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Readers!

 

My July fund-raising campaign to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black is now over. I want to thank all those who so generously donated or subscribed, especially those who have become regular supporters. I can't do this without your help. I also find it increasingly hard to express how much your support means to me. God bless you all!

 

The donations during this year's campaign were sadly less than previous years, but for this I blame myself. I am tired of begging for money, and so I put up the campaign announcement at the start of the month but had no desire to update it weekly to encourage more donations, as I have done in past years. This lack of begging likely contributed to the drop in donations.

 

No matter. I am here, and here I intend to stay. If you like what I do and have not yet donated or subscribed, please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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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Watch Starliner’s return to Earth

The astronauts on ISS closed the hatch yesterday on Boeing’s Starliner manned capsule in preparation for its return to Earth today, with a planned landing at White Sands, New Mexico, at 6:49 pm (Eastern).

I have embedded NASA’s live stream below. The undocking at 2:36 pm (Eastern), with the live stream beginning at 2:30 pm (Eastern). After the capsule separates and ends joint operations with ISS the live stream will break off until 5:45 pm (Eastern), when it will resume to cover the landing.

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

5 comments

  • Jay

    Bob,
    I wonder if you will hear the sonic boom from your location? White Sands is about five to six hours away from your city?

  • Jay: Tucson is more like 10 hours away from White Sands. Also, sonic booms are much more localized, probably not heard more than 30 miles away.

  • V-Man

    Did I hear right? There are more issues with the OMS/RCS thrusters (beyond the earlier shutdowns), but “there’s plenty of redundancy to draw from” according to the Boeing commentators.

    Granted, it’s a test flight, but as I’ve said before you couldn’t pay me to set foot on this deathtrap.

  • V-Man: My understanding is that there have been no additional problems today. Two OMS thrusters shut down prematurely during the final orbital burn after launch. Then two RCS thrusters failed during maneuvers prior to docking.

    Today Boeing engineers did tests of those failed thrusters after undocking to try to better understand why they failed.

  • Edward

    Robert Zimmerman noted: “Also, sonic booms are much more localized, probably not heard more than 30 miles away.

    This is probably true. Several years ago, the Space Shuttle’s reentry path took it about 60-ish miles north of where I was. It was a nighttime reentry and beautiful to watch. Some observers thought it was kind of purpleish but I thought it was more pinkish. The point, though, is that when the sonic boom reached us, it was more of a very quiet “puff puff,” certainly too quiet to be heard from 60 miles away during the daytime, with all the regular ambient noise.

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

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