posted 01-29-2021 05:02 PM               

Below is an astrophilately display presentation in celebration of Apollo 14 with mostly crew-signed postal covers and individual astronaut-signed material such as mission covers, badges, cards and decal stickers. It's only a small assortment for this purpose in highlighting some personal Apollo 14 memorabilia, however, there wasn't room enough to depict any signed photos or other non-philatelic material in this montage assembly. Several of the depicted items had been owned/used by Apollo 14's Launch Director Dr. Walter "Kappy" Kapryan, of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Apollo flight was mostly remembered for the spaceflight return of America's first spaceman, Alan Shepard, but also in him becoming the only "Original 7" astronaut to reach the moon as the world's fifth moonwalker.

Even more so, Apollo 14 was probably best known as the "golf ball moon mission." At the end of the second moonwalk (EVA), Apollo 14 commander Al Shepard hit two golf balls with the head of a 6-iron attached to the handle of a lunar-sample collecting tool. One of the balls landed in a crater, making this the first "outer space hole in one."

Another, but lesser known sports milestone, was made by Apollo 14 lunar module pilot Ed Mitchell (sixth man to walk on the moon) when he threw an improvised javelin spear," which landed just beyond one of the golf balls.

The second montage is a personal one with some flown artifacts and other special memorabilia by Admiral Shepard himself for helping the pioneer Mercury and Apollo astronaut with working on his own space collection evaluations and authentication services.

Shepard and Mitchell explored the lunar highlands for the first time in the Fra Mauro crater region with an on-moon stay time of 33.4 hours on Feb. 5-6, 1971. Their lunar module, LM-8 "Antares," made the most precise lunar landing of the Apollo program with only 87 feet from its targeted point.

Apollo 14, the last of the "H" lunar surface landings at specific sites of scientific interest for two-day-long stays with two EVAs, deployed on the surface the third ALSEP experiment package that contained a half-dozen experiments and detectors that included a solar wind collector, a laser ranging retroreflector and Apollo's first active seismic experiment.

The EVAs by Shepard and Mitchell were nearly nine and a half hours long that covered a distance of just over two miles. The lunar explorers used on the moon for the first and only time a two-wheeled pull cart, nicknamed the "lunar rickshaw," that could carry and handle just over 20 pounds of tools, equipment, and collected lunar samples.

But Apollo 14 was not without major glitches during the nine-day flight. Five docking attempts had to be conducted by command module pilot Stu Roosa until, on the sixth try, a successful "hard dock" was performed in connecting both Apollo spacecraft together before heading out on the three-day trip to the moon.

Also, before Antares' powered descent to the lunar surface, there was a short in the lander's computer abort switch, which could have triggered an undesired abort during the LM's descent. The LM pilot had to re-program Antares' computer flight software to ignore the erroneous signal. The software modifications were radioed up to the crew where Mitchell entered the changes just in time for a "go" powered descent landing.

Another problem with Antares occurred when the lander's radar failed to lock onto the lunar surface, preventing the computer from being updated with crucial information on altitude and vertical descent speed. The flight controllers at Mission Control in Houston told the pilots to cycle the landing radar breakers; it worked, and once again, just in time.

The splashdown of the Apollo command module, CM-110 "Kitty Hawk," on Feb. 9, 1971, occurred within a couple miles of the planned target area, about 800 miles south of American Samoa in the South Pacific Ocean. The recovered command module can now be seen on public display at the Apollo/Saturn V Center at NASA's Kennedy Space Center across the Banana River overlooking the capsule's launch site at Complex 39A.

All in all, the astronauts had collected 94 pounds of rock and soil, which would go to 187 scientific teams in the U.S. and 14 other countries for analysis during the decades that followed. One of the rock samples was believed to have actually originated on Earth billions of years ago and possibly landed on the moon from an asteroid impact.

posted 01-30-2021 06:55 AM               

1. I woke up the morning of February 5, 1971 to see that Shepard and Mitchell had touched down on the moon. I wanted very badly to watch the moonwalk later that day (a Friday). I told Mom that I had a sore throat and needed to stay home from school that day. She bought it! 😊

2. Fast forward to 1987 and I was living in Texas where I had met the Holy Trinity of my space cover mentors: Jane Beville (a stamp dealer in Waco), Bob Boyd, and Ray Cartier (cvlvr99 here on cS). One day at a trade session, both Bob and Ray walked over to me with the above cover in-hand.

   They said that Jane was selling this cover for $100, and "you NEED this cover!." Well, I hadn't jumped into crew-autographed covers at that stage of my collecting career, and back then $100 was a significant chunk of the micropooz bank account. But when Bob or Ray said "you NEED this cover" I learned that I needed to put my concerns aside and go for it!

   So my first crew signed cover was the below Apollo 14 lunar liftoff cover postmarked in Houston.

posted 01-31-2021 06:03 PM               

But for this high school student in 1971, $100 a pop for a fabulous Apollo 14 crew signed cover with Alan Shepard was too excessive. It certainly looks to be a vintage-era signed cover as well. A great find!

As a kid in high school and later college, I did order Apollo-era covers from Jack's firm in Houston a lot, but always on a limited budget during the early/mid-1970's.

posted 02-15-2021 04:02 PM               

The Bishop astronaut wing pin insignia cachets (Navy and Air Force) were used for the flight, but only Mitchell had signed each of the flight covers.

Many years after the flight, most of the flown covers were purchased by a European (Italian) worldwide stamp dealer. As Walter pointed out, they were the first Apollo postal covers that we know of to reach the moon's surface while inside Lunar Module-8/ Antares.