House votes for Mint to make NASA coins

FullStrike

LINK

This is the first I've heard about these new Commems coming out in 2008. There was a mention about them in another thread entitled "What do you folks think about the 230th year Marine Corp commem.? ".

It seems that there will be a 1 oz 1.25 inch diameter Gold Coin representing the Sun and 9 - 1.5 inch Silver Coins representing the Planets. Wouldn't it seem more appropriate to have the Sun Coin bigger than the Planet Coins? I guess maybe I'm talking about a 3 ounce Coin here. The cost would go up but then we'd get into a more exclusive ( low mintage ) issue - and isn't that what makes us all happy? I'm thinking second coming of the Panama- Pacific slug here.

I'd like to see a 3 oz Gold Coin - even bigger than the Pan Pacific but
here's the specs I found for the $50 Panama-Pacific

SPECIFICATIONS:

Diameter: 1.74 inches

Weight: 83.55 grams

Composition: .900 gold, .100 copper

Edge: Reeded

Net Weight: 2.41757 ounces pure gold

and it would be so fine to put a really high face value on the Coin like $250

ms70

ddink

Fullstrike, one ounce is already too pricey for me--three ounces would price even more people out of it (at least $1500 is how much the set would cost).

DominusDeus

Yea, I can see this set costing more than I can afford. One ounce of gold is worth more than my two most valueable coins.

And it would seem there are 10 planets now, and perhaps more by 2008. Not to mention we don't even have a clear view of what Pluto looks like to use on the coin.

FullStrike

Article on Pan-Pac $50


<< <i>finding buyers at $100 for a $50 gold coin when wages were low, interest in numismatics was insignificant, and political and economic uncertainty high, was a difficult task at best. >>




Aw come on wouldn't anyone like to see a new 3 oz Gold Coin Coin in the spirit of that big old Panama-Pacific $50 ? If the Mint could keep the price below $2500.00 ( for the Gold Coin - $3000.00 for the set )I'm sure they could sell at least a few. Look at that 95W Silver Eagle with a mintage of 30,125 and a value around $4,000.00 - $5,000.00. I'd much rather buy a big 3 oz Gold Coin than buy one of those, especially if the final mintage ended up around 5,000.

PerryHall

It's weight is closer to 2.5 oz.

ROBERTB

In case anyone cares.........the mint is going to a layaway program for gold and platinum eagles in the very near future, I'd imagine they's allow this set under the program as well. So it might not really be out of anyones reach.

richbeat

I really like the concept, but wish it would be half dollars instead of dollar coins. That's going to be awfully pricey.

Conder101

I think whoever wrote the bill has no concept about making or designing coins. The edge inscription for the one ounce coin would require almost 49 letters more than twice the number found on the capped bust halves. The Earth dollar is directed to have designs commemorating seven different programs/concepts. And what is that bit about authorizing the mint to make bronze duplicates of the $50 gold coins? Are we doing to have a gold AND a bronze $50 coin? ( I see a real possibility for a gold plating setup) Or will the bronze coin have a different denomination? Or will it be a "copy" with no denomination? The other planet design directives also seem to me to be shall we say both vague and over ambitious.

Steve27

"Passed July 12 by the U.S. House of Representatives, the "NASA and JPL 50th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act" authorizes the Mint to produce a $50 gold coin with an image of the Sun and nine $1 silver coins each representing one of the nine planets in our solar system."

Will they have to revise the act to reflect the recent discovery of a 10th planet in our solar system?

DominusDeus

And you know... the only way they could truly pull this set off, is if the coins are holographically colorized. Otherwise, they'll almost all look the same... Uranus and Neptune are almost identical in size and shape. Pluto, we don't even have a clear picture of yet, nor do we have a clear image of 2003 UB313. Venus wouldn't be anything to look at except a sphere, unless colorized.

MajorDuty

<< <i>....And it would seem there are 10 planets now, and perhaps more by 2008. Not to mention we don't even have a clear view of what Pluto looks like.... >>



Not.

How good of a picture do you want?

You're obviously not that into astronomy:

flaminio

MajorDuty, where did those Pluto pix come from? I consider myself fairly "in to" astronomy, but I've never seen Pluto pix that good (assuming it is indeed Pluto).

