With all the fame and recognition, its easy to forget that astronauts are government employees and come under the same pay scale as everyone else in that sector. With this is mind, the astronauts federal salaries were not enough to purchase life insurance.
When Neil Armstrong & the ret of the crew of Apollo 11 jumped in that huge fuel filled rocket in 1969, bound for the moon, they were under no illusions that it may be the last thing they did. unfortunately for them, the life insurance companies had a similar view, putting their families at a obviously high risk if they never came home.
Back then, astronaut captains made about $17,000 year. A life insurance policy back then would’ve run about $50,000 year (more than $300,000 in todays dollars).
Obviously you need to be smart when working on rockets at NASA, so what the astronauts did to provide for their families was both genius and creative. Their strategy has become somewhat of a legend.
Because some guys from the prior Apollo missions had gotten colds and mild bouts of queasiness on their trips, NASA had implemented a quarantine procedure before liftoffs.
So about a month before they were set to go to the moon, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin were locked into a Plexiglas room together and got busy providing for their families the only way they could — they signed hundreds of autographs.
In what would become a common practice, the guys signed their names on envelopes emblazoned with various space-related images. The ‘covers’ would, of course, become intensely valuable should the trio perish on the mission. They’re now often referred to as ” Apollo Insurance Covers.”
And to ensure the covers would hold maximum value, the crew put stamps on them, and sent them in a package to a friend, who dumped them all in the mail so they would be postmarked July 16, 1969 — the day of the mission’s success — or its failure.
Fortunately, the trip went off without a hitch and all three men went on to live long, healthy lives and all remained alive until Neil Armstrong’s death a few days ago.
Credit to BusinessInsider