posted 09-13-2020 11:19 PM               

Space Cover 577: NASA Cachets from KSC

The new Kennedy Space Center post office opens July 1, 1965, and a special blue NASA cachet is provided to cover collectors upon request. However, the first NASA cachet for a crewed spaceflight is the one pictured for the launch of Gemini 5. NASA cachets like this one are a subspecialty collecting area and have an avid, enthusiastic collector following.

Ref: Schultz, Donald, "Project Gemini... Two Steps Into Space," Appleton, Wisconsin, 1967, page 30.

A difficult red NASA cachet is shown for the anticipated rendezvous and docking of the Gemini 6 spacecraft with its Agena. The cover is cancelled on the failure date of October 25, 1965. The Kennedy Space Center cancellation is very desirable, as is the added light red circular George Goldey cachet for President John F. Kennedy and an added NASA insignia and text above the NASA cachet for the cover.

Ref: Durst, Steve, "Project Gemini Sets the Pace," Self Published, Annapolis, Maryland, 2008, page 129.

This special NASA cachet was the second of two Fire Prevention Week covers made by the space cover artisans KSC Postmaster Dusty Roads, Ray Burton, Ralph Yorio, and Angelo Taiani, and cancelled at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

Ref: Durst, Steve, "NASA Space Cover Collection," Annapolis, Maryland

posted 09-17-2020 03:07 PM               

I've counted a total of 44 different ONC's since the first release of the KSC post office opening in 1965 to the last "on base" cachet issue for the second Viking Mars launch in 1975.

Two of those NASA cachet covers that I have included were never released to the public, though, as reported earlier by Steve and other sources, for the Apollo 1 (AS-204) spacecraft fire on Jan. 27, 1967. Only 40 covers were processed for the crew tragedy by a KSC postal worker early that evening. Little information or details are known, though, about the limited number of blue cachet applications of that tragic event.

Another not too often seen NASA cachet was for the unmanned Surveyor-C lunar probe launch in April 1967 with less than 3,900 blue cachets applied on postal covers. But the lowest number of serviced cachet covers would be the Helios-A sun probe launch in Dec. 1974 with only about 1,400 black cachets applied.

Perhaps the most unknown space center cachet hardly never seen before was for the second KSC Open House in Oct. 1970 of the whole Center and nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It was a three-day open house event (mainly on Oct. 24) for NASA and contractor employees and their families to visit areas on the space center itself about three months before Apollo 14's launch to the moon.

To the best of my knowledge, about half-a-dozen stamped covers had been dropped off at the headquarters building post office window by KSC security officer Len Linscott of Titusville, Florida, requesting that his covers, addressed with peelable labels, receive any sort of available NASA cachet impression for the open house week.

Years later, after knowing Len quite well as a local fellow space cover and badge collector friend, I asked him how he came about knowing of a possible NASA cachet release for the open house. He said he couldn't recall when he first heard of such news, however, it may have been by Estelle Coleman, a postal friend of Len's that had been handling the NASA cachet requests. I've included one of the unusual "Open House" unofficial "ONC's" below in the third of three display panel presentations here. Linscott said he had no idea, when asked about it, and was quite surprised to hear that no one else apparently was able to get the cachet on any covers in the mail stream or otherwise, not even by the veteran space center stamp club members.

His covers had been mailed from the KSC post office direct to his address in Titusville, however, some of the covers did receive different KSC-M cancel dates throughout the Open House week. The veteran KSC security administration official believes they had been dropped off to Coleman at KSC's Mail and Distribution Services section of the KSC Headquarters Building East Wing. A similar story with Ms. Coleman pertained to the Helios NASA cachet affair incident four years later in 1974 involving myself, but perhaps that could be another story for another cS posting.

The second display panel features a complete collection (all except one) on good, basic, or standard, "straight forward" ONC with mostly no addresses on clean unaltered envelope covers, and with some of the best chosen/used postage stamps available at the time (many with the popular 5-cent JFK memorial postage stamp issue). That would be 42 different ONC's, without including the mysterious Open House issue, during NASA's decade-long cachet history at Kennedy.

