From the Vault: Postage from Outer Space

Like so many of my generation—I’m a space geek.

It comes from the early imprinting-watching Alan Shepard and John Glenn lifting off into space on TV as a child. Real spaces heroes.

(As a kid I wrote a letter to NASA and received a mound of documents about the early plans for the space program with diagrams of space capsules and lunar landers.  I had quite a few books on the future of space travel *and I treasured my photo of the X-15 that I got from a box of cereal).

Over the years, without realizing it I’ve collected—more like acquired—a handful of graphically pleasing postage stamps commemorating the early days of the space exploration--the classic and romantic Mercury, Gemini and Apollo  programs (and let’s not forget the Soviet Union)--I don’t seem to have any post-classic Space Shuttle stamps though they surely must exist.

The month of March has some significant dates in space history-- on March 18, 1965 (50 years ago!) Cosmonaut, Alexei Leonov became the first human to "walk" in space.  (Note: the above stamp commentates American astronaut Ed White's first space walk of June of 1965).

 Here's a cool, but not exactly historically accurate, Soviet stamp:

March 23, 1965 was the first mission of the two-crew American Gemini program. Astronauts Virgil 'Gus' Grissom and John Young flew that one 50 years ago this month.

  Here are few other stamps from the early days of Nasa:

Project Mercury--The USA first space capsule.

Alan Shepard first American Astronaut.

The Apollo moon landing July 1969.

Ditto

This one features the Lunar Rover first used on Apollo 15 in 1971.

The USA's first space station was Skylab (1973).

The Apollo series ended with the American-Soviet Union cooperative mission--the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project of 1975.




(*See post August 20, 2013 for kids illustrated space exploration books)