The Flight of the Phoenix - Apollo 7 T-Shirt

This patch commemorates Apollo 7, but also pays tribute to Apollo 1. The Apollo 1 accident was on January 27, 1967 when it was a full Moon, so the illustration of the full Moon from the Apollo 1 50th anniversary mission commemorative patch. The illustration of the spacecraft is like the one from the original Apollo 1 patch. Three larger stars honour the crew of Apollo 1 and the other three stars pay tribute to the crew of Apollo 7. The Apollo 7 crew requested to use the radio call sign "Phoenix" to honour the effort required to get their mission off the ground. NASA management refused. Ten years ago I teamed up with astronaut Walt Cunningham to make a limited edition of this embroidered patch that was only available from his website. The launch of the Saturn 1B with its plume depicted as a flaming Phoenix rising from the ashes of Apollo 1. The same Roman numeral seven from the original mission patch is used. The shape of the patch was about doing something different, and a red, white and blue border is used to commemorate the return to flight of the U.S. space program.