The Lighter Side of NASA

Yes, it's a real patch!

NASA and space travel have always been fascinating to me.  I remember as a kid going to Space Camp and dreaming of one day being an astronaut.  Obviously that never happened (too scared of heights for one thing) but I still have a collection of old NASA mission patches that I started collecting back during my impressionable youth.  None of them are nearly as cool as the patches that Wired.com managed to find in an article they recently posted on their web site.  The three part article shows many of the more humorous mission patches (both official and unofficial) that have been used over the decades of manned space flight.

My personal favorite?  That of the C.O.L.B.E.R.T, the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, made to honor comedian Steven Colbert for whom the space station’s treadmill is officially named.