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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
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

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.


Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – Learning To Fly

An evening pause: Performed live, 2006.

R.I.P.

I’m learning to fly
But I ain’t got wings
Coming down
Is the hardest thing.

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

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

9 comments

  • Joe

    One of the great all time rockers, he will be missed!

  • LocalFluff

    I’ve taken a course in hang gliding, flying horizontally with a delta wing attached to your back, starting by jumping off a cliff. The instructors said more people die during golf than during hang gliding. Of course, many more people play golf than hang glide, and those who die from old age do so while playing golf because they spend so much time there. Maybe brave people are brave just because they lie to themselves about the dangers? With hang gliding, life is at stake each time.

    So, silly lyrics. Coming down is unavoidable. Although one wishes one could be on the ground again without the landing part. Out of ten guys for three weeks, only one broke a leg and two quit. One after having gained surprising height and blew away over the mountain tops to the next valley. He came back to the instructors’ farm late at night after a long walk through the wilderness, bruised and in torn clothes without the wing. He left the next morning. (That all got off topic)

  • Joe

    Local Fluff, I have always said, at least when I go flying, I have wings!, often see people on motorcycles going airborne in some form of stunt and think that to my self!

  • LocalFluff

    @Joe
    Wings? So, you’re Hell’s Angels? :-)

  • wayne

    Great audience-participation, good selection Edward.

    Felix Baumgartner jump
    Red Bull Stratos
    https://youtu.be/7f-K-XnHi9I?t=195

  • @Joe:

    Heartily agree. My Petty albums were some of the first I converted to CD.

    @LocalFluff:

    Flying is easy; landing is hard.

  • Joe

    Landing is the fun part, take offs mean you are committed to the landing!

  • eddie willers

    As they say about mountain climbing: Going up is optional, getting down is mandatory!

  • eddie willers: Heh. In caving and hiking the Grand Canyon, it is the reverse: Going down is optional, climbing out is mandatory.

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