Bob M
Member Posts: 1902
From: Atlanta-area, GA USA
Registered: Aug 2000
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posted 03-22-2024 05:08 PM
   
To pay tribute to the three NASA astronauts who all passed away in a span of less than four months, I have chosen two special autographed covers from each relating to their spaceflights. All three were mostly good about autographing for many years and we as space fans and autograph collectors are greatly indebted to them for what they kindly have left us for our collections. The top cover is an Apollo 16 insurance-type cover signed by Ken Mattingly and below it is a cover canceled for STS-1 and autographed by the eight Space Shuttle Orbital Flight Test (OFT) astronauts. Autographs by Fred Haise and Vance Brand are also included, as they were the original crew for one of the OFTs, but because of Haise's retirement, were replaced by Ken Mattingly and Hank Hartsfield, who flew the fourth OFT, STS-4. For more Ken Mattingly autographs and related covers, see Space Cover of the Week 729 from Nov. 26, 2023.  In 1995, on the occasion of Richard Truly's induction into the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame, the cover at the top marks Truly's first flight and the Shuttle's second, and was signed in person for me by Truly at that time. The cover below marks the second Enterprise Free Flight in the Approach and Landing Test (ALT) program at Edwards AFB, CA and is autographed by pilots Truly and Joe Engle.  Tom Stafford autographed the top ASTP cover and very kindly added his four spaceflights: Gemini 6A and Gemini 9A, plus Apollo 10 and ASTP. The cover below is autographed by the American Apollo-Soyuz Test Project crew, including Stafford, and the two Soviet cosmonauts, including Alexei Leonov. A final note about these three historic Americam astronauts is that both Mattingly and Stafford are two of the 24 Apollo astronauts who flew to the moon, with at this time only seven remain of the 24. Those 24 Apollo lunar astronauts belong to perhaps the most exclusive club in the world: humans who traveled to the moon over 230,000 miles away! When will others join that exclusive club? We'll have wait to see. |
Bob M
Member Posts: 1902
From: Atlanta-area, GA USA
Registered: Aug 2000
|
posted 03-31-2024 02:51 PM
Thanks, Tim. It's one of my favorite autographed covers, but actually it took only two separate mailings to NASA/JSC for the ten autographs. I mailed two such covers to Gordon Fullerton in 1977 and they were kindly autographed by the eight original OFT astronauts. Then in 1981, after the successful flight of STS-1, I mailed the covers to Hank Hartsfield and he signed along with Ken Mattingly, who replaced Haise and Brand as OFT astronauts. While Haise and Brand didn't fly on any of the four OFT flights, Haise previously was Enterprise ALT CDR and Brand was CDR of STS-5, the first Shuttle operational flight. Both Fullerton and Hartsfield were friends to us collectors and they and some others were sometimes helpful in acquiring other autographs for us bothersome collectors, as this cover demonstrates. |
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