Frank Borman
James Lovell
William Anders
James Lovell
William Bradley
The Apollo 8 patch is elegant in its simplicity and brilliant in its eloquence. According to Apollo 8 crewmember Jim Lovell:
Borman and I were in California working on our Apollo spacecraft when we got word that our mission had changed. We were going to take McDivitt’s spacecraft and make a circumlunar flight around the moon.
“On the way back to Houston the next evening, Frank was flying the airplane, and since I had nothing to do, I sort of sketched out what I thought would be an appropriate patch. After I returned to Houston I gave my sketches to the NASA artist who made the final drawing.
It sounds as if the design sprang fully-formed from Lovell’s brain, like Athena from the brow of Zeus; but the story is not that simple.
In the original plan of missions, Apollo 8 was to be a test
of the lunar module in Earth orbit, and Apollo 9 was to test the lunar
module in cislunar space. The crew originally slated for Apollo 8 was Jim
McDivitt, Dave Scott and Rusty Schweickart, while the crew slated
for Apollo 9 was Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders.
A patch design by Allen Stevens, the artist responsible for the earlier
Apollo 1 and Apollo 7 patches, had been chosen by the (then) Apollo 9 crew.
It depicted three horses enclosed in a CM-shaped triangle, overlaying an
American flag. Stevens had previously created several designs incorporating
the CM shape among his proposals for the Apollo 7 patch, so this was
just a case of recycling a design element he felt had merit. That the
patch had actually been selected by Borman’s Apollo 9 crew is supported
by the fact that it had been photographed, and assigned an official NASA
MSC photo ID (S68-53480).
Lovell flew twice during the Gemini program, as pilot on Gemini 7, and as
command pilot on Gemini 12.
Around the time of these flights, a number of documents from MSC’s
Mission Planning and Analysis Division (MPAD) were published which carried a
curious emblem on the cover.
This emblem has a unique and prescient image as its
central design element — a simplified, abstracted version of
a trajectory around the Earth and the moon. It is an almost exact representation
of the central
image of the Apollo 8 patch. MPAD played a crucial role in
devoloping the techniques of every manned space flight in this period, and
it is almost unthinkable that Lovell would not have encountered some of
these documents.
(Consider also that when Lovell later saw Lumen Winter’s mural of three galloping horses during a trip to New York city, he was compelled to base his Apollo 13 patch on that design motif. He was clearly influenced, if only subconsciously, by the earlier design of Allen Stevens which featured three horses.)
When it became apparent that the Lunar Module was not going to be ready for a flight in 1968, it was decided to remanifest the two missions: Apollo 8 would take just the CSM into lunar orbit, while Apollo 9 would test the LM in Earth orbit. The two crews were swapped. It was then that Lovell sketched the patch. The MPAD emblem may have been in the far recesses of Lovell’s mind when he conceived the central part of the design; regardless, that element clearly fit nicely into the CM shape from Stevens’ design which was currently the crew’s patch, even though not publicly announced.
This photo of the patch on Bill Anders’ flight suit, shows how the beta cloth was trimmed to approximately the shape of the patch before being sewn onto the suit. Photo courtesy of David Woods.
This is the complete emblem that appeared on the cover of the “SSR/ACR Work Schedule” document. ADFO (“Assistant Director of Flight Operations”) was the parent organization of MPAD (“Mission Planning and Analysis Division”), which in turn contained several branches, among them being FAB (“Flight Analysis Branch”).
The Apollo 8 crew shows off their patch design at a press conference.