Scroll down to read this post.

 

Readers!

 

The time has come for my annual short Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

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.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:

 

4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed 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 successfully launches 51 payloads using Falcon 9

SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch 51 payloads into orbit, including a whole range of microsats, cubesats, and orbital tugs.

The first stage completed its tenth flight, landing at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The fairings completed their second and fifth flights respectively. As of posting the satellites have not yet deployed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

24 SpaceX
15 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 27 to 15, and the entire world combined 27 to 26. SpaceX by itself trails the entire world, including American companies, 24 to 29.

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

16 comments

  • Cotour

    BEYOND OUR HUMAN ABILITY TO COMPREHEND?

    Daily Mail: “The Pentagon established the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office in 2022 to investigate reports of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, some of which appear to operate outside the bounds of known physics.”

    Are there layers to reality and physics that are beyond or above our human ability to comprehend?

    I think there is a short list of such things / anomalies that come under this heading that have been verboten for anyone in the “serious” sciences to even recognize let alone discuss seriously.

    And that like many other things throughout history that were in fact verboten at the time and today are fully accepted, studied and better understood for the reasons that prevailed politically and related to power and its control in the past.

    Galileo for example and what he observed and proposed to the powers that be at the time for one.

    History is chocked full of such examples and observations. But this subject at this point in time and those few other subjects may be among the ultimate and may indeed be beyond our comprehension and our ability to drag our brains to accept and understand. Not to mention how they may disrupt the political and power paradigm of the day.

    And we all understand how that need to manipulate and control can justify ANYTHING.

    Or is this all but preparation for some future deception in the future by our own government? Might the truth lie somewhere in between? “Never let a good crisis go to waste”? Thoughts? Comments?

    https://wallpaperaccess.com/full/130253.jpg

  • Ray Van Dune

    Apparently the recently-launched European JUICE mission will terminate by crashing onto the surface of Ganymede. How is this not highly irresponsible?

  • Ray Van Dune: Your comment illustrates the irrationality of our so-called intellectual class. They demand we do not poison other planets with our presence, but then demand we do not leave our planetary probes in space but crash them in a controlled manner once their mission is complete.

  • According to solarsystem.nasa.gov Ganymede’s surface temperature ranges between -297 and -171° F. (90 to 160 K). Is there really any significant risk of biological contamination of such a world?

  • Ray Van Dune

    I cannot say whether there is a risk or not, only that the Cassini probe was directed into Saturn’s atmosphere to be vaporized, ostensibly to preclude it crashing into any Saturnian moon after it was no longer controllable.

    If there is a high-energy impact onto a moon such as Ganymede, wouldn’t the question always linger whether or not future samples were contaminated by it? I thought it was a de facto standard that such things were to be avoided.

  • Call Me Ishmael

    The big worry in the Saturn system was Enceladus, and the big worry at Jupiter is Europa; both currently believed to have subsurface (liquid water) oceans. Anything that wasn’t killed on impact with one of those two and somehow got transported X kilometers below the surface might indeed find comfortable conditions.

  • James Street

    “Thoughts? Comments?” – Cotour

    Normies: “Aliens!”
    Conspiracy theorists: “No.”

  • John

    Cotour holy tangent. Anyway, lots of UFO I mean UAP nowadays. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The ubiquitous silent triangle shaped UFO often sighted at night around military bases happens to be the most common shape for stealth. The UFOs filmed swarming around USN ships are somehow are a lot like common drones. The tic-tac leaked footage is interesting, but there’s something off about it…almost like a technology designed to interfere with the sensor. UFOs/UAPs that operate outside of known physics are what you would see if the enemy jammed or interfered with your sensors, particularly radar. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office is more likely concerned with Chinese technology rather than extraterrestrial technology. It’s not out of the realm of possibilities that they have stealthy satellite controlled submarine launched UAVs that have an interest in our bases and ships. It could also be obfuscation for something we’re flying over them. “The Americans are seeing UFOs too!” Or it could be Oumuamua was extraterrestrial and they’re here (ref Extraterrestrial book by Avi Loeb). But I think in the UAP case Occam’s razor applies.

