Skylab Rescue 

" My first attempt"

Apollo - Soyuz

" Thank you for your interest, but..."

STS-1

" Thank you for your interest, but..." - Part 2

STS-62A

" We would be pleased to see what you might come up with"

In May of 1985 I recieved a letter that sent me into orbit. It had been twelve years since I began contacting astronauts with the request to design their patch and thus far the responses had all been negative.

"Dear Mr. Gagnon:

Thank you for your kind letter.   I have tentatively asked for some ideas for a patch  for  62A  but  thus  far  have received  none.  You are very kind to volunteer your services.  As  you  might  know,  we  have  no  way  to  reimburse  you for this effort.  If  that  is  acceptable,  we  would  be pleased  to  see  what  you  might come up with.  There  is  also  no  way  I  can  guarantee  that  we  would end up selecting your work as the crew patch.

For  some  details,  I  am  partial  to  round  patches,  but  other  shapes  are  okay If  there  are  a  minimum  of  protuberances.  Also  simple  is  good.  Too  much  detail In  a  patch  doesn’t  work.  As  for  colors,  I  am  partial  to  red,  white,  and  blue,  but  that  is  not  a  constraint.  However  the  maximum  number  of  colors  should  be  about  ten.  It  would  be  desirable  if  the  first  launch  from  Vandenberg  was  symbolized  somehow. One  idea  is,  we commonly use the term  V-1  when  talking  about  that  flight.  In  addition,  a  polar  orbit  indicator  would  be  appropriate,  Crew  names  are  Crippen,  Gardner,  Mullane,  Gardner  and  Ross.  We  will  add  any  Payload  Specialist(s)  names  at  the  bottom.

We  should  be  working  towards  a  design  complete  date  of  September  16,  1985.

Thank  you  for  your  help.

Sincerely,

Robert L. Crippen

NASA Astronaut"

I of course set out to impress the heck out of "Crip", Guy, Mike, Dale and Jerry with my artistic ability. I created the four draft designs above and sent them in with time to spare. I recieved notice that the designs were under consideration but no word about which one was preferred. 1985 was an incredibly busy year in the shuttle program. Nine missions were flown that year. A school teacher was training for a space flight scheduled for January, 1986. I assumed that when they could, the crew would contact me about the design.

While waiting I began a new project. As a child I had assembled scrapbooks for every space flight. Now as a father I enjoyed sharing them with my daughter and nieces and nephews. Throughout the fall I wrote to every women astronaut asking for some type of contribtution for scrapbooks I was creating for my daughter Trish and niece Abbie. Until the shuttle program there were no women astronauts and I wanted the girls to know the sky was no longer the limit when it came to accomplishing their goals.

The year of 1986 promised to be even busier than 1985. Fifteen missions were scheduled to be launched that year including the Teacher in Space mission, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Journalist in Space. On January 12th after many launch scrubs STS-61C was launched.  

On Saturday, January 25th I opened the mail to find the first contribution to those scrapbooks for Trish and Abbie. The package included a signed portrait, some other photos and a hand-written note which read in part, "I encourage you to work hard in school. You can do anything you want if you get a good education. Good Luck." It was signed "Judy Resnik NASA Astronaut."  Three days later she along with that beautiful school teacher and their crew mates were killed 73 seconds after launch.

The shuttle program was grounded for the investigation, STS-62A was canceled, the Hubble Telescope waited four more years to fly. But the message of Judy's note set me on a path to make sure that message didn't die with her. I began a volunteer career with the Young Astronaut Program.

That other dream, the one about designing a crew patch would wait a bit longer.

STS-111, Expedition 5, Expedition 8 & Expedition 9

Unsolicited Designs  - never before seen

STS-114

" A phone call from Steve"

In May of 2003 I attended the Astronaut Scholarship Foundations induction ceremony for the US Astronaut Hall of Fame. One of the highlights of the event was a performance by the all astronaut rock band "Max Q". Tracy Caldwell was lead singer and was backed up by Dan Burbank on guitar, Steve Robinson on base, "Box" Johnson on keyboards and Jim Weatherbee on drums.  A great performance by a bunch of incredibly talented people.

During a break I approached Steve Robinson and showed him my designs for a new STS-114 patch. Steve is an artist as well and was assigned as Mission Specialist on that flight. I knew he was involved in their patch design and he was gracious enough to bring my design to the attention of the other members of the crew for consideration.

In September of that year Steve telephoned me at work to tell me that while they very much appreciated my effort, they were going to stay with the redesigned patch they had. He complimented me on my work and hoped that I would keep submitting ideas for future crews. I assured him I would. The neat thing about his call was that it came on my birthday. Steve didn't have to make the effort to respond to my proposal. The fact that he did meant a lot.

Expedition 11

" A Dream comes true"

In 2004 I read the annoucement of the crew assignment for the Expedition 11 mission to the International Space Station. The increment commander was to be Russian Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev and the Flight Engineer assignment went to NASA Astronaut John Phillips. I sent an email congratulating John on his assignment and told him of my wish to contribute to the space program by designing a mission emblem. After two weeks went by John responded and offered me the assignment.

