Astrum Space - The Scandal NASA Wishes Never Happened | Astrum Sleep Space

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

We investigate the scandal that was the Apollo 15 Lunar mission.Discover our full back catalogue of hundreds of videos on YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@astrumspace⁠For early access videos, bonus content, and to support the channel, join us on Patreon: ⁠https://astrumspace.info/4ayJJuZ⁠

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It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. For many, the Apollo missions represent the golden era of space travel. For a decade, it was headline after headline of incredible feats, earning NASA and their astronauts respect and reverence across the world. But just one year after completing its mission, Apollo 15 made different kinds of headlines. In a scandal that rocked NASA to its core, accusations of smuggling, profiteering, and a lack of good judgment,

landed the space agency in a congressional hearing. This incident reduced a mission with a valiant scientific purpose to a backroom operation that stained NASA reputation at the height of the space race. All over 850 grams of paper. I'm Alex McCulligan and you're listening to the Astrum Podcast. Join me today as we get into what made the Apollo 15 postal scandal so gut-wrenching. How the story unfilled and what the lasting repercussions have been on the world of spaceflight.

On November 14, 1969, a German man named Horst-Ierman, left his Florida home and jumped on a bus to the Kennedy Space Center to watch the Apollo 12 launch. As luck would have it, another German man was on the same bus. Hermann Siger was a stamp collector and dealer, who turned out to be from the same region in Germany as Ayerman. They shared a love for space travel and became fast friends. Back then, collecting stamps was a popular hobby. NASA started printing specially designed covers for each Apollo mission, which were stamped on launch day. These covers became such a huge part of the Kennedy Space Center's launch days that

machines would start rolling from as early as 1am to keep up with demand. These made great gifts for astronauts friends and family and for NASA employees. Some astronauts took this a step further. transporting postal covers up into space in the command module to then gift their loved ones. Ironman was a NASA contractor, so he knew a lot of people who worked at the Kennedy Space Center, including a number of astronauts. On more than one occasion, he'd tried to persuade Apollo astronauts to smuggle aboard various stamps and postal covers in exchange for money, without success, so far. One evening in May 1971, while having dinner with the Apollo 15 crew, David Scott, Alfred

Warden and James Irwin, Ironman tabled a tempting offer. He asked them to carry 100 special stamp covers to the moon for Siga and 300 for themselves. Siga's covers would eventually be sold off as exclusive collector's items, and the astronauts would each get a very generous $7,000 for their troubles, which would equate to about $54,300 today. Initially, the crew were hesitant. NASA's standards of conduct forbid astronauts from using their position to make money for themselves or anyone else. Iron Man reassured them, claiming many other Apollo crew members had done the same in the

past. NASA had also recently restructured their employee benefits, meaning astronauts no longer receive life insurance. Space is a hostile environment. no matter how many security measures you put in place, and being an astronaut is not a risk-free occupation. Iron Man played on this by convincing them that the money could be put aside to care for their families should the unthinkable happen on the mission. It was, and still is, fairly normal for astronauts themselves to take personal souvenirs on missions.

Of course, all these personal items need pre-approval from NASA before they could fly to ensure the articles are safe for space and compliant with weight restrictions, Alan Shepard brought up a few golf balls, a modified golf club head, and famously played golf on the moon. Buzz Aldrin carried on board a communion wafer and a vial of wine. Several astronauts carried postal covers on their missions for friends and family back home. These were all approved by NASA prior to launch day. In light of this, accepting Ayrman's proposal may not sound like such a big deal. However, just a few months prior, the Apollo 14 crew had taken some silver

medallions aboard the spacecraft without NASA's knowledge. It was a deal brokered directly between the astronauts and the production company, the Franklin Mint. After the mission, Franklin Mint melted some down, mixed them with other metals, and mass-produced commemorative medallions. They used the story that these medallions had been to space in their marketing in an attempt to profiteer. Because the Apollo 14 crew hadn't taken any money for their role in facilitating this, they didn't get into any trouble. The scandal didn't become the moral stain on NASA's reputation it could have been. Remember, this is all happening against the backdrop of the Cold War. Public interest in the space race was at its peak, and astronauts held celebrity status.

