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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.

 

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Yearlong mission on ISS reaches halfway point

The yearlong manned mission on ISS is now halfway over.

If they complete their planned 341-day mission through March, Mark Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko will have logged the fifth and sixth longest human flights in space. They will not complete a full year in space, (as has been advertised by NASA), something that four Russians did in their Mir space station, including one flight of fourteen and a half months.

I had not realized that this mission was not actually a complete year until I read the story above. In reality, they are actually only spending just over eleven months in space. I find this very disappointing. The whole reason to have ISS is to do these long missions. To cut this short of a year seems silly. If anything, they should take advantage of the situation and try to push to break the longevity mission of 14.5 months.

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

3 comments

  • Cotour

    Q: Has it ever been revealed if anyone who has been on the ISS and / or in space has ever had a panic attack or other psychological problems related to being in space or cooped up for such long periods in such an unnatural environment?

    And have missions been cut short because of it?

  • The answer to both your questions is yes, but not on ISS. You should read my book, Leaving Earth.

  • Orion314

    Bob,
    Your points are bang on target..NASA used to be a “Can Do” ,” Balls-to-the-walls” outfit. Now, when it comes to manned space flight, NASA is so PC/pussifed as to be worthless.
    A recourse might be to put the screws to NASA. How?
    Step 1: remember HST
    the American people got that political hack/quisling NASA director O’Keefe to recant, and the rescue mission went through.
    2: Find someone with media access to interview the most boring Astronaut ever, Scott Kelly on one of NASA tv’s endless, tedious, weekly interviews, and put it to him, “Can you cowboy up for 14 months and set an all time on-orbit flight record” I bet he says yes so fast it would make the powers-that-be heads spin.
    3. Start the same call-in/e-mail campaign that saved the HST….the USA used to break aerospace records every month..maybe we can again?
    ClearDarkSkies!
    mb

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