It's been said that when NASA was interviewing Gemini astronaut candidates, they had them all register at the Rice Hotel in Houston as "Max Peck" (which turns out to be the name of the hotel manager). This patch requires some suspension of belief in order to imagine all of these pilots, test pilots and aviators mingling in the hotel lounge wearing all the same name tag. While this never happened, this name tag is a bit of a play on this imaginary moment of an actual event. The patch is 3 1/2" wide and includes a matching decal. This patch will come mounted on velcro, which is a first for Retrorocket Emblems. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did imaginging it! Available mid-December 2025.
(Sample image, patch in production)
The original patch is extremely rare, and based on the embroidery style may have only been made by the handful. The design is simple and depicts the Roman god Mercury in profile. The patch is 3" in diameter. There's no official link of this patch to the program, so it's more of a curiosity than anything. Patch will be available to ship around December 1, 2025.
This model is a 3D printed 1:1 scale replica of a Langley Research Center Mercury Spacecraft wind tunnel model. This model was sold at auction in 2009 for almost $10,000, but this highly acurate model can be your for $30 + shipping! The model is shipped as a kit as the parts are a bit too delicate to ship as a completed model. The kit comprises of approximately 20, printed-in-color parts made of PLA and Silk PLA. The kit includes a tube of superglue and a jig for setting the main truss of the Launch Escape Tower. The assembled spaecraft and base stand about 12 inches tall.
Enos was the second chimpanzee launched into space by NASA. He was the first chimpanzee, and third hominid after cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov, to achieve Earth orbit. Enos's flight occurred on November 29, 1961. This is a patch commemorating his spaceflight. It is 4" wide.
Ham the Astro Chimp was launched on a sub-orbital flight on January 31, 1961 atop a Mercury-Redstone rocket as part of Project Mercury. The name “Ham” was given to the chimpanzee only after his successful mission. NASA was concerned with the potential of bad publicity surrounding the possibility of a failed mission with a named chimp on board, so until after his mission, Ham was known as “No. 65” and among his handlers, he was known as “Chop Chop Chang”.
