Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Why would anyone replace the perfectly good "pertaining" with "for" in that subject?
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
Please do not forget that Pluto has been and always will be a planet and yes I'm aware of the current definition.
Regards
Slashdotgirl
The more I know, the less I know
Don't practice your alliteration on me!
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Philatelists Push Petition For Pluto...
I'm not sure what oral sex has to do with Pluto...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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!!!
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
In 2015 we will be more aware that we don't have flying cars nor MrFusion than that we got near Pluto. When Doc Brown appears in his Delorean will be badly disappointed.
The American Association Against Abusively Applied Acronyms has a problem with the title of this submission.
The probe will be pretty much to Pluto by then, and it will be the 85th anniversary of the {dwarf}-planet's discovery. A nice round number that people normally reserve such celebrations for.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
My personal use of stamps is down about 50%, as more of my bills are paid electronically. As more and more data replaces first class letters, postage stamps will soon be a relic. So what can replace them as a way to publicly commemorate an event? I recognize the Post Office will not vanish entirely, since we still need to deliver physical items sometimes, but those rarely use regular stamps.
Don't worry, the post office killed off the stamp collecting hobby years ago. And the US mint is threatening to do the same to (commemorative) coin collecting.
The post office kept making stamps for the silliest things and so the hobby died due to over-saturation. Perhaps we need to realize that not -everything- needs to be commemorated in coin or stamp format and keep it for the big things that happen.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Keep it down with the "P"s, willya? My shirt is soaked, I had to wipe my face, and I had to disinfect my keyboard.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Is the "drive to explore" uniquely human?
I don't know.
My chickens are pretty inquisitive.