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[b]Space Cover #463: Earliest Atlas Cover?[/b] Above is a classic Goldcraft cachet cover hand cancelled at Port Canaveral on November 28, 1958 for the 15th test flight of an Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). In this test, the Atlas finally flew its full intended trajectory, 6300 miles downrange. The Atlas was originally developed as an ICBM to loft nuclear warheads across the planet in the case of a world war. Fortunately, none had to be used for that purpose. The Atlas ICBM ended up becoming the workhorse launch vehicle for the American space program, launching four Americans into orbit during Project Mercury, Agena docking targets for Gemini, Rangers/Surveyors/Lunar Orbiters to the Moon, Mariners/Pioneers to the planets, and many more all the way up through 2004 (the current generation of Atlas launch vehicles are a newer design, unrelated to the ICBM). Atlas was a very complicated missile for its time (hence hard-to-develop), going through the A, B, and C test models before reaching the operational D model. The first Atlas (an A model) was launched on June 11, 1957 and failed shortly after launch. The cover above represents the 15th overall Atlas flight test (this one was a B model) and only the 8th successful one (remember the "hard-to-develop" part above?). Three weeks later another Atlas B successfully placed the SCORE satellite into earth orbit (covers exist for this launch). Anyway, the cover above is the earliest Atlas test flight cover that I have found. This got dinged by a judge in a philatelic exhibit for not being "the first" Atlas test flight cover, but I've never seen nor heard of one of those. Has anyone found any Atlas test flight covers prior to the one above (e.g. time period from June 11, 1957 to November 28, 1958)? If so, let's post 'em! And as always, I'll be glad to host the image of your cover if you need it — just email the image to me.
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