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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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ULA buys 20 more Russian engines for Atlas 5

With the Congressional ban on buying Russian rocket engines lifted, ULA today wasted no time and immediately purchased 20 more engines from its Russian supplier to use in its Atlas 5 rocket.

I could also title this post “The Death of the Vulcan Rocket”. With at least 20 engines available, ULA no longer has any need to develop that new rocket. The Air Force is still willing to overpay for Atlas 5 launches, and they will now have enough engines to fly that rocket for probably 5 to 10 more years. Since there have already been indications that the bean-counters at ULA have been reluctant to fund Vulcan’s development, I expect them to now kill it.

This of course will be a very short-sighted decision. They might get some business with the Altas 5 and the Delta from the government for those few years, but this will not make them competitive in the new rocket industry. Eventually, they are going to go the way of the American steel industry, which failed to innovate and compete with foreign companies, and in the end lost its business to those foreign companies.

In the case of aerospace, however, the competition is coming from American companies. And that is wholly to the good.

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

3 comments

  • Frank

    Shameless ULA with their fat government contracts now gets a green light to send tax dollars to Russia instead of doing the right (and hard) thing of investing in the future and creating jobs and value at home. ULA is better at lobbying and turing a quick buck than building rocket engines.

  • D K Rögnvald Williams

    They will eventually be buying first stage rockets from SpaceX.

  • fred k

    So the ordering from Putin is now allowed. How quickly will they be delivered? Putin would be happy to take the check but deliver (or not) depending on his mood.

    Looking that the launch manifest from last year shows 10 launches. This buy looks like about 2 years of launches only. There is still a need for Vulcan (or preferably, a working Falcon Heavy)

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