“The Earth Reminded us of a Christmas Tree Ornament.”  James Irwin

“The Earth reminded us of a Christmas tree ornament hanging in the blackness of space. As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine.”

James Irwin

James Irwin and his Apollo 15 crew-mates; Mission Commander David Scott and Command Module Pilot Alfred Worden flew a spectacularly successful lunar landing mission.  It was one of the best and I wish the story ended there but unfortunately it doesn’t.  Soon after their return home the crew of Apollo 15 was embroiled in a scandal and no one emerged unscathed.  I’ve read everything I could find on the Apollo 15 Postal Cover incident and I believe that I understand it about as well as any outsider could.  There are multiple versions of the events and these versions are often incompatible.  However this much is beyond dispute:

1)  Prior to flight the crew of Apollo 15 obtained 398 postal covers from an untrustworthy German named Hermann Sieger.

2)  The crew then carried the postal covers to the surface of the moon and back again to Earth. 

3)  After returning to Earth the crew “sold” 100 of the flown covers to Sieger for 21,000 dollars or $210 each.   

4)  An agreement had been reached whereby Sieger wouldn’t offer his flown covers for sale, or make their existence known, until after the conclusion of the Apollo lunar landing program.

5)  Within a matter of weeks Sieger broke the agreement by offering his covers for sale.  Surprise! Surprise!

6)  In an attempt to assuage NASA the crew returned the cash but Sieger kept his covers thus obtaining them for free.  Guten Tag!

7)  One of the “Sieger Covers” sold at auction for $55,000.  Sieger must have been a happy guy!

If the Apollo 15 crew wanted to carry unauthorized covers fine.  But they should have done so without the involvement of Sieger.   Obtaining the covers would’ve been trivial, just a trip to the corner stationary store to buy a box of blank envelopes and a subsequent trip to a print shop to have a really cool design embossed on them.  If the crew was too busy training for their upcoming flight they could’ve asked a member of their support crew or a secretary to do it for them.  The only possible explanation for Sieger’s participation was that the Apollo 15 crew wanted cash up front.  In short, they were greedy. 

After Apollo 15 Irwin left NASA to devote himself to his Christian ministry and to the search for Noah’s Ark.  Yes I said Noah’s Ark, the big boat with all the animals.  Irwin was a creationist, he believed in a strictly literal reading of the bible and thus the actuality of the Ark.  This belief lead him to undertake a number of ill-fated expeditions to Mount Ararat in search of said biblical artifact.  Irwin never found any evidence to support the Ark’s existence, however he did write three embarrassingly childish and simple minded books about his quest.  What future historians will make of these books I can’t imagine. 

Fortunately his autobiography To Rule the Night was much better although it never achieved a wide readership.  One curious aspect of this book was a full page photograph of Irwin giving a private tour of the Johnson Spaceflight Center to anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant.  I always wondered if this photo was meant as a tacit approval, a little wink and nod, to Bryant’s bigotry and homophobia. 

You might ask, why bring up these less than flattering fact at this late data?  Didn’t I like Jim Irwin?  I liked the man very much.  But I think it’s worthwhile to remember that the men who braved such dangers to be the first to fly to the moon had the same human frailties as the rest of us.