Everything that could reflect poorly on American success and NASA's integrity was not acceptable. In light of these events, NASA's Director of Flight crew operations, Deke Slayton, had expressly warned the Apollo 15 crew against taking anything into space that could make money either for themselves or others. They couldn't afford more bad press after what happened with the Apollo 14 Medallion scandal. With this in mind, it might surprise you to hear the Apollo 15 crew eventually accepted Ironman's deal, but only on the condition that absolutely no sales were made until the they retired from NASA.

Independently of the agreement with the Germans, it's important to mention another interested party, who came to the crew with a similar request. Retired film director and stamp collector F. Herrick Herrick asked Warden to take 144 covers into space on his behalf. He said they'd be set aside for some years and then sold once all the astronauts had retired from NASA. But unlike Iron Man,

he didn't offer Warden any money to transport them. Warden trusted him and agreed it to go with it as a favour for an acquaintance. He couldn't know it at the time, but that decision set the event's emotion that would drastically change the course of his life forever. The Kennedy Space Center Post Office opened at 1am EDT on launch day, which wasn't unusual on an Apollo launch morning. Collins brought with him several hundred of the stamp covers to be run through the cancellation machine, before taking them to the astronaut quarters.

There, members of the flight crew support team vacuum sealed the 143 approved covers in Teflon-covered fiberglass to fireproof them for space. This included the 144 Herrick covers, which were approved by NASA ahead of the launch. As team lead James Smotherman was carrying out final checks on the astronaut's personal preference kit, he came across the 400 undeclared Seeger covers. Right there, with contraband in his hands, he mustook them for the approved covers traveling aboard Apollo 15 and thought nothing of them. In his own words, he goofed. And just like that, the bootlegged Siga covers slid into David Scott's spacesuit pocket, destined for the moon.

In terms of space exploration, the Apollo 15 mission was a success. It was the first mission to use the lunar rover, giving the crew greater surface mobility to support geological investigations. They also stayed on the moon for almost three days, longer than any crew before them, thanks to engineering advancements of the lunar module that allowed carrying a heavy payload. Warden performed the first spacewalk in deep space, while Scott and Irwin collected the first sample of the moon's early crust, the Genesis rock from the lunar surface. The crew even cancelled a NASA certified postal cover on the moon's surface, in honor of the US Postal Service. Yet, less than a year later, these achievements would be overshadowed by

bitter betrayal. As soon as Apollo 15 returned to Earth, Seeger, Ironman and Herrick turned on their word and got to selling the postal covers. Seeger kept one and sold the other 99 for $1,500 each in just two months. That's almost $12,000 each in today's money. Herrick got busy commissioning sales across various dealers in New York and Europe, selling the covers for between $790 and $1,250 each, which today would be between $6,000 and almost $10,000. Late in October 1971, one of Herrick's interested buyers contacted NASA, asking if they could verify the authenticity of the cover. NASA's director of flight crew operations, Deeks Leiden, had no idea what he was talking about, which really didn't make NASA look good.

He warned Warden to make sure these covers wouldn't be further publicised. After all, they'd only been approved under the assumption that they were for non-commercial use. Warden wrote to Herrick, demanding he cease sales immediately. He'd laid to say, I believed Herrick was as good as his word. It was a huge lapse in judgment on my part to trust this stranger. By the next month, word had spread about the supposed Apollo 15th covers selling all over Europe. The crew, who were in Germany at the time as part of their official NASA European tour, decided it would be improper for them to accept the $7,000 promised by

Seeger. But by then, the American media had gotten a hold of the news and the damage was done. Slayton was furious. His crew had directly disobeyed orders and the result was a very public dispute that damaged NASA's credibility. He called the events a regular god-down. scandal and reprimanded Irwin, Scott and Warden for poor judgment. He also removed them from their positions as Apollo 17 backup crew. They were stripped of their wings and never flew in space again, the worst kind of punishment for an astronaut. But the drama didn't end there.

