Page 88 - The Appollo Story

The Apollo Story t--- --------....

Apollo 15 (AS-510) Hadley Rille
The Apollo program was facing severe cutbacks. The remaining three missions needed to place a far
greater emphasis on science than the earlier landings, which had been predominately about getting there
and returning safely. It was time to go exploring, which would be achieved by increasing the astronauts'
mobility and by putting them through an intensive pre-flight grounding in geological practices and theory.
The launch cover below is signed by all three astronauts

The circular patch features stylised red,
white and blue birds flying over the
Hadley Rille section of the moon. Im-
mediately behind the birds, a line of cra-
ters form the Roman numeral XV. The
artwork is circled in red, with a white
band giving the mission and crew names
and a blue border. Scott contacted fash-
ion designer Emilio Pucci to design the
patch, who came up with the basic idea
of the three-bird motif on a square patch.
The crew changed the shape to round
and the colours from blues and greens to
a patriotic red, white and blue. Al
Worden stated that each bird also repre-
sented an astronaut, white being his own
colour (and as command module pilot,
uppermost), with Scott the blue bird and
Irwin the red. The Roman numeral de-
sign was created when NASA insisted
that the mission number be displayed in
Arabic numerals.

Mr.
Franz D r e m 1
333 Helmstedt
Schwanefelder Weg 4
Qerman Fed. Republ.