To read this post please scroll down.

 

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
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

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.


Voyager Space buys satellite electric propulsion company Exoterra

Voyager Space announced yesterday that it has acquired Exoterra, a company that specializes in building electric propulsion engines for satellites.

ExoTerra’s proprietary technology delivers precise maneuvering, extended lifetimes and high efficiency delta-V – essential for spacecraft across national defense architecture layers that must be able to reposition, avoid threats and sustain mission advantage.

…ExoTerra’s Halo thruster technology is proven aboard DARPA Blackjack ACES spacecraft and the company recently supplied York Space Systems with 21 propulsion modules for the Space Development Agency Transport Layer. The company also has contracts with commercial companies and organizations such as NASA.

Voyager Space began as a space station startup, acting as the lead company in the consortium building the Starlab station. Since then it has diversified its operations to make money in other space-related areas. This acquisition appears aimed at increasing Voyager’s ability to win contracts in connection with the military’s Golden Dome project.

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

5 comments

  • Jeff Wright

    How many of these buy-outs are just ways to sit on others innovations as opposed to helping develop said innovations?

  • Dick Eagleson

    Ah yes, the “200 mpg carburetor” being suppressed by Detroit – a story already decades old when I was a boy. That ancient lefty fable might actually be a legitimate concern if the acquiring company was some arrogant and intellectually barren legacy outfit with an inferior extant product it wanted to continue foisting on the market – like, say, any of the major contractors who work with Marshall or the iconic, but fictional, North American Veeblefetzer Corporation from MAD Magazine during its glory days.

    But Voyager Space hasn’t been around long enough to have any superannuated product lines to protect. Nor has Rocket Lab, which is another company that has grown notably from its start-up roots via multiple acquisitions of smaller firms with complementary technologies but also with capital and production problems.

    Far from suppression of acquired technologies, the NewSpace acquirers of NewerSpace companies want to sort out production bothers, slap their own names on the acquired tech and send its sales force out to flog the new stuff to existing and potential new customers. Rocket Lab, Voyager Space and Redwire have all demonstrated the benefits of such a business strategy.

  • Aussie Dave

    The “200mpg carburettor “! That and X-ray Specs. Good times, simpler times. I may also have some MAD magazines in the attic somewhere

  • john hare

    I remember it as the 100 mile per gallon carburetor, not that it makes a difference. Anyone here remember the joke about it not being the oil companies that bought the carb to keep it off the market. It was the Japanese and they were selling it back to us 5 miles at a time.

  • john hare: I believe that’s from the 70’s. 120 hp V8’s. Some consumer-available engines today get more from one cylinder. I have had a Datsun 210 wagon, and while rattly, noisy, mildly uncomfortable, and with a sub-standard (understeer) steering rack, did offer 5 row-your-own gears, Could get north of 35 mpg on the highway, but almost no sound insulation. Snoqualmie Pass: barely 40 in 3rd gear with the engine near redline. Passed by semi-trucks. I took the car places it had no business being, and while tough, I wouldn’t care to own another.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *