[Apollo 16]

Stuart Roosa's handwritten letter reads: "These are from my suit used in training for my role as backup CMP. / STUART ROOSA."

APOLLO ASTRONAUT STUART ROOSA'S BACKUP CREW PATCHES FOR APOLLO 16, COMPLETE WITH MISSION REPORT.

Stuart Roosa was known for his thorough technical expertise, so much so that he was hand picked by Apollo 14 Commander Alan Shepard to be a member of the Apollo 14 prime crew before serving on the backup crew of an Apollo mission.

Roosa first served as a member of the astronaut support crew for Apollo 9, an especially ambitious mission laying the groundwork for the future lunar landing. When the Apollo 9 Lunar Module Pilot Rusty Schweickart fell ill due to space sickness, no one on Earth at the time knew the mission's flight plan as well as Roosa. He had spent months in simulations with the flight controllers prior to launch, and used that expertise to help reorganize the mission schedule and save as many of the objectives as possible to keep the future Moon missions on schedule. He was at the CAPCOM mike nearly the entire time that the crew was awake.

His diligence caught the attention of Al Shepard, who had just been cleared for flight after undergoing a newly developed surgery that cured the Ménière's disease that had kept him grounded since his legendary Mercury flight. One of Shepard's last acts as Chief of the Astronaut Office was picking his crew for the mission he would command. He chose for prime crew Stu Roosa as Command Module Pilot (CMP) and Edgar Mitchell as Lunar Module Pilot (LMP). It was unprecedented for an astronaut to be selected for an Apollo prime crew without having flown or served as backup crew for a previous mission, which caused a stir among other astronauts that Shepard was quick to quash.

The patches in the present lot are from the first time Roosa served as backup, a unique departure from the typical trajectory of Apollo astronauts.

If Roosa had flown on Apollo 16 or 17 as CMP, there is a chance he could have broken the record for most efficient docking, as he would have broken the record during Apollo 14 if not for a faulty latch mechanism. Prior to Apollo 14, Roosa had trained through 19 months of mission simulations, more than any other Apollo CMP, and he was track to break the record for using less fuel than any Command Module Pilot before him if the docking hatch had fully functioned.

Roosa served as backup CMP for Apollo 16 and 17 and would have been in line to command Apollo 20 if the program hadn’t prematurely ended.