Air and Space: Why Alan Shepard Carried a Dollar Bill on His Mercury Flight

By Richard Jurek

    On May 5th, 1961, Alan Shephard made the first spaceflight by an American, and he took a dollar bill with him. It was the result of a PR screw-up by the Russians. After Yuri Gagarin made the first-ever spaceflight, they tried to get it certified by the FAI in Paris, which had validated aeronautics world records since 1905. But the FAI had very specific requirements, and one was witnesses. They had to prove the astronaut that landed and the astronaut that took off were one and the same. So they came up with a clever, sleek solution - Shepard would carry a dollar bill with him, and a present NAA official would write down its serial number beforehand. Once he landed, Shephard would radio the numbers back to the official to verify his identity. The same procedure has been used with Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions.

    Eventually, the bills were seen as having too much value, and were replaced with paper certificates. In fact, astronauts are now banned from taking any money with them to space.