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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.

 

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
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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.


Stratolaunch building its own rocket engine

Capitalism in space: Stratolaunch yesterday revealed details about its PGA rocket engine that it is developing in house.

The hydrogen-fueled PGA will produce 200,000 pounds of liftoff thrust. “When you try to do something like single stage to orbit, or in our case air launch, you really have to have hydrogen performance to make it happen,” Jeff Thornburg, Stratolaunch’s vice president of propulsion engineering, told Aviation Week.

Stratolaunch says that 85 percent of the manufacturing process will take advantage of additive-manufacturing techniques, also known as 3-D printing. That’s aimed at reducing the cost of engine production. “The propulsion team is currently in the process of manufacturing and testing prototype subscale and full-scale hardware,” Stratolaunch says. “The team has completed ignitor development, with injector testing currently underway. After this is completed, the team will perform a full-scale preburner test by the end of 2018.”

The engine is being designed to power the rockets and manned ferry that they also plan to build to be launched from the bottom of their giant airplane Roc.

It is clear now that they could not find anyone else willing to build these upper stages, and are now building them themselves. This means that SpaceX, with its Big Falcon Rocket, is now not the only company building a completely reusable system for gaining access to space.

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

2 comments

  • geoffc

    Where in there do you see reusability? 200K thrust is too high to do landings, unless they can throttle down to less than 10% which seems unlikely.

  • Kirk

    Presumably, any reusability would be for their Black Ice spaceplane. As far as I know, Black Ice is still in the “concept study” phase.

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