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The time has come for my annual short pre-Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

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ULA reduces workforce at Vandenberg

Capitalism in space: In an effort to save costs ULA is reducing its workforce at Vandenberg by 48.

The company has been aggressively trying to streamline its operations to better compete against SpaceX. This reduction was expected, and based upon what I saw when I toured Vandenberg a few years ago, entirely justified. While SpaceX’s operations then looked lean and simple, ULA’s set up appeared a bit inefficient.

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

6 comments

  • LocalFluff

    Concerning Capitalism In Space, I saw you’ve got “mail” yesterday with an op-ed in Space News by Scott Pace who is some guy with a title larger than a visit card. He’s critical, very selectively critical. Remarkably strange claims are being made about economics. That demand for space flight won’t increase until launch costs come under $400 per kilogram, for example. Among standard claims that you made unspecified factual errors and did not realize that SLS/Orion compensates its cost by being safer than any commercial alternative (when you see someone eating his hat, it’s because they made such claims).

    That article is like a decapitated hen running around, just a bit more agitated than the same creature was before it lost its cranial appendix. Hundreds of readers’ comments overwhelmingly seem to disagree with Mr. Pace.

    http://spacenews.com/op-ed-wishful-thinking-collides-with-policy-economic-realities-in-capitalism-in-space/

  • wayne

    LocalFluff–

    Good stuff.
    — Mr. (they hate it when one doesn’t use their appointed Title!) Pace hasn’t held a real job, in his entire life. He’s one of those Expert-Mastermind’s who knows everything about the Theory of Space and how everyone else should be forced to do it.

    -The Usual Gang of Crony Suspects:
    https://spi.elliott.gwu.edu/supporters

  • LocalFluff

    Mr. Pace’s title doesn’t say much. He’s a director of an institute at a school of a university, dealing with international affairs (which doesn’t sound relevant to his topic). No academic title, but he’s employed by those who have such. I think that this topic is better understood by people working in the space industry than by any academics or their administrative staff.

  • Tom Billings

    “I think that this topic is better understood by people working in the space industry than by any academics or their administrative staff.”

    That, sir, is the basest form of heresy against the never-to-be-questioned right of academia to be an ever-expanding guide for all society. It reasons as though academicians are not unbiased and above us mortal creatures. Here in the Portland metro area that would get street riots as a reply!

    Oh Well, ….

  • LocalFluff

    Tim,
    One of the reasons why I love, and trust, astronomy, is that it isn’t corrupt, like economics is, which I unfortunately have wasted a couple of university courses at. An astronomer could make anything up, what ordinary person could check it? And some UFO people do make anything up, but they are easy to distinguish. So astronomers make absurd claims and refer to quagmire math, which even if you sift through it and nod that you couldn’t find any errors there, still doesn’t tell you much about anything. But they have this water proof alibi:
    You couldn’t make it up!
    Today’s cosmology is waaay too weird to be a fantasy, it’s beyond the capability of any human mind to make this up, it has to have been discovered.

  • Alex

    Look at the list of sponsoring partners that says all.

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