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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
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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.


ULA’s Delta Heavy successfully launches spy satellite for NRO

ULA today has successfully launched a spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, using its Delta Heavy rocket, its largest rocket.

With this launch, ULA retires the Delta from any further launches from Vandenberg. Future California launches will use its as yet untested Vulcan rocket.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

42 SpaceX
38 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
6 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 59 to 38 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 59 to 58. The 59 launches makes this the third most active launch year in American history, trailing only 1966 (70 launches) and 1965 (64 launches).

SpaceX has a Falcon 9 launch of 52 Starlink satellites scheduled very shortly, so these numbers will hopefully go up again before the day is out.

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

7 comments

  • Ray Van Dune

    I had a casual friend who had an admin job that had nothing to do with rockets, but it took him to the factory in Long Beach where they built the Delta IV series. Naturally they offered to show him one of the rockets as sort of a welcoming gesture, but as he was on a tight schedule he almost didn’t bother. Like I said not a CLOSE friend!

    Anyway, to be a good sport he agreed to walk out to the factory… and as long as I knew him after that, he never quit talking about it!

    He was not only floored by the size of the booster itself, but then they told him to imagine two more, one on each side of it, in the Heavy configuration. He thought they were pulling his leg until they showed him the user guide!

  • Jeff Wright

    Long Beach?
    http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/m-6250

    The SSME clad RS-68s had 90% fewer parts than RS-25…and was to go on Ares V at first…

  • Ray Van Dune

    My memory of what he said may be flawed! As I remember he said he was at the former Douglas factory in Long Beach, Ca.

  • Lee S

    I have a question… Why was the Delta never man rated? It seems to have been a reliable work horse for many years..

  • Lee S: I can’t directly answer your question. However, I do know this. The Delta family of rockets had become ULA’s most very expensive rockets to build in recent years, much more expensive than the Atlas-5 or the proposed Vulcan. Thus, Boeing had no interest in using it for Starliner, and SpaceX had its own much cheaper rocket.

    Congress meanwhile mandated NASA build its own rocket, SLS, cobbled from shuttle equipment.

    There were thus no customers for Delta. I suspect this is why it was never man-rated.

  • Lee S

    Thanks Bob…. I guess that combo makes nothing but sense… Especially when you throw that long shadow of SLS into the mix…

  • Jay

    Lee,
    To answer your question about the Delta-IV Heavy’s engine, the RS-68, and to point out Jeff Wright’s post, I am sure the reason why all those other parts had to be added was to man-rate the RS-25 for the shuttle. The shuttle’s RS-25 had a little bit more thrust than the RS-68, and like Jeff said, that engine was considered for the five engine first stage of the canceled predecessor of the SLS, the Ares-V.

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