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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.
 

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ULA finally begins stacking Vulcan for next launch

After months of delay following the nozzle failure on the rocket’s second launch, ULA has now finally begun preparing a new Vulcan rocket for its third launch, carrying a number of a classified NSSL national security payloads.

Based on statements by ULA’s CEO, Tory Bruno, the company is finally about to begin the aggressive 2025 launch schedule he had promised last year.

During a media roundtable on the sidelines of the 40th Space Symposium in early April, Bruno said they planned to launch around 11 to 13 times by the end of the year. He said that would be a roughly 50-50 split between Atlas and Vulcan rockets.

The next two Vulcan launches are planned to be two NSSL Phase 2 missions: USSF-106 and USSF-87. The Vulcan rockets for both have been at the Cape since last year, but the status of the payloads hasn’t been publicly discussed given their ties to national security.

Bruno said following those two NSSL missions, ULA will launch the first Kuiper Vulcan mission and then bounce back and forth between Atlas and Vulcan flights through the end of the year.

If this schedule turns out to be true, it will be good news not only for ULA but for Amazon, as it indicates the possibility of ULA launching more than 500 Kuiper satellites before the end of the year. That will make a significant dent in its requirement to place 1,600 satellites in orbit by July 2026. At the moment only 54 are in space.

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

4 comments

  • Mitch S.

    I suppose it makes sense to keep launching Atlas to run down the stock of RD-180s and wind up the program.
    But I do wonder about the supply of BE-4s.
    An average of one Vulcan launch/month. There is a New Glenn scheduled to launch next month but I don’t know BO’s plans after that.
    If BO succeeds in recovering New Glenn’s booster and reusing it’s BE-4s it would help.
    Does make me wonder how Merlin reusability is working out these days – how many flights is SpaceX managing per engine and how many new Merlins are they manufacturing?

  • Richard M

    Color me skeptical. But I very much hope I am wrong.

  • Ray Van Dune

    If Starship is not to delay Artemis, it seems obvious that its recent failures will place an additional Starlink launch load on Falcon 9. That in turn means that Amazon probably cannot shift a significant number of launches to SpaceX, even if they wanted to, especially if the USSF starts shifting priority payloads away from ULA to SpaceX too!

    BE-4 production rate is looking like a big wobbly tentpole in a lot of plans!

  • Edward

    Ray Van Dune wrote: “If Starship is not to delay Artemis, it seems obvious that its recent failures will place an additional Starlink launch load on Falcon 9. That in turn means that Amazon probably cannot shift a significant number of launches to SpaceX, even if they wanted to, especially if the USSF starts shifting priority payloads away from ULA to SpaceX too!

    I don’t think that Starlink has any problems meeting government imposed deadlines for numbers of satellites in service to keep its frequency licenses. SpaceX can always substitute Starlink flights with paying customers such as Amazon and USSF without any significant delays in expanding the Starlink constellation.

    The incentive favors launching competing constellations, as the launch income is greater than competition losses (if there are any). Starlink is still the 800 pound gorilla with the majority of the customers.

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