The full story of the design of this emblem has been published on the spacpatches.nl website: http://www.spacepatches.nl/station_frame.html The project lasted all summer until I submitted my final draft design (above left) in September, 2004. The project wasn't finished for John as he turned it over to the graphics department at the Johnson Space Center. It came under the care of artist Terry Johnson. You see this was the last emblem I designed with pen and ink, glitter and stick-on letters - real "cutting and pasting." Terry was the artist who had to recreate what John and I had discussed and vector the image for all of the uses that NASA utilizes. He deserves as much credit for the final product as anyone. The crew also went through some changes when Sergei Volkov was reassigned from Expedition 11 (he eventually flew on Expedition 17). Volkov joked that he is represented by the Sun in the final design.

The center image is the graphic that John emailed me in December, 2004. The final official emblem is on the right.

Expedition 11 will always be my "mission accomplished" emblem. The dream was finally realized and it only took 31 years. 

STS-120 

" Missed it by that much ! "

In 2006 I was invited by the mission commander Pam Melroy to submit draft designs that illustrated the mission goals but yet were "simple and elegant." I sent these three designs to her and she responded that they were well recieved by the crew. They liked my use of the Roman Numeral for 120 - and that the "C" was shadowed to represent a tribute to the crews of both "Challenger" and "Columbia".

In the end it came down to my design (that they autographed to me) and the one that became the official crew emblem.  So close - but they were kind enough to recommend me to other flight crews. 

STS-126 

" A Shuttle Mission at Last "

In October of 2007 I recieved an email from Eric Boe asking if I would be willing to help the crew with the design of their mission emblem. Of course I was!

Since the release of the Expedition 11 emblem I became friends with Dr. Jorge Cartes of Madrid, Spain. Like me he was in his fifties, is a life long fan of space exploration and had always dreamed of designing a crew emblem. Jorge had helped me "clean-up" or to be more accurate "re-master" the art from STS-62A. All I had were old Polaroid photos of the original art I had sent to Bob Crippen. Jorge's talent in using his software program was obvious so I contacted him to tell him of this latest opportunity and asked if he would be willing to join me. Jorge replied as enthusiastically as I had to Eric.

Jorge and I put together some draft designs and emailed them to Eric. The way this project worked was that Eric would distribute our work to the crew. Each Friday they would have a crew meeting and after it adjourned Eric would telephone me to give me the latest feedback. I would transcribe the notes and email them to Jorge. Then he in Madrid and I in Titusville would work all weekend and make the changes that the crew requested. On Monday I would email Eric with the new art.

This went on from October through mid-December, 2007 about seven weeks in all. It went smooth because we never forgot our role. We never forgot it was their patch. We made recommendations, the crew made decisions.

I had the great pleasure of meeting the crew at the Shuttle Landing Facility on October 26, 2008 when they arrived at KSC for the launch rehearsal or Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test -TCDT. They presented me with two crew baseball caps and two signed crew posters.  I mailed Jorge his cap and poster straight away.

Unfortunately Jorge couldn't be there so the local media coverage of our contribution didn't give him proper credit. Let me attempt to correct that. 

Robert Pearlman of collectSPACE.com interviewed the crew about the mission and the creation of the patch. His story can be read here: http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-112508a.html. The website spacepatches.nl is an excellent resource about the stories behind all space patches, United States, Russia and China. Read their post through this link: http://www.spacepatches.nl/sts_mis_frame.html

Each project is special not only because of the art that is created but because of the people you work with. Jorge is an incredible artist and his collaboration has been critical in our success. He brings a viewpoint different from mine. I call it a "European perspective."  Whatever it is - it works and I am grateful to share these experiences with him.

Muchas gracias Mi Amigo.

STS-127

" Gemini simple"

Fresh off the STS-126 project I recieved an email in January 2008 from Tom Marshburn who along with Julie Payette was going to be the patch project coordinator for the 127 crew. He wanted us to know that the crew had already decided to have an emblem that was uncluttered. An excellent idea that they put forward immediately was to use the star-shaped "A" in JAXA as representing the payload.

Between projects Jorge and I play around with different designs to see how elements work together. This allows us to submit drafts to a crew very quickly so we can optimize our time and respond to crew suggestions quickly. 

We each designed an emblem based on our interpretation of their mission goals and sent them in. Tom responded that they liked the shape and idea of the orbiter trailing a contrail from Jorge's initial design and the idea of being able to look at the Earth from a distance and use of the JAXA star in mine.

Then the real work began. Jorge and I took the design elements they liked  - removed the ones they didn't and recreated the emblem and re-submitted it. This process allows us to focus on what the crew wants. Eventually my Earth was simplified to a blue crescent which worked well against the gold "swoosh" trailing the orbiter that turns into the astronaut symbol topped by the JAXA star that you see above. The process only took a month because of the simplicity of the design and because the crew was happy with the result.

The artwork was then put in the care of the Graphics Design Team at JSC. Since neither Jorge or I use a vector based software, they had to re-create what we did and prepare it for all of the uses NASA has for mission emblems. Once they were finished the design was submitted for formal approval. It was officially released in November, 2008.

 NASA's official description of the design:

"A crew spokesperson had the following words for the patch. "Bathed in sunlight, the blue Earth is represented without boundaries to remind us that we all share this world. In the center, the golden flight path of the space shuttle turns into the three distinctive rays of the astronaut symbol culminating in the star-like emblem characteristic of the Japanese Space Agency, yet soaring further into space as it paves the way for future voyages and discoveries for all humankind."

Expedition XXII

" Jorge knocks it out of the park on the first pitch"

Expedition XXIII

" Thanks Teej"

STS - 129

" Komrade's Chicken Scratch"

Expedition XXV

"Working for Wheels"