Ken Havekotte
Member Posts: 3570
From: Merritt Island, Florida, Brevard
Registered: Mar 2001
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posted 01-22-2023 05:22 PM
   
New to my rocket pioneer collection is the below official NASA Apollo 11 NASA crew emblem launch day cover from the Kennedy Space Center. It had been signed by top rocket developer and space pioneer Dr. Wernher von Braun in July 1969 when the world-renown space leader was visiting the Florida Space Coast. I've always wanted to have one of the official launch day covers like this for man's first lunar landing autographed by Dr. von Braun. Well, for more than half a century gone by, here is one of them that I am now proud to own. But it's not necessarily the von Braun signature that makes this cover unique, or
at least, to me. Inside the KSC-NASA emblem launch envelope cover was a blue-black printed one-sided insert card. The information on the card quotes JFK's famous moon landing goal, the Apollo 11 flight crew bios, along with the text: "This is to certify your participation in the APOLLO 11 LAUNCH, the first moon landing, on July 16, 1969. - Buz Hello." My gosh, that's a reference to Bastian "Buz" Hello of North American Rockwell Space Division here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center during the Apollo program. "Buz" ran the Rockwell command and service module and Saturn S-II rocket stage operations here at Kennedy managing Apollo 7 through Apollo 12 during the mid-late 1960s. He was the top honcho guy in charge of Rockwell's prime Apollo contractor program in getting Apollo astronauts into space, on the moon, and back. If you note that the signed von Braun cover has a machine-generated mailing address in red ink. The cover is addressed to Anna White of Merritt Island, Florida. Ms. White was a Rockwell employee at Kennedy in which, or apparently, the Rockwell Space Division offices here at KSC mailed her the launch day cover with this exact same inserted card. I have a few more of the same type Apollo 11 launch covers with other red-printed addresses on them. Sure enough, they too, had the same blue "Buz Hello" cards inside. Another unusual insert card for Apollo 11's launch to the moon can be seen below as well. It's actually a hand-signed North American Rockwell Space Division printed one-sided card. It depicts the crew faces along with an illustration of man on the moon with the following text copy: "Greetings from Apollo 11 and the American astronauts who will put man's first footprint on the moon." The card is autographed by four Apollo 11 Rockwell program officials at bottom, they are: Al Kihlef, assistant program manager, M. J. Roll, Sr. vehicle project engineer, Dan Jensen, chief CSM launch operations, and Russ Johnson, vehicle project engineer. Now that's a classy insert cover card, multi-hand signed, that you don't see every day. |
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