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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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The first nation in space?

A science research center has announced it is forming an independent nation in space which anyone can join.

If you are 18 or over and have an email address, you can apply to become a ‘citizen’ of Asgardia today. At the time of this writing, more than 4,900 people have signed up, including at least one Popular Science editor. “When the number of those applications goes above 100,000 we can officially apply to the UN for the status of state,” said Ashurbeyli, adding that Asgardians would not have to give up citizenship in their countries of origin.

The group hopes to launch its first satellite in 2017 or 2018. How it will avoid being under the jurisdiction of any other country remains to me a mystery.

Eventually, when there are thriving reasonably self-sufficient colonies in space, circumstances will demand that they declare their independence from what is becoming an increasingly oppressive Earth culture. Until then, declarations like Asgardia are nothing more than publicity stunts that are not going to go anywhere.

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

6 comments

  • Matt in AZ

    This sounds like yet another variation of a Grand Plan that pops up every few years. Mars One wasn’t too different. I’ve been hearing announcements about ocean-based versions since the 90s… that never seem to get anything built.

    From 2009:
    http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/09/floating.cities.seasteading/

  • Localfluff

    Nah. I’ll rather spend my monies on saving that Nigerian astronaut that the Soviet sent to space just before Yeltsin took power, and the poor bastard is still up there with no funding to bring him home. He managed to email me his emergency message from orbit. He’s a rich man promising to repay me tenfold once back on Earth so he can do his banking.

  • wayne

    Localfluff– hilarious!

    This sorta (kinda’) reminds me of that guy who had his own country, on an unused off-shore oil-platform in the North Sea. I recall they ran a pirate radio-station in the late 60’s. (pirates, on multiple levels.)

    Who, prey tell, cares what the UN thinks? (Last thing we need, is to export Statism, into Space.) Do we have the heavy-lift capacity to launch the UN headquarters into one of those LaGrange point orbits & keep them safely away from us?

    -On a more serious note– we do need to abrogate all of those “Space Treaties,” we ever signed.
    I’m all-in on getting, all-out.

    Matt in AZ–
    L. Ron Hubbard & Scientology?
    http://www.scientology.org/faq/church-management/what-is-the-sea-organization.html

  • Matt in AZ

    Wayne, you’re pretty close the mark there – I’d forgotten about their sea history. The later sea-based utopias do come across as Scientology-like wannabes.

  • There is a Naval quote: “The seat of power is on land”.

    Until and unless space-based facilities are self-sufficient, they will be at the mercy of Earthly politics. I can envision a consortium of space companies declaring a terrestrial zone in a friendly territory.

  • ken anthony

    The moon has a similar problem. It’s too close to be independent of earth politics.

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