Philatelists Push Petition For Pluto Probe Postage

Hugh Pickens writes "Space.com reports that an online petition directed at the USPS and its Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC) hopes to collect 100,000 signatures or more by March 13, the 82nd anniversary of the announcement of Pluto's discovery as the New Horizons robotic spacecraft gets closer to flyby Pluto and its moons in 2015. 'This is a chance for us all to celebrate what American space exploration can achieve though hard work, technical excellence, the spirit of scientific inquiry, and the uniquely human drive to explore,' reads the petition. Whether or not the New Horizons team is successful in getting the USPS to honor their spacecraft's mission, the probe will have delivered a stamp to Pluto. New Horizons includes nine stowaways including one of the 1991 'Not Yet Explored' Pluto stamps together with other mementos including a Florida quarter, a small container with an ounce of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto, and a small segment of 2004 Ansari X Prize winner SpaceShipOne, the first privately-funded crewed spacecraft. 'Why nine mementos? I bet you can guess,' says Dr. Alan Stern, New Horizons' Principal Investigator adding why he wanted to send one of the Pluto stamps on the mission. 'Pluto may not have been explored when that stamp set came out, but we were going to conquer that,' says Stern. 'I wanted to fly it as a sort of 'in your face' thing.'"

Re:Pluto is a Planet

[ColdWetDog]

Planet or planetesimal, it's just tremendously sad that

'This is a chance for us all to celebrate what American space exploration can achieve though hard work, technical excellence, the spirit of scientific inquiry and the uniquely human drive to explore ...'

The "chance" happens to be a frigging stamp.

Somehow, I had hoped for a bit more.

Why?

[uvajed_ekil]

Why should New Horizons get a stamp, and why not Cassini-Huygens, the Galileo probe, the Magellan orbiter, or MESENGER? The others all completed their missions and studied real planets, while New Horizons has not arrived at the minor planet Pluto yet. Get over it, Pluto fanboys, your boring little ice ball is not a planet!!!

Re:Don't worry...

[Darkness404]

Yes, like that, its completely ruined the market for stamp collecting because so many stamps are purely produced for collectors. The US post office has been doing it for several years, the US mint has just started doing it in the last few years by producing presidential dollars and Native American dollars no one wants but "collectors" snatch them up hoping they will be worth lots of money later (they won't be) and making worthless commemorative coins for collectors which they buy in hopes they will sell for more later on (chances are they won't). I mean, today you can't even hardly give away modern (non silver) proof sets. While older coins are rising in value and the value of junk silver/gold has gone up dramatically, there are few modern coins made at any western mint that has retained its issue price value except for a rare few which now have a higher scrap silver/gold value than issue price. This is true for the US mint, the Royal Mint, the Royal Canadian Mint, the Perth Mint and many private and European mints. About the only positive gain in modern commemorative is from China which is dangerous for a western collector to collect due to the huge amount of fakes and lack of information.

Just stop with the madness of commemorative stamps/coins.