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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
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.


Want your food kosher in space?

While some of the food can be kosher, it is presently not possible for an astronaut on ISS to maintain a completely kosher diet.

It has nothing to do with the space station per se; it has to do with our food production facility,” Kloeris told Space.com. “We have a single packaging room on the U.S. side. All of the food that’s part of our standard menu that we provide — from what I understand, in order for them to be kosher and halal, they have to be done in separate, unique facilities. Therefore, everything we package would not meet that requirement.”


Kloeris noted that it’s possible to travel with a limited allotment of kosher or halal foods, in order to honor an astronaut’s heritage; every astronaut is allowed a certain number of crew-specific containers sent to the space station, which can account for about 10 percent of their diet.

The same limitations also apply to halal food for Muslims.

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

  • LocalFluff

    Good!

  • geoffc

    This is not entirely true. If they wanted to, the prep room could be cleaned, non-kosher items removed, a run of food produced, then go back to buisness as usual. Many plants that make kosher food do it this way. Stagg Chilli in fact does it this way. The vast majority of the time, they do not bother getting the production line certified kosher, but on some schedule, they do an extra cleaning, get supervision in house, and do a large run of kosher stock. I met the guy who organizes this in Atlanta a few years ago. Welch’s grape juice does something similar around Passover time.

  • Alex

    Why is kosher food for space important? Are there so many Jewish astronauts? Next step, pork-free food for Moslem astronauts (BTW, are there any of them?)

  • Pzatchok

    Alex
    Future workers and scientists.

    Robert would the water still be considered clean even after recycling?

  • Edward

    This is another example of how free market capitalism works better than a centrally controlled system. As geoffc mentioned, the free market already found a solution for several food producers to the general public, and once “space food” can be supplied by non-government sources (e.g. when Bigelow and other non-governmental space habitats become operational), then nations, companies, and organizations will have more freedom to supply their people with specialized foods and to meet other specialized needs.

    Government organizations are notoriously inflexible, attempting to create a one-size-fits-all solution to solve a mutually exclusive problem. Free markets are immensely flexible, attempting to create solutions that satisfy as many people as possible, even if that means they need separate processes and extra work.

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