Michael Collins: "There were also a variety of non-technical chores, such as thinking up names for our spacecraft and designing a mission emblem. We felt Apollo 11 was no ordinary flight, and we wanted no ordinary design, yet we were not professional designers. .... We wanted to keep our three names off it because we wanted the design to be representative of everyone who had worked toward a lunar landing, and there were thousands who could take a proprietary interest in it, yet who would never see their names woven into the fabric of a patch. ... Jim Lovell, Neil's backup, introduced an American eagle into the conversation. Of course! What better symbol -- eagles landed, didn't they? At home I skimmed through my library and finally found what I wanted in a National Geographic book on birds: a bald eagle, landing gear extended, wings partially folded, coming in for a landing. I traced it on a piece of tissue paper and sketched in an oblique view of a pockmarked lunar surface.
"Thus the Apollo 11 patch was born, although it had a long way to go before final approval. I added a small earth in the background and drew the sunshine coming from the wrong direction, so that to this day our official insignia shows the earth over the lunar horizon... I also penciled APOLLO around the top of my circular design and ELEVEN around the bottom. Neil didn't like the ELEVEN because it wouldn't be understandable to foreigners, so after trying XI and 11, we settled on the latter and put APOLLO 11 around the top. One day outside the simulator I was describing my efforts to Jim Lovell, and he and I both agreed that the eagle alone really didn't convey the entire message we wanted. The Americans were about to land, but so what? Tom Wilson, our computer expert and simulator instructor, overheard us and piped up, Why not an olive branch as a symbol of our peaceful expedition? Beautiful! Where do eagles carry olive branches? In their beaks, naturally. So I sketched one in, and after a few discussions with Neil and Buzz over color schemes, we were ready to go to press."