posted 11-27-2022 08:36 AM               

Space Cover 678: Apollo 17 at 50

With the age of Artemis successfully dawning a couple weeks ago, and with the 50th anniversary of Apollo 17 coming up in a couple weeks, I figured it was time to pay tribute to what will (hopefully) not be "the last Moon landing" for much longer!

So above is a pretty mundane looking Apollo 17 cover (actually a card). It's postmarked on the launch date, December 7, 1972 at KSC. It carries a black and white rendition of the Apollo 17 crew patch as a cachet, along with a cartoon rendition of an astronaut standing on the moon. The reverse of the card shows a map of the Apollo 17 lunar traverses at its Taurus-Littrow landing site. But what catches my attention is the wording at the bottom of the obverse that says "CISCO" and "Flight Dynamics Organization".

Most everyone is familiar with the Cisco today that manufactures a lot of computer hardware, but it was founded in 1984. So I'm wondering if this 1972 CISCO was 1) an acronym of some NASA organization, or 2) another company known as CISCO back in 1972 that provided some kind of flight dynamics (e.g. – figuring out trajectories) support to Apollo. I've scoured the press kits of all of the Apollo moon landing missions, and no CISCO shows up in the contractor lists.

So, I'm stumped on what a CISCO Flight Dynamics Organization was, and actually did. Anyone here have any insight? Please post!

And while we're at it, let's all post a favorite Apollo 17 cover!

posted 11-27-2022 11:12 AM               

As you pointed out, Cisco Systems, Inc. was not in operation until a dozen years after Apollo 17 flew. As you said, too, it was never listed in our nation's NASA Apollo contractor and subcontractor companies.

So why was it printed on these launch cards for Apollo 17 in 1972, which certainly appears to be an original text printing and not later added on.

Perhaps it had been a creation of David Cisco, an Apollo Lunar Module (LM) spacecraft technician from Houston. He spent hundreds of hours as a LM stand-in commander and pilot technician during the initial LM testing program stages, which included LTA-8 and LM-2. David Cisco had been a part of that organization, I believe in some FD-related s/c testing capacity, while at MSC/JSC.

posted 12-07-2022 06:07 PM               

Below is a depiction of interesting and in some cases unusual postal cachet covers, cards, etc. in commemoration of man's final Apollo lunar landing voyage. The liftoff occurred half-a-century ago today for the launch of Apollo 17 right after midnight at 12:33 am on Dec. 7, 1972.

I've tried to display some different types of Apollo 17 covers, of which, I have also included a few crew signed cover and card varieties since prior 50th Apollo flight anniversaries had crew signed covers posted.

Some of the covers shown were produced by NASA itself, aerospace contractors, support agencies, official space stamp groups, along with a couple of humorous cartoon-type cachets that are hard to come by.

Apollo 17 was the last manned Apollo/Saturn V rocket to fly that turned night into day as the mighty moon rocket's brilliant exhaust flame illuminated the Florida space coast that could be seen for hundreds of miles away. The liftoff had been planned for the late evening hours of Dec. 6, but a delay of 2.5 hours caused by a computer problem that falsely signaled a safety system of the Saturn's third S-IVB stage was not properly pressurized. Launch Control Center engineers bypassed the erroneous signal and liftoff came 2 hours and 39 minutes later than originally planned. Ten(+) minutes later, the crew was in orbit safely preparing to start their quarter million mile journey to the moon. A week later, it would be the last time humans would walk on another celestial body.

For myself, the liftoff experience was spectacular and most memorable, to say the least! NASA had invited me as a teenage space enthusiast to witness the history-making moment of the only night- time launch of a manned space vehicle. The invitation included a prime spot at KSC's main VIP viewing site area near the spaceport's VAB and LCC, and that's another story to tell by this wide-eyed space buff.

As an afterthought of Apollo 17's eye witness liftoff account, when viewing the early morning night-time Artemis 1 launch last month, in my opinion, AS-512's launch to the moon seemed more majestic as the Saturn vehicle was slow in lifting off. Even the night-time sky appeared more bright and luminated than for NASA's newest Space Launch System, even though Artemis had more than a million pounds of liftoff thrust than a Saturn V. On top of that, there was just something compelling, thrilling, or magical in witnessing live "on site" the start of man's last lunar journey thus far.

posted 12-19-2022 01:44 PM               

Of those cachet Apollo 17 covers represented in this quickly-assembled montage, they contain official NASA printed cachets such as the vintage VIP launch cards, ONC issues, a NASA Exchange VIP cover and others, the KSCPS, Heritage Crafts at KSC (also a cover supplier to NASA Exchange at the time in 1972), and a special Paul Calle artwork cover approved by NASA. Others included are by popular commercial cachet makers such as Orbit, Cape Kennedy Medals (another NASA Exchange provider), and ROMA of Italy.

posted 02-20-2023 05:37 PM               

As depicted, it has an illustration of an Apollo command module. On the rollout cover itself is noted in small print at the bottom: FYDO "Eyewitness To Space" Cover No. 7. So it would appear the Apollo 17 rollout to pad was the seventh event space cover production by CISCO, which I believe, was the creation of spacecraft technician leader David Cisco of NASA's Flight Dynamics Division at Houston.