Apollo 8 8 are the names of the three astronauts. The initial design of the insignia was developed by Jim Lovell, who reportedly sketched it while riding in the back seat of a T-38 flight from California to Houston shortly after learning of the Apollo 8's re-designation as a lunar-orbital mission. The crew wanted to name their spacecraft, but NASA did not allow it. The crew would have likely chosen "Columbiad", the name of the giant cannon that launches a space vehicle in Jules Verne's 1865 novel "From the Earth to the Moon". The Apollo 11 CM was named "Columbia" in part
Canceled Apollo missions 1963, and replaced them with two manned Saturn IB missions, designated AS-204 and AS-205. These would be followed by the first unmanned flight of the Lunar Module (LM) on AS-206, then the third manned mission, designated AS-207/208, would use AS-207 to launch the crew in an improved Block II CSM, which would rendezvous and dock with the LM launched unmanned on AS-208. The crew selected on March 21, 1966, for AS-204 consisted of Command Pilot Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger Chaffee, who named their mission Apollo 1. AS-205 was to be named Apollo 2, and