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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.

 

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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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Two NASA employees indicted for allowing Chinese scientist access

Two NASA supervisors from the Langley Research Center in Virginia have been indicted for allowing a Chinese scientist unrestricted access to the facilities there for two years, including allowing the scientist to return to China with a NASA-issued laptop.

What I find amazing about this indictment is that a U.S. attorney in the Obama Justice Department has issued it. The Obama administration and NASA administrator Charles Bolden want unrestricted cooperation with China, and have even done some things that could also violate the same laws against providing U.S. technology to China. Under these conditions, I would have thought the attorney would have been ordered to drop the case, just as the Obama administration has done with numerous other examples where someone in that administration did something illegal and got away with it.

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

5 comments

  • NickP

    Bob

    “just as the Obama administration has done with numerous other examples where someone in that administration did something illegal and got away with it.”

    Is it just that I’m getting older and more cynical or has it always been this bad?

    I just don’t remember this level of corruption in prior administrations.

  • mike shupp

    Try and convince me, if this were a graduate student from within the US, returning to Peoria after a stint with NASA, carrying the same lap top and the same data — mostly soft porn, if memory serves — would you or anyone else give a damn? Nobody on earth, not even Congressman Frank Wolf, sees this case as comparable to the Rosenbergs giving Manhattan Project secrets to the USSR back in the 1940’s.

    I think people are jumping up and down and screaming because a Chinese guy is involved and it’s just so much fun to jump up and down and scream about the evil Chinese. Particularly when there’s no cost.

  • A. Choo

    No cost!! Someone is out in space on this one. Could it just have been a Hillary oversight. Back to sleep.

  • The corruption and politicization of the Justice Department has been getting worse in the past few administrations, starting with the Clinton administration. When Clinton took office he did something that no previous president had done in decades, firing all the attorneys and replacing them with politically trustworthy Democrats. Bush, being the wimp he is, didn’t do the same and kept these hacks on when he took office in 2000. Obama then cleaned out the small number of Bush appointees in 2008. Since then, the Justice Department has been a reliable Democratic Party operative.

  • pzatchok

    Who said it had to be comparable to the Rossenbergs?

    Spying is spying no matter how much was gained.

    Industrial espionage is still theft. In fact I bet the US government paid for all that tech he took. That’s my cash.

    Why don’t you care about that? What would it take to make you care?

    China admitted the man was a spy. He was deported to keep the political fallout down to a minimum.
    But someone had to pay for the mess up. So that fell in these two mid level chumps.
    They could have ratted out their boss who told them to give this guy access. But no, they are taking the blame and retiring to a nice quiet lifestyle. You don’t really think they did this all on their own do you?

    They will get a slap on the wrist or a presidential pardon and sent on their way.

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