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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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Sierra Nevada abandons its own hybrid engine for Dream Chaser

The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada has decided not to use its own hybrid engine on its Dream Chaser manned shuttle.

With the apparent decision by Virgin Galactic to also abandon this engine, it would appear that hybrid rocket technology is not yet ready for prime time, if ever.

Posted from Spokane, Washington, where Diane and I will be visiting my oldest friend Lloyd and his family for the rest of the week.

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

6 comments

  • wodun

    Hope you get out and enjoy some of our spectacular outdoor activities. You might enjoy seeing the channeled scab lands from the Columbia Plateau Trail or from a boat on one of the local lakes. Klink,’s, at Badger Lake, has great food.

    If you do hit any local trails or parks, be sure to check if a Discover Pass is needed for parking. Thankfully, one is not needed on the Centennial Trail.

  • Pzatchok

    And yet one more company finally abandons the old bottle rocket idea.

  • We did not come prepared for hiking, as this is a visit with old friends who don’t do that stuff. Instead, we go to restaurants and watch movies.

  • Edward

    After all, it *is* rocket science, and it isn’t easy to get into space.

  • wodun

    Regardless, I hope you enjoy your time here. Spokane means children of the sun and we live like it :)

  • Pzatchok

    How many other launch groups are using hybrid engines?

    From what I can guess not many if any.

    Which should be a clue as to how effective it is.

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