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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent independent analysis you don’t find elsewhere. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn’t influenced by donations by established companies or political movements. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

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Watching Astra’s launch attempt tonight

Capitalism in space: Astra has made its live stream available for its orbital launch attempt tonight, scrubbed last night about ten minutes before liftoff.

This will be the company’s fourth attempt to launch a payload into orbit. The first three attempts failed in some manner.

I have embedded the company’s live stream, provided by NASASpaceflight LLC and Astra Space Inc., below the fold.

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

6 comments

  • Localfluff

    I haven’t paid much attention to space flight during the last couple of years. Looking at it now, SO MUCH IS HAPPENING!

    If you who read this were lingering along with space news day by day like I did, and I do now again. Please take a couple of years’ perspective, and it is a huge step for human kind. Again. Perhaps not this single launch, but on the whole it is getting much more intensive now year by year. Spaceflight is the future. It is happening.

  • Localfluff: What is happening now is what I predicted would happen a quarter century ago, in my final chapter of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8:

    The new century will see a renaissance of space exploration as exciting and as challenging as the space race in the 1960’s. And this rebirth will happen under the banner of freedom and private property, the very principles for which the United States fought the Cold War.

  • Questioner

    Congratulations to Astra for the success. The rocket design, in which the first stage carries the greater part of the propulsion capacity, is interesting.

  • Jay

    Congratulations to Astra on reaching orbit.!

  • Chris Lopes

    The more companies who can do this, the better. This one almost looked like it was launched from someone’s backyard. It had a very low tech feel to it, which is ironic considering we are talking about an orbital spacecraft. Perhaps that’s where the technology is right now. Pretty much anyone with money and know how (Blue Origin excepted) can put things in orbit. Very cool.

  • Questioner

    The second stage, which has a small engine that is pressure fed (no pumps), is unusually small compared to the first stage. This is why the end-of-burn speed of the first stage is here 4.1 km / s (2.7 km / s for Electron). With regard to the second stage and the overall rocket, there are definitely still opportunities to increase performance. For example, why don’t you use a vacuum version of the first stage engine and make the second stage much heavier. It should not add significantly to the overall manufacturing cost, but increase payload capacity and fairing diameter signficantly. What about the engine deal with Firefly? From which rocket production number will the new engine be used?

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