posted 11-21-2020 10:02 AM               

Space Cover #586: The X-24B Lifting Body, Part 2

This week's Space Cover of the Week will continue what Dennis began last week about the X-24B lifting body aircraft and will present more covers from the X-24B, NASA's sixth and last lifting body.

The X-24B was re-built from the X-24A by the Martin Marietta Corp. in Denver, CO, and the top cover above marks its rollout, the official public presentation of the X-24B at Martin Marietta prior to its delivery to Edwards AFB, CA.

The cover below it marks one of the eight (some sources list ten) ground "taxi runs": prior to the beginning of the actual test flights. The speeds were from 40 to 150 knots with the last taxi run with the X-24B mated to the B-52 mothership (The same mothership used in the X-15 flights).

The top cover was flown aboard the mothership during the 23rd air-launch and free flight of the X-24B, and the bottom cover was flown aboard the T-38 photo chase aircraft at Mach 1.1 on the X-24B's 29th free flight.

The top cover is autographed by all six X-24B pilots and has the type 4 NASA official printed cachet. The cover below - with a Robert Boudwin rubber stamp cachet - is for the aborted flight, B-A-31 ("31" signifying the 31st time the X-24B was carried aloft by the mothership) and autographed by pilot Mike Love. Tragically, Mike Love was killed in an aircraft crash only about three months after the final X-24B flight.

The top cover was flown aboard the mothership on the final X-24B flight, with it also being the final lifting body flight, going back to the three M2's, the HL-10 and the X-24A. Mothership pilot George Luck, in a letter to me, stated that the cover was "...carried in my brief case along with the aircraft manuals."

The bottom cover marks the departure of the X-24B from Edwards AFB to KSC for display during KSC's 1976 Bicentennial Exposition of Science and Technology, which I attended and saw the X-24B while there.

The X-24B's final home is the National Museum of the USAF at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.

posted 11-21-2020 01:05 PM               

OK, so here's a stumper for this esteemed assembly of experts on collectSPACE:

Who did the X-24B cachet shown below? Looks like a (slightly downsized) copy of Swanson's artwork from the Boy Scout Cachet, along with some rubber stamped wording for the mission. If anyone knows, please shout! I've been trying to identify this for 20+ years...

posted 11-21-2020 02:29 PM               

To maybe help answer Dennis' question, though, the depicted X-24B cachet flight cover in November 1975 appears to be from a New York space cover dealer, Sean Marsar, that I knew and worked with during that decade and beyond. I remember ordering similar covers from Sean, however, I am not completely certain if they originated from him, though, or if he had access to them from another source. It was nearly half-a-century ago.

If I recall, and maybe Sean can add more to this discussion if he can, Marsar did a long-series of covers like this with different rubber stamp colors of text line sizes. The text lined cachet covers, along with some provided illustrations, were available (but with only a few dozen produced) during the 1970/80's, but mostly for shuttle program developmental tests and simulations at Marshall, Ames, JSC, Edwards, and in addition to a few other installations mostly "Out West."

If I recall, space cover dealer Stan Henderson of 3-Muscateers in California also worked with Marsar throughout the '70/80's. Stan was able to acquire similar cachet covers from Marsar even though Henderson had his own photo-text cachet type covers during that era.

I've got several of them with the text lines signed by participating officials and personnel at the previously indicated locations across the country.