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My February birthday fund-raising campaign for this website, Behind the Black, is now over. Despite a relatively weak initial three weeks, the last week was spectacular, making this campaign the second best ever.

 

Thanks to every person who donated or subscribed. It continues to astonish me that people who can read my work for free like it enough to donate money voluntarily. Words cannot express my appreciation for that support, especially in these uncertain times.

 

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You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. 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.

 

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UN announces proposed Dream Chaser international mission

Capitalism in space: The Outer Space office of the United Nations has announced an opportunity for member nations to express their interest in doing a science mission using Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser reusable spaceship.

The UN announcement states that

The purpose of this Call for Interest (CFI) is to provide a summary of the proposed mission and to solicit information from Member States interested in providing experiments, payloads, or satellites that could be flown on this mission. The CFI also has the objective of gathering information on the interested countries so that UNOOSA may better understand the demand for this type of mission.

The actual call [pdf] roughly describes a mission lasting 2 to 3 weeks and carrying about 20 experiments. This call is designed to give them a better idea of what those experiments might be, what nations wish to participate, and where the funding for the mission might come from. The actual announcement to submit experiment proposals won’t come until March 2018.

Being a UN mission, it is not surprising that it wants to focus on a variety of leftwing “Sustainable Development Goals”:

  • No Poverty
  • Zero Hunger
  • Good Health and Well-Being
  • Quality Education
  • Gender Equality
  • Clean Water and Sanitation
  • Affordable and Clean Energy
  • Decent Work and Economic Growth
  • Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
  • Reduced Inequalities
  • Sustainable Cities and Communities
  • Responsible Consumption and Production
  • Climate Action
  • Life Below Water
  • Life on Land
  • Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions
  • Partnerships for the Goals

Many of these areas of research actually make sense. Many are leftist Orwellian propaganda positions that have nothing to do with space research and are solely designed to give them power over the language and thus everyone else. Anyone who opposes “strong institutions” must therefore also oppose “Peace and Justice” and must be a fascist! You are against “Reduced Inequalities?” You must be a racist!

The problem is that the strong institutions they desire will not be used to establish peace, justice and reduced inequalities. Instead they will impose tyranny on us all in an effort to create the left’s typical fantasy about utopia. The result will be disasters like Venezuela, the Soviet Union, and North Korea.

The irony here is that the leftist UN is doing this using a spaceship built entirely on the concepts of freedom and capitalism, ideas that interestingly are not included in these “sustainable development goals” and are actually the best proven ways to bring about sustainability and wealth. Sierra Nevada is trying to develop customers for its reusable spaceship, and while the UN wallows in leftist dogma, it will be making money and building spaceships that will bring wealth to itself and to the United States.

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 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

2 comments

  • Matt in AZ

    The much-lauded UN Declaration of Human Rights has an interesting tidbit, tucked near the very end. Most of its 30 articles sound very generous and wonderful, and then you get down to Article 29, part 3:

    “These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”

    Nice all-purpose backup clause! Best not to give them some actual power.

    http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

  • Edward

    Matt in AZ,

    In the past, I have noted Article 29, part 3 as being the UN retaining the right to eliminate any of the human rights that it has deigned to grant to us.

    This is the difference between a tyrannical governing body and one that promotes liberty and freedom. The US Constitution is written not from the point of view that the government grants us rights but that we naturally have rights that the government may not take away from us, that governments are our creation and we own it and have power over it, not it having power over us and owning us.

    Robert,

    I noticed that missing from the list of goals are:
    — life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness
    — property rights
    — individual choice (where someone’s choice may result in his own poverty, hunger, poor health, and low quality education)

    It shows quite a difference between the top-down thinking that continually gets into wars and the bottom-up thinking that, in a mere 300 years, turned the US from a backwoods village that couldn’t even feed itself to the global economic powerhouse that rescued the world from two global wars (both started by top-down nations).

    As you noted, Robert, bottom-up thinking nations and their freedom, capitalism, and private property have proved to be far more sustainable than the top-down thinking nations, such as Venezuela, the Soviet Union, and North Korea. The productivity generated in countries that rely upon enlightened self interest beats out that of countries that impose governmental self interest, the latter countries being so unproductive that they depend upon other people’s money to look sustainable, and when they run out of those people’s money they often threaten to or actually start another war in order to get a new source of other people’s money.

    With luck, commercial space will help show the world that bottom-up thinking is the superior, more sustainable way to go.

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