Apollo 15 - Scandals

Scandals

Further information: Apollo 15 postage stamp incident

After a highly successful mission, the reputation of the crew and NASA was tarnished somewhat by a deal they made with a German stamp dealer. H. Walter Eiermann, who had many professional and social contacts with NASA employees and the astronaut corps, arranged for Scott to carry unauthorized commemorative postal covers in his spacesuit, in addition to the postal covers NASA contracted to carry for the U.S. Postal Service. Eiermann had promised each astronaut US$7,000 in the form of savings accounts in return for 100 covers signed after having returned from the Moon. He told them that he would not advertise or sell the covers until the end of the Apollo program. Irwin wrote in his book To Rule the Night that the astronauts had agreed to the deal as a way to help finance their children's college tuition.

One final controversial event happened after the flight. The crew had contacted Belgian sculptor Paul Van Hoeydonck to create a small statuette to personally commemorate those astronauts and cosmonauts having lost their lives in the furtherance of space exploration. The small aluminum sculpture called "Fallen Astronaut" was left on the Moon next to the Rover at the end of EVA 3, along with a plaque bearing the names of 14 American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts. Unknown at the time, two of the original selection of 20 cosmonauts were also deceased before Apollo 15: Valentin Bondarenko (fire during training, March 1961) and Grigori Nelyubov (train accident/suicide, February 1966). Therefore, their names were not included on the plaque. The memorial was left while the TV camera was turned off. Only Irwin knew what Scott was doing at the time. Scott told mission control he was doing some clean up activities around the rover so they wouldn't know what he was doing. They had agreed with Van Hoeydonck that no replicas were to be made. After mentioning the statuette during their post-flight press conference, the National Air and Space Museum contacted the crew asking for a replica made for the museum, and Van Hoeydonck subsequently advertised replicas for sale to the public. Under pressure from NASA, Van Hoeydonck withdrew the sale offer. NASA ultimately showed the monument on its Apollo 15 mission documentary, with no mention that it was unauthorized.