  • Great views of the Nile River and Nile Delta juxtaposed against the Egyptian desert, Mediterranean, and Red Sea during the first satellite deployment phase of this SpaceX Transporter mission launch. Too bad the spokeswoman couldn’t happen to mention it while it was happening….

  • Cotour

    James / John:

    “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ”

    I absolutely agree.

    The question is: Are there some things / events that we observe, and these observations have occurred well before and are documented as best as can be before our modern times and black programs and drone technology, back into history, that we are just not able for whatever reason to properly contextually comprehend and understand?

    Is there an edge to our reality beyond which we cannot or are currently unable to see and understand? And if so, will we be able to at some point see past and comprehend it? If we cannot figure out what in fact actual UFO’s or UAP’s actually are, then what?

    I think some of these things / events certainly do come under that unknown or unknowable category and may indicate exactly that.

    And at that point we must ask ourselves: What is really going on?

    For one more modern example: Zimbabwe Ariel School UFO Phenomenon

    https://www.afrikaiswoke.com/ufo-incident-in-zimbabwe-ariel-school/

    A government mass hypnosis program? An actual verifiable event? I think in this event there were dozens of children and teachers who saw this up close and personal. And they still today as adults say the same exact thing. ????????

  • Boobah

    Cotour: Galileo’s problem wasn’t science-related, but political. Dude didn’t get in trouble for talking about the planets (including Earth) orbiting the sun; dude got in trouble because he threw a very public hissy fit when politically powerful people pointed out that he was wrong about those orbits being circles, since they actually did the science and made observations that falsified Galileo’s hypothesis.

    That made it politically necessary to punish him, and between the person insulted being the pope (also the dictator of the Papal States,) and choosing to prosecute him in the ecclesiastical courts rather than the secular courts, the story about it being religion vs. science was born.

  • Cotour

    Boohbah:

    Galileo publicly proposed that the earth orbited the sun and not the other way around. He threatened the earth centric model of existence and therefore threatened the accepted doctrine the church I.E. God was stating was so.

    Heliocentrism: “In 1616 the Catholic Church placed Nicholas Copernicus’s “De Revolutionibus,” the first modern scientific argument for a heliocentric (sun-centered) universe, on its index of banned books. Pope Paul V summoned Galileo to Rome and told him he could no longer support Copernicus publicly.”

    “Galileo was summoned before the Roman Inquisition in 1633. At first he denied that he had advocated heliocentrism, but later he said he had only done so unintentionally. Galileo was convicted of “vehement suspicion of heresy” and under threat of torture forced to express sorrow and curse his errors.

    Nearly 70 at the time of his trial, Galileo lived his last nine years under comfortable house arrest, writing a summary of his early motion experiments that became his final great scientific work. He died in Arcetri near Florence, Italy on January 8, 1642 at age 77 after suffering from heart palpitations and a fever.”

    And people wonder why the Catholic church has PR problems?

  • Jeff Wright

    The recent Baltimore deal didn’t help.

  • Gary

    Michael McNeil, here’s the view you discussed at 1:06 in the video.

  • pzatchok

    And since Galileo’s time the Church has embraced all science.

    600 years is a long time for people today to hold a grudge against a 2000 year old institution. If you and all other organizations can change over time and no one cries (democratic party and racism) give the Church a little break.

  • Cotour

    WHEN YOU THINK YOU HAVE SEEN IT ALL

    Some crazy Mother XXXXXX goes over and above and amazes you.

    Now this is commitment to your religion.

    https://nypost.com/2023/04/17/couple-behead-themselves-with-homemade-guillotine-in-india/

    Well done you nutty bastards.

    (They have got to be some very “woke”, “progressive” Democrats, because this is some high-level stuff and is exactly where they are headed. Headed, get it? :)

    https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009767671.jpg?resize=1324,1536&quality=75&strip=all

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

No registration is required. I welcome all opinions, even those that strongly criticize my commentary.

 

However, name-calling and obscenities will not be tolerated. First time offenders who are new to the site will be warned. Second time offenders or first time offenders who have been here awhile will be suspended for a week. After that, I will ban you. Period.

 

Note also that first time commenters as well as any comment with more than one link will be placed in moderation for my approval. Be patient, I will get to it.

Leave a Reply

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