The first of the panels contains a complete ONC assembly of all the crewed Apollo, Skylab and ASTP ONC launch astronaut "signed" covers, all completely crew signed (except Apollo 8 for now) and with no personal inscriptions and on the best covers possible that were put together during the later Apollo and early shuttle program years. There may be, however, a disputed signed Apollo 11 cover with one or more atypical or suspect signatures. But all the other 13 Apollo crew autographs are genuine with many of them acquired by my own personal encounters and home visits with several Apollo crewmen since the 1970's. Even to this day, the signed crew ONC project continues on in pursuing improved and better quality signed covers, if possible. A good Apollo 8 and 11 are still in need as those in the past were not kept.

posted 09-22-2020 03:45 PM               

He has my assistance and it will be an in-depth research study of this fascinating asset of space philately from KSC, America's Spaceport USA.

posted 09-24-2020 05:02 PM               

For example, some NASA tracking stations applied an Apollo or Skylab or station type (e.g. NASCOM) to covers sent to them — applied by station — NASA official?

posted 09-24-2020 06:12 PM               

Good question, Tom, about the rubber stamp cachet impressions that you see from many of the U.S. and worldwide tracking stations. Many of those supported tracking stations are operated by communications contractor companies for NASA, and I don't think, such cachet monies were supplied nor paid for by the space agency.

But there are other U.S. provided cachet services that had been available at other NASA space flight field installations, such as Marshall, Ames, and Goddard.

posted 09-25-2020 09:29 AM               

On-site space center stamp clubs, such as the KSCPS, never did create any ONC's at KSC as they had been provided (designed by government graphic designers) and paid for by NASA itself, the agency's mail and distribution handling directorate. Of course, though, KSCPS members were supportive of all the milestone ONC cachet issues, but it was Dusty Rhodes' NASA mail management office that was responsible for the ONC project.

If space cover and stamp clubs at Marshall, Ames, JPL (joint NASA and university), etc., provided a cachet service (which we know they did in the past), and made available by mailed-in requests to an address on that space center itself, the cachets were still not a paid-for creation or approved government project of any official NASA installation, in my view of most cases.

I had forgotten, however, that the provided rubber stamp cachets applied by NASA's Marshall Space Flight in Huntsville, AL, mostly throughout the Skylab and early shuttle program years, might had been a NASA-created and paid for service as I recall it may had been a public affairs service to employees and the public.

On the other hand, Tom, I don't ever recall NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston providing any sort of cachet service. The cachets currently in use for the International Space Station (ISS), Mission Control, Crew Dragon, etc. all have originated from local Houston area postal facilities. None were requested nor paid for by any NASA organization, but rather by the U.S. Postal Service and private companies (my firm has even sponsored many Cape/KSC-area pictorial cancel devices for special events).

If a NASA division did request such a cancel device, and as you have indicated,
let the local stamp club provide and operate such a philatelic service -- it's still my opinion that unless paid for by the space agency specifically, it's not an ONC of a federal space center.

posted 10-17-2020 10:40 AM               

When covers that I sent in for the Saturn V launch on May 14, 1973 came back to me, I was happily surprised to find a black RSC showing the Saturn V on my covers.

For the launches of the Saturn IB on May 23, 1973 and June 22, 1973 a different cachet was used. The same cachet was used on July 28, 1973 for the launch of the second crew but one of the two solar wing panels on Skylab was missing from the cachet.

I wrote to the PAO at MSFC asking about the cachets and received a reply from Amos Crisp. He told me that because he had an interest in philately be had become the collection point for covers sent to MSFC. Since several collectors had asked for cachets on the early covers, he turned in a suggestion that cachets be created using RSCs.

NASA higher levels agreed and he was then assigned to create the rubber stamps to be placed on covers mailed in, for future events. He wrote further, "Since most of the other cachets highlighted the astronaut crews, I decided to highlight the launch vehicle and the workshop."

He advised me that he had used a razor blade to cut out the one solar panel of the cachet applied for both the second and third manned launches on July 28, 1973 and November 16, 1973.