To read this post please scroll down.

 

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.


SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites

The beat goes on! SpaceX today launched another 23 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 19th flight, tying the present record for the most reuses of a Falcon 9 booster. It landed safely on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 space race:

26 SpaceX
10 China
3 Russia
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 30 to 19, while SpaceX leads the entire world, including American companies, 26 to 23.

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

5 comments

  • Andi

    Minor edit in first sentence: “another 23 Starlink satellites”

  • SpaceX is amazing. Their tempo is setting a new standard. When they overcome the stability problems with Starship on orbit (which appears to be one problem they had on IFT-3), if Starship is launched as an expendable, SpaceX can put over 100 tons into LEO.

  • Jeff Wright

    It would be safer for LEO for Starship at least to be expendable for the time being.

    Falcon is at the very bottom of the bathtub curve:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve

    Teething problems in the past…yet signs of wearing out that is the hallmark of end-of-life issues.

    It took lots of explosions to dial Falcon in.
    Even less for SuperHeavy to stage successfully.
    But they’re no threat to orbit.

    At some point,—as part of the fail-forward mantra—there will be a Starship RUD in LEO…and it is in my estimation less likely to happen at the end of the bathtub curve once SpaceX has given us the infrastructure to clean up space debris.

    No—I think it is more likely to happen at the beginning of the curve…where the most damage—and backlash—can be expected.

    Now, I think a lot of Gene Meyers of Space Island Group.

    His plan was to use shuttle External Tanks (now SLS cores) as wet workshops.

    The refrain of all the energy vampires was “Oh noes! Too much foam popcorning!”

    —even those ET/SLS cores are largely inert.

    But now we saw Starship tumbling out of control and shedding debris, propellant and God knows what else—huffing and puffing like a big boy locomotive….and not a peep out of New Space.

    Had this been a Chinese craft—you’d all be freaking out.

  • Richard M

    And, three more Falcon 9 launches this week!

    These guys are just a juggernaut now.

  • Edward

    Jeff Wright wrote: “Had this been a Chinese craft—you’d all be freaking out.

    I don’t know why we would freak out. The Chinese intentionally drop their rockets onto populated areas. SpaceX explicitly targeted empty ocean for both Test Flight Three vehicles.

    We may have freaked out when the flight termination system took far too long to terminate the first Starship flight, but that was a failure of a safety system. Failure may be an option during development testing, but it is not an option for a flight termination system. Intentional deorbit of hardware into empty oceans is a long accepted method of disposal.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *