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[b]Space Cover 713: Covers with Appropriate Stamps[/b] A huge variety of US postage stamps have been used on space covers through the years. In the very early days, many covers often had just US flag or standard US commemorative stamps affixed. But soon stamps were issued for space events, such as for Echo 1 and Mercury, so then collectors had appropriate stamps to use on their space covers. Many other space-related stamps were to follow. But this SCOTW is only about space covers with stamps that relate to or are appropriate to the actual space event they commemorate. Using such appropriate stamps adds to the covers and shown here are eight excellent examples. This SCOTW contributor takes no credit for the eight covers shown, as they all came from and at least most were the thoughtful creation of Ken Havekotte. We start, above, with one excellent example of stamps being appropriate to the space event they commemorate, but this Teacher-in-Space cover, with teacher- or education-related stamps, is mainly a sad reminder of a tragic event. Below it is a cover commemorating then-Florida US Representative Bill Nelson on his STS-61C flight, with four stamps showing the US Capitol and a Florida bicentennial stamp. Eileen Collins was the first female commander of a spaceflight and this cover has a stamp commemorating women in the Armed Forces (Collins is a retired USAF Colonel) and also an Amelia Earhart commemorative stamp, with her being a historic woman in aviation. What do bird stamps have to do with a space event?! Plenty, as a persistent woodpecker took a liking to Space Shuttle insulation that resulted in a rollback of STS-70 for repairs. An add-on rubber stamp explains the delaying event. The top cover, commemorating John Glenn's return to space on STS-95, has two very appropriate Glenn-related stamps: a Mercury stamp for his first flight in 1962 and a Space Shuttle Priority Mail stamp for his flight 36 years later; a very appropriate combination. The bottom cover marks STS-31 and its launch to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope. Two very appropriate stamps are affixed, one being the 3 cent Mount Palomar Observatory commemorative stamp, and the other showing the HST in space. The cover above marks the 100th US manned spaceflight in 1995 and bears five US stamps, with each commemorating one of the five US manned space flight programs during that 100-flight span: Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and Shuttle. This eighth and final cover marks the 50th anniversary of the first rocket launch at Cape Canaveral, which involved a captured German V-2 rocket called Bumper 8. The cachet shows a V-2 launch, with four relating stamps, with two showing V-2 launches in their design.
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