1969 Space Mail Cover - Did This Really Fly?

I picked up an interesting space cover recently that I hadn't seen before. It has a written notation of Apollo 12, which flew Nov. 14–24, 1969, but this cover was cancelled Nov. 1. The cachet is for the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Nothing on the back.

Can anyone tell me what the notation "Space Mail" indicates? I can't figure out what mission this piece could have flown on and returned to Earth.

I assume you know that there is space mail. I do have an FDC that was flown on the Space Shuttle Challenger a couple years before the disaster. This took place in 1983. I can post the cover if you wish for reference. It came from a USPS/NASA joint partnership, mostly to promote NASA's 25th Anniversary. They also could have been testing for viability using space to ship bulk mail loads.

My cover has a USPS postmark from the date it arrived at the Lauch site. A USPS postmark for the day of launch and a USPS postmark for the day it returned to earth. There is also a stamp stating that it did orbit the earth on mission STS-8. This is all in 1983. Apollo 12 flew in 1969. I don't believe there was any partnership in place at the time, as most of these missions ended poorly. Rockets were not the safest mode of transport at that time. In all fairness they were improving with each mission.

I do like your cover. It shows enough hopefulness and desire to explore which were paramount in the time period. The connection of the Observatory and the Apollo Missions. The fact that it was headed for West Germany, and seems to have gone through customs, alluding to the stamp of printed material. Makes me believe, in my opinion, humble as it is, believes that no this did not actually go into space. Unless there were postmarks from the USPS on this cover, front or back. In '69 there was hope for a lot of technology improvements for our lives. The space mail cover I possess, laid groundwork for that. However, E-mail was taking over the world by then. So, plans for space mail took a back seat. With the new Space Force becoming a reality, I'm sure there will be renewed interest in this process. Yet, I believe email will trump that also, which it has for almost all military mail today.

Great cover though, I hope you enjoy it for many years.

Sorry, I wasn't entirely clear. Yes, I know what space mail is. I don't know why this cover is marked "space mail" in the cachet. I suspect it did not actually fly, so why that notation? What mission was it associated with? That's the information I'm after.

Considering the price to launch a pound of anything into space is 1 to 10 thouand dollars, we will need new denominations to send mail into space, instead of 73 cents, would probably need to be 73 dollars (maybe $730)!

I'm still interested in learning some actual background on this, if there are any advanced space collectors on the forum.

A quick search of ebay reveals 4-5 covers with this cachet, all sent on different dates, including one as late as 1981. This seems to be a generic rubber stamp cachet essentially co-serving as a return address stamp on their outgoing mail.

Extra for tracking.

If you simply search the phrase "astrophysical observatory" on eBay with "stamps", you will find a number of covers with this cachet from multiple years.

I suspect that each time there was a launch with any equipment from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, there were covers made with this cachet to correspond to the launch date.

You can find similar covers done for virtually every space mission regardless of how "minor" it might have been in the grand scheme of things. Such interest was not limited to the Apollo or Shuttle flights, they just did not have as colorful a cachet. There are collectors who enjoy(ed) preparing covers and requesting such cachets.

In August 1983, space flown mail (STS-8) was handled as standard express mail at $9.35 per ounce without the overnight or second day service. The stamp used was Scott 1909.

Such flown covers sell in the range of $5 to $12 currently.

Funny you should mention that -- I have one of those covers. It was sort of what led to this topic. You'd expect a cover that said "space mail" to have actually been to space. Not so with my Smithsonian cover, but at least I have one that did!





Incidentally, the mission flew 260,000 covers into space. I think they were only sold in special folders for $15.35 each. That raised $4 million -- nice haul for the USPS. I wonder how much went to NASA.