posted 11-11-2013 03:36 PM               

The crew of Gemini 3, Commander Gus Grissom and Pilot John Young, sign their recovery cover onboard Primary Recovery Ship, USS Intrepid, CVS-11, in the Atlantic Ocean near Grand Turk Island, March 23, 1965. In addition to having the crew autographs of Grissom and Young, the printed Beck cover is also an unnumbered Beck crew cover, thought to have been distributed only to crew members aboard the ship.

After the first docking of two vehicles in space, a Gemini agena target vehicle and the Gemini 8 spacecraft, Commander Neil Armstrong and Pilot Dave Scott have to emergency abort their mission due to a stuck thruster rocket. Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott sign this Space Craft Cachet cover on their mission's launch date, March 16, 1966. As the cover pictured at the top of the page, both this autographed Gemini 8 cover and the Gemini 3 cover above are almost impossible to find to add to a space cover collection.

Space Cover #239: Almost Impossible, GT-3 and GT-8 Crew Signed Covers

Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, have always held a fascination for me as a new fledgling space cover collector, then as a seasoned collector, and now, as an experienced, maybe overly seasoned collector forgetting many of those earlier things I had learned. One area that always has fascinated me were the crew signed covers of Project Gemini. There were a total of 12 Project Gemini missions, with Gemini missions three through twelve specified to be manned space flights to test spacecrafts and astronaut crews to work and work well in the hostile environment of space. Project Gemini became a major milestone on the way to Project Apollo, finishing concurrently as the Apollo Program was starting, but proving that astronauts could also perform spacewalks, accomplish scientific tests, and, time wise, could make a simulated trip to the Moon, in preparation for the Apollo Program.

Many space cover collectors decided to collect the rich number of new missions and expansion of astronaut crews from the six astronauts of Project Mercury to the ten crews of Project Gemini. Early on, the Commander of GT-3, Gus Grissom, was killed with the Apollo 1 crew in a tragic fire in a training accident, January 27, 1967, and subsequently making the crew signed cover for GT-3 almost impossible to complete unless you already had a crew signed cover for the mission, or unless you had a single crew member signed Gus Grissom cover for the GT-3 flight and only needed Grissom's Pilot, John Young's autograph to finish it. After the loss of Grissom, obtaining the autograph of John Young, became almost equally difficult, and other early astronauts also became increasingly reluctant to sign covers. Many of these early astronauts were affable and agreeable signers in this period, but one by one they began to drop out and decline signing autographs on crew covers and other space covers of their missions. The Golden Age of astronaut autograph signings sadly was ending as astronauts opted not to sign covers.

On March 17, 1966, on the second day of their mission, Commander of GT-8, Neil Armstrong, and his Pilot, Dave Scott, experienced an uncontrolled thruster jet on their spacecraft in orbit and survived an inflight spacecraft emergency, aborting their Gemini mission, and landing in the South Pacific Ocean in the vicinity of Okinawa. Upon recovery, the GT-8 crew was besieged to sign crew covers for their mission and slowly retreated from the general public and the public's increasing requests for the crew member signed covers. Neil Armstrong, an approachable astronaut and a great signer of space covers, gradually pulled back and after a short period of time would only sign his photos. Then, later, he stopped signing covers all together. Dave Scott, Armstrong's Pilot, was somewhat more accommodating, but followed suit to not sign covers after completing his time in the Apollo program.

So for many space cover collectors, those ten crew signed covers of the Gemini 3 through Gemini 12 missions are a test of completion of a space cover collector's efforts to complete a full set of Project Gemini manned flight covers. The real test, though, is do you have crew signed covers for Gemini 3 and Gemini 8, the two almost impossible missions? If you do, tell me and add it to my thread here. I would like to hear how you did it and compare notes. Many thanks.

posted 11-11-2013 04:20 PM               

If I recall, though, Gemini 8's pilot Dave Scott did in fact accommodate signature requests for space covers long after the Apollo lunar program was over with. After his departure from the astronaut corps in 1972, I recall mailing him cover requests throughout the mid/late 1970s, and getting most of them back signed as requested.

I think the veteran Gemini/Apollo astronaut was very cooperative with autograph requests during his tenure as deputy director, and later as center director, of NASA's Dryden Flight Research at Edwards AFB, CA, until his retirement from the space agency in Oct. 1977.

Perhaps the third hardest-to-find Gemini crew signed cover would be Gemini 10 with Young and Collins, would you agree?

Next would probably be, in my opinion, GT-4 with McDivitt and White, even though at one time I did own more than a dozen or so crew signed covers from the second manned Gemini spaceflight with America's first EVA/spacewalk. To me, it would seem GT-4 signed covers were somewhat easier to come by than GT-10, even though White was no longer with us after Jan. 1967.

posted 11-18-2013 07:29 PM               

This is an uncacheted cover, signed by both GT3 crewmwen with a March 23, 1965 Cape Canaveral machine cancel.

Both Steve and I were at a picnic for airmail cover collectors many years ago. They had a box of assorted air mail covers for sale, most of which were early-20th-Century "propeller plane" covers (e.g. - not too interesting to space collectors like Steve and me). Well, another collector was looking through the box and found this jewel for $75! Both Steve and I looked at it and told the guy that the signatures looked good.

He...put...it...back...in...the...box!

After the other collector got done looking at the box Steve, being the gentleman that he is, motioned to me to go for it! So I did! Thanks Steve!!!