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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five 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. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

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.


Soviet spacecraft kidnapped by CIA

Stranger than fiction: In 1967 the CIA kidnapped a Soviet spacecraft for 24 hours during a global international exhibition tour.

Because the Lunik was guarded 24/7 by Soviets during the second exhibition, the intelligence agents had to wait until the show was over and the Lunik crated for shipment. Then the CIA agents “arranged to make the Lunik the last truckload of the day to leave the grounds,” Finer says. When the Americans made sure no Soviets were on the road watching the truck with the precious cargo as it made its way to the railroad station, “the truck was stopped at the last possible turn-off, a canvas was thrown over the crate and a new driver took over,” Finer says. “The original driver was escorted to a hotel room and kept there for the night.” In a salvage yard, the American experts poked, prodded and photographed the Lunik. Meanwhile, at the railroad yard where the shipment was expected, the Americans got lucky. The Russian waiting to check in the truckloads evidently grew tired, bored, hungry or all three: He left his post to eat dinner and then headed to his hotel to sleep. By 7 a.m., the Russian was back at his post at the rail yard, none the wiser. There he “found the truck with the Lunik awaiting him.”

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

One comment

  • I am quite curious about what happened to the driver that was “was escorted to a hotel room and kept there for the night”. I assume the driver was a Russian with some sort of soviet military association. I hope nothing sinister happened, but you would think that if they just let him go, that he would have mentioned something to someone in the previous 47 years. Unless he was offered a chance to defect? But, then wouldn’t he have been realized to have been missing by the soviets in charge?

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