UAR's ( Upper Atmosphere Rockets ). These vehicles were sometimes made up of Cockatoo and Kookaburra parts and about 17 of this type was launched between October 1970 and the July of 1971. There are a few envelopes for most of these launchings.
LORIKEET. Another type of Upper Atmosphere Rocket which was an improved version of the earlier HAT rocket. About 11 launchings of this rocket took place between July 1973 and Sept 1976.These trials were to test wind speeds and turbulence at high altitudes using a lithium trail. A number of commemorative envelopes were made for these launches some of which have a catchet depicting a desert scene with a double stump of an ancient desert plant.
COCKATOO. Upper Atmosphere Research Vehicle. Seventy three rockets of this type were launched between 1970/ 1976 and commemorative envelopes were made for most of these trials. These consisted of trials with spheres and lithium trails.
HI-STAR. Another type of Australian designed rocket. There were three launches of this vehicle the first of which was on the 4th, the others on the 11th and the 17th September 1974. A few envelopes for each launch were made.
BLACK BRANT 5. NASA Six launches in 1987/ 1988 of rockets fitted with telescopes to check Light Rays, X-rays and Gamma Rays to look at Super Nova 1970A. A Mr. Jack Koch produced a limited amount of less than 50 sets of envelopes for this project with information supplied by me and with the help of my son Steven who sketched the rocket. The Black Brant "Cosray " was launched on the 9th Nov 1976; A very limited number of commemorative envelopes were also made for this launch. The limited edition of 100 sets of six envelopes for the October/November 1995 launchings of Black Brant were of course produced by me as mentioned later in this memo. A picture of one of these envelopes is shown but there were six envelopes in a set each with the serial number of the rocket and all eight stamps of two consecutive issues were affixed to these six envelopes. There were originally supposed to be seven launches of one launch a week but owing to fiscal changes in the US budget during the launch program this was cut to six launches and two were launched in the last week of the programme, this explains the text on the envelopes stating that only six launches took place.
The pilotless target plane , JINDIVIK was perfected and flown on hundreds of sorties from Evetts Field. A small amount of air mail commemorative envelopes were made for the 200th flight of the Jindivik. This particular envelope has an orange coloured picture of the drogue plane with text stating that this was to commemorate the 200th flight of this aircraft. It had a circular Woomera post mark and dated 30th October 1970 with the Christmas 6c stamp.
Activity on the Woomera Range slowed down for quite a long period then in the August of 1987 it re opened for a Scientific Research Sounding Rocket $10 million dollar upgrade program. The first launch involved 11 sounding rockets and one British Skylark. These trials were to study Supa Nova 1987A. Mr. Jack Koch also produced a small amount of commemorative envelopes for this project. No other commemorative envelopes for any launchings were made from this date. It was from that time on that I decided to produce a small amount of these envelopes so that I could keep a more permanent record of any future launch trials. I decided to restrict these to limited editions of not more than 100 envelopes for some of those trials and 75 for others. This was mainly more for nostalgic reasons than for reasons of financial gain. I have since found of course that it costs more to produce these envelopes in small quantities than is really worthwhile. However the project was not undertaken for financial gain but to try to continue to record the activities on the Range where my family and I had spent a large portion of our working lives. I was able to record all of the launch activities by producing the only commemorative envelopes made from (1987). These included the " Ausroc 11, Ausroc 11-2, Black Brant, the Hope Space Plane trials and the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Woomera Rocket Range. I have since continued with limited issues of envelopes for the ASRI Zuni launchings from July 2000 to the present time 2004. The dates for the other envelopes issues are as follows: AUSROC II on 22nd October 1992. A limited edition of 100 sets of three envelopes in each set, 100 of which were placed in the nose cone of the rocket, the other hundred were placed in the fairing of the rocket. Batches of envelopes were also produced for this project but were not flown. The launched envelopes were all recovered intact as they were in fireproof packs when the rocket exploded on the launch pad. This set was marked with a rubber stamp stating (RECOVERED FROM ROCKET AFTER LAUNCH MALFUNCTION). A further 100 sets were made for the launch of Ausroc II-2 launched on the 26th May 1995. A limited edition of 100 envelopes placed in the nose cone of the rocket that was successfully launched but crash landed as per story in the Astrophile and my Home Page. I was only able to make up a limited edition of sixty seven sets of this envelope collection however as the remains of the crashed envelopes were too small to reassemble after being recovered from the buried rocket remains in the Woomera outback. I still have a box of the shattered remnants of the envelopes and some very nice photo's and video clips to remind me of the calamity. Full story of Ausroc follows at the end of this section. More recently as a result of requests made by my friends in the US I have produced a limited edition of fifty Woomera cancelled commemorative envelopes for the successful trial of SpaceShipOne the worlds first private manned space plane that was launched into space from the White Knight Aircraft in the Mojave Desert USA on the 21st June 2004. The SpaceShip One Project is part of a ten million dollar Xprize competition for the successful launch of a three man crew into space ( 100 kilometres ) and a safe return to a successful landing at the launch site, this project to be repeated twice within two weeks from the original flight. SpaceShipOne attempted another launch on the 29th September and this launch was successful so a further launch will be attempted on the 4th /5th October this year. I have to report that the 4th October trial was a great success and Scaled Composites took out the prize for the Ansari Prize. I have also produced the same number of envelopes for the successful " Mars Expedition Two " that took place in Arkaroola in South Australia's Outback between the 2nd and 29th August 2004. These envelopes were post cancelled at the Leigh Creek Post Office, this being the only post office within the confines of the expedition site.This project was designed to test Mechanical _Counter_Pressure suit analogs, social_ psychology and biology program and other scientific related items.
Next page of Covers
Site Index.