With new patch design, the Crew-13 astronauts clearly aren't superstitious

It comes after 12 The STS-13 crew, redesignated STS-41-C, created this patch that highlights superstitions and triskaidekaphobia. The STS-13 crew, redesignated STS-41-C, created this patch that highlights superstitions and triskaidekaphobia. Credit: collectSPACE.com Prior to Crew-13, NASA managers leaned into the superstition and devised a less intuitive but more data-driven designation that went into effect after the ninth space shuttle mission. Hence, what would have been STS-13 became STS-41-C, where the 4 was the fiscal year (1984), the 1 was the launch site (Kennedy Space Center in Florida), and C was the order of launch (C was the third planned flight of the year). “I mentioned it was 41-C that originally was STS-13, and my friend Jim Beggs, who was the administrator of NASA, had triskaidekaphobia, and he said, ‘There’s not going to be [another] Apollo 13 or a Shuttle 13, so come up with a new numbering system.’ So we did come up with this complex system for numbering the shuttles during that period of time,” said Bob Crippen, STS-41C commander, in a NASA oral history interview. NASA later reverted to a straightforward numerical designation after the loss of the space shuttle Challenger and the STS-51L crew in January 1986. As such, there was an STS-113, which launched aboard space shuttle Endeavour in 2002, but not before having to make late crew changes due to medical issues. The last time that NASA faced the same decision was on Apollo 13. …