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
Apollo 1 bearing on the accident. Manned Apollo flights were suspended for 20 months while the command module's hazards were addressed. However, the development and unmanned testing of the lunar module (LM) and Saturn V Moon rocket continued. The Saturn IB launch vehicle for Apollo 1, AS-204, was used for the first LM test flight, Apollo 5. The first successful manned Apollo mission was flown by Apollo 1's backup crew on Apollo 7 in October 1968. AS-204 was to be the first manned test flight of the Apollo command and service module (CSM) to Earth orbit, launched on a Saturn IB rocket.