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The Spoils of Spaceflight

Space-faring artifacts sold at an April auction drew bucks big and small

Anne-Marie Corley

30 Jun 2010

Photo: Bonhams

In April, Bonhams auction house held a space history sale in New York City timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Apollo 13. An Apollo 11 checklist page that details the countdown to the first footsteps on the moon sold for US $152 000. The sheet boasts Neil Armstrong’s signature, along with his historic first words from the moon’s surface. The page was allegedly given as a gift to NASA press officer John McLeaish just days after the first moonwalkers returned. But the purchase is not without intrigue: Armstrong himself swears he never signed the quote for anyone.
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Photo: Bonhams

These badges, sold together for $3355, granted access to restricted areas of Peenemünde, the military base in northeastern Germany where Wernher von Braun developed the V-2 rocket. After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, treasure hunters slipped through the base’s fence and found items like these buried in the dirt. Yellow badges gave access to Test Stand 7, where the V-2s were tested.
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Photo: Bonhams

Apollo 13 commander James Lovell and lunar module (LM) pilot Fred Haise marked up this page of their contingency checklist after an oxygen tank explosion forced the crew to move to the LM to survive their return to Earth. The LM power-down instructions they noted here and on two additional pages were radioed from Mission Control, in Houston, to conserve battery power for their four-day journey. The checklist sheets sold for $45 750.
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Photo: Bonhams

An aluminum fork and can opener used by the first man to orbit the Earth for a full day, cosmonaut Gherman Titov, sold for $5490. While NASA designed new food packaging and freeze-dried meals for its astronauts, Soviet engineers made a different choice: They simply took a child’s fork to lighten the load. The items are framed together with two photographs signed in Russian by Titov.
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Photo: Bonhams

A packet of dehydrated pineapple-grapefruit drink that flew on Apollo 13 sold for $3965. Because of the explosion that cut off electrical power in the command module, the astronauts could not draw water—or heat it—to rehydrate their food; instead, they ate foods that did not require rehydration. The small blue Velcro square [bottom right] indicates that the drink was assigned to Fred Haise.
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Photo: Bonhams

This sketch by rocket engineer Wernher von Braun informed Fred Freeman’s illustrations for the 27 June 1953 issue of Collier’s, part of a series entitled “Man Will Conquer Space Soon.” The series detailed von Braun’s plans for human spaceflight; he imagined the “baby satellite” staying in orbit for 60 days and carrying monkeys, TV cameras, antennas, solar mirrors, and Geiger counters. The sketch sold for $12 200.
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Photo: Bonhams

A test-fired Apollo rocket engine, made by Rocketdyne out of steel and ablative material, sold for $6100. A set of 12 of these engines provided the Apollo command module with rotation control, rate damping, and attitude control after separation from the service module and during reentry.
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Photo: Bonhams

This lapel pin, which sold for $5185, flew on Apollo 13 and comes from astronaut Fred Haise’s collection. Snoopy was adopted as NASA’s “manned flight awareness” mascot to get kids and the public interested. Apollo crews took the pins with them into space, then gave them to members of the ground crew who exemplified exceptional support. Receiving a Snoopy pin was considered a high honor.
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Photo: Bonhams

Apollo astronauts signed and distributed space-themed envelopes to their families to serve as creative forms of life insurance; in the event that the astronauts didn’t return, their families were to sell the envelopes to provide for themselves. This one, which sold for $6710 at auction, was signed by the Apollo 11 crew and postmarked in Houston on 20 July 1969, the day Apollo 11 landed on the moon.
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type:slideshow space flight

Anne-Marie Corley

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