Apollo Stamp Scandal Options

[dvandorn]

There aren't very many good articles on the web about it, so I'll tell you some details here.

During the early years of American manned space flight (Mercury through Apollo), astronauts were celebrities and heroes and got a lot of lucrative offers and deals. For the most part, NASA looked the other way as car dealers gace them free cars, bars gave them free drinks and restaurants gave them free meals.

There was also a well-established trade in objects that had flown in space. Each astronaut got a Personal Preference Kit, weighing few pounds or so each, in which they could carry anything that fit under the weight cap. The guys carried things for friends and relatives, and they also carried items that were later sold, the proceeds going back to the astronaut in some fashion.

One of the more popular things that astronauts carried were stamps, since you can carry quite a few of them without taking up much space or much weight. NASA approved a lot of stamps, carried for later sale by the USPS and other agencies -- with no special renumeration going back to the flight crew. On Apollo 15, they were supposed to carry something like 50 pre-stamped envelopes and a canceling stamp to cancel them while on the Moon.

They actually carried more than 200. The extras were given to a dealer, the proceeds were to be given back to the crew in the form of trust funds for their childrens' college educations.

Apollo 15 also carried a small original sculpture called "The Fallen Astronaut," which was placed on the Moon along with a plaque listing all of the astronauts and cosmonauts who had died to-date in the pursuit of manned space exploration. The sculptor had arranged to sell copies of the sculpture, starting no less than a year after the flight, with one-quarter of all profits going into trust funds for the crew's childrens' educations.

What happened to the Apollo 15 crew was that the sculptor (or his manager) started selling copies almost immediately, bringing the deal to the notice of NASA and the press. The crew disavowed the deal and refused any payments, but this caused a Congressional subcommittee to hold hearings on astronauts profiting from side-deals resulting from items they took with them on their flights. That was when the stamp deal became public.

The Apollo 15 crew was chastised by NASA because they initially denied that they had ever been involved in the stamp or sculpture deals, then later admitted their involvement. They had been named as the back-up crew for Apollo 17, but after NASA issued letters of discipline, they were relieved from active duty and were replaced by John Young, Charlie Duke and Stu Roosa. Scott and Irwin transferred to other NASA centers and then retired, while Worden (IIRC) returned to Air Force active duty for a couple of years.

The guy who really got shot down was Jack Swigert. The Congressional investigation revealed that Swigert, on Apollo 13, took along a pretty sizable number of stamped covers and profited from their sale, and when asked about it told the investigators to go to hell. He refused to admit anything and never admitted to his actions. Swigert was Deke Slayton's first choice as one of the ASTP crew, but his non-cooperation in the stamp scandal investigation earned him a permanent seat on the bench, after which he resigned NASA.

Poor Jack -- he was elected to Congress in 1980 (if I'm remembering the dates properly), but died of cancer before he could take his seat in the House...

-the other Doug