posted 05-06-2023 07:48 PM               

Space Cover 700: LLRV and LLTV

Above is a cover postmarked at Edwards, CA (same as Edwards AFB) on December 13. 1965, a day that Army helicopter pilot Emil E "Jack" Kleuver's flew the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV). It carries one of Bob Rank's Velvet cachets depicting the LLRV. This is the only LLRV cover that Rank made (that I know of – if anyone knows differently, please post!).

The cachet doesn't show it well, but the LLRV looked nothing like any kind of spaceship – a metal tube framework with four legs, a jet engine pointing downward, rocket engines and tanks dotted throughout, and an open cockpit on the side, as shown below. In fact, NASA's Monograph in Aerospace History #36, NASA SP-2004-4535, titled the LLRV as "Unconventional, Contrary, and Ugly".

Two LLRV's were built by Bell Aircraft to test techniques for the Apollo astronauts to land on the Moon. On a typical flight the jet engine would boost the LLRV up to about 200 feet altitude over Edwards, then throttle back to a thrust of 5/6 the weight of the vehicle in order to simulate lunar gravity. Then the pilot would fly a landing approach much like the (then) future Apollo Lunar Module would over the Moon using the rocket engines. NASA FRC pilots Joe Walker, Don Mallick, Army helicopter pilot Kleuver, and NASA MSC "instructor pilots" Joe Algranti and Bud Ream flew 204 of these missions from October 30, 1964, to January 13, 1967 at Edwards.

Covers were produced for many (but not all) of these flights, and most were more "plain Jane" than the above cover, with a simple rubber-stamped cachet (probably from the local Boy Scout troop). This typical one is from Walker's March 2, 1965 flight:

After these flights at Edwards, LLRV #1 was transferred to Ellington AFB in Houston to help train the Apollo astronauts. Additionally, three more vehicles, nearly identical to the LLRV's, designated Lunar Landing Training Vehicles (LLTV's) were procured for Apollo training. This squad of four vehicles made around 590 flights at Ellington.

But remember the word "contrary" above? Even though the LLRV's and LLTV's were good training tools, an errant gust of wind or a small problem with the vehicle could create a bad day. Three crashes occurred; Neil Armstrong in LLRV #1 on May 6, 1968; Joe Algranti in LLTV #1 on December 8, 1968; and MSC pilot Stu Present in LLTV #2 on January 31, 1971. All three pilots successfully ejected before crashing but, because of the hazards involved with the LLRV's and LLTV's, astronaut training with these vehicles was generally reserved for Apollo commanders and backup commanders. So, the astronauts who actually flew these vehicles in training were limited to: Borman and Anders (prior to the crashes and being assigned to a non-LM flight), Armstrong, Conrad, Lovell, Shepard, Scott, Young, Cernan, Gordon (as Apollo 15 backup commander), and Haise (as Apollo 16 backup commander).

I haven't seen any covers postmarked for the Houston LLRV and LLTV flights. If any of you have one, please post 'em!

posted 05-08-2023 07:39 PM               

1. Antoni - The LLRV silhouette is a great add-on to the normal Boy Scout Cachet! Any idea who did that?

2. Cronky - Interesting variant of the Rank Velvet Cachet! That's fairly common with Rank's Velvets - he pretty much handmade each one. He had to hand-sprinkle the pigments onto each of the cachets before baking them in his oven. So that introduced notable variability between cachets of the same design.

3. Tim - Nice signed cover! And it's interesting that by 1966 the Boy Scout Cachet rubber stamp had evolved from just "LLV" in the earlier cachets to "Lunar Lander Research Vehicle".

posted 05-08-2023 08:38 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by micropooz:
Covers were produced for many (but not all) of these flights...

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posted 05-09-2023 08:08 AM               

There was a guy named Dennis Lally that worked with the local Boy Scout Troop at Edwards to service and cachet covers. I'd imagine that the kids in the troop all had dads that worked on base and knew when the flights were happening.

posted 05-18-2023 05:45 PM               

So I used to have one of these stamps as a kid, back when I collected space stamps. My space stamp collection drifted off to the four winds about 40 years ago after I discovered space covers. When I was conceptualizing my LLRV/LLTV Space Cover of the Week a month ago, I regretted not having this stamp anymore. So I ordered the set from a firm in Germany a couple of weeks before my submission was due. Well the German and US postal authorities must have conspired to send this via pack-turtle and rowboat, because it just showed up today, a month after shipment!

posted 07-11-2023 04:48 PM               

Is this the earliest LLRV flight test cover known thus far? I'll keep checking for others even though I wasn't an avid collector of covers like this, and if you note the recent American Space Museum auction to end July 15 does feature a Boudwin LLRV flight test cover signed, but not signature verified, by Armstrong and Scott. The cover may, however, be pulled. It's one of mine if anyone might be interested in it if pulled.

posted 07-11-2023 05:18 PM               

The Nov. 16, 1964 flight was indeed the second flight of the LLRV and flown by Walker. NASA flew the LLRV down at the old "South Base" of Edwards (where the X1 flew) to stay out of the way of the daily flight testing then going on at the North Base.

As Walker flew the LLRV over a manhole cover, the downward thrust flipped the manhole cover and it went flying up toward the LLRV's legs! After that flight, NASA decided that they needed to weld all of the manhole covers down at South Base...

Not sure what the "Captive Flight" notation may have meant on your cover — the LLRV never had any kind of motherplane or tether to keep it captive. Likely an error by the cachet maker(?).