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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
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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.


SpaceX launches 22 Starlink satellites, flying its second booster for a 17th time

SpaceX tonight successfully launched 22 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral using a first stage booster flying for the seventeenth time.

The booster landed successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The company now has two boosters that have flown that many times, plus at least one that has flown fifteen times.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

67 SpaceX
43 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 78 to 43, and the entire world combined 78 to 69. SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) by only 67 to 69.

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

9 comments

  • Steve White

    In addition to the numbers of flights, it might be interesting to look at payload mass put in orbit. I have a hunch (I don’t have the numbers) that while SpaceX may trail the world a bit on numbers, when it comes to mass they’re way, way ahead.

  • Richard M

    It’s wild to think that we’re only 11 days from the big (Falcon Heavy) launch of Psyche, and that’s not even the next Falcon launch. There are two Starlink launches scheduled ahead of it.

  • Richard M: If all goes as planned, based on the launches SpaceX has announced, that Falcon Heavy launch will be the company’s 70th in 2023, which will match the annual record of launches for the entire United States prior to 2022. In 1966 the U.S. completed 70 launches, and then didn’t beat that record until last year (mostly because of SpaceX).

  • Richard M

    If all goes as planned, based on the launches SpaceX has announced, that Falcon Heavy launch will be the company’s 70th in 2023, which will match the annual record of launches for the entire United States prior to 2022.

    These SpaceX guys are getting pretty good at this, aren’t they?

  • Richard M

    In addition to the numbers of flights, it might be interesting to look at payload mass put in orbit.

    BryceTech actually tracks that, globally, every quarter.

    You can see their briefings here: https://brycetech.com/briefing

    So, you can see that in 2Q 2023, SpaceX launched about 214,095 kg of spacecraft upmass in Q2, followed very distantly by CASC with about 23,069 kg. No one else even hit 10,000 kg.

  • Jeff Wright

    About SuperHeavy and any flow problems:
    https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.A35553

    Lots of goodness here.

    Elon reads Next Big Future, so I hear…

  • Steve White

    Richard M: thank you, and just as I thought.

  • Edward

    Richard M noted: “These SpaceX guys are getting pretty good at this, aren’t they?

    They have to get good at it. SpaceX has to launch a very large number of Starlink-2 satellites in the next few years, and the delay of Starship means that a few hundred Falcons would be required to do it instead. Starship would be less expensive, and much faster, but they don’t have that option, yet.

  • pzatchok

    Showoffs.
    That is all they are anymore, just showoffs.

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