The HabForum

Recently, I ran across something I have been looking for for a very long time: the mission patch I drew with my final Space Camp team. How fitting it is to find this relic created twenty years ago this week!



The story behind this patch is an interesting one. I was coming off of back-to-back winning patch designs, one having been good enough to be published in the Space Camp brochure. I was eager to try and top my efforts from my previous Space Camp sessions. Upon arrival, I was disappointed to learn that Level II Academy did not have a mission patch competition. I suppose it had been decided that drawing and coloring a patch was below what the older high school aged kids would be interested in.

This didn't stop me from getting with the guys on my team and attempting to throw a patch design together during the few breaks we got from our busy schedule. My team this particular year was not as cohesive as in years' past, and there wasn't much interest from the rest of my teammates when it came to contributing in the design brainstorming effort. We settled on this design, and luckily I made a photocopy of it to take home before we colored it in. The image you see above is a scan of that original photocopy, colored and cleaned up in Photoshop.

So there you have it, the unofficial mission patch for the Johnson Team, twenty years ago this week.

Nice design! Are you going to make actual patches? I couldn't imagine not making a patch for a SC rotation...

Hotdog wrote:I suppose it had been decided that drawing and coloring a patch was below what the older high school aged kids would be interested in.

And yet, the adult programs have mission patch design contests. Odd, huh?
I so envy anyone who was able to go to SC as a kid, I can't imagine what that must have been like...

Times have changed. We're talking twenty years ago here when Space Academy was a much more serious program vs. the Space Academy of now, Parent/Child, etc.

The advanced Space Academy back then, or Level II, was a more serious program bent on getting high school aged kids ready towards a career in the engineering, science or technology fields. Those of us who completed Level II were given college credit from the University of Alabama Huntsville. There was apparently no time for mission patches with this sort of "serious" curriculum.

Space Camp has changed a lot since then. I am glad that the modern Space Camp programs have seen fit to bring the mission patch design competition back to the curriculum. I am disappointed that the modern Advanced Space Academy has been dumbed down to exclude college credit, at least as I am told, they no longer offer college credit like they did back in my day. If I am wrong, correct me.

All that being said, I look forward to the day when I will return to be a Space Camp trainee once again, perhaps to fly as Commander of the Dream Chaser, and go for yet another winning mission patch. It will be interesting to see the difference my college degree in graphic design has made to blow away these archaic designs I did when I was a teenager!

I am considering having patches made up for this 1994 patch. Would anyone on Hab1 be interested in one? I still have a few of my 1992 patches left.

We didn't do a patch the first time I went to Space Camp. The adult 3-day program in 1988. But I designed one for my two friends and I when we came back and hand embroidered 3 of them. Not nearly as nice as yours and the only copy I have is the one that I made and kept. Every camp since then that I attended had it included. Not the Aviation Challenge ones, though.

Hotdog wrote: I am disappointed that the modern Advanced Space Academy has been dumbed down to exclude college credit, at least as I am told, they no longer offer college credit like they did back in my day. If I am wrong, correct me.

You are incorrect. ASA trainees still receive 1 credit hour from UAH, and have for the 11 years I've been here.

Thank you, Street for clarifying. That is great news! I thought they done away with the college credit years ago. Glad this is still a part of the curriculum.