Space Cover 387: Supersize That?This week's Space Cover of the Week highlights Project Mercury astronaut comments added to their spaceflight covers. I have used author's license to add a popular comment in the vernacular by asking a question normally asked in a fast food place, "Supersize that?"
In asking this question, I am showcasing additional comments that astronauts made on their spaceflight covers after deciding that the covers for their spaceflights were just not sufficient enough for the missions they were undertaking. So, the astronauts have added additional comments on their flight's space covers, and in my thinking, had "supersized" them to the pleasant surprise of space cover collectors who were fortunate enough to receive them.
The supersized space cover pictured above is actually not a space cover at all, but is a Sarzin folder commemorating the first U.S. man in space flight, astronaut Alan Shepard, and cancelled on his launch date of May 5, 1961, at Port Canaveral, Florida. Shepard, though, could not resist adding a comment about his epic space flight.
When I wrote to him and asked if he would sign my spaceflight item for his flight, he enthusiastically signed it. But, next to his signature, he also had added, "Boy, what a ride!" next to his signature on the folder. After his spaceflight, this was the iconic comment Shepard had made to his worldwide audience after his successful spaceflight. Alan Shepard's exciting comment was widely published in the U.S. press and international press, but here it also was on my mission folder commemorating his epic spaceflight! Shepard had supersized it!
After six mission scrubs for the first American manned orbital space flight, astronaut John Glenn was successfully launched into Earth orbit, February 20, 1962, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. After his successful launch date, he added the reason he could not carry space covers on his flight to correspondent Barbara Baker who had sent him the covers and asked if he could take them on his orbital space flight.
Glenn added this note after his orbital space flight on one of her covers, commenting, "Sorry we can't carry such items, Barb, Best regards, John H. Glenn, Jr., Lt. Col., USMC, Mercury Astronaut." The item he could not carry on his spaceflight was one of Barbara's space covers and addressed to her that she had sent before his flight, so that did not work.
But Barbara did get a personal note written by John Glenn on her space cover and mailed back to her on the date of the first manned orbital space flight by a U.S. astronaut.
The second Project Mercury manned orbital flight was scheduled to be made by astronaut Donald "Deke" Slayton, but he was medically grounded only three days before his flight in 1962 by a doctor diagnosing him with atrial fibrillation, a heart condition that was giving him an irregular heartbeat rhythm. Unable to now fly, Slayton accepted a position as NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations, at Cape Canaveral, Florida. This high level NASA position made Slayton responsible for astronaut assignments at the Cape from November 1963 until March 1972, when his flight status was checked and finally resumed.
Having been removed from astronaut flight status right before NASA's second manned orbital flight, though, was a bitter outcome for him after three years of astronaut training for his orbital space flight. The Swanson space cover pictured is a consolation space cover for a collector asking him to sign the launch date cover for what would have been the United States' second manned orbital spaceflight for Project Mercury. Deke Slayton, though, wanted to make a statement on the collector's Project Mercury spaceflight cover for his flight, and he did.
Slayton signed it, "Donald K. Slayton, Mercury Astronaut." It is fairly easy to find space covers signed by astronaut Deke Slayton, but it is not so easy to find a space cover signed by Slayton for his Project Mercury spaceflight date with the additional wording, "Mercury Astronaut" added by him after he had been grounded by NASA and could no longer fly.
posted 10-16-2016 07:08 AM
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