posted 06-06-2010 12:28 PM               

Space Cover #60: First Kennedy Space Center cachet

For the last couple of Space Cover of the Weeks, John Macco and Bob McLeod have shown us a sampling of the KSC "Official" Cachets. This week, let's look at the very first of these.

Nobody can describe the start of the KSC Post Office as well as Ralph Yorio does in his book, Kennedy Space Center Philatelic History, 1971, The Viking Press. I'll quote directly from his introduction:

On June 3, 1965, NASA-KSC published an announcement that KSC would open a postal facility on July 1, 1965 at the Kennedy Space Center. It would be a contract branch of the Orlando, Florida post office. NASA appointed Mr. John E. Markovich as Clerk-in-Charge. The post office was located in the KSC Headquarters Building. Two Zip Code numbers were given to this post office: 32815 for Kennedy Space Center Installation and 32899 for official National Aeronautics and Space Administration mail.

On July 1, 1965, the KSC Post Office opened; to commemorate this occasion. NASA-Mail and Reports Management Section, headed by "Dusty" Rhodes, of the Installation Support Directorate, issued a special cachet and thus started the philatelic history of KSC.

My copy of this cachet is shown above. According to Yorio, this cachet was applied to 7116 pieces of mail that day, about 3000 of which were philatelic covers.

This cachet and its successors seem pretty unremarkable on the surface - small (usually), single color, rubber stamped cachets, much less extravagant than some of the commercially available cachets of the time. But two factors make these highly desirable to astrophilatelists:

1. the rubber stamps were supplied by NASA, not a private enterprise, and
   
2. the rubber stamps were applied at the post office, thereby making them official postal markings (a real distinction over privately applied artwork, to the hardcore philatelists).

For these two reasons, these cachets are often called "KSC Official Cachets."

Don't overlook KSC Cachets just because they aren't as flashy as a Space Craft, Orbit, or other printed cachet!

posted 06-10-2010 01:37 PM               

In the meantime, it would be good if someone would display all the NASA cachets on a Website. The SU Website would be ideal for this.