Got Charon ones too?

flaminio

First of all, this is a stupid idea. Not as dumb as the First Lady gold coins, but quite dumb nonetheless.

That said, it'd be cool if they used coin sizes appropriate to the planet sizes.

Make the Sun the $50 slug. Jupiter could be a dollar. Saturn a half dollar (and make it bimetallic, to symbolize the rings). Uranus and Neptune would be quarters. Earth and Venus could be nickels. Mars, a dime. And Mercury and Pluto would be 3 cent silvers .

That'd be a fun set.

mhammerman

Yeah major duty...those pics seem like some kind of internal organ photo, like maybe a colon or something.

MajorDuty

From a jpl.nasa.gov site.

I assume the pictures are incredibly enhanced.




Charon:

flaminio

<< <i>I assume the pictures are incredibly enhanced. >>

I think that'd be an understatement. Here's a more typical Pluto/Charon pic, from the Hubble Space Telescope:

Wekar

MajorDuty - you gotta be careful looking at pics at jpl.nasa.gov, they have quite a few "artists conception", which that picture of Pluto and Charon are.

The best real pics of Pluto aren't even remotely that pretty:
Hubble WiFPIC2 pics of Pluto, best pics of Pluto ever


As for the "10th" planet, what about the 9 1/2th (Sedna)? or 9 3/4th (Quaoar)?

The field of Astronomy, specifically those folks at the Internation Astronomonical Union, are getting to have the fun debate now about how exactly to define a Planet (vs. a Kuiper Belt object vs. an Oort Cloud object vs. ???). Personally, I don't think Pluto should be a called planet, but probably always will be because of history.

edited to attach photo

joefro

Although I definitely couldn't afford to buy them... I would love to see a coin series commemorating our exploration of space and our solar system as a whole. I started a thread about a month ago asking about space related coins the mint has produced as well as the hundreds of coins and medals produced by all of the non-official mints (which everyone could care less about.. they have a medal for every single mission ever flown for christ's sake!) I would love to see what the coins look like. And as for what Neptune and Pluto and all that look like... we KNOW that Pluto is a big ball of Ice. We KNOW that Neptune is a giant ball of blue gas. It being the second most distant planet (in the inner solar system), we have still taken amazing photographs of it..

Neptune:


This is NOT an artist's conception. We have even discovered details on Neptune' s surface such as a dark spot similar to the one on Jupiter.

I think we know enough to make the planets look cool and accurate.. Neptune pictured above is about as boring as you get in our Solar System. Earth, Jupiter, Saturn... these would all look sweet!

joefro

Pluto Info from http://www.nineplanets.org/pluto.html:





<< <i>Pluto is the only planet that has not been visited by a spacecraft. Even the Hubble Space Telescope can resolve only the largest features on its surface (left and above). There is a planned mission called New Horizons that will launch in 2006 if its funding is continued. >>




<< <i>Fortunately, Pluto has a satellite, Charon. By good fortune, Charon was discovered (in 1978) just before its orbital plane moved edge-on toward the inner solar system. It was therefore possible to observe many transits of Pluto over Charon and vice versa. By carefully calculating which portions of which body would be covered at what times, and watching brightness curves, astronomers were able to construct a rough map of light and dark areas on both bodies. >>

Wekar

funding for the first unmanned mission to Pluto is as close as it's ever been, probably means a 1 in 5 chance of actually happening, but, if it does, why not Send your name to Pluto!

flaminio

<< <i>The field of Astronomy, specifically those folks at the Internation Astronomonical Union, are getting to have the fun debate now about how exactly to define a Planet (vs. a Kuiper Belt object vs. an Oort Cloud object vs. ???). Personally, I don't think Pluto should be a called planet, but probably always will be because of history. >>

I agree. I think the newly discovered tenth planet is just the beginning. As telescopes, computers, and observing techniques get refined I predict that in the next 20-30 years dozens of Pluto-esque objects will be discovered in the outer reaches of the solar system. Do they all get planetary stature? Pluto will remain a planet, and perhaps this tenth one as well (ten is a nice round number) but I think calling every largish remote ball of ice a "planet" will get old fast.

joefro

Quote from article:



<< <i>Sales exceeding that amount will go the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution to be split evenly between the preservation, maintenance, and display of space artifacts at the National Air and Space Museum, and for the establishment of a new stand-alone National Museum of Money. >>

Wekar

For those who are curious and haven't seen it, here's the discovery pictures of the "10th planet":


This is three images side by side with the "planet" circled, to show it's motion against the background stars, thus proving it isn't a star.

