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Readers!

 

My July fund-raising campaign to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black is now over. I want to thank all those who so generously donated or subscribed, especially those who have become regular supporters. I can't do this without your help. I also find it increasingly hard to express how much your support means to me. God bless you all!

 

The donations during this year's campaign were sadly less than previous years, but for this I blame myself. I am tired of begging for money, and so I put up the campaign announcement at the start of the month but had no desire to update it weekly to encourage more donations, as I have done in past years. This lack of begging likely contributed to the drop in donations.

 

No matter. I am here, and here I intend to stay. If you like what I do and have not yet donated or subscribed, please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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.

 

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SpaceX launches another 27 Starlink satellites

SpaceX today successfully launched another 27 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its 18th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

61 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 61 to 49.

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

2 comments

  • Richard M

    According to SpaceFlightNow, this mission also had the distinction of being the SpaceX’s 450th successful booster landing.

    https://spaceflightnow.com/2025/05/23/live-coverage-spacex-to-launch-west-coast-falcon-9-with-starlink-satellites/

    The real achievement for SpaceX is that, like the Dragon flights you talked about yesterday, this is now such a ho-hum achievement that little of the news treatment of this mission even mentions this milestone.

  • Dick Eagleson

    Yeah. Ho hum, another SpaceX Falcon launch with Starlinks aboard. Must be a day with a name ending in ‘y.’ I suspect the corporate space press will likely also fail to mention SpaceX’s 500th successful F9 booster landing when it occurs – if current cadence continues – in 90 days or so. Or the one thousandth when that happens in early 2028. And once Starship hits its stride, of course, there will be even more such milestones to ignore and at more frequent intervals. Oh well, the NYT doesn’t report train arrivals and departures at Penn Station or flights to and from JFK either. Unremarked routine is just one of the indicia of success. The more that space stories become dog-bites-man affairs, the better.

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

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