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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

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.

 

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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’s loses launch contract due to scheduling delays

Because of SpaceX’s decision to delay its next launch into early January, Inmarsat today decided to switch launch companies for a mid-2017 satellite, dropping SpaceX and signing a contract with Arianespace.

Inmarsat is not abandoning SpaceX, only switching to Arianespace for one satellite. Nonetheless, this decision, coming only one day after SpaceX confirmed the delay, explains to me why SpaceX has been saying for months it intended to resume launches before the end of 2017. Inmarsat had probably told the company that if they delayed into January, they would lose this launch. When SpaceX finally admitted they couldn’t meet the 2016 launch deadline, Inmarsat made the switch.

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

  • ChrisL

    That’s what competition is about. If you can’t meet the buyer’s needs, he goes elsewhere. In the private sector, failure has consequences.

  • Edward

    The good news is that SpaceX is demonstrating seriousness about reliability. They seem to be willing to lose a payload in order to assure that they have fixed their problem and will consistently launch safely. This may be a short-term setback, but if the next many launches go well, it is likely a long-term victory.

    True or not (I think “not”), many people blamed pressure to launch for the Challenger disaster. SpaceX seems to be telling the world that they would rather lose a payload to a competitor than fold from such pressure.

    Although this is not the one that went to Arianespace, EchoStar 23 has some pressure to get on orbit and be operational by the middle of next year, otherwise the Brazilian license may expire for some of the frequencies the satellite is built to use. This may merely be an additional financial cost to EchoStar, as I am guessing that they could maintain these frequencies by paying a fine to Brazil, should they end up missing the deadline.

  • ken anthony

    Selenium boondocks has a good take on this.

  • Edward

    ken anthony,
    It would be a good take, except that it assumes that SpaceX could have been flying for a couple of months.

    So far, I have seen no evidence that SpaceX yet has confidence in the new procedures that they have said should solve the problem, and with this latest delay, I see evidence that they still do not have enough confidence to fly and may even be considering tweaking or testing the procedure some more.

    Having been on the problem solving side of faulty or misbehaving spaceflight hardware, I know that these things are not rushed. Rushing is how other problems are missed and how accidents happen.

    A company or team that does not fully understand the process can end up with a rocket exploding on the pad due to unexpected reactions, and oh!, that’s just what happened to SpaceX. I think it is likely that they are being especially cautious, this time.

    Since their site is announced as “Random Musings from the Warped Minds of …,” I suspect that Selenian Boondocks does not want us to take their musings too seriously.

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