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

After the naming contest what would you do?

[Shivetya]

Of course I doubt they would go with a shuttle picture with billions blowing out the exhaust as something to highlight.

I wonder how many years our exploration/exploitation of space has been on hold because of the costs of the shuttle program. Would we have people already on the moon? We made this grand celebration of getting into orbit in a fancy science fiction looking way and just stopped.

It was like, ain't this enough? Granted NASA's budget is a drop in the bucket (and no the Iraq war ain't denying NASA any money - it would have gone elsewhere through some other politician fantasy) of the overall federal government but still, how much of a detour was the shuttle?