posted 04-14-2013 05:56 AM               

Space Cover #209: Vandy Officials

NASA and Vandenberg AFB in California have a storied past. Discoverer I, the first American satellite to achieve polar orbit left Vandenberg in February 1959. While Cape Canaveral and later the Kennedy Space Center in Florida have lofted America's astronauts from the Eastern Test Range a sizable number of unmanned flights began at the Western Test Range in California. Plans to launch astronauts from Vandenberg were scuttled after breathtakingly expensive expenditures to prepare the launch site. First the Titan III facility was mothballed when the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was cancelled. The site was then transformed at great expense to support launches of the Space Shuttle. Before the first could blast off the Challenger accident happened and the fleet grounded.

Vandy Officials come in a couple of different flavors. All are postmarked at Vandenberg AFB or Lompoc, California. All will commemorate a specific NASA launch. Here the classic magenta is replaced by a pink cachet. The reduced artwork presentation is as least as common as the first example.

Astrophilatelist are familiar with rubber stamp cachets applied in Florida for manned and some unmanned flights between 1965 and 1975. These are commonly referred to as "KSC Officials". From the early 1970s through perhaps the mid-1980s NASA personnel applied artwork on the West Coast as well. At least 20 "Vandy Official" launches are known and perhaps as many more are suspected. Kennedy Space Center-Western Launch Operations Division (KSC-WLOD) cachets are a pinkish-magenta although light green cachets and some black cachets also exist. Also look for KSC-WOSO or NASA-WOSO (Western Operations Support Office) as part of the cachet.

Here a rather Spartan black cachet is seen. This size, color and printing method are exist on several launch cachets. They often provide the precise date and time of the satellite launch.

NASA cachets at VAFB were the headline of the July 1975 publication Explorer. It suggested interested collectors send two covers per launch (there were between 4-7 launches per year) to NASA/WLOD in Lompoc. By 1978 Linn's Stamp News was reporting that the NASA WLOD Public Affairs office had been closed. Fortunately, Gene Schlimmer, a NASA employee and philatelist continued to provide the service. In 1979 Explorer quoted the space agency, "NASA will discontinue its practice of cacheting launch covers for the Western Test Range in California, effective immediately". This wasn't quite true as launches continue to receive artwork at least through 1981 and perhaps as late as 1984.

Here is yet another Vandy. Like the others it has a form of KSC/WLOD. It is the only known framed cachet but since half of the possible dates have not yet been discovered who knows how atypical this is.

Other NASA Centers produced "Officials" including Ames, Edwards, and Marshall to name a few. Like Vandenberg none are well documented. Since Vandy Officials are not well known and at a glance look like any of hundreds of launches from VAFB they can be found in the dollar box and are fun to collect. Eddie Bizub, formerly the junior "E" of E & E Space covers and now the owner of Liberty Bell 7 Space Covers compiled the list of known Vandy Officials. You can read his article on the subject in the handbook American Astrophilately: The First Fifty Years.

posted 04-23-2018 07:01 AM               

You know, the maiden shuttle launch from VAFB was originally scheduled for the spring of 1986 (later changed to July and than October) with the STS-62A crew commanded by Crippen.

Despite the numerous technical, safety, environmental, and cost overruns of having the shuttle on the West Coast, if it hadn't been for the Challenger tragedy in January 1986, there still was a good chance that Crippen's crew would have attempted their inaugural shuttle polar-orbit flight that same year or in early 1987.

posted 04-24-2018 08:07 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Ken Havekotte:
You know, the maiden shuttle launch from VAFB was originally scheduled for the spring of 1986 (later changed to July and than October) with the STS-62A crew commanded by Crippen.

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Earlier than that: spring or mid-1985. One NASA release for what would become 61B (might even have that flight designation) stated that mission would be Ross' second flight....

Probably for another post, but out of curiosity, does anybody have any shuttle-related Vandenberg covers, perhaps for when the four ETs arrived, or when Enterprise was fit checked?