posted 06-07-2015 06:54 AM               

Space Cover #320: Gemini 4 At 50

So when you saw the title for this week's space cover, you probably expected to see some kind of boffo commemoration of the first-American-spacewalk. Then when you saw this one, you went "huh?"

We all know that Gemini 4 was the first American spacewalk, and there are certainly plenty of great covers out there to commemorate that fact. But one of the lesser-publicized facts is that Gemini 4 was the first spaceflight controlled out of the Manned Space Center in Houston, TX (currently known as the Johnson Space Center). So above is a Sokolsky generic space-station cachet with a Celestial Cachet overprint for Gemini 4, postmarked in Houston on June 3, 1965, the date of Gemini 4's launch and Ed White's famous spacewalk. Houston postmarks for this mission are very historic, and available, but not always on the flashiest covers for Gemini 4. You can see that this one is the very generic Houston circular-date-stamp hand cancel, and that the cachet actually calls Houston a "NASA Tracking Station & Installation". Fast-forward 50 years, and that "Installation" has been a focal point for all US-involved human spaceflight ever since then.

So if you run across a Houston postmarked Gemini 4 cover, it will be well-worth adding to your collection, no matter how unspectacular it may look next to your other Gemini 4 covers.

Do any of you have other Houston postmarked covers for Gemini 4? Or boffo first-American-spacewalk covers? If so, let's post them here and celebrate Gemini 4! If you need someone to host your cover image, please email it to me and I will be glad to do that...

posted 06-07-2015 09:04 AM               

The cover has two different Houston cancels. The top one is the Houston machine cancel for the launch date, with Houston as the newly operational Manned Spacecraft Center for McDivitt and White's spaceflight, and the bottom cancel is their mission's recovery date, with Houston as Manned Spacecraft Center.

And, what luck, today is also the 50th anniversary of that flight's successful recovery, too. So, happy 50th anniversary for Gemini 4 everybody!