To read this post please scroll down.

 

THANK YOU!!

 

My November fund-raising campaign for Behind the Black is now over. As I noted below, up until this month 2025 had been a poor year for donations. This campaign changed that, drastically. November 2025 turned out to be the most successful fund-raising campaign in the fifteen-plus years I have been running this webpage. And it more than doubled the previous best campaign!

 

Words escape me! I thank everyone who donated or subscribed. Your support convinces me I should go on with this work, even if it sometimes seems to me that no one in power ever reads what I write, or even considers my analysis worth considering. Maybe someday this will change.

 

Either way, I will continue because I know I have readers who really want to read what I have to say. Thank you again!

 

This announcement will remain at the top of each post for the next few days, to make sure everyone who donated will see it.

 

The original fund-raising announcement:

  ----------------------------------

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
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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 might spin off Starlink with stock offering

Capitalism in space: Comments by SpaceX’s CEO suggest the company is considering spinning off its Starlink internet operation, with the additional possibility that spin-off would go public.

SpaceX President & COO Gwynne Shotwell told a group of investors that the company may spin off its Starlink internet satellite business, possibly as a public company. “Starlink is the right kind of business that we can go ahead and take public,” Shotwell said, according to a report from Bloomberg.

…There’s no time frame yet disclosed for a potential IPO of the Starlink side of SpaceX, and the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It’s unlikely the whole company would go public. Elon Musk has said for years that he wouldn’t take SpaceX public until the company has been regularly launching to Mars.

Don’t start counting your chickens. While there might be good reasons for SpaceX to do this, I suspect there are other good reasons for not doing it. They will likely make the decision once the Starlink constellation is operational and they have begun providing service to customers. At that point they will see what the demand will bring, and will have a better idea what’s the best course to take.

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

4 comments

  • A. Nonymous

    I thought the whole point of Starlink was to provide an *ongoing* stream of stable revenue that could be used to pay for the billions in construction/launch/operations costs needed to put a small city on Mars, without having to depend solely upon government funding and the mountain of problems it brings with it?

    Spinning it off, much less going public, would give SpaceX a one-time infusion of cash, to be certain, but at the cost of long-term income needed to sustain Elon’s long-term plans. Unless he thinks that he can pull off an IPO at Tesla P/Es, or is thinking about only selling a small, non-controlling stake in Starlink, I don’t really understand this move.

    I don’t know enough about the regulations surrounding the ISP/cell market. Could the ongoing paperwork to maintain governmental compliance be such that there is little extra cost to going minority-public and adding SEC compliance costs?

    The last thing that I would ever want to see, of course, is Starlink getting bought up by an existing telecom. Those do not have good track records when it comes to customer value.

  • Willi

    I’m guessing that Ms. Shotwell is the real genius behind some of Musk’s apparent successes. Along with some good ideas he has come up with some really screwball ones. A YouTube creator named thunderf00t has created some good videos debunking his Boring Company and Hyperlink ideas. Personally, I’m greatly anticipating becoming a Starlink subscriber. But, if the asking price is just too much, Starlink could easily be a flop, like the first Iridium. Spinning off Starlink could keep it from becoming a drag on other Musk projects should it not be as great a project as every expects. Being a standalone company would allow investors to properly evaluate its future performance. There will be competition like OneWeb. Complaints from the astronomical community are growing and could become a major problem.

  • wayne

    tangentially related…..

    Joe Rogan Experience #1425
    Garrett Reisman
    2-7-2020
    https://youtu.be/3RG5pXTpLBI
    2:12:12

    Garrett Reisman is a former NASA Astronaut and currently a Professor of Astronautical Engineering at USC and…. a Senior Advisor at SpaceX.

  • wayne

    If you can get through Joe being agog, Reisman actually has a bit of inside-SpaceX tidbits to relate. (I don’t follow this closely myself, but they probably mean some-thing to those who read the tea leaf’s, better than I.
    (so to speak)

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