With the media pumping out headline after headline, there was real concern that the publicity around Apollo 15 would reduce an otherwise successful scientific mission to an unethical money grab by the crew, or worse, by NASA themselves. On August 3, 1972, the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences held a hearing to set the record straight once and for all. There were several layers of concern to address. Firstly, the actions of the astronauts. The crew acknowledged they acted thoughtlessly in not declaring the postal covers and claimed they were oblivious to the German's intentions in using these covers for commercial purposes. However, something had happened on board that cast doubt over their

true intentions. At some point during the mission, the 400 unauthorized covers were moved from the main command module to the lunar module and eventually to the surface of the moon. In testimony, the astronauts agreed this violated protocol, but said they couldn't recall how or when the transfer had taken place. Postal covers usually remained within the command module, so moving them into the the lunar module would have made them a crowning jewel in the dealer's collection, increasing the value of these covers significantly. Perhaps the astronauts weren't the innocent victims in a businessman's game, as they were portraying themselves to be.

The Senate was also concerned how NASA allowed another incident to happen so quickly after the Apollo 14 debacle. The postal covers dispute made NASA look incompetent, with no idea what its employees were doing, what was being taken aboard missions. and individuals putting personal gain over the public interest of the agency. Slayden himself came under fire too. Turns out, despite his rage and fury, he didn't report the crew to his superiors when he learned of the unauthorized covers.

This called his integrity into question, raising eyebrows that perhaps he was somehow in on the whole operation, although nothing along those lines has ever been confirmed. Interestingly, after a duress from senior NASA management, the Senate invoked a rarely used rule to close the hearing to the public, when testimony might impact the reputation of witnesses or others, which in itself raises suspicions. The repercussions of this hearing had lasting effects on NASA and their astronauts. NASA asked all current and former astronauts to turn in any covers they had flown with, including the remaining Herrick covers, and Apollo 15's

300 non-commercialized covers. The seizure led to the suspension of 15 astronauts who had broken the faith with us and ignored a standing order from Slayton, as NASA flight director Christopher Kraft Jr. put it. Today, astronauts can still carry NASA-approved personal items and mementos aboard missions, but coins, stamps, and postal materials that, by their nature, lend themselves to exploitation by the recipients are forbidden by federal regulation. Just when it seemed to be case closed, something happened that no one was expecting. Five years later, in 1978, the Justice Department sent a private memo to NASA, informing them that while they likely had the right to keep all the confiscated Herrick covers,

the astronaut's 300 covers intended as gifts were another matter, as these items were taken from the astronauts without any. illegal proceedings, NASA might have reached their constitutional rights. It was on this basis in 1983, the warden sued NASA and won, getting the cruise covers back in an out-of-court settlement. Apollo 15 was by all accounts a successful scientific mission. However, it was also overshadowed by a scandal that called NASA's competence into question and stained the image of the astronaut as the infallible hero. While it does seem wrong to try and profit off such a mission, some were firmly on the astronaut's

side. It was perceived by some that they were being punished for behaviour that wasn't new to NASA, says Shopman, an expert in stamp history. Today, Siga covers are all over the world, mainly in private collections. Only four ever made it to public sale, with the latest selling for over $55,000 in 2014, which would be close to $70,000 today. Still, the questions remain. Were the astronauts really just unfortunate pawns in an opportunistic business game?

Or were they in it for personal profit? Was NASA oblivious to what was going on? Or were more people in on this? I don't think we'll ever know. This is a story that highlights how even a noble pursuit like space exploration isn't free of opportunists. curiosity, ambition and ingenuity are all part of human nature, but so are wildliness and self-interest. In that way, the story is a stark reminder of the importance of honour and honesty, personal duty and dignity in public service, and that virtues like these truly are priceless.

Well, that's all we have time for today. If you like what you've heard, please feel free to follow us for more podcasts on other fascinating space topics. But for now, I'm Alex McCauldgan, and this has been Ashtram. All the best, and see you next time. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition, First Citizens Bank. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsor jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more.

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