Apollo 15 postal covers incident in the moon landings, the public's fascination with items flown in space increased, as did their value. Although it was not publicly known until September 1972, 15 of the men who entered space as Apollo Program astronauts, before Apollo 15, had agreed with a West German named Horst Eiermann to autograph 500 philatelic items (postcards and blocks of stamps) in exchange for $2,500. This included a member of each mission between Apollo 7 (1968) and Apollo 13 (1970). These items were not taken into space. Covers were prepared by the crews and flown on Apollo 11, Apollo 13 and Apollo
Apollo program That was one of the biggest investment of the US in science, research and development, and employed thousands of American scientists. A single Saturn V launch in 1969 cost up to $375 million, compared to the National Science Foundation's fiscal year 1970 budget of $440 million. In 2009, NASA held a symposium on project costs which presented an estimate of the Apollo program costs in 2005 dollars as roughly $170 billion ($ in dollars). This included all research and development costs; the procurement of 15 Saturn V rockets, 16 command and service modules, 12 lunar modules, plus program support and