Apollo 11 mission patch

A mission patch is a cloth badge worn by astronauts and other personnel affiliated with a manned or unmanned space mission. A new patch is created for each mission. Apollo 11 was the fifth human spaceflight of the Apollo program, the third human voyage to the moon, and the first manned mission to land on the Moon. ... Template:Redirect Template:Redirect U.S. Space Shuttle astronaut Bruce McCandless II using a manned maneuvering unit (MMU) outside the Challenger in 1984. ...

Origins

Mission patches were first sported by NASA astronauts in 1965. Mission patches are similar in style and purpose to shoulder patches worn by members of military units, and the idea of mission patches was first introduced to NASA by Air Force pilot (and astronaut) Gordon Cooper. A Shoulder Patch, officially known as a Shoulder Sleeve Insignia (SSI) by the US Institute for Heraldry, is a multi-colored or subdued heraldic device that uniquely identifies the major unit the soldier belongs to. ... Leroy Gordon Gordo Cooper, Jr. ...

Early manned NASA missions lacked patches; instead, the astronauts gave their spacecraft names. (Alan Shepard's capsule for Mercury 3 was named Freedom 7, for instance.) When Gus Grissom proposed to name his Gemini 3 capsule Molly Brown – a reference to The Unsinkable Molly Brown, referring in turn to Grissom's Mercury 4 capsule which sank in the ocean shortly after splashdown – NASA officials were nonplussed and they abolished the practice of naming capsules. Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. ... Crew Alan Shepard Backup Crew John Glenn Mission parameters Mass: 1,295 kg (apogee) Maximum Altitude: 187. ... Virgil Ivan Gus Grissom (April 3, 1926 – January 27, 1967) was a United States Air Force pilot who became the second American astronaut and one of the first to die in the U.S. space program. ... Gemini 3 was a 1965 manned space flight in NASAs Gemini program. ... The Unsinkable Molly Brown is a musical play which tells the fictionalized account of the life of Margaret Brown, whose husband made a fortune in the Colorado gold mines, and who survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic. ... Mercury 4 was a Mercury program manned space mission launched on July 21, 1961 using a Redstone rocket. ...

Gemini 5 mission patch; NASA's first patch

This prompted astronaut Gordon Cooper to propose and develop a mission patch for his and Pete Conrad's Gemini 5 flight: an embroidered cloth patch sporting the names of the two crew members, a covered wagon, and the slogan "8 Days or Bust" which referred to the expected mission duration. NASA administrator James E. Webb approved the design, but insisted on the removal of the slogan from the official version of the patch. The so-called Cooper patch was worn on the right breast of the astronauts' uniforms below their nameplates and opposite the NASA emblems worn on the left. Image File history File links Gemini5insignia. ... Image File history File links Gemini5insignia. ... Gemini 5 (officially Gemini V) was a 1965 manned spaceflight in NASAs Gemini program. ... Charles Pete Conrad, Jr. ... Gemini 5 (officially Gemini V) was a 1965 manned spaceflight in NASAs Gemini program. ... James E. Webb James Edwin Webb (October 7, 1906–March 27, 1992) was the second administrator of NASA, serving from February 14, 1961 to October 7, 1968. ...

Evolution

Following the loss of the Apollo 1 crew in a devastating fire, embroidered patches were restricted from crew clothing. Instead, astronauts in flight wore mission patches of fire-resistant Beta cloth onto which designs were silkscreened. (Embroidered patches were still produced for ground side wear, non-flight personnel, sale to collectors and to be flown in space as souvenirs.) Apollo One is the official name given retroactively to the Apollo/Saturn 204 (AS-204) spacecraft, destroyed by fire during a training exercise on January 27, 1967, at Pad 34 (Launch Complex 34 at Cape Canaveral) atop a Saturn IB rocket. ... Screen-printing, also known as silkscreening or serigraphy, is a printmaking technique that creates a sharp-edged single-color image using a stencil and a porous fabric. ...

Since Gemini 5, patches have been created for all NASA manned missions and many unmanned expeditions. Patches are now created by professional graphic designers, but the design is still directed by each astronaut crew. Enthusiasts have since created patches for manned NASA missions which preceded Gemini 5; many purists object to these designs on the grounds that these newly-minted patches weren't created or worn by the astronauts.

Mission patches have been adopted by the crew and personnel of many other space ventures, public and private.

External links

• Eugene Dorr. History of Patches.
• Travis K. Kircher. "More Than Just a Merit Badge".