If the Mint did get to make a 10th planet commem coin, what do you think the design for this would look like? Big wide open fields with a tiny speck in the middle that could be mistaken for a bagmark?

joefro

<< <i>

<< <i>The field of Astronomy, specifically those folks at the Internation Astronomonical Union, are getting to have the fun debate now about how exactly to define a Planet (vs. a Kuiper Belt object vs. an Oort Cloud object vs. ???). Personally, I don't think Pluto should be a called planet, but probably always will be because of history. >>



I agree. I think the newly discovered tenth planet is just the beginning. As telescopes, computers, and observing techniques get refined I predict that in the next 20-30 years dozens of Pluto-esque objects will be discovered in the outer reaches of the solar system. Do they all get planetary stature? Pluto will remain a planet, and perhaps this tenth one as well (ten is a nice round number) but I think calling every largish remote ball of ice a "planet" will get old fast. >>



We will definitely be discovering more "large objects with predictable orbits" in the future. I think the difference between Pluto and these soon-to-be-discovered objects is that Pluto is within the "inner solar system" and these new objects being detected are floating around far far far off in the Oort could as Wekar mentioned.



<< <i>The Oort cloud (sometimes called the Öpik-Oort Cloud) is a postulated spherical cloud of comets situated about 50,000 to 100,000 AU from the Sun. This is approximately 1000 times the distance from the Sun to Pluto or roughly one light year, almost a quarter of the distance from the Sun to Proxima Centauri, the star nearest the Sun. >>



Thats pretty freakin far!!

richbeat

The debate over planetary status will be pretty interesting, depending on how much of it we get to hear about. A set of criteria will have to be established. I think, as long as Pluto is designated a planet, that any object as large or larger (and this one is larger) that orbits the sun will have to be called a planet. I read an article where there are astronomers who believe that there may be objects as large as Mars out there somewhere.

I also read that this tenth planet will be given the name Xena. I don't know if that's been confirmed or not.

Conder101

<< <i>I also read that this tenth planet will be given the name Xena. >>


Not likely since planets are named after Gods, and I'm not aware of a God named Xena.

291fifth

The congressmen who voted for this measure should be sent on a fact-finding mission to the 10th planet.

Modern junk at its worst.

joefro

<< <i>The congressmen who voted for this measure should be sent on a fact-finding mission to the 10th planet.

Modern junk at its worst. >>



I swear, some of you people seem like you want the mint to just stop making coins. Just because you don't like things the mint is making... everything is the last half a century is automatically labeled "modern crap"? Are there any recent non-commem, non-bullion coins that you consider not to be modern crap?

Seriously, what could be more deserving of a coin design then our solar system and the history of mankind exploring it? Would you rather see some more dead presidents? Celebrities from the 1900s??? What could the mint make that you wouldn't label modern crap??? If you don't think our planet is worth honoring on a coin... what do you think is? I'm curious..

MajorDuty

<< <i>

<< <i>The congressmen who voted for this measure should be sent on a fact-finding mission to the 10th planet.

Modern junk at its worst. >>



I swear, some of you people seem like you want the mint to just stop making coins. Just because you don't like things the mint is making... everything is the last half a century is automatically labeled "modern crap"? Are there any recent non-commem, non-bullion coins that you consider not to be modern crap? >>



Here here. I'm with you on that thought.

Mercury

I like this idea alot better that the Presidents and their wifes. That one bugs me just because I am against the idea of eventually having living people on our coins. This idea I like, not sure if I will be able to afford it but, the idea has possibilties if it done right.

I also agree about the modern bashing. If you don't like it, Dont' collect it. Period. Why do others have to put down people and things they don't like. There a few of the early issues that I think are downright ugly. But, you don't see me going around and finding every thread about them and posting how ugly I think they are.

Mercury

I forgot to add I also like the idea that some of the proceeds of the planet coins will go to the creation of a national coin museum.

richbeat

The name Xena came from a UK Observer article and is an unofficial name.