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Bob Axsom

Well Known Member
After being retired for a little over a year and moving into our retirement home my wife is insisting I clean up my "stuff". One of the tasks involves getting my project/mission patches mounted in a large frame and up on a wall in "my room". OK everything is going fine except for this one patch. It is associated with Project Mercury but I don't know what it represents or what side is supposed to be up. Anyone remember this? The other six have the astronauts name and the name of the mission on them. I remember that D. K. Slayton was found to have some minor heart anomally and did not fly on Mercury but I don't think this is related to the patch shown below. If you know the answer please let me know what it is. Thanks - I need to get this stuff done so I can go modify the inside of my upper cowl.

Bob Axsom

mercpatch6sw.jpg
 
Bob, you have it displayed upside down. It is the Mercury 7 women astronauts program patch. It has a 7 in the small black figure with the sign for a woman below it.

Roberta
 
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Thanks Roberta

That makes sense. I worked on Mercury a lot but it was long ago and I can recall nothing about a woman astronaut program back then. A woman from NASA HQ sent me the patches a few years ago. Something nags at my brain though - with no details of course.

Bob Axsom
 
Roberta sounds good, but I'm confused.
The Mercury 7 seems to be the first seven male astronauts...

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/40thmerc7/intro.htm

Apparently all of the Mercury missions were labelled "7" in honor of these first seven astronauts.

The Mercury women trained number 13 and are referred to as the Mercury 13, and I think the program was kept quiet at that time...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1301400

I think the patch is one of the Mercury mission patches... perhaps a mission that did not happen...

gil in Tucson - worked on the Apollo 17 experiments...
 
Ok

OK, I don't remember such a patch but that's a big help. As Gil in Tucson said each mission was given a name that included a seven reflecting the unity of the original seven astronauts:

Freedom 7 - Alan B. Shepard - 5 May 1961 - suborbital
Liberty Bell 7 - Virgil I. Grissom (Gus) - 21 July 1961 - suborbital
Friendship 7 - John H. Glenn - 20 February 1962 - 3 orbits
Aurora 7 - M. Scott Carpenter - 24 May 1962 - 3 orbits
Sigma 7 - Walter M Schirra - 3 October 1962 - 6 orbits
Faith 7 - L. Gordon Cooper - 15-16 May 1963 - 22 orbits

We built the tube & cable mock up and the first 5 capsules in Building 102 of McDonnell Aircraft (there was no McDonnell Douglas until around 1967) where the first White Room was constructed (we didn't call them clean rooms then). New Class 6 and Class 10 white rooms and open manufacturing area were constructed in building 1 where the the project was finished (something over 20 capsules were built). The Orbital Timing Device (Satellite Clock) and the Retro Fire Timer were built in a small lab on the 1st floor of Building 32. As a young 20 something employee I inspected and independently performed the functional acceptance test of every one of the OTDs. Things were different back then - not necessarily better, but I liked it.

Anyway, thanks for the help, I should have these things mounted in a couple of days then back to the airplane.

Bob Axsom
 
A little-known fact....

For thaose who like to collect space patches and stickers....

Misison emblem stickers (at least in the shuttle era) are actually more rare than patches, and I guess that might make them more valuable. The Astronaut Office mailroom is responsible for ordering and distributing these things, and when they get a new mission/patch, they order a set number of patches and stickers. When they run out of stickers, they're gone - they don't get anymore. But if they run out of patches, they restock. (At least that was the way it was a few years ago - maybe the budget situation has change dthings...)

So if you are looking to build value, don't stick those stickers on anything!

(Of course, there are "aftermarket" venders of all these emblems, and most of the ones you see on the market are reproductions, not part of the official NASA run - but I doubt you can tell the difference.)

Paul
 
I might have the answer

I'm no space historian (I am an Aero Engineer by schooling, Army Artilleryman by trade)...but I seem to remember that symbol from somewhere. A quick search on the internet (google) led me to this:

http://btc.montana.edu/messenger/elusive_planet/merc_symbol.htm

Sooo...me thinks that is the project patch for mercury 7.

[edit] damn...I guess I should have read closer...Doug beat me to it! Oh well, at least you guys can see the history behind the symbol if you follow my link.

-Greg
 
Wow this gets interestinger and interestinger - good work

That is some good research info Greg. I see you are living in Killeen, Texas - Army Artilleryman by trade - perfect match. My most demanding "take it to the absolute edge of life's endurance" work was done there at Ft. Hood 15 years ago. The distant boom of thunder through the night when the sky was clear of clouds was an intuitively solved mystery. You have my respect.

Bob Axsom
 
Recently Released 6 DVD set Shows the symbol

A friend named Jim Clawson who worked Apollo at JSC sent me an e-mail telling of a newly released six DVD set exclusively on Project Mercury offered for $85 at http://www.spaceflightnowstore.com. I ordered it and the symbol appears throughout the first 2.5 disks I have watched so far. They confirm what you all have told me the patch is for Mercury and I had it upside down. In the DVDs all I have recognized so far is the original "White Room" in building 102 in St. Louis and the McDonnell Aircraft Project Engineer John Yardley. They are well into the Wallops Island Little Joe tests with SAM and Miss SAM at this point so it is getting pretty interesting.

Bob Axsom
 
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