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My July fund-raising campaign to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black is now over. I want to thank all those who so generously donated or subscribed, especially those who have become regular supporters. I can't do this without your help. I also find it increasingly hard to express how much your support means to me. God bless you all!

 

The donations during this year's campaign were sadly less than previous years, but for this I blame myself. I am tired of begging for money, and so I put up the campaign announcement at the start of the month but had no desire to update it weekly to encourage more donations, as I have done in past years. This lack of begging likely contributed to the drop in donations.

 

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The Space Launch System is a threat to JSC, Texas jobs

An op-ed in Houston: “The Space Launch System is a threat to JSC, Texas jobs.”

It appears that even some NASA employees are beginning to see the madness of spending billions on a launch system that will likely only fly one mission almost a decade from now. And it will seem even more mad to more people should Dragon and Cygnus prove successful in the coming year.

To put it bluntly, the long term politics are very much hostile to SLS. It is going to die, if only because the federal government is bankrupt and can’t afford it. I just wish our elected officials had the brains to realize this now rather than three years down the road.

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

3 comments

  • Joe

    Not to nitpick, but neither Kraft nor Moser are current NASA employees.

    To the best of my knowledge they are both very honorable men who are aghast at what they see happening to the HSF infrastructure they were instrumental in establishing.

    But, with great respect to them (and I truly mean that); the damage to that infrastructure is not being caused by the SLS. It is being caused by the Obama Administrations non Space Policy.

  • Kelly Starks

    ;/

    I find the logic here “curious”
    >.. Kraft and Moser aren’t just worried about a downsized JSC Mission Control team twiddling its collective thumbs; they are also worried about JSC’s other core competencies: engineering and development. <

    NASA sucks at : engineering and development and should not be doing it. Past that, The ed JSC Mission Control team has pretty much all been laid off already?

    Like wise the NewSpace saw that "..development of the SLS, is economically unaffordable.." is nonsensical given NASA is a gov agency. Cost is irrelivent, votes are the coin of the realm – and SLS has strong bipartisan support.

    Past that – what does Kris Craft suggest? Cancel SLS and NASA has no project at all? He mentioned
    "….There are cheaper and nearer term approaches for human space exploration that use existing launch vehicles….."
    There are no existing craft that can carry folks beyond LEO — nearly nothing TO LEO. Trying to build up a craft (after its developed) in orbit with Atlas's and Delta's start to get pretty outlandish.

    Like it or not. Kill SLS and the US is out of the maned space flight busness for perhaps a generation.

    You think I'm kidding? Canada and Britain dropped out of aerospace and space respectively the same way when the last program was killed. Their still out generation later.

  • wade

    just Another example of the blunders of our present congress. fire them All. usher in a one. if they screw up, repeat the process…

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