posted 10-10-2021 08:28 PM               

Space Cover #625: Commercial astronauts

With the commercialism now ramping up in travel into space, with people like Wally Funk and William Shatner going, where paying passengers are learning to experience spaceflight, we have to look back to the first individual, paying passenger: Dennis Tito who flew into space aboard a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome on 19 April 2001, over 20 years ago!

I don't know if there were any Russian covers flown for this flight, but the above was the only signed cover cancelled on that date which I've located. For an exhibitor, this would be a good first page in what is soon to be enough pages for a single frame exhibit of tourists into space as a single frame exhibit.

Along with this first tourist in space, one of the latest was of course, Mercury 13 candidate, Wally Funk, who probably won't be called an astronaut, but who should be because she did go through, not only astronaut training, but cosmonaut training as well.

A future space traveler who will experience the thrill of launch, weightlessness and a soft "thumpdown," very soon, is Audrey Powers who signed the third cover. She was present at the Wally Funk hometown parade in Grapevine, Texas and standing by as Wally was signing covers for local fans. Not knowing at the time that she would be one of the three companions to William Shatner on the next Blue Origin flight on October 12th, I had her sign one of the few covers that I made for the parade. She told me only that she was an attorney and asked if I wanted her to add "Blue Origin" under her signature and I agreed. It was only a few days ago that I learned of her upcoming flight.

Powers, who joined Blue Origin in 2013, played a lead role in the multi-year process to certify New Shepard for human flight. Prior to her current role, she served as Blue Origin's deputy general counsel and vice president of legal and compliance. Before becoming a lawyer, Powers worked as a flight controller with NASA, racking up 2,000 hours of console time in the agency's mission control for the International Space Station program. In addition to serving as executive sponsor of Blue Origin's New Mercury gender diversity business resource group, she is a pilot and serves as the chair of the Board of Directors of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.