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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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South Korea signs the Artemis Accords

On May 24 South Korea officially signed the Artemis Accords, joining nine other countries in the agreement designed as a work around of the Outer Space Treaty’s provisions in order to protect property rights in space.

By my count, that makes eight signatories, including Japan, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates and Italy.

Essentially, the space-faring nations of the world are splitting into two groups, those who will follow these accords, and those who won’t, led by China and Russia. In a sense, we are seeing a renewal of the Cold War in space, with the western powers that believe in private enterprise and freedom aligned against those whose cultures are authoritarian and ruled from above.

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

8 comments

  • Mark

    Japan listed twice. Are their countries that want to join?

  • Mark: You are right. I have corrected the post.

  • Dick Eagleson

    Ukraine also signed.

  • mkent

    In a sense, we are seeing a renewal of the Cold War in space, with the western powers that believe in private enterprise and freedom aligned against those whose cultures are authoritarian and ruled from above.

    It’s good to see UAE in the former camp. They seem to be genuinely working towards still having an economy once the oil runs out.

    Are their countries that want to join?

    Several. Brazil and New Zealand are thought to be next.

  • Mark

    The Spacenews website had an article from May 27th indicating that Brazil and New Zealand were likely the next two countries to sign the Artemis accords. Brazil last year signed a letter of intent. So opportunities for private space continue to grow around the world. I hope that Brazil can advance in smallsats. Just last week, Vaya Space announced that it will create a Brazilian subsidiary, and is now picking a location to manufacture. In New Zealand, Rocket Lab has a launch facility and there is more venture capital there going into private space, The future’s so bright, Bob gotta wear shades.

  • Pyrthroes

    By c. AD 2050 – 2125, as global demographics crater and dustmote Earth confronts cyclical, plate-tectonic induced 102-kiloyear Pleistocene glaciations due to cover 60%+ of habitable landmasses with ice-sheets two miles thick (the Holocene Interglacial ended 670 years ago, in AD 1350), quantum “telesponding” –instantaneous entanglement/superposition from A to B anywhere in the dual-dynamic cosmos’ 94-billion LY “Eternal Present” interface)– will have rendered classical action-reaction rocketry as obsolete as canal boats vs. an SR-71.

    As for neural-net AI, virtually immortal trans-human capabilities via hyperlinked, self-aware Cloud Minds will have superseded organic evolution: If hominids can’t lick our powerful creations, we’ll just join ’em. What form that takes is beyond current comprehension… but what we do know is, contemporaries’ extraordinarily self-deluded ignorance, reigning oligarchs’ antipathy to anything that smacks of noumenal reality, will go the way of Nineveh and Tyre.

    Residual populations born c. 2050 will take all this for granted. But for our benighted milieu, three generations into the greatest cultural dearth since Late Roman times, the coming century will see more changes than all four previous eras from AD 1600.

  • “The future’s so bright, Bob gotta wear shades.”

    Have the album, and the following effort (also pretty good). Appreciate the reference.

  • wayne

    Dr. Who –
    Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966)
    [the Peter Cushing variant]
    https://youtu.be/WCIk3Mf-hIc
    4:57

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