Vega entered her apartment after another long day at the law firm, and went straight to her bedroom closet. There, on the top shelf, was the cardboard box she was looking for. From it she pulled out a three-ring binder with gold lettering embossed on its black cover.
It was his father’s old collection of the Apollo program mission patches. He had given it to her when she was 10 years old. His way of showing her how much he loved that she shared his interest for the space race. This had always been one of her most precious possessions. A treasured symbol of the special bond she had with her dad.
Since lunch, a little voice kept telling her to look into that collection. She began staring at the colorful embroidered patches in the album without really searching for anything in particular. While doing so she could hear her father explaining them to her like it was yesterday.
“The Apollo astronauts had a lot to say about their mission patches. Some of them even took it upon themselves to design theirs. Looking at them is like taking a trip into the astronauts’ minds,” he told her the first time he showed her the collection. And then he would go through each one of them explaining their missions.
Apollo 1’s patch irony was not lost on her. She couldn’t help thinking about the astronauts’ family members while staring at the patch showing a command module orbiting Earth. A mission that never left the launch pad where a fire ended the life of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee.
The mission numbers then jumped from one to seven. According to NASA there were some unmanned missions between 1 and 7. Her father always doubted their official numbering story.
“The mission commander for Apollo 7 was Walter Schirra, one of the Mercury seven original astronauts,” her father would say. “After the Apollo 1 tragedy, NASA needed all the positive vibes available in the universe. So they went with lucky number seven. Remember that all the Mercury missions used that same number and they were all successful. Of course NASA would never accept they were as superstitious as the next guy so they came up with this cockamamie story about obscure unmanned missions that only they knew about, or understood for that matter.”
Vega noted something she hadn’t before in the Apollo 7 patch. Although the key visuals on it were similar to Apollo 1’s – they both featured a command module orbiting Earth – on this one the ship’s engine was lighted while on Apollo 1’s it wasn’t. Did the astronauts do that on purpose? You know, to indicate that this one would get off the ground… and avoid their predecessor’s fate after featuring what could be referred to as a dead engine in their patch. Was this superstition at work again? She wondered… but moved on.
Apollo 8’s had always been her favorite – a very sleek design that featured a red “8” denoting both the mission number, and the circumlunar trajectory of the mission. The design was first conceived by mission astronaut Jim Lovell who then prepared a sketch and gave it to the NASA artist in charge of the project.
Apollo 9’s mission patch was probably the least appealing of them all. Her father used to compare it to an elementary school textbook diagram. She moved over quickly to the Apollo 10 patch – another one of her favorites. 
A pretty busy design, unlike Apollo 8’s sleek one, but somehow it worked in a very pleasant manner. Mission astronauts Young and Cernan designed it and its shield-like outer shape gave it a space ranger flair.
She turned the page and came face to face with the most famous patch in the history of space flight – Apollo 11’s landing eagle insignia.
“This one here is where it all started,” her father would tell her. “When I was a little kid I swallowed NASA’s official version regarding the meaning of this design. The eagle with the olive branch in its talons representing the United States going to the Moon in peace. And no astronaut names on it because the feat was an achievement for all humanity. But as I grew older I started to feel there was another more revealing meaning to it.”
The first time he said that my eyes opened up like Frisbees, thought Vega.
“Mission astronaut Michael Collins designed the insignia,” he would go on, “and I truly believe he and the rest of the crew decided to leave their names out of it for another reason. In case they didn’t land on the Moon and had to go to their backup plan. The one in which only the image of the United States accomplishes it. What if their real mission was to make the world believe they had landed regardless of whether or not they did. Back then, there was a great deal of pressure on NASA to fulfill Kennedy’s dream. Plus the reputation of the United States was on the line. Not to mention the political pressure associated to the Soviet Union’s parallel efforts to reach our companion in the cosmos.”
But they did land on the Moon Dad, Vega could hear herself say with the innocence of a ten year old.
“The United States did, yes,” he would say, “but not Apollo 11. To the astronauts’ credit, they tried, but had to abort and go with the backup plan – make the world believe they did.”
Vega was incredulous the first time she heard her father’s theory. Then, after reading a great deal about the Apollo missions through the years she had to conclude that something didn’t quite match. Especially suspicious were those of Apollo 12 and 13, just ahead of the Kitty Hawk mission.