Logos for the other missions?

[darkstar]

Awesome FOIA request!

Are you planning on doing requests for the other patches too? There are some rather nice ones out there...

[Keavon]

I am very happy that this has happened! I am the Wikipedia editor who has spent last month significantly updating the List of NRO launches article with over 50 hours of research, sourcing the best-available imagery from the annals of history, and editing the images of many to include transparent backgrounds. In particular, the previously best-available NROL-39 patch was the full-color PDF page from a previous FOIA request consisting of a scan of an inkjet printed page (missing some lines of color) from a PowerPoint presentation containing the logo. I did my best in Photoshop to fix up those missing lines of color from the clogged inkjet head. But a vector is absolutely ideal, so this makes me tremendously happy.

But there are so many more! Not only that, but two are entirely missing from history to the extent of my intensive research. I cannot find any patch design from NROL-2 and NROL-3. Furthermore, NROL-7 has only one image available on the internet and that image is watermarked (hence, it cannot be uploaded to Wikipedia even though the patch design is public domain).

If anyone is as excited as me about space history and the awesome works of art that are the NRO mission patches, I would be ecstatic to coordinate an effort to further complete the Wikipedia article with SVG versions of the newer logos (presumably some NRO missions predate the common usage of vector graphics within these patch designs) and, at least, higher quality raster versions of the older ones.

I have no experience with the FOIA process, but I'd love to work with more knowledgeable people such as @palewire and other volunteers on this. In particular, would it work to establish a procedure so that volunteers can easily submit requests, each for single missions from the list? Or would a request for, say, 5 or 10, fall within scope without incurring too great of a search cost that it would exceed $50 per volunteer who has submitted an FOIA request?

I'd love to know more about how this effort could come to fruition!

[TA10S]

Looks like Ben (palewire) has already sent a request for the NROL-61 badge. I guess we'll see in a bit if they actually fulfill it. In the mean time, whats the formal jargon for "search for as many logos as possible within 2 hours so I don't have to pay for it"?