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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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SpaceX launches 90 payloads on its ninth smallsat Transporter mission

SpaceX today successfully launched 90 payloads on its ninth smallsat Transporter mission, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

From the link: “There will be 90 payloads on this flight deployed by Falcon 9, including CubeSats, MicroSats, and orbital transfer vehicles carrying an additional 23 spacecraft to be deployed at a later time.”

The first stage completed its twelth flight, landing back at Vandenberg.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

82 SpaceX
51 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China 94 to 51 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 94 to 80. SpaceX by itself is now leads the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 82 to 80.

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

  • pzatchok

    Hello? Any one out there?

    Yeh I know. Another successful Space X launch.
    This is not even worth us commenting any more.

    i personally love it but I am sure the haters are gonna hate.

  • DJ

    I agree. Even the live streams are becoming hard to find. And of course no more narration. So yes, and if what Space X plans, next year will be more like watching planes take off at LAX.

  • Jeff

    I watched a replay (missed the live launch) via Tim Dodd’s “Everyday Astronaut” channel and was surprised to hear the familiar SpaceX narration.

    https://youtu.be/dcHM3IdDufg?t=1547

    I assume since it was a mid-day launch from Vandenberg, the west coast folks were awake. 8^)

  • Jeff Wright

    Some scuttlebutt about IVs and Adderall out there…

  • Ray Van Dune

    No more Kate Tice? What a shame, and not just because she is beautiful, but because she is smart and a real engineer.

  • Jeff Wright

    At +00:02:30 here:
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FF3LAnvVcJA

    —you see the best second stage separation footage ever in that you can see the first stage move away—at last.

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