Strange NRO Mission Patches
March 4th, 2011I’ve seen a lot of weird military patches, but I think that this one might take the cake. It’s related to the NRO satellite that was launched back in January, USA-224, also known as NRO Launch 49 (NRO L-49).
NRO L-49
The Latin means something like, “First Heavy from the West,” or “First Heavy from the Sunset.” This was the first launch of the Delta IV Heavy rocket from west coast of the U.S. So, that’s probably that.
But for the rest of this, they threw the WTF?! into afterburner. I’m mainly curious about that dark moon/sun/death star thing that’s partially blotting out the… Earth? Yeah, the object with the the subliminal writing in it.
Also, why is “Betty” holding a trident and a wrench? What kind of creature is Betty?
Is this also Betty on the related, “Better the devil that you know,” patch: NRO L-49
due to its relative size re: earth, i’d guess that dark object might actually be the moon. or earth’s ‘dark twin,’ should such a thing exist: http://poleshift.ning.com/profiles/blogs/earths-dark-twin
i’m going to throw a random guess that the subliminal writing could be initials of the team members.
the ‘better the devil’ slogan could refer to the level of classification of the mission/project.
the five white stars and their placement are beyond me, though.
personally, i’ll be watching the skies for …something… that looks like it has wings and a swirly tail. looks like they will be, too.
one more thought: whatever betty is, she appears to hold the proverbial “wrench,” by which plans are to be disrupted….
the idea that something they chose to depict as a hellish harpy/gryphon is out there in near orbit (earth is BIG in that image) makes for pretty good justification to launch a reconnaissance satellite.
ok ONE one more thing:
the trident is a symbol of the naval academy and/or the navy seals–could they be involved in the project? it’s also the weapon of Shiva, destroyer god of the hindu religion…
so it seems we’ve got a winged, flaming, she-devil “destroyer” holding a wrench somewhere in the vicinity of earth. and special ops might be in charge of the recon. wow.
The devil is in the details.
From Lucifer being the Grand Architect of the Universe and the Supreme Being of the Freemasons to Bohemian Grove to Lucis Trust to this, I’ll be betting my Pascal wager on Jesus.
Perhaps the “Betty” refers to Betty J. Sapp, the first female Principal Deputy Director of the NRO:
http://www.nro.gov/bios/Betty%20Sapp.pdf
The dark inscription in the large “L” before “L-49” in the image, looks like an outline of the Delta IV rocket.
From the “subliminal” writing on the moon or whatever that gray blob is supposed to be: RDG, SLS and AL.
“LRSW” on the right reminds me of Long Range Sniper Weapon; hope that’s not right, though.
Obviously, Betty ‘fixes’ things 🙂
As for the trident, the first thing that came to mind was the submarine-launched Trident missile system.
The dark planet looked like a ‘crypto-world’, the earth obscured by encrypted/garbled information.
My two cents.
@Pookie
Good find re: Betty. I looked through a couple of military focused threads on this and nobody caught that.
This is long but found on eBay:
NRO L- 49 DELTA IV HEAVY USAF MISSION PATCH
NROL-49 Delta IV-H Space Wing LRSW Satellite EMBROIDERED 4 inch mission patch. Payload sucessfully launched from Vandenberg AFB on 20 January, 2011 (01/20/11). This is a rare and collectable item in limited production.
Check other listings for other mission patches with velcro, mission pins and the up-comming Atlas V scheduled launch of NROL-34 from Vandenberg’s SLC-3E in the March or April 2011 timeframe.
The design above is derived from the NRO’s mission patch featuring a Phoenix rising from the ashes in a swirl of flames. There’s a long tradition that stars in such mission logo designs represent the number of like launches. Since this is the fifth Delta IV HEAVY launch – there are four stars along the left side with the fifth star atop the “L” in L-49. Prior launches were Dec 2004 (demo/test), Nov 2007 (DSP-23), Jun 2009 (NROL-26) and Nov 2010 (NROL-32).
Another tradition goes back to the Titan program where rockets launched from the West Coast were named after women. This is partially where “BETTY” came to be. The rest of the name came from the Latin phrase “melior diabolus quem scies” Roughly translated, this means “Better The Devil You Know”… or, BETTY, the devil you know.
The wrench in Betty’s hand represents the numerous launch pad modifications that were required to convert SLC-6 affectionatly known as “Slick six”. Originally designed as a Titan III pad (1966), SLC-6 underwent major $4B changes to become a West Coast Space Shuttle launch pad (1980) scheduled to launch in 1986. This program was cancelled after the Challenger disaster. SLC-6 then was home to to an Athena II pad (1999) eventually modified to accomodate todays Delta IV pad configuration to the tune of over $100M operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA) in support of the mission.
Across the bottom of the patch reads “PRIMORIS GRAVIS EX OCCASUS” which is again Latin for “First Heavy from the West” celibrating the innaugral Western Range launch.
This Delta IV (DIV) HEAVY stands 238 feet tall and burns 3 tons of fuel and oxidizer per second!
Also IL in roman numerals interestingly equals 49 as well.
IL is equal to 49 in Roman numerals because 49 can be XXXXVIIII (4*10+9) or IL (-1+50) and not XLIX
I am so fascinated by this I have been trying to figure out any hidden meanings. So when u try and unscramble the letters u get some interesting words/
Solar
Arrows
Warsand a ton others.
I’m thinking, and this is extremely reaching, that the 3 could numerical albhabet meaning. So the letter c? Thoughts?