#spiritlowerlight

[lonestarflight]

I must have missed some information through the years or at least some pages in Sky and Space and various magazines as I never knew they allotted a badge for the unmanned mission or missions. Have you seen any other patches for the earlier missions?

You know I did a search on Tumblr for Apollo and Astronauts and bugger all concerning any of this came up.

I believe the patches were given to the ground crews and the people in mission control. I haven't been able to turn up a lot of information about them, other than they exist. I haven't found one for AS-203.

There are other patches for the recovery capsule teams.

And for some reason, Grumman commissioned patches for the factory workers and the KSC spacecraft preparers of the Lunar Module.

Even North American got in it too.

Thanks for the ask. It led me down a rabbit hole. I'll have to add some patches to my future posts.

[lonestarflight]

Thanks those patches for ground crew and recovery I didn't know about. Might even be be patches for assembly and other various areas of NASA involved in operations culminating in work towards launches of missions? I should do a Google search. I have a replica Apollo 13 mission patch bought for me in 90s by a fellow train driver however through my train driving I picked up from Broken Hill signatures of Apollo 11 crew, various badges and cooroborating letter dated 1973 from NASA's Canberra office to Broken Hill Space Club ( a few hundred kilometres from radio telescope at Parkes used for relaying Apollo journey and landings back to NASA) and Armstrong was still signing autographs up until 1994 until privacy issues made him stop so should be legit, there was even a Nestles Space book with most of collectible inserts in it,all for $20 Australian in 90s, I offered more but book shop where I got them from declined, I don't think they knew the historical significance of what they were selling me. Cheers mate.

Since you've sent me this, I've collected a bunch more from various places on the internet. I was going to this post but there are too many. I've added the patches to some long posts coming up.

I've found all of the Grumman Lunar production Module patches.

Rockwell International got into it during the Space Shuttle program and I've added them to each of Rollout Ceremony posts in my queue.

They created at least one for all of the shuttle missions from 1981-1990.

All of the unmanned Apollo missions have patches.

Thanks for the ask. I always enjoy talking about the Apollo and Shuttle programs.

source

[lonestarflight]

I was lucky enough to see Halley's Comet in 1986 by naked eye, would you believe looking through a toilet roll which blocked out street lights and moon in the small rural town of Robertstown in South Australia's north east pastoral district and it was a great sight. I have also been lucky enough to see during the day (getting close to dusk I believe) a shuttle's illuminated flight path travelling from south to north and I was looking to west of Adelaide and not sure what year that was. It could have been first shuttle flight back after Challenger but I can't remember what year. Anyway I would be able to work out which shuttle I saw just by the tracking information or is that a bit hard to be specific?

That's really cool! I was just a baby when the comet came by. I hope to live long enough to see it return.

But to answer your question, there wasn't a shuttle flying at the time. There was one planned (STS-61-E) but due to the Challenger Disaster, the shuttles was grounded.

"Back row: Samuel T. Durrance, Robert A. Parker, Jeffrey A. Hoffman, Ronald A. Parise

Front row: Richard N. Richards, Jon A. McBride, David C. Leestma"

"Columbia was to carry the ASTRO-1 observatory, which would be used to make astronomical observations including observations of Halley's Comet. ASTRO-1 consisted of three ultraviolet telescopes mounted on two Spacelab pallets, controlled by the Instrument Pointing System (IPS) which was first tested on STS-51-F.

After the Challenger disaster, the flight was remanifested as STS-35 and several crew members were replaced. Both Richards and Leestma were reassigned to STS-28 while McBride left NASA in 1989. Vance D. Brand replaced McBride as the commander while Guy S. Gardner and John M. Lounge replaced Richards and Leestma, respectively."

It was planned to launch on March 6, 1986.

source

NASA ID: link, S86-25345

[firagaarmor]

Tim I just read your first story Weekend Break and really enjoyed it. I'll be reading some more when I get time. Thanks again.

Hey, thanks a lot for reading!!

[lonestarflight]

