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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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Chase Hiller – Skateboarding down a mountain in Columbia

An evening pause: For the weekend, some recreational activity. There are two or three cuts, but in general he makes the whole run non-stop. If you want to get your palms sweating play some of this at 2x normal speed. The location is in San Felix, Columbia.

Hat tip Tom Wilson.

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

  • Jerry Greenwood

    Wow! What a rush! The cars, the dogs, jumping cow paddies! Oh to be young and bullet proof again for just one day, one hour.

  • Blackwing1

    Sorry, this is just plain craziness; taking risks for the sole purpose of taking risks. Far too many things that aren’t under his control, right down to a simple bearing freeze at a bad millisecond, will result in death (or worse yet, crippling injury).

    This will be evolution in action at some point. The average survival skills of the human race will go up by a minute fraction when he finally bleaches his little portion of the gene pool..

  • Alex Andrite

    Death Wish ?
    I would commute from the CA Coast up and over the Sonora Pass, 120, elev ~9.600K ft, into Nevada for random work.
    I got paid for the days commute. Loved it.
    Did work in Reno, Go V.A., Bridgeport, Go Marines, and out in Fallon, Go Navy.
    Then the next weeks commute was back to the coast over 120.

    This one commute home, as I crawled back up 120 from 395 Nevada side, I reached the summit Pass, and paused.
    There at the summit were 5 guys (no gender intended) all in fine leather racing suits with full helmets and cameras atop the helmets.
    It was the long skateboards, and large gloves they wore which caught my attention.

    I came to a slow stop.
    Four of the guys took off down the pass. The fifth lagged and took of after them all,
    I realized that the fifth was running as a sweeper, slowing / stopping following traffic, as if there were a lot of us. !

    I followed them all the way down to the bottom, Kennedy Meadows.
    Observing the wide slomon turns, gloves sparking, knees dragging on the asphalt, only to disaper agian around the next curve.
    #5 doing his job. I lagged behind.

    Down at the Meadows area, they had a “road block” type set up with three tourist cars waiting to climb the pass to Nevada, blocking the boarders descent.
    The skate boarders were already collecting themselves, and marching back up to the large final turnout where their well labled Team Van and camera crew, filiming their arrival, waitied for them.
    I waved as I passed.

    Ah well, just a commute.

  • Jeff Wright

    Astounding control…insane

  • markedup2

    Why skateboard down a mountain? Because it’s there.

    The average survival skills of the human race will go up by a minute fraction when he finally bleaches his little portion of the gene pool..

    I couldn’t disagree more – and that’s exactly why changing our own genes is so dangerous. Risk takers _like_ this (if not him in particular) are what drive humanity forward. Those same reflexes and situational awareness are what allow humans to fly jet fighters.

    We also don’t see the prep work. I’d be very surprised if there was anything unexpected on that run other than the occasional vehicle. It was all scouted, mapped, and analyzed, first.

    This is a triumph not a travesty.

  • Thomas Wilson

    I love the part where the dog comes out of nowhere (2:25) . . . absolutely classic, an amazing save.

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