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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.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent independent analysis you don’t find elsewhere. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn’t influenced by donations by established companies or political movements. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:

 

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The Fixx – Red Skies

An evening pause: Hat tip Joe Griffin.

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

  • wayne

    Joe–
    Nice selection—I totally forgot, about these guys! Heavy rotation on MTV at the time. (Back when they actually played music & had very little advertising.)

  • Rene Borbon

    Without leftist politics too

  • Joe

    I think Wayne grew up listening to a lot of the same stuff i did, finally back in the country after a wedding in the Caribbean!

  • wayne

    Joe–
    Good deal on the wedding trip.
    I suspect we’ve heard quite a bit, of the same music.

    Rene–
    We had MTV on our cable system from day one. It was amazing to actually see “music video” 24/7.
    Definitely had more of an alternative FM radio feel, for the first few years. (I couldn’t however, tell you when the last time I actually watched MTV or VH1– must have been the mid 90’s.)

    MTV Launch
    August 1, 1981
    https://youtu.be/unVqWMDNYGA
    (5:55)

  • BSJ

    Thanks for this! I’ve been trying to figure out the name of one of their songs for a couple years now! Kept getting sidetracked because I thought it was by Yes…

    Stand or Fall. “Red or blue, what’s the difference?”

    She’s a Beauty was the first video I ever saw on MTv. Didn’t have cable at the time. Saw it at a Holiday Inn.

  • wayne

    BSJ-
    Good stuff.
    (Stand or Fall is, pretty good. I’ll restrain myself from linking to it.) They do have a distinct sound, but I empathize with co-mingling them with a band like Yes.

    I ended up wasting a bit of time reviewing early 80’s music, jogged the memory quite a bit!
    It was definitely a transitional time period.

    Har…I distinctly recall the “wow, this hotel has MTV,” feeling!

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