Apollo Mission Patches

Few things spark the human imagination like the Apollo space program and the eventual landing of people on the moon. Those 17 missions taught us so much about science, human ingenuity, and something to rally around as a species. We have not been back for over 50 years now, but I wanted to pay tribute to famed members of NASA by transferring some of the mission patches into Lego form. This idea originally started as just the Apollo 13 patch, but I was struck by inspiration and expanded it also include Apollo 11 and Apollo 12.

Apollo 11 is perhaps the most famous of the the Apollo missions, with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, landing the first man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth. A million things could have gone wrong, but they didn't, and the world was captivated by the images broadcast back from the Moon. 

The mission patch for Apollo 11 is just as iconic as the mission, with the image even finding its way onto American coinage. A bald eagle gracefully lands on the surface of the moon, holding an olive branch, in peace for all mankind. The silvery craters take up the foreground, while the earth, so small, hangs in the background. The name Apollo appears at the top.

Apollo 12 is overshadowed in many respects by the more famous missions before and after it, but it proved that 11 wasn't just a fluke and that we could return to the moon over and over again. Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, and Richard Gordon were the astronauts on tackle the second landing on the moon. In many ways some of the stress was off compared to 11, it had already been done and proven to be possible. Compared to Armstrong's more stoic words, "Whoopie!" is the most famous quote from Apollo 12. 

The Apollo 12 patch is dominated by two distinguishing features. One is the moon, silver gray, pockmarked with craters. And flying around it, a golden age masted sailing ship, with a golden hull, zipping around the moon, a tiny American flag adorning one of the masts. On a golden border, the name Apollo appears at the top.

Apollo 13, the infamous mission where if not for the ingenuity and determination of NASA and it's employees would have seen the loss of three astronauts on the way to the third moon landing. The technical issues on that mission meant that Jim Lovell, John Swigert, and Fred Haise only got to see the moon from a window as they floated past, but they all lived to tell the tale.

The mission patch for Apollo 13, displays the sun, Earth, and Moon flanked by a trio of golden horses, with the name of Apollo above it all. The roman numerals found on the patch did not fit the way I wanted them to on this model, so all you triskaidekaphobes need not worry too much. 

This model also comes in under 600 pieces which makes it a much more obtainable set than the other NASA Ideas sets out there. They can be displayed all together, or individually. So lets start the countdown, and hope that this set doesn't need NASA to get it off the ground.