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Did USSF Steal the Seal?

Seals, emblems, logos, and insignia are important cultural elements in any organization, especially in the military, where they carry special significance in ceremony, as part of official channels of communication to the service personnel and to the public, and also in efficient day-to-day interpersonal interaction to convey rank, unit, ability, and role.

In various forms, iconography for America’s Navy and Marine forces have long featured the anchor, its Army the shield, and its Air Forces, wings. All are abstracted and simplified to varying degrees, both to meet typographic and stylistic requirements, and also for universality; the best icon is the one that is equally recognizable across time and space, independent of changes in technology or situation.

Space Force iconography centers around “the delta,” a symmetrical triangle and star meant to represent the USSF’s mission to defend America’s interests in space. In science and mathematics, the Greek symbol delta (Δ) represents change, appropriate for a service branch called into existence by political and technical change and concerned in many ways with rocketry, in which the mathematical underpinnings of the symbol feature so prominently. But in other forms, the same basic glyph has long served military iconography as an abstract representation of an arrowhead or spearpoint. Both meanings are relevant for the Space Force, which has adopted it “to represent the organization’s role as a ‘force of change’ in the military and in space exploration” and also to pay tribute to historic military antecedents going all the way back to the Second World War.

The arrowhead has been a staple of military heraldry for as long as there have been organized military units. In modern times, the delta symbol used in Space Force unit insignia and central to the USSF Seal honors a heritage leading (at least) back to World War II. According to the 36th Wing Heritage Pamphlet 1940–1994[5], the emblem approved in June 1940 for 36th Group was: “An arrowhead point upward gules, in a chief, azure, a demi wing agent . . . . . . . . . The shield is blue and gold, the colors for the Air Force. The arrowhead is a deadly swift weapon of offensive[sic]. The silver wing in the upper part of the shield is emblematic of aerial protection and vigilance.”

Subsequent to the war, the Western Transport Air Force (a high-speed airlift logistics service) adopted a stylized delta similar to that now used in the NASA logo. New missile defense units of the Army and Air Force continued the use of stylized arrowheads, often combined with lightning bolts and/or triangular “shockwave” lines representing rapidity of action. As missile technology developed, stars symbolized operation at the edge of space, and actual rockets were often represented with varying degrees of artistic success.

Thus, “the delta” is far from new to military iconography. Yet in July 2020, when the fledgling service announced the designs for its new seal and delta emblem, social media influencers pounced on similarities between the new graphics and those familiar from Star Trek. George Takei, who played Sulu on the original series before settling into the social mediasphere as lovable provocateur, took famously to Twitter to opine over an image of the new USSF seal, “Ahem. We are expecting some royalties from this . . .” Nationally syndicated cartoonist & illustrator Dave Granlund joined in the fun with the following (used by permission):

And fair enough, the similarities are there, but is this life imitating art, or is it the other way around?

The sets and costumes of the Star Trek franchise are littered with pseudomilitary iconography, but those most recognizable today are the “delta” uniform insignia (later the combadge) of starship personnel, and the seals of Starfleet and of the United Federation of Planets. This last, we know, was directly based in the original series on the seal of the then still-young United Nations. That leaves the delta and the Starfleet seal which incorporated it as the alleged source material. But is it?

According to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, the delta symbol was chosen to represent Starfleet because it was a simple, bold shape that would be easily recognizable and memorable. Indeed, documentary evidence[6] shows he had discussed selection of such a clear symbol suitable for trademarking and merchandising at least as early as the summer of 1964. The exact genesis of what Roddenberry came to call “the Star Trek emblem” is lost, but we don’t have to strain too far in search of its roots. He’d flown in the Army Air Corps during World War II, and would have been familiar with military emblems based on the delta and spearpoint motifs. He’d flown for Pan Am after the war, and would have known that the Greek letter delta, which represents change and evolution, had been used by Delta Airlines since the 1930s; and this usage would have appealed to his Star Trek vision of a future where humanity has evolved and is working together for the betterment of all. Then again, in surviving memoranda he also called the emblem “the flying-A,” probably in reference to a popular West Coast gas station logo featuring pilots wings flanking a neon letter A with which he’d have been long familiar, and which in turn was heavily influenced by the “shield and wings” emblem of the old N.A.C.A., predecessor to NASA.


