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The time has come for my annual short pre-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.

 

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SpaceX’s first recovered first stage placed on display

The competion on display: SpaceX has installed its first recovered first stage on permanent display outside the company’s offices in California.

The link includes a lot of pictures showing the installation process, where they used a crane to place the stage upright.

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

4 comments

  • I experience cognitive dissonance when I see ‘SpaceX’ and ‘California’ in the same sentence.

  • ken anthony

    Watch out for the aluminum scrappers… they’ll take pieces of anything not under constant guard.

  • geoffc

    @Ken Anthony: People have found the last Falcon 1, sitting in a junk yard, near SpaceX HQ via GMaps satellite data. So that one has lasted pretty well. Cannot leave the real engines out, since ITAR issues will mean people in jail.

    Have to imagine, due just to ITAR, they have reasonably good security at the plant. Gotta imagine someone driving up with a crane to steal the stage should be pretty noticable.

    Maybe the plot of Oceans 8 (the all women reboot, since Ghostbusters did so amazingly well) can be to steal the Falcon 9?

  • ken anthony

    geoffc, The danger isn’t someone with a crane. The danger is a criminal with a cutting tool. Construction sites, with workers every day, have found aluminum and copper missing from the day before. Even tractor trailers parked overnight have had sections cut out of them. I’m not saying it will happen, but I know criminals (Phoenix is full of them.)

    You and I look around and see landscape. Criminals see dollars.

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