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The time has come for my annual short Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

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Deepest underground structures

An evening pause: This is not a complete list, as it leaves out some very deep caves and mines that I myself have actually visited, but it truly does provide a sense of scale. It also mixes artificial structures with natural features.

Hat tip Cotour.

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

14 comments

  • John C

    Unbelievable. That is a lot of mass above you. I guess I didn’t know that oil wells went down to 35,000 feet. I wonder if we will ever know how much oil is truly below our feet. Better bankrupt our civilization, because we’re not sure.

  • Peter Gent

    Oil wells going down to 35,000 feet proves oil is not a fossil fuel. It is produced naturally deep in the earth’s crust.

  • Cotour

    PG:

    “But is the O-14 really 49,000 feet deep? The short answer is no, because there is one little catch: directional drilling.”

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Truth-About-The-Worlds-Deepest-Oil-Well.html

    “In terms of vertical depth, though, BP’s Tiber field in the Gulf of Mexico, drilled by the infamous Deepwater Horizon, became the location for the deepest oil well. The Tiber well’s depth – true vertical depth – was more than 35,000 feet.”

    I suspect that abiotic oil is the result, as is “Fossil” fuel-based oil and gas is essentially the same thing.

    Massive amounts of biological material being laid down over eons of time and driven down to depth through plate tectonics to where it is very deep and has been there for a long, long time. The earth has been biologically active for the last 3.5 billion years?

    I found the video very interesting in how it gave perspective and scale to something that is difficult to visualize.

  • James Street

    Good one Cotour. Thanks.

    Reminds me I watched a great movie on Amazon Prime called “Thirteen Lives” starring Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell and directed by Ron Howard about the 2018 rescue of the boys’ soccer team and their coach from a cave in Thailand.

  • Jahaziel Maqqebet

    Like other commenters here I blame fairies.

  • GWB

    OK… two things…
    Why is the Turtle crying? (Tears of the Turtle Cave)
    Because he’s the bottom turtle. It is not really turtles all the way down.

    What are they observing 1,000m underground? Usually “observatories” are for looking at the stars. Kamioka Observatory looks like a contractor misread the blueprints and nobody questioned them on the cost overruns for digging a deep hole.

    Noticed some inconsistency with negative numbers appearing. Weird.

    All of that really cool.

  • GWB

    Jahaziel Maqqebet
    November 30, 2022 at 8:43 am

    Like other commenters here I blame fairies.

    Well, in the case of mines, you’d need to blame kobolds. Fairies are lazy and don’t like to get their hands (or wings) dirty. Kobolds do real work. :)

  • Alex Andrite

    wow.
    I had to clear my “ears” due to multiple popping on the way down.

  • GWB: These deep underground observatories are for detecting neutrinos, which can pass through the Earth quite easily. By placing the neutrino detector deep underground you isolate it from other energy sources that could make detection difficult.

  • GWB

    Robert Zimmerman
    November 30, 2022 at 10:41 am

    I figured that might be what it was. But it should be labelled that way in the video. (Not your problem, obviously.)
    Also, I think that idea makes a materialistic assumption there are no “energy sources” in the Great Deep. The Old Ones are not forever content to be ignored. ;)

  • Joseph Neal Sr

    Thank you. Name calling erupts from childish emotions that have no rational or logical expression except a bellow if fear.

    Obscenities are similar but are adult bellows that fail to consider the content and counter such with well thought out counterpoint thus the obscenity which is the bellower” reaction “you mean I have to think now and actually write my reasoned counterpoint- bullocks!”

  • Joseph Neal Sr: And thank YOU for your donation. It is most appreciated.

    I have found that by insisting people not use obscenities or insults they are forced to think, and thus the quality of the comments on this webpage have improved considerably. In other words, I demand they act like civilized mature adults, and after a short grumpiness most find the rules actually benefit both them and everyone else.

    Civilization. What a concept. We should all try it sometime.

  • Boobah

    I noticed that they showed another, further underground laboratory and that one was labelled as a neutrino observatory; Kamioka in particular does that, too, but they’re also a gravity wave observatory, and the work there and at other similar sites is how we’ve largely confirmed that, however gravity propagates, it seems to do so at the speed of light, since the gravity waves from events arrive at the same time as the light.

  • GWB

    Boobah
    November 30, 2022 at 1:16 pm

    Ahhhh, ok. Thanks.

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