Apollo 11 Mission Patch
21.08.2023 - 11:37
/ theunconventionalgardener.com
/ Emma Doughty
Following NASA tradition, one of the tasks for the Apollo 11 crew – Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins – was designing the patch for their mission. The astronauts chose not to include their names:
“We wanted to keep our three names off it because we wanted the design to be representative of everyone who had worked toward a lunar landing, and there were thousands who could take a proprietary interest in it, yet who would never see their names woven into the fabric of a patch. Further, we wanted the design to be symbolic rather than explicit.”
At the time, it was common for the commander of each mission to fly a T-38 into the Asheville airport to help the designers at manufacturing company A-B Emblems achieve the crew’s vision.
Once the design was approved, a drawing would be created, and then scaled up to exactly six times the size of the finished patch, using scale rulers and enlarging cameras. Every embroidery stitch required for the final product would be marked with a pencil on the enlargement. This sketch would then be fed into the punching machine, to produce a roll of paper with punches for every stitch.
Workers would thread the Swiss Embroidery Loom and feed in the punching roll and the cloth. The embroidered patches were then cut and given a triple-thread pearl stitch border, to insure they were ravel proof.
Although embroidered patches wered added to flight suits, recovery suits, jackets, and any other official NASA gear for the mission, they were not sewn into spacesuits. For these, the design was silkscreened directly onto the fabric along with the NASA logo and the American flag.
Mission Name: Apollo 11
Mission Date: July 1969
Space Agency: NASA
Symbolism:
Fellow astronaut Jim Lovell suggested the