posted 04-27-2019 04:19 AM               

Space Cover 512: Corrected space cover

The above cover was postmarked by a mechanical cancel of Cape Canaveral July 29, 1969 marking the approach of Mariner 6 spacecraft to Mars planet.

But, what is special in this space cover?

This cover is a corrected space cover produced by Centennial cachet-maker.

The original, and previous one design, sports a typo error. Please, see below.

The text of this second cover reads: Mariner 6 approaches the THE planet Mars and starts...

It is easy to see that word THE of the first line is repeated in the second line.

Although this is a minor error, Centennial cachet-maker revised the text and produced the corrected space cover shown in the beginning of this topic.

I wish all the cachet-makers with some kind of error would correct it and remade new covers without errors.

As I think this is not the unique corrected space cover, this place is open to you to share other examples, if you know them.

posted 05-06-2019 08:56 PM               

The 14th OV-099/Challenger flight had been scheduled for March 1985 with Karol Bobko's crew. The primary satellite cargo for Challenger's 51-E mission was the big Tracking Data and Relay Satellite (TDRS-B). But due to unexpected technical problems with the satellite payload's Inertial Upper booster Stage (IUS) in Challenger's cargo bay, NASA had decided to cancel the original 51-E flight and roll back the Challenger flight vehicle "stack" to its assembly and checkout Vehicle Assembly Building at Launch Complex 39A.

The seven-member astronaut flight crew of 51-E, headed by Bobko, were reassigned to fly aboard another shuttle orbiter, OV-103/Discovery, on Mission 51-D, set to launch in April of 1985. That is, all except one crewman, Patrick Baudry of The National Centre for Space Studies (CNES).

Baudry, the payload specialist of the French government space agency, had been replaced by veteran payload specialist Charles Walker of the McDonnell Douglas Corporation, the first non-government or commercial astronaut to fly in space a year earlier.

With TDRS not ready to fly yet, the 51-D payload manifest would now consist of two communications satellites, ANIK C-1 and LEASAT-3, which were successfully deployed during the flight.

The original printed 51-E cachet space covers had already been printed in late Feb. 1985 before the big change-over NASA announcement had been decided. Many thousands of the cachet 51-E color mission- or patch-emblem covers were now available for the Challenger flight with less than three weeks away before her scheduled launch.

At the time, the covers had been produced in partnership with Space Shuttle Covers, owned by Richard Chaney of Titusville, FL, and Ken Havekotte's SpaceCoast Cover Service of Merritt Island, FL.

Ken had suggested to Richard to use several of the already-printed 51-E covers and have them posted/cancelled on the March 5th rollout date from KSC when the shuttle Challenger launch vehicle "stack" was returned back to the VAB. This was done for about 100 cover issues.

The first cover depicted below illustrates that cover event, however, I wanted to imprint the new 51-D emblem cachet on the reverse side of the same 51-E front-sided printed cover. In addition, though, of course a complete new 51-D cover batch had been produced as well since the 51-E cachet covers were now in error of having the wrong shuttle orbiter, mission designation, and with a different crewman assigned to fly in place of another.

The next or second cover depiction shows the replacement 51-D cachet imprint on the back/or reserve side of those same 51-E envelopes. An actual launch day of April 12, 1985, was applied for the launch of mission 51-D on OV-103/Discovery with the same flight crew, but with Walker's name replacing Baudry on the new printed covers.

It had been the first time in the shuttle's program history that a mission so close to its launch date had been changed so much, therefore, I did not want to use the original printed 51-E cachet covers for the replacement 51-D flight, and besides, there was enough time to print and prepare new batches of separate 51-D envelopes, which we did.

After 51-D flew, there was yet to be another shuttle change-over cachet cover, and perhaps that would be another post.

posted 05-08-2019 03:26 PM               

Please, see below extract from Astrophile nr 298 May/June 2007.

I hope it helps.

And Ken, in my opinion, the new astronaut-crew for STS 51-D is not a corrected space cover but another absolutely different. It was not any kind of error in the first 51-D patch as well as any kind of error in the second, and finally flown 51-D mission.

posted 05-09-2019 05:41 AM               

I was only saying that, for me, 51-D cover with new patch is not a corrected space cover in basis of the first one did not enclose any kind of error. Furthermore, and I already told, your comment about these pair of 51-D covers could be a very interesting new topic titled something like "Revised space covers".

Please, excuse me if I did not explain correctly before. In any case I am NOT disgusted with your comments, on the contrary, I am very happy for them. It was a little difference between us in the appreciation about what a corrected space cover is.

For me corrected means do the same but avoiding error/s.

STS 51-D space cover did not contain errors in the first astronaut crew as neither in the second astronaut crew. This last is just a revised (maybe you can find a better appropiate name) space cover.

I hope all is now clear. Thanks again Ken.

posted 05-09-2019 10:56 AM               

Therefore, Antoni, with that said and now behind us, how about this new "corrected" space cover incident; Below are depicted two cachet cover designs by Artcraft for the official first day issue (Scott #1193) of John Glenn's MA-6/Friendship 7 spaceflight from Cape Canaveral in Feb. 1962.

Apparently there had been an original cachet produced by the popular Artcraft first day cover company (The Washington Press) commemorating Glenn becoming the first American to orbit the earth during his pioneering Project Mercury space feat.

The cover at left depicts a Mercury Redstone (MR) launch vehicle for Glenn's 3-orbital spaceflight voyage, however, the MR vehicle had only been used for our nation's first two sub-orbital space trips by Shepard and Grissom in 1961. NASA and the Air Force's bigger and more powerful Atlas-D rocket was used for Glenn's flight, but it wasn't the earlier sub-orbital MR rocket version that Artcraft had depicted on their first cachet design artwork.

It looks as though Artcraft had been notified of their major cachet design error, but unfortunately, it wasn't before the New Jersey-based cover firm produced and released many issues of the wrong used-rocket depiction in their first-released engraved printed covers.

The illustrated cover to the right correctly demonstrates the proper inclusion of a Mercury Atlas launch vehicle, however, does anyone know how many of the MR-cachet productions were issued before word got out of the incorrect artwork error?

posted 05-11-2019 01:58 AM               

When I had the idea about this topic I was always thinking on the FDC for Glenn's flight widely referred in your previous post.

I was aware that someone would explain it. And you do it. Thanks again.

I know several space covers with wrong cachet design or some errors in text, but except the Mariner 6 cover, I have never seen that same cachet-maker remade the design and corrected the error.

Just FDC for Scott #1193 USA Mercury stamp and Mariner 6 were designs corrected, in illustration or in text. Maybe there are others but I do not know.

And now please, let me show what I think a revised cover is, in the same line that your STS 51-D cover.

On Aug 17, 1996 was launched from Baikonur the Soyuz TM-24 mission with Russian cosmonauts V. Korzun, A. Kaleri and French astronaut (first French woman) Claude André-Deshays.

See cover below signed by full crew.

However, this was not the original crew assigned to Soyuz TM-24.
G. Manakov and P. Vinogradov were Russian original crew. Both were exchanged five days before launch due to medical problems by Manakov.

As space covers were already printed when changed occured, the cachet-maker did not make new ones but used a sticker with new Russian cosmonaut's names to hide the printed names.

This would be a sort of "revised" space cover below with the raised sticker.

Nor original space cover neither revised space cover contain errors. It was just adapted to this change.