NASA American Flag Beta Cloth Patch

NASA Beta Cloth American Flag patch.  This beta cloth patch is made from a fire proof material woven from Teflon coated glass fibers. It was supplied to NASA by the Owens Corning Corporation for use as the outer layer of the Apollo space suits and in-flight garments worn by the astronauts after the Apollo 1 fire. In order to reduce the use of flammable materials to a minimum it was logical that the mission patch, NASA insignia, U.S. flag, and nametag used on each space suit and coverall from Apollo 7 onwards would also be produced in beta cloth material rather than embroidered cloth. In general, these beta cloth patches were never made available commercially and are now sought-after collectibles. Owens Corning contracted out the printing of NASA's beta cloth patches to the Screen Print Corp. of Coventry Rhode Island. There the insignia were screen printed onto rolls of beta cloth. These were then cut into 9" squares (or 5½" in the case of the ASTP patches) with the printed designs at the centers. The hand-drawn 'cut lines' for the edges of these squares are often visible on one or more sides of beta cloth patches.

This American Flag Beta Cloth patch measures 9" x 7" and is in near mint condition but does show a very small imperfection the second from top red stripe which occurred during printing.