff Wright

    There is a new kind of diamond synthesis

    “A team led by University Professor Eiichi Nakamura of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Tokyo explored an alternative low-pressure approach through controlled electron irradiation of a carbon cage molecule called adamantane (C10H16).”
    https://phys.org/news/2025-09-diamonds-electron.html

    My hope is that this could enable cubic boron nitride deposition
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borazon

  • Jeff Wright

    Ilka Agricola has uncovered massive fraud in mathematics in Germany of all places–as per phys.org.

    That really surprises me—I wouldn’t have thought that possible.

    False medical studies being tough to root out makes sense to me….folks having different body chemistry such that a low sample of people helped by a medication might be skewed by that same handful all having an increased predilection for the same disease. Those with the disease outside of that immediate group may not be helped at all perhaps.

    That is the difference between a (partially) false finding and a fake finding…like saying great mathematicians come from an area not known for mathematics.

    That and an equation is either wrong or it isn’t.

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