In terms of outer space, 1969 was a pretty neat year: The Apollo 11 spaceflight landed on the moon, making astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin the first humans to set foot on the lunar surface. We’re part of the group that believes the moon landing wasn’t faked, so we suppose it’s an event worth celebrating. Our country’s House of Representatives seems to agree with us, as they just passed a bill that requires “the Secretary of the Treasury to mint commemorative coins in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the first manned landing on the Moon” (via Gizmodo).
The bill, titled H.R. 2726, says that the Treasury will create convex coins “to more closely resemble the visor of the astronaut’s helmet of the time,” so it won’t be like the flat coins you’re used to. As for what the coins will be, we’ll be able to get our hands on $5 gold coins, $1 silver coins, and half-dollar clad coins, the designs of which will be decided by a contest, the winning design of which will be “emblematic of the United States space program.”
The treasury will sell the coins with a $10-$50 surcharge, and the proceeds will benefit the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum’s “Destination 3 Moon†exhibit, the Astronauts Memorial Foundation, and the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. These coins aren’t yet a foregone conclusion, though, the as Senate must still unanimously vote to approve the bill, and then the President has to decide whether or not to sign the bill into law.
We need curved space coins, so let’s make this happen, America.
Featured image: NASA
