Pioneer Rocket Mail & Space Mail - English edition

544 pages, hardcover with glossy finish. Translated by Annika Backe-Dahmen. Published independently. ISBN: 978-3-9500207-1-7

Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the first manned moon landing, the handbook and specialized catalog "Pioneer Rocket Mail & Space Mail" is now available in English. It replaces the Ellington Zwisler catalog, which has been the "bible" for rocket mail for the past 50 years. Each rocket launch is thoroughly and clearly described, including technical, historical, biographical, and philatelic backgrounds. The flown covers and rocket labels are evaluated in detail.

One of the rocket experimenters featured in the book from the interwar period was Austrian Friedrich Schmiedl. He launched numerous postal rockets from the Schöckl mountain in Graz down into the valley. This rocket pioneer not only wanted to speed up postal delivery but also aimed to initiate space travel. In 1928, he launched a rocket from a stratospheric balloon, and five years later, he deployed a high-altitude balloon from a rocket. In 1931, Schmiedl launched the upper stage of a 520 kg three-stage "space rocket," which ultimately could not be completed due to funding issues. Schmiedl tested rocket designs and fuels. Since gravity and air resistance decrease at higher altitudes, large rockets need the most thrust at liftoff, which led him to explore conical and funnel-shaped rockets. Believing that African deserts were ideal launch sites for space rockets, Schmiedl developed heat- and cold-resistant fuels with long shelf lives. In 1935, he transported mail using two liquid-fuel rockets.

Reinhold Tiling, who received several patents for his rocket planes, died in 1933 while pressing rocket fuel. Keith Rumbel, at age 16, conducted the first international rocket mail service in 1936 between McAllen, Texas, and Reynosa, Mexico. He studied chemistry at Rice University and MIT, later developing solid fuels for Polaris medium-range missiles. In 1939, Cuba issued stamps for official rocket mail tests.

To round off the work, the space race is described in detail. Even die-hard collectors of space-related stamps and covers will be surprised by some of the research findings. For example, chief designer Sergei Korolev—the Soviet Wernher von Braun—wanted to send cosmonauts to Mars with the N-1 rocket as early as 1974. However, the political leadership continually tasked him with beating the Americans at all costs. He was constantly in competition with the design bureaus of Vladimir Chelomei and Mikhail Yangel. Korolev died in early 1966 during a routine operation. Due to his importance, only the best surgeon was allowed to operate on him, though it was overlooked that the health minister had spent less time at the operating table and needed to improvise less than most of his colleagues.

The first space mail appeared in 1960 when the American spy satellite Discoverer 17 carried letters around the Earth 31 times. The return capsule containing film and letters was caught by an aircraft. The USAF's X-15 rocket plane reached space, and philatelic covers were carried on some X-15 flights.

In 1969, Neil Armstrong brought a U.S. Postal Service postmark to the moon with Apollo 11. It was used to cancel the official moon cover, and three test impressions were made, with each astronaut receiving one. Two years later, David Scott became the first postmaster on the moon. He even had two postmarks to choose from. Apollo astronauts brought covers to the moon that landed with Apollo 14, 15, and 16, and circled the moon in the command module with Apollo 11, 12, 13, and 15. The various types are illustrated and described in detail.

The first Soviet space mail appeared in January 1969. After the docking of Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5, Vladimir Shatalov received two letters. Before an Apollo docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in 1975, the Soviets proposed an international cosmic mail service, but NASA declined, especially after the Apollo 15 stamp scandal. However, in 1982, NASA, in cooperation with the U.S. Postal Service, sent 261,900 covers around the Earth on the Space Shuttle Challenger—the first affordable space mail for the public.

Saljut-6, the first space station with two docking ports, launched a busy exchange of letters between space and Earth in late 1977, a practice that continues today.

For the first time, the mysteries of the Zenon Jankowski blocks are solved. In 1978, the Polish Post initially printed blocks featuring the image of the backup cosmonaut, which were almost entirely destroyed. Why did Mirosław Hermaszewski fly? How did small sheets make their way into collectors' hands? Why is the 6.90 Zloty block much rarer at auctions than the 1.50 Zloty block, even though both were produced in quantities of 50?

After the fall of the Soviet Union, U.S.-Russia cooperation in space intensified. Between 1995 and 1998, Space Shuttles docked with the Russian space station Mir. According to NASA regulations, American astronauts are not allowed to take letters or covers into space, but they acted as mail carriers for cosmonauts. Little changed in this regard when the construction of the International Space Station (ISS) began in 1998. It wasn’t until 2008 that the Russian Post brought a postmark to the ISS. With over 200 pages, this topic represents the lion’s share of the book.

Finally, the signatures of all 570 astronauts are displayed, ranging from Yuri Gagarin to Nicklaus Hague, who was scheduled to live and work on the ISS until October 3, 2019.

A small special edition includes a sheet that traveled 175 million kilometers in space between March 21 and December 20, 2018. It was postmarked, stamped by the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and marked with the octagonal station stamp aboard the ISS. It is signed by cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Sergei Prokopyev, and Alexei Ovchinin.