posted 03-15-2014 12:30 PM               

Space Cover #257: A Tribute to Bill Pogue and Skylab 4

Sadly, another of our space heroes has left us. We have seen the news that Skylab astronaut Bill Pogue passed away on March 3 at age 84. This installment of our weekly SCOTW series will pay tribute to him.

Before becoming an astronaut and spending 84 days in space on the Skylab orbiting space station, Pogue already accomplished and experienced much. After earning a BA degree, he enlisted in the US Air Force and in 1953 flew 43 combat missions in Korea. Later he flew as a member of the Air Force's Thunderbirds aerobatic team. He later earned a Master's degree in math at the USAF Academy and then taught math there. Later he graduated from the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB. In 1966 he was selected as an astronaut and served as a support crewman for Apollo 7, 11 and 14.

Then on November 16, 1973, he and crew members Jerry Carr and Edward Gibson began a record-setting 84-day stay in space on the final Skylab manned mission. Splashdown on February 8, 1974 ended Skylab-4 and Pogue's time in space, and later, after being selected as a crew member of Apollo 19, he suffered the disappointment of having the flight canceled and ending his hopes of flying in space again.

The cover at the top was nicely autographed for me by Bill Pogue in 1987, where he indicated his role on SL-4 as "SL-4 PLT."

The top cover has a mission emblem/crew patch cachet and is nicely signed by the SL-4 crew. The bottom NASA/KSC official cacheted cover marks the first SL-4 EVA, which Pogue and Gibson accomplished.

The top cover marks the splashdown and recovery of SL-4 and again is autographed by the crew. By the way, Pogue, Carr and Gibson have always been very cooperative signers for us collectors and perhaps SL-4 crew signed covers are the most plentiful of all the 43 pre-Shuttle flights.

The bottom cover marks the unofficial end of SL-4 and the Skylab Program, with the return of the SL-4 crew to Houston at Ellington AFB, TX. Again, the crew was kind to autograph yet another cover for this collector.

posted 03-15-2014 04:00 PM               

His last day on Planet Earth was in a Cocoa Beach condo last week, only a few miles nearby, from his Kennedy Space Center Apollo/Skylab launching pad into space.

Skylab 4 not only broke the longest single manned space mission of its kind, but also for the longest periods of work in Earth orbit outside of a spacecraft.

Altogether, the final Skylab spaceflight in 1973-74 set 8 astonishing endurance and distance records for the history books!

On Christmas Day 1973, Pogue and Carr established a new world record of just over a 7 hour spacewalk (EVA-2) outside of a spacecraft.

Almost a month earlier on Nov. 22, with Pogue again--along with science pilot Ed Gibson-- performed the mission's first EVA that lasted 6.5 hours while outside the spacecraft.

A little known fact about Col. Pogue was his post astronaut career highlights. After leaving NASA in 1977, he, along with his "brother in space" Jerry Carr, provided contract technical support to The Boeing Company from 1984-98.

Pogue's long-term support work at Boeing was crucial for NASA's Space Station Freedom program, which later evolved into the now-orbiting International Space Station.

An accomplished teacher, public speaker, and gifted author, Pogue had penned five books during his lifetime, including his own autobiography, "But for the Grace of God," in 2011. His most popular--mainly a children's book--"How Do You Go to the Bathroom in Space?"--has been revised twice since its first printing in 1985.

He will long be remembered as a hard-working, great story teller, kind, humble, generous and gracious person that my wife and I had the pleasure to know and for me to work with since the 1990s.

Perhaps it should be pointed out, since this topic is about astronaut signed space covers, that there was no one better than Bill Pogue (and Jim Irwin) when it came to autographing; always a cooperative and gracious signer! During visits to my home, he would sign and include long inscriptions--sometimes not even asked for--about his astronaut career and Skylab mission accomplishments.