Designing Space Mission Patches: what does it take?

Tim Gagnon was born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut. A fascination with space exploration came early as did an interest in art. Like many others of his generation Tim remembers watching the missions of his childhood heroes on a small black and white television with “rabbit ears” that could receive few broadcast stations. For his 16th birthday gift in 1972 his parents arranged for Tim and his father to attend the launch of Apollo 17 as invited guests of NASA. 

Ever since reading about the design of the Skylab 1 patch in an article written by the artist Frank Kelly Freas in 1973, Tim dreamed about creating a patch for a flight crew, to use his artistic talent to contribute to the space program. He came close in 1985 when Bob Crippen invited him to submit designs for the first shuttle mission scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base…