To read this post please scroll down.

 

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
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

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.


Pan Am Boeing 707 – 1965 Emergency Landing

An evening pause: This television news report about a 1965 near disaster where a Pan American passenger jet’s engine and wing fall off and the captain brings everything down safely is fascinating to watch, partly because of the live action footage taken by one passenger, but also at how television news has evolved since then, for the worse. This 1965 report has no shots a newsperson standing in front of the camera telling us what happened, as is typical today. Instead, the filming focuses on the events and the witnesses themselves, and lets them tell the story in as straight-forward a manner as possible.

Hat tip Mike Nelson.

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

7 comments

  • mpthompson

    The second plane sent to pick up the passengers stranded at Travis AFB had it’s nose wheel collapse??? WTF! LOL! What kind of maintenance schedule were those planes on? And then all, but eight of the passengers got in a third plane to finally make it to Hawaii. Sheesh, I would have that only eight of the passengers would get in the third plane.

  • Joe

    My dad was on an American Airlines dc-10 in 1979, flight 191, he got off that aircraft at Detroit Metro, the aircraft went on to O Hare and landed, on takeoff enroute to L.A., the right engine came off and landed on the runway, severely damaging the wing and its control surfaces, all aboard perished, it was determined to be a maintenance issue. Stuff happens and no one has any control over it, I am sure the mechanics who worked on that aircraft had no idea that something like that would happen, this is why airliner accidents are studied so closely.

  • C. Cecil

    Without researching what happened, I would guess the crew put her on the hardstand in existing configuration.
    Way over normal landing speed, but who cares about tires in a situation like this? An enormous amount of lift lost, but the weight of the lost engine, fuel tanks and contents, etc. would probably compensate for the loss of lift. 8 degrees wing down on the port side, #3 at 90%, 1 & 2 at 60%, what more can you do? Just a guess.

  • Edward

    Interestingly, as part of the simulator recreations of the flight 191 accident, sometimes they told the pilots what they were simulating and sometimes not. Because a lot of cabling was severed when the engine departed the aircraft, the airplane’s instrumentation gave incorrect information to the pilots, and every simulator pilot who was not told what they were simulating crashed their simulated airplane, but every pilot who was told had managed to return to the airport. This demonstrates the importance of the pilots knowing the true condition of the aircraft.

    Joe,
    I’m glad your father was not aboard, otherwise he would have become one of the many who lost their lives while we learned how to fly right:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXbdJ3kyVyU (7 minutes, Bill Whittle, “The Deal,” I know that I have linked to this a lot, lately)

  • Joe

    C. Cecil, I would agree with you, if it’s flying with that kind of damage, changing configurations is a big unknown, why upset the apple cart if the possibility exists that you can’t pick all the apples back up! Edward, thanks for the Video, I have seen it before, there is a learning curve that comes with all new technologies, commercial aviation included, commercial aviation in the United States has become so safe with both maintenance and procedures in the cockpit being a crucial part of the safety record, I am very fortunate that my dad deplaned where he did, in this respect we are powerless to predict the next ten minutes, sometimes pilots can work miracles and sometimes they can’t.

  • Sandra Warren

    Another life-saving pilot from Danville, CA, just like Captain Sullenberger. I flew 50,000 miles last year, and always felt safe. It’s rare that I praise government intervention, but it seems to me that the NTSB and the FAA together with the world’s major airlines have combined all their efforts to make a magnificent transportation system. Kudos and thanks to all the people in the airline industry who get us there safely.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *