posted 02-06-2014 07:14 AM               

This is the next best thing to such a photo: a print of a detailed painting showing Armstrong on the lunar surface, with Aldrin and the lunar module in the background. It is a "foil etch" on a shiny silver surface, mounted on a sturdy border, and it makes for quite a display. Armstrong signed it on the border and added "Apollo 11." It is 12 inches x 16 inches, with the image 8x12.

I'll show photos of it from a couple of angles and lighting conditions:

The print has at the bottom "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" so Armstrong was signing a copy of his historic words as well.

posted 02-06-2014 07:15 AM               

The original descriptive tag is still attached to the back of the border. It can easily be peeled off, or as you can see in the photos above, just folded back.

This print was available as a special supplement to the Dallas Morning News less than a month after the moon landing. There is one on eBay right now. (Incidentally, the artist, John Berkey, later painted some of the posters for the original "Star Wars" trilogy.)

The print itself is in pristine condition. The border has slight discolorations here and there, as I believe show in the pictures.

I will point out the possibility of having the rest of the crew "complete" the item by having them sign it in the next month. Collins could sign it at the Astronaut Central signing early next month for $350, and then Aldrin could sign it at Autographica 20 a few weeks later for, well, a lot more. The picture does, after all, show Aldrin near the LM, and the CM (with Collins on board) up above them. Or it could remain a fantastic, rare Armstrong signed picture.

posted 02-06-2014 07:16 AM               

It is dated Sept. 12, 1962 and commemorates a visit by President Kennedy to the Manned (later Johnson) Spacecraft Center in Houston. The significance of this date and event to Roger Chaffee is that he and the rest of the Next Nine astronauts of Group Two were introduced to the public just days later. Does anyone know if Kennedy met with them there? But more significantly, this was the very day Kennedy gave his famous speech at Rice University:

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too...

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, reentering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun - almost as hot as it is here today - and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out, then we must be bold.

Chaffee-signed covers are quite rare. In all the thousands of astronaut-signed items Heritage and RR Auction have sold in the last ten years, there has not been a single one. Regency-Superior sold one that had been signed as a blank envelope, and was postmarked later. I think the one I am offering is more appealing, being as it is from the dawn of Chaffee's career as an astronaut and of America's efforts at a moon landing, but I will price it at the same $950 which that one sold for several years ago. — Steve