On this day 52 years ago....

John H. Glenn, Jr. became the first American to orbit the Earth aboard his Mercury Atlas 6 and inside his "Friendship 7" capsule as part of the Mercury program, rocketing him into the history books as an American hero and icon. Along for the ride on that mission were 32 dollar and two dollar bills secreted aboard by the launch support crew, who signed the bills and with good luck wishes to Glenn, and then taped them around the internal wiring of the spacecraft. These bills famously were signed by Glenn and formalized flight certificates were made to prove their flown provenance. They also became subject of a Congressional investigation when their existence became known. Based on an analysis of the serial numbers of all 32 flown bills as revealed by the Congressional investigation, the majority of bills were $1 bills, with 15 or less being $2 bills.

Here is a look at the flown $2 bill in the Jefferson Museum from the Glenn flight, one of the most historic flights of the Mercury program. It is one of the first bills ever acquired for the museum.

Marketing The Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program

My friend, fellow Apollo space enthusiast, and best-selling author David Meerman Scott  and I wrote a book to be published by MIT Press titled Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program.

Gene Cernan, Apollo 17 Commander and the last man to walk on the moon wrote the foreword to the book.

As passionate space artifact collectors, David and I have been working on this project for some three years. The marketing aspects of the Apollo program is a fascinating topic for both of us as we are both professional marketers, both authors (I have written and published numerous articles in the trade journals about marketing as well as space artifact collecting;  David has published 8 other books on marketing, including the international best-seller The New Rules of Marketing and PR), and both happen to collect vintage Apollo-era contractor and PR material.

Over the years, David and I would meet at conferences and discuss our shared passions, and we would belabor the fact that the Apollo marketing story had never been told before, nor in the way we thought it should be told. There are so many aspects where the marketing and PR story of Apollo either remains untold, or even some where the record is just plain wrong.

For Marketing the Moon, we interviewed dozens of Apollo-era astronauts, NASA public affairs officers, contractor public relations people, and journalists who covered the program. And we drew from our collections of original Apollo source materials so that many of the 300+ color illustrations in the wonderfully designed book by Scott-Martin Kosofsky have never been published before. Until now.

Pre-publication demand for the book has been so strong, that the press has already gone to a second printing. We have sold the Japanese rights to the book. And the book is being optioned for film rights by Emmy and Academy award nominated filmmaker Robert Stone.

Marketing the Moon (MIT Press, March 2014)

Here is the description of the book provided by MIT Press on their website and in their 2014 catalog copy:

In July 1969, ninety-four percent of American televisions were tuned to coverage of Apollo 11's mission to the moon. How did space exploration, once the purview of rocket scientists, reach a larger audience than My Three Sons? Why did a government program whose standard operating procedure had been secrecy turn its greatest achievement into a communal experience? In Marketing the Moon, David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek tell the story of one of the most successful marketing and public relations campaigns in history: the selling of the Apollo program.

Primed by science fiction, magazine articles, and appearances by Wernher von Braun on the "Tomorrowland" segments of the Disneyland prime time television show, Americans were a receptive audience for NASA's pioneering "brand journalism." Scott and Jurek describe sophisticated efforts by NASA and its many contractors to market the facts about space travel -- through press releases, bylined articles, lavishly detailed background materials, and fully produced radio and television features -- rather than push an agenda. American astronauts, who signed exclusive agreements with Life magazine, became the heroic and patriotic faces of the program. And there was some judicious product placement: Hasselblad was the "first camera on the moon"; Sony cassette recorders and supplies of Tang were on board the capsule; and astronauts were equipped with the Exer-Genie personal exerciser. Everyone wanted a place on the bandwagon.

Generously illustrated with vintage photographs, artwork, and advertisements, many never published before, Marketing the Moon shows that when Neil Armstrong took that giant leap for mankind, it was a triumph not just for American engineering and rocketry but for American marketing and public relations.

Here is the back cover of the book with some pre-publication endorsements:

Welcome to the new Jefferson Space Museum

Welcome to the new Jefferson Space Museum website! Designed by our good friend Doug Eymer at Eymer Brand Laboratories + Think Tank.

So, poke around on the new site - check it out. And don't forget to stop at the gift shop!

The blog has been on hold for a while since we've decided to update the site...but with the new site and new infrastructure, we'll be posting here more often!

The world's largest collection of space flown US $2 bills

Since the Jefferson Space Museum has the world's largest collection of space flown US $2 bills spanning the history of US manned spaceflight, we have always been interested in other space flown currency. Part of the historic lore around astronauts carrying currency into space includes the tradition of the crews signing one dollar bills, flying them, and turning them over to the National Aeronautical Association (NAA) for their official flight certifications post the mission. Over the years, I have talked to astronauts about these bills -- all have recalled them, and recalled turning them over to the NAA official involved...but no one knowing what ever happened to them. I have also spoken with the NAA, and senior folks there were also aware of the tradition, but had no record of whatever happened to the bills. Then one day I was researching on the Smithsonian website, and stubbled across the bills, which you can see by clicking here, and then scrolling down to the middle of the page where you will see groupings of dollar bills signed by all the Apollo flight crews. These bills all flew on their respective Apollo missions. Amazingly, these bills are not displayed anywhere at the Smithsonian, but are in storage. But at least -- like the Jefferson Space Museum -- they can be enjoyed online. These bills represent the greatest assemblage of space flown US $1 bills in existence across all of the Apollo manned missions. A collection like this would be impossible for private collectors to assemble. But there is hope to acquire one or two of the bills. Note that some flights have 4 bills (one for each crew member, and one for the NAA) which were all turned over. Other flights, like Apollo 14 and 13, only have one bill in the archive...perhaps the crew members kept their bills. One can always hope! :) In the end, however, these bills represent an important part of the tradition of US astronauts carrying currency into space -- as important of an influence as the old fighter pilot short-snorter tradition.

A one dollar bill  from the Apollo 11 flight

This is one of the 4 flown one dollar bills from the Apollo 11 flight used by the crew to certify their flight with the National Aeronautical Association (NAA). This bill is part of the Smithsonian collection, which has all the NAA bills from the manned Apollo flights. Not that the bill is crew signed, as well as signed by the NAA representative who received the bill from the crew upon their return.