Thanks for getting back to me, thinking back after I sent you the ask you are right and it would have been another year I saw the shuttle. You never forget something like that but the year you can. It was getting on to dusk and I and another train driver had just taken a number of Locomotives to our Motive Power Centre for servicing at Dry Creek North South Australia,a long bright streak of light in the east appeared and was travelling south to north lasted about 45 seconds to a minute before it was gone and the local news I didn't see until much later mentioned it. It was a beautiful sight to see and can't recall if shuttle was on its orbit to re-enter atmosphere or that was just a normal orbit. With the Railways I also was lucky enough to pick up cheaply from a second hand book store in Broken Hill a box of NASA related articles along with a 1973 letter from NASA's Space Office in Canberra ACT, corroborating the items (not individually) for the Broken Hill Space Club and various badges were amongst it plus the signatures of the Apollo 11 crew which should be real signatures and not auto-pen as was used later. A Nestle's Conquest of Space book to be a member of The Nestle's Space Club was included and has no date of printing but written by a John Gunn A.R.Ae.S and only printed in Australia by W.C. Penfold &Co Pty Ltd , Sydney. With the acknowledgements thanking United States Information Service Sydney and Mrs Robert H Goddard,Mass,USA for the supply of photographs and information on late Dr Robert H Goddard plus thanking U.S.S.R Embassy in Australia. It has pictures that children collected from various Nestle products and stuck them in corresponding photo boxes, would like to know the year of printing but first entry written in log at rear is Sputnik I 1957 up to 9 March 1961 and then stops with 4th Spaceship launched and weighed 4 1/2 tons. That was written after Feb 4 1961 Sputnik IV launched 6 1/2 tons. Not all pictures collected but it is a good memory of beginning of Space Race. Sorry for using up so much space on your ask. Btw I was born 30 May 1959 the year the infamous Edsell car was released onto the market. Cheers from Australia.

Fon memories

[a-forger-and-a-point-man]

Hi I don't have a question but let you know I reblogged your post on Oppenheimer and the non-mention of the victims from the Tularosa village and the Mescalero Apache Reservation involving Native Americans and Hispanic Americans, anyway I haven't seen the film but believe the research done for creating this post and I have added more tags taken from the body of the post. Victims should be acknowledged. I will be posting a similar post about the British atomic tests and how our government in 1955 in north west South Australia requisitioned 1,158 square miles of land for them and as early as 1952 were relocating Anangu people (First Nations or Aboriginal people) from Maralinga Tjarutja lands and then tested 7 atomic bombs and did other tests but didn't adequately warn and find all people before testing causing blindness, radiation poisoning and left with a legacy of radiation related health problems. British packed up and left in 1963 and have since spent along with Australian government cleaning the affected area which some say isn't really complete and handed land back to traditional owners in 2009 and tourists have been coming to Maralinga since 2016 but only being told the British side of the story not the Aboriginal side which I hope has changed now and that the traditional owners who indicated in this research I did wanted to take over the tours of the test site and tell both sides and all the history. Sorry for taking up so much space on your blog but I just needed you to know about the kindred spirit I feel due to the fact my white people in the past did this same thing and many other bad things since invading their country in 1788. We even stole their children away from them. My information came from abc.net.au. Looking at your posts I see you help people find stories in the fandom literature area and I think that is great. I also like that you understand that factual tags are important to find similar subjects in the Tumblr search engine. Cheers from Australia.

Hi there, thank you for this deeply important note! I really appreciate this kinda thing!!!

Glad you mentioned it because I had to mute notifications on my original post — it went up to 10K notes in less than two days and my notifications tab was exploding, so sadly if people are adding interesting things I am missing them.

This is such an important issue and we need to seize the moment to get the word out about the impact of nuclear bomb testing.

I am ashamed to say I didn’t know about the UK tests in Australia and what a surprise, of course it affected Aboriginal Australians. Please tag me in your post so I can read / reblog! I’m very interested in learning further.

❤️

[rushingheadlong]

Hi I just wanted to say thanks to you for your post about Freddie Mercury being in a band called Ibex and the drummer was Mick Smith. I like to research a lot and unless I missed that in researching which I didn't think I did as furthest back I got was him being in the Smile Band and just found out that was mentioned in Bohemian Rhapsody movie but you have given me a bit more to dig into. Feel free to visit my blog and I just ask people to leave enough tags on rebloggs so people can find it in a search. Incidentally I have a Freddie Mercury art animation video you might like. Use tags to find stuff in my blog as most things group together even though I need to go back and add some tags to early posts so people can find them. Sorry you swore in front of the kids but you know eventually they hear it from someone. Cheers from Australia.

omg I'm SO SORRY for not seeing and replying to this earlier, tumblr never gave me a notification that you sent this!!

I don't know what you've found in your research already since sending this in, but Freddie was actually in a couple of different bands pre-Smile!

He was in a group called "The Hectics" while in boarding school in India. Then after coming to England he joined "Ibex" in 1969, which later became "Wreckage", and in 1970 he was briefly in a band called "Sour Milk Sea" before joining Smile that spring.

There might be one or two more in there but I'm not very knowledgeable on Freddie's pre-Smile history myself unfortunately!

The info above comes from the QueenConcerts.com page on Freddie's known pre-Queen bands and shows (HERE)... I know that the book As It Began talks a bit about all of their pre-Queen groups, as does Queen: The Early Years. I can't remember off the top of my head if Queen in Cornwall discusses any of Freddie's other groups, but it does cover Roger's early bands and Smile pretty thoroughly.

Anyway, sorry again for missing this before and I hope you were able to find out some more info about this!