David Scott - Stamp Incident

Stamp Incident

After the return of Apollo 15 to Earth, it was discovered that, without authority, Scott, with the knowledge of his crew, had taken 398 commemorative postal covers to the moon of which a hundred were then sold to a German stamp dealer. The profits of the sale would have been used to establish trust funds for the Apollo 15 crew's children. Although NASA had itself contracted to carry stamp covers on the mission, the actions of the astronauts were not illegal, and NASA had turned a blind eye to similar activities on earlier flights, the administration decided to make an example of Scott and his crew and none of them flew in space again.

According to his autobiography (Deke! ), Deke Slayton, Chief of the Astronaut Corps, felt Scott, Worden and Irwin had embarrassed NASA and the Apollo program by trying to profit in such way from the hard work that had gone into the Apollo 15 mission, and violated NASA rules. He confronted them and they told him what they'd done and why, and it was then that Slayton took them off the back-up crew of Apollo 17 and effectively ended their careers as astronauts. Worden went on to work at Ames Research Center and Scott was placed in the Manned Spacecraft Center. Irwin left NASA to become a full-time preacher.