Posts: 194
From: Citrus Heights, CA - USA
Registered: Jan 2006

posted 01-10-2006 11:46 PM               

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I am Bill Coukoulis, Jr., who designed the Moonstar 18 and other Moonstar patches.

Over the past years I've written short stories about the fictional future of human space flight, first of which is Moonstar, a program to return Americans to the Moon in the 2030s using modified space shuttle and classic Apollo era spacecraft. I also designed a series of mission emblems to accompany the story. I then decided to have my designs made into patches, finding people who wanted their names on them, as gifts. All who are on the patch split the cost. That's the background.

For anyone interested, the symbolism of the Moonstar 18 patch is as follows: I wanted a silhouette view of the shuttle caused by the sun, and over the earth. Inside the silhouette is a single blue star streaking across (representing project Mercury), above that streak two white stars (project Gemini) and streaking upward to a full moon are three red stars (project Apollo). Together, the red, white & blue stars represent the United States.