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I have made some adjustments to the shipping options. Due to major increases in USPS First Class international rates, international customers have the ability to choose non-tracked shipping to bring their cost down. The option for tracked is still available at the new, higher rate. (First class USPS package with tracking to Europe is now $15) I will still have to manually refund you for combined shipping when you place an order with multple items. |
RRE has three new patches coming Q4 or Q1 2014. We plan to release all three simultaneously as part of a Kickstarter campaign which will allow you to acquire all three at a special price. We here at RRE have a desire to create patches that fill in some of those gaps in the Space Race era. We hope these three offerings do just that.
We envisioned creating a patch for HAM that emulates a patch that could have been released prior to his flight. Prior to his spaceflight, HAM was actually known as "No. 65" and "Chop Chop Chang" to his handlers at NASA. He was renamed "HAM" after his mission, as NASA didn't want the potential enslaught of bad press if the mission had failed with a named chimpanzee on board. "HAM" comes from the name of his training center: Holloman Aerospace Medical Center. This is a rathor light-hearted emblem, but considering America's first space pioneer was indeed a chimpanzee, we think it is apt.
The AS-201 patch highlights two of the primary objectives of the mission: validate the Saturn IB and the viability of the CM's heat shield. This is still a work in progress, but this is the current design as it stands now. Because Saturn is the ruler of Capricorn, the stars of that constellation are visible.
AS-202 was a continuation of the Saturn IB and CSM testing process. This time the objectives would be guideance systems, multiple, hot-firing of the CSM SPS engines and a skip reentry to test the CM headshield under high stress. The commemorative patch shows the SPS engine firing on the CSM and CM's trajectory as it skims across the Earth's atmosphere for reentry.
We created the Apollo 6 commemorative emblem as a companion to the Apollo 4 patch that we have already released. Apollo 6 was a moderately succesful, full-stack test of the Saturn V rocket. Our conceptual patch was designed as if it was released prior to the mission with the primary objectives noted: demonstration of a Trans-lunar Injection and Direct Return. A stylized trajectory of the mission objectives is shown, with a hallmarked lyre as a symbol of the Greek god Apollo.
This patch is a reproduction of an emblem spotted on a helmet from the early Apollo days at Cape Canaveral. It was also spotted on a stamp for a Apollo training certificate. The simple stylization and bold graphics really struck a chord with us here at Retrorocket Emblems so we thought a cloth reproduction was in order. We had a bit of artistic license with regards to color, but we like the results.
