Rocket mail

The collection of philatelic material ("stamps") used for (and depicting) rocket mail is part of a specialist branch of aerophilately known as astrophilately.

[1] While editor of the Berliner Abendblätter, he wrote an article published on 12 October 1810 which proposed using fixed artillery batteries to fire shells filled with letters to predetermined landing locations of soft ground.

Kleist calculated that a network of batteries could transmit a letter from Berlin to Breslau, 290 kilometres (180 miles) away, in half a day.

Hermann Oberth suggested using rockets for mail in a 1927 letter, and he lectured on the topic at a meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luft- und Raumfahrt in June 1928.

After moving to the United Kingdom, Zucker tried to convince the General Post Office that postal delivery by rocket was viable.

In 1992 the Indian government issued a stamp to celebrate the centenary of Smith's birth, calling him "the originator of rocket mail in India".

At Mayport, the Regulus missile was opened and the mail forwarded to the post office in Jacksonville, Florida, for sorting and routing.

"[8] Summerfield proclaimed the event to be "of historic significance to the peoples of the entire world",[9] and predicted that "before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia by guided missiles.

[2] One of the mail containers which was on board the Regulus missile fired by Barbero is in the collection of the United States Submarine Force Museum in Groton, Connecticut.

Rocket expert Willy Ley speculated in 1954 that using small cruise missiles to rapidly deliver mail might be possible for as little as three times the rate for airmail, in part because they could be reusable.

[2] Technologists like Robert Zubrin, of Mars Society fame, think that rocket mail, or at least ultra-elite business package delivery, may become commercially viable with the development of fully reusable launch systems, particularly single-stage to orbit vehicles.

The potential of package delivery with reusable launch vehicles is discussed in Zubrin's book Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization.

Test pilot Dick Rutan made the flight, which lasted about 9 minutes and carried US mail from the post office in Mojave to addresses in California City.