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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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The shuttle Atlantis has landed, ending the shuttle program

The shuttle Atlantis has landed, ending the shuttle program.

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

  • Cheers! We were born the same year so the shuttle will always be my spacecraft, kind of like how the music that you listen to the most in high school sticks with you. We were all watching challenger live in classrom in 2nd grade. I am feeling better lately about the gap between now and whats next. I hope this official ending of the program will serve as positive motivation and inspire those working in the new space industry to rededicate themselves to excellence and find ways to grow. Then maybe hire me when they land the next huge space contract, I will keep the regulatory database and file room in tip top shape. Go team!

  • Joe2

    Hi Walter,

    As we discussed earlier our Russian brethren, may beg to differ:

    http://news.yahoo.com/russia-declares-era-soyuz-shuttle-133921047.html

    Note the Title “Russia declares ‘era of Soyuz’ after shuttle”

  • O man well i hope it is a short “era of soyuz” or whatever people choose to call it , hah I guess that is a better name for it than the “era of nothing” , i just saw that soyuz means union in russian so as globalization changes everything it is living up to its name in new ways . everytime I look at an american flag it makes me wish the shuttle or something man-rated and built in the usa was still flying ^^

  • Kelly Starks

    With the end of the shuttle program, the US ceases to be a space faring nation for the forseable future.

    :(

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