For years, many Star Trek fans believed that the iconic “delta” insignia ubiquitous in the franchise identified members of the Enterprise crew specifically, and that the crews of other ships wore other insignia. But a memorandum sent December 18, 1967, from producer Robert Justman to costume designer William Ware Theiss proves otherwise. In it, Justman points out that the insignia created for an earlier episode’s “merchant marine” crew had erroneously inspired creation ofyet another insignia for the uniforms of a crew from a different starship in the episode in production at that time. “I have checked the occurences [sic] out with Mr. Roddenberry,” he said, “who has assured me that all Starship personnel wear the Starship emblem that we have established for our Enterprise Crew Members to wear.”

By the time Justman saw the mistake in dailies, of course, a correction would have required expensive reshoots. This was in the earliest days of off-network rebroadcast syndication and years before the home video recorder, when TV episodes were only expected to be aired at most twice. Thus, Justman continued, “Please do not do anything to correct this understandable mistake in the present episode. However, should we have Starfleet personnel in any other episodes, please make certain that they were [sic] the proper emblem.

Under penalty of death!”


This was after all, 1964: seven years after Sputnik; six years after the founding of NASA; and five years after the Ford Galaxie, an old-fashioned gas-guzzling sedan born of the space age, had been embellished with the same delta motif slashed across its flanks in gleaming chrome. The “boomerang” graphic adorning the primary hull of the original starship Enterprise and her shuttlecraft was meant to be futuristic, and so was absolutely the product of the times. Whatever its exact origin, the Star Trek delta was history smearing into the future, part artistic flourish, part midcentury logo perfect for selling lunch boxes. It was literally iconic by design.

Which brings us to the Starfleet seal, bearing the same delta but set over a field of stars and wrapped in an orbiting spacecraft. Star Trek lead graphic designer Michael Okuda[7] has said this emblem, perhaps surprisingly, did not appear until a Deep Space Nine episode in the 1990s (nearly a decade after the founding of U.S. Space Command). To make it, Okuda’s team just grafted “the Star Trek emblem” into a background patterned after the NASA seal, so . . . . . . . . . mark another down for art imitating life.

At least in the case of NASA, we know the exact origin of its official seal and logo. The NASA seal was designed in 1958 by James J. Modarelli, an artist-designer at the N.A.C.A.’s Lewis Research Center in Cleveland (now the NASA Glenn Research Center). When the decision was made to absorb the facilities of the old National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics into NASA, N.A.C.A. employees were invited to submit designs for the new agency’s official seal. Modarelli, a division chief with an undergraduate degree in art, submitted the winning design.

And we know exactly what inspired him because he told the story in a 1992 interview with NASA historian Glen E. Swanson.[8] Two months earlier, Modarelli had toured the Ames Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel at Langley Research Center, where a radical new Mach-3 wing design was being studied. The cambered, twisted arrow wing and upturned nose of the model impressed Modarelli, who later stylized its radical features in his NASA seal design, though he unknowingly drew it upside down. After the design was selected, this mistake was corrected and the design was further simplified for mass color reproduction. The “ball and wing” design was then used in the official seal and the original NASA logo we now call the “meatball.”

So there you have it. The seal and emblem of the U.S. Space Force, like all military iconography, are the product of historical context. Steeped in symbolism intended to meet the future, they take inspiration from, and pay homage to, the history of those who blazed the trail, most directly the Air Force Space Command, but also the long line of air-logistics and missile-defense units going all the way back to the Second World War and earlier.

That’s a fitting legacy, too, since far from some jack-booted imperial space navy drawn from dystopic science fiction, the Space Force actually has a pretty “down-to-earth” mission to safeguard space and ensure the nation and its allies enjoy the unfettered benefits of this remarkable age. Even Captain Kirk needed shields and phasers and laws and diplomats. Neither the community of nations nor our deepest wishes will stop those who would creep through the endless night to sabotage and weaken us; only strength and vigilance are the universal price of peace.


5) Meyer, Jeffrey, 36th Wing Historian, April 2019. 36th Wing Heritage Pamphlet 1940-1994.

6) August 10, 1964 memo from Gene Roddenberry to Pato Guzman, Subject: Star Trek Emblem. UCLA, Gene Roddenberry Star Trek television series collection, 1966–1969.

7) https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/sf_command_emblem.htm

8) https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3947/1


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