Proposed STS-62A Mission Patch T-Shirt

Proposed STS-62A Mission Patch Backstory: I wrote to Bob Crippen, in early 1985, requesting to design the patch for the STS-62A mission scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in the Summer of 1986. He wrote back on May 16, 1985 with an invitation to submit some art. I was thrilled. The crew would have been: CDR: Bob Crippen, PLT: Guy Gardner, Jerry Ross, Mike Mullane and Dale Gardner, Mission Specialists; Brett Watterson and Edward Aldridge, Payload Specialists. I submitted four designs, but after the Challenger tragedy, STS-62A was cancelled along with the hope of producing a mission patch. Jorge Cartes and I polished up my original hand drawn art and released a limited edition set of 250 in 2005. Through that effort I learned that this design of the four was favored by the crew. I reached out to Jerry Ross and Mike Mullane during the pandemic shut down in 2020 with an idea to finalize the patch design the way we would have done in 1985 with crew input. The final patch was released in Spring, 2021, made to the original specifications for 1985. I shared the finished art with Bob Crippen via email and he was pleased, wishing that they would have been able to fly. In 2021 I presented Mike Mullane and his family with patches at Spacefest and sent one to Jerry Ross. In January, 2022 I met Guy Gardner at KSC and gifted him with a patch as well. Description: The design illustrates the American bald eagle protecting the orbiter and hiding its payload as this was a DoD mission. The mission is shown launching from Vandenberg AFB in Southern California, as planned, to become the first crewed launch from VAFB, hence the use of “V1” in the design which was going to be the designation for this launch from Vandenberg. The first crewed mission to fly a polar orbit in order to deploy its reconnaissance payload, symbolized by the “Big Dipper.” A separate tab is sewn on the patch, per the original plan, to display the names of the payload specialists.