Philatelic Snippets

Reach for your Dreams

A Tribute to Apollo 15 Astronaut Colonel James Irwin who died in August 1991.

As I look at some of the stamps issued to commemorate the historic Apollo 15 flight I am reminded of this very special man who in his own unique way helped me to see my hobby in a different light.

On 10th January 1990 it was my privilege to welcome Colonel James Irwin to my home, having invited him to come to our area to talk about his Apollo flight and his Faith. But it wasn’t just taking him into schools and hearing him talk about his mission, or even listening as he personally narrated a film of the flight before an auditorium of people that made much an impression with me.

The memories that stay with me are of those moments when he sat and chatted as part of the family. The way he picked up my little boy and sat him upon his flight-suited knee, and the time he spent looking through my various space collections, talking through the various aspects of them with me.

So often when Stamp collectors or Space enthusiasts get together their focus is entirely on their collections, or the astronauts or cosmonauts that they’ve spoken to, making the newcomer to the hobby feel very inadequate, or their collection appear very inferior. My day with Colonel Irwin taught me to reach outside that, because a man that had walked on the moon was interested in me, interested in my family, in my collections, and wanted to encourage me to ‘reach for my dreams’.

I needed that, I believe our hobby needs that, and for that I shall be eternally grateful to the man who signed off his letter to my family ‘you’re very grateful brother from the moon’.

Tony Bird

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Vostok Two - Remembered

Just sixteen days after America has completed it’s last Manned Sub-orbital flight, and almost six months before it’s first Manned orbital flight, Russia again pulled off another spectacular. This time it was with the flight of Cherman S. Titov in Vostok 2, launched on Sunday 6th August 1961, at 1130 am Moscow Time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Titov orbited the Earth seventeen times in a flight lasting 25 hours and 18 minutes, thus he became the first man to spend a full day in space. He was also the youngest man in space (he was 25years and 329 days old on the day of the launch) and he was also the first man to be space-sick, but this did not affect him from maneuvering his spacecraft and doing other tasks.

The final ‘first’ came when Titov ejected from his spacecraft at a height of 22,000 feet and then landed by parachute away from the capsule, he was the first man to land separately from the craft he was launched in.

During his one and only space-flight Cheman S. Titov travelled 436,656 miles. Illustrated are some First day covers commemorating the flight,

Nigel Harpham

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USSR Cosmic Post Cover

by John Holland

The Souvenir cover illustrated, commemorates the Third Principle Expedition to ‘Salut—6”, and was from aboard the Orbiting Complex. The cover was taken there along with other items of mail by the unmanned craft Progress-5, and was returned with the Cosmonauts ‘Lyakhov and Ryumin’ on completion of a 175 day stay in space. The cover has their autographs. 

There is a circular cachet, which translates “Soyus—Salut Progress, 3rd Principle Expedition aboard Orbiting Complex”. There is also a “Cosmodrome Baikonur” date stamp (returning date) 19/8/79. The inscription at bottom left reads: Cosmic Souvenir from aboard ‘Salut6’. The 10 kopek stamp features ‘Yuri Gagarin’ and the Vostok craft, and is from the 1977 set of six stamps issued to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Cosmic Era.

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Austrian Pioneer of Space Travel Honoured

 

Herman Potocnik was born on 22 December 1892, and in space literature he is known as the inventor and discoverer of the synchron course where -today’s geostationary satellites are placed. His discovery was prerequisite to the positioning of Communications satellites at a height of around 36,000 km.

In a book published in 1929 ‘The problems of Space Travel — The Rocket Motor’ he wrote:
‘ An observation point in empty space: Every body circling around the earth 42,300 km above the centre of the earth in an orbit parallel to the equator, remains permanently floating above a fixed point on the earths surface.

The body stays above a defined equator point, 35,900 km above the earth, as can be deducted from the earth’s radius of around 6,400 km. Such a body represents something like the peak of an enormously high tower whose force of inertia, although not existing in reality, is replaced by the effect of centrifugal forces.

This floating ‘lower Peak can be enlarged to any size and appropriately furnished. A building would emerge which, though forever belonging to the earth and even being in a fixed position relevant to her, is nevertheless stationed in empty space far above the atmosphere. It is an observation point at 35,900,000 km above sea-level.'

To commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Herman Potocnik, the Austrian Postal Authority have issued a 10s stamp featuring the earth with a satellite in orbit around it. Today, television transmissions via satellites from the landing on the Moon or the Olympic flames can be watched by millions of viewers on all continents.

The civil and military value of his discoveries, published in 1929, is inestimable today. Now, the entire mankind benefits from Potocnik’s brilliant ideas.

Potocnik also performed the first systematic research of manned space travel. He designed a space station, consisting of a residential wheel, a power station and an observatory. Today’s space platforms were designed and built after ideas developed by Potocnik 50 years earlier.

Potocnik, together with the English science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, are considered fathers of today’s communications satellites, whose importance continues to increase, In 1965, the American space physician, Campbell found the most beautiful words for Herman Potocnik-Noordung: ‘…..he lived and died long before his time’,

Submitted by Prof, Herbert Pichler
(“Moon Pichler”), Vienna, via the Austrian Postal Authority

 

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