A few words about mission patches.

Every manned American space mission, since the first Mercury flight has had a mission patch. I really don’t know what these patches are for. No astronaut actually gets confused about what flight (s)he’s on.

In any case, these patches are symbols of America’s voyages above the planet. And they tell stories.

Gus Grissom and the Molly Brown

Exhibit A: the Gemini 3 patch. The patch shows the spacecraft NOT in orbit, but floating in the ocean. The patch also includes the words “Gemini 3″ and the nickname for the spacecraft, coined by mission commander Gus Grissom: “Molly Brown”.

Gus Grissom wouldn't let the Molly Brown sink.

The nickname was a humorous reference to the (then current) broadway musical, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”. Grissom’s first spacecraft, Liberty Bell 7, sunk to the bottom of the ocean after splashdown. Grissom was determined not to lose his new spacecraft.

NASA was not amused. They took more notice of patch design…and spacecraft names. Future Gemini flight would use only their numers as names (i.e. Gemini 4, Gemini 5, etc.)

C.C. Williams and Apollo 12

Then there’s Apollo 12. During Apollo, spacecraft names came back in vogue. After all, when missions have TWO spacecraft (a command ship and lunar module), you need to refer to them separately.

C.C. Williams represented on a mission patch.

The command module for Apollo 12 was called Yankee Clipper. The mission patch shows a 3-masted ship “sailing” around the moon.

Above the moon, we see 4 stars representing the crew. Hey, wait! Apollo missions had 3-man crews, not four!

The fourth star represents astronaut C.C. (“Clifton”) Williams. Based on regular crew rotation, Williams should have been on that flight. Williams would have been the fourth man to walk on the moon.

But Williams died when his jet crashed on October 5, 1967. Instead of Williams, Alan Bean served as Lunar Module pilot on that flight. But Williams was not forgotten.