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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

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Stephen Hawking passes away, age 76

R.I.P. Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76.

The man led a miraculous life. The world is better for it.

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

9 comments

  • Andrew_W

    We were very lucky to have him for so long, he will be missed.

  • Joe

    So sad, quality of life must have been terrible, but he excelled anyway!

  • wayne

    ‘Mind over matter’:
    Stephen Hawking –
    An obituary by Dr. Roger Penrose
    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/14/stephen-hawking-obituary

  • wayne

    My Father, Stephen Hawking
    Lucy Hawking
    March, 2015
    https://youtu.be/RVVR4QyiqMc
    5:41

    “Journalist and author Lucy Hawking describes what it was like to grow up with Stephen Hawking as a father. From his childhood—where his teachers didn’t believe he would amount to anything—to his struggles with ALS, the disease that would take away his ability to move or speak on his own.”

  • Gary M.

    Stephen Hawking was a rare and amazing combination of star dust.

  • Localfluff

    I had no idea he was that old. He didn’t look his age at all.

    While Nobel prize winners have often confirmed the predictions of Einstein’s theory (as with gravitational waves recently), my understanding is that Stephen Hawking developed that theory by concluding that black holes evaporate after all. He didn’t confirm an old prediction of the Relativity Theory, but made a new one. Since Einstein apparently cannot be disproven, the way forward is to build upon him.

  • Somewhere, a black hole imploded.

    Watched a Hawking bio in which a University mate was interviewed and said he and another were trying to work through a problem set and couldn’t make any headway. They talked to Hawking about it at dinner, and he confided in a low voice, “Well, I’ve only done half of them.”

  • Noah Peal

    I read that in 2009, Stephen Hawking had a birthday party where everyone was invited, only he didn’t tell anyone of the party until after it was over. He expected time travelers to his party.

  • Steve Earle

    A great mind and a great sense of humor, if only that combination was more common….

    Sheldon Cooper meets Stephen Hawking for the first time:
    https://youtu.be/wlrOKpQ6UBI

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