NASA’s Contest To Design the Last Shuttle Patch

rocamargo writes "The space shuttle program is on its way out, but the core of people who built and maintained it will live on. To honor them, NASA gave its employees the chance to design the patch that will commemorate the shuttle program, which is slated to end in September, after STS-133 flies. From the designs of 85 current and former employees, the Shuttle Program Office has selected 15 finalists. The prospective patches, presented here, will be voted on internally by NASA employees and judged by a small panel." I've been thinking a lot lately about the end of the Space Shuttle. For someone my age, the shuttle really *IS* space travel. I'm going to be really sad to see STS-133 land.

Comments

Number Three...

[GypC]

... is the best by far. Most of those entries won't embroider well at all.

Re:Number Three...

[llZENll]

Only a few are good, but patch #3 is the best design, five shuttles, and each star represents a lost crew member. An excellent design. Its clean and stylish and represents several ideas.

Re:After the naming contest what would you do?

[TapeCutter]

Nobody wants to see a space truck until they need a delivery.

Agree with you, CT

[Camaro]

It's really quite sad to see another step backward in human spaceflight. I grew up in the '80s when the shuttle was exciting but thought we'd have progressed beyond it by now. As a child a space station meant a large circular wheel with a central hub that thousands of people were living on and which was stepping off point for missions further out. Much as I appreciate the science going on with what we have, it sure would be nice if mankind was a little bolder.

Re:How Many shuttles?

[frith01]

I knew that Enterprise never made it to space, I was just surprised that internally at NASA they werent counting it. ( The same as some of them start the project in 1976, instead of 1981)

Shuttle Wasted 30 years

[thrich81]

"For someone my age, the shuttle really *IS* space travel. I'm going to be really sad to see STS-133 land." -- Well for someone MY age, the Shuttle with its false promises of cheap access to space is what destroyed the Apollo-Saturn progression of vehicles and stagnated real manned space exploration for 30 years. Good riddance; it is time to get back to business with Constellation or some other Apollo type vehicles which will take us beyond LEO.

Re:Shuttle Wasted 30 years

[sir_eccles]

Or was it Apollo-Saturn with its promise of quick and dirty into space before the Soviets what destroyed the progression of the X-15/X-20 spaceplane program and stagnated space exploration for years.

Oh really?

[copponex]

Have they sent anything into orbit? Have they made a trip to the ISS? Private space companies haven't even achieved what the CCCP did with the Sputnik over fifty years ago.

I had a conversation with one of the people who works at Canaveral. He said it's sad that they're about to destroy decades of work and knowledge of a community that knows how to build, maintain, and successfully launch vehicles into space. A lot of the real brains there are getting old, and if they aren't able to pass on their experiences to the new generation of spaceflight engineers, we are going to find ourselves severely behind in space travel and technology in general.

It's really a pity. The American idea of progress has turned inside out. Investment in spaceflight and the technologies to improve it is apparently is not equal to a month of spending for foreign military invasions. Not exactly a way forward if you ask me.

Re:Oh really?

[FleaPlus]

First off, SpaceX and Orbital don't "only engage in suborbital flight," but has designed and launched orbital rockets; in contrast, NASA hasn't successfully designed and launched a new orbital vehicle in around 30 years, despite plenty of attempts which have become case studies in poor program management.

Additionally, you're confusing two different issues: having space exploration entirely privately funded, which hardly anybody is advocating, with the issue of having transportation to low-earth orbit handled commercially (i.e. NASA, scientists, tourists, etc. buying trips to orbit), which many people are advocating. Even if a portion of the R&D for the rockets has been paid for by the government, what's important is that there's a competitive commercial marketplace for manned launches. That way multiple new approaches can be tried in parallel, proving new and more efficient systems with unmanned launches before transporting humans on them. Government-controlled monopolies tend to be suboptimal, to say the least.