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Editor's Note: included in this email is the full text of NASA PAO's official logo policy which includes:
"1) Astronaut mission logos are an important part of NASA activities. They should continue to be used as they have been, since they are an established form of visual identification for a particular mission. However, in terms of media awareness and overall visibility to the public, the use of the "meatball" should take precedence over the use of mission logos. You are spot-on about mission/project patches being the "soul" of NASA. I think that NASA management has succumbed to the corporate/advertising mindset of "brand identity." NASA shouldn't be a secret bureaucracy showing only one symbol to the world. Project logos help inform the public about what we do. My non-NASA friends and neighbors love getting mission "stuff" - cups, hats, patches, etc. It helps them identify with and support the work we are doing. We also use project and mission patches and logos on shirts, cups, etc as team and individual rewards for the people who work so hard to make the research/missions happen. We pay for the items ourselves - no appropriated funds are used.
I was asked today from a fellow employee if the NASA logo cops would be handing out tickets if there children put the mission logos on their school books or bicycles? They do not want to teach their children to go against the rules, especially if they work for NASA as this would not set a good example for their familiy. I am a contractor at an unnamed NASA site. (West Coast) I will not talk about the nature of my contracted position but this crap about the mission patches is just one too many. It is absolutely ludicrious that Goldin and his little Logo-Nazis are so adamant in dealing with the worm vs. the meatball and all that crap when infrastructure needs repairing, morale is suffering among civil servants and contractors and we cannot recruit nor retain the young men and women that will be needed for the future of the space program. Someone told me today that we have more NASA personnel over 60 than we have under 30. It is a sad commentary that NASA, once the premiere federal agency has become so bloated with bureacratic bs that the MISSION seems to have taken a backseat to "community empowerment" "affirmative action awards" and other pablum. My God, had this crew been in command in the 1960's, John Glenn would be waiting for his FIRST orbital flight today! Enough venting, now back to the "job.
I've been thinking. (Dangerous, I know, but life is so short) Lil' Danny and his visual cops are on the loose. Try taking this story mainstream. This one may need a letter writing campaign, and some more public pressure. You point about the public knowing, liking and expecting to see project and mission patches is the most important one. Case in point. I have a school age boy who lives in my apartment building. He's 20 years too young to have any memory of Apollo, or more specifically Apollo 11. But I., being an old relic, have plenty of things around the house and on the Net that have to do with the mission. As he does well at keeping his marks up in school, I let him come over on weekends and look thru some of my treasures. This young fellow has learned to tell the Missions and NASA centers and their details apart *by the Patches and Logos* Someone with a sheepskin in Teaching should to be asked to suffer thru sitting with Lil' Danny and try to chip into the concrete that the best education and recognition methods are *VISUAL*, and that our vaunted guardian of New Nasa should put away his logo attack dogs and find something better to do. Like maybe a nice Crossword puzzle.
I wonder if the Borg started this way??? Must be part of Dan's "Stamp out happiness edit or joy" program. I took all my mission patches down today and replaced each with a new meatball. My awards now look "assimilated". Now everyone knows what missions I have supported. I am so proud (not). Hi Keith, As far as I'm concerned, NASA should stop creating individual patches for each and every shuttle mission. It is a costly, time consuming and generally wasteful practice. Since the Space Shuttle program was designed to be a long term program, NASA's original plan was to replace mission specific patches by using the single Space Shuttle Program patch (the blue triangle with a white shuttle) and give each crew a tab with the mission number (i.e. STS-006) that would be affixed under the Program patch. The result would be simple, straightforward and cost effective. A veteran Astronaut could be easily recognized buy the number of tabs under the Program patch, the same as an Army veteran can be recognized by the number of hash marks on his/her sleeve. But noooo, the first shuttle astronauts wanted to continue with the specialized patches and now, with nearly 100 missions completed, we have so many different patches you can't tell one from another. To make matters worse, we are running out of room on the walls at Mission Control and today's Astronauts look more like Indy car drivers than anything else. It is my fervent hope NASA dispenses with mission specific patches after 100 missions. Final note. Where did you ever get the idea the "worm" was the original NASA logo? It was the winner of a national competition held in the 70's to come up with a slick looking replacement for the "Meatball" and was designed by persons from the National Endowment for the Arts. The "Meatball" (a name I detest), was designed by NASA early in the space program and was referred to as "The NASA Vector". Later, a minor change resulted in the "Extended Vector", AKA "Meatball", we see today. The "Vector" was meant to reflect the spirit of NASA at that time and is still, far and away, the best logo to represent NASA. Death to the "Worms"!
Editor's note: the author (a United Space Alliance employee) is a bit confused. I have never referred to the worm logo as NASA's original logo.
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