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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
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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.


SpaceX launches 27 mini-Starlink satellites

SpaceX today successfully launched 27 mini-Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its tenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. This launch had been aborted at T-11 seconds two days ago when an airplane had entered the range unexpectedly.

The 2025 launch race:

10 SpaceX
4 China
1 Blue Origin

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

4 comments

  • Marshall

    > drone ship in the Atlantic

    Was that a copy/pasta error?

    That would be a new thing – launching from Vandy and landing in the Atlantic.

  • David M. Cook

    Arrrg… Pasta Errors! That‘s worse than the Spaghetti Incident!

  • Marshall: Thank you. The error was in my brain entirely. Fixed.

  • Dick Eagleson

    I’ll confess I initially wondered if that “27” in the payload description wasn’t another case of errant keyboarding but other sources concur. That would seem to indicate that the V2-mini version of the Starlink sat has been recently sent to a fat farm and emerged more svelte. If they now tip the scales at little enough that 27 at a time can be flown from Vandy, perhaps 30 or more will soon be departing on each mission out of KSC/Canaveral. That will, of course, accelerate SpaceX’s pace of Starlink deployments even above and beyond what would be expected from the F9’s advancing launch cadence.

    Both the increases to cadence and the reducing regimen administered to Starlink V2-minis suggest that both will play a continuing role in building out the population and capacity of the Starlink constellation even with Starship is perhaps as little as a couple of months away from the start of it own heavyweight contributions to the cause. I foresee F9 and the V2-mini continuing Starlink missions at maximum achievable chat until the constellation reaches the maximum number of ca. 42,000 specified in its current and pending FCC licenses. Only when that occurs – and all V1 and V1.5 Starlinks have been replaced and de-orbited as well – might F9-based Starlink deployment missions end. I think we will be seeing such missions continue for at least another five years and perhaps for even longer if not only the mass of V2-minis continues to decline but their bandwidth capacity also takes steps upward.

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