posted 11-29-2020 03:24 PM               

Space Cover #587: Wernher von Braun rocket team

After several delays, the Wernher Von Braun rocket team successfully orbits the 80-inch long, 30-pound, Explorer 1 satellite using a US Army Jupiter C rocket. It is launched at 8:58 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, January 31, 1958, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and successfully puts the United States in space.

The cover shown is a Flick cachet showing the launch cancelled from Patrick Air Force Base, Florida on January 31, 1958.

The Wernher Von Braun rocket team would soon turn their attention to the larger Saturn V rockets in the effort for launching and landing US astronauts on the moon. The German post office sponsored a significant number of space related pictorial cancels in the 1960s with many related to Wernher von Braun and his team.

Pictured is a March 21, 1968 von Braun related Apollo Program cancel used in Hamburg, Germany on a postcard with a von Braun cachet shortly before the Apollo 6 launch on April 4, 1968.

posted 12-01-2020 03:15 PM               

I've got a similar von Braun signed-inscribed cover (see below), however, mine has a hand cancel at Patrick AFB, but in April 1958, and with the same-type notation that yours has for Explorer 1. But I did notice a different launch time recording of America's first U.S. earth satellite that von Braun himself indicated on both our covers.

For some reason, Steve, von Braun penned "8:48 pm EST" on your classic launch day cancelled cover. But on mine, he indicated the actual launch time was "10:48 EST," which would be the correct Florida eastern time recording. The Jupiter-C launch vehicle liftoff did occur 12 minutes before 11 pm on that cold January night. Why von Braun wrote 8:48 is a mystery to me; any ideas as to why?

I've also included a few of my own von Braun signed covers on significant represented space events. The earliest is the #10 White Sands Proving Ground government envelope for a V-2 rocket launch in 1947 (the topic of a prior cS-posting), another signed cover could perhaps represent his tenure at the ABMA in Huntsville, AL, (1956) with the U.S. Army and his work on Explorer 1, a few years later with the signed MR-3/Freedom 7 Swanson cover for the launch of our first astronaut into space (Shepard in 1961), and concluding with the pair of signed Apollo 11 covers for the launch and moon landing first day issue in 1969.

posted 12-01-2020 07:27 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Ken Havekotte:
Why von Braun wrote 8:48 is a mystery to me; any ideas as to why?

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posted 12-01-2020 09:44 PM               

Von Braun and his rocket team had been transferred to another missile and rocket base at Redstone Arsenal of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, AL, in 1950. But Alabama eastern time is only one hour behind Florida eastern time.

But as you have correctly pointed out, von Braun on the evening of Explorer 1's launch, was in Washington, D.C., at the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. von Braun wanted very much to be at the Cape, but was ordered by the Army to accompany Explorer 1 team leaders, Dr. William Pickering of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and Dr. James A. van Allen of the University of Iowa, for a press conference hopefully after a successful liftoff and orbit of the world's first free satellite. Time wise it would be the same time zone as in Washington, D.C. and Florida.

As a side note, it was reported that in a letter by von Braun to his father two days later, the rocket pioneer leader expressed his remorse at not being in the blockhouse of Launch Complex 26A on that historic "launch day" of America's first earth orbiting moon. He said to his father, "When one has worked for 28 years on such a thing and now expects the culmination, it was a fairly bitter pill."

More than three years later in May 1961, though, von Braun was in the blockhouse at Launch Complex 5 when America's first spaceman sat atop a von Braun rocket team developed Redstone space carrier vehicle.

After nearly half-a-century of space collecting, though, I was hoping to see somewhere an Explorer 1 launch day cover, or even for an anniversary year, with multiple signatures on it by key Explorer 1 program officials and launch team members. While I do have a few combo-signed Explorer 1 covers by Pickering and van Allen, I've never seen a cover signed by more than three officials. Could you imagine an Explorer 1 launch cover signed by von Braun, Pickering, van Allen, Gen. Bruce MeDaris, Kurt Debus, Isom Rigell, Lt. John Meisenheimer, Robert Moser, Albert Zeiler, Hans Gruene, and perhaps by a few others of the 54 operational personnel that had filled the blockhouse to capacity on that history-making "Space-Orbit" day for our country. Anyone out there have something like this (Steve?) as I would love to see a signed cover, or photo, like this!