By Kerry Rodgers, World Coin News February 10, 2010

On April 12, 1981, the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic space flight, NASA’s first reusable space vehicle, Columbia, took off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. Commander John W. Young and Pilot Robert L. Crippen were at the controls.

Two days later, it glided back to Earth to land at Edwards Air Force Base, California, having completed 37 Earth orbits during which it traveled 1,074,567 miles. An entire new era in space exploration had commenced with the shuttle program dominating NASA’s manned operations ever since Columbia’s successful flight.

Most appropriately, the launch of this revolutionary craft is the subject of the final release in the Cook Islands’ revolutionary “Orbit and Beyond” silver dollar series from the Perth Mint.

Following on from salutes to Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin, Alexei Leonov and Apollo 11, the rotating reverse of the new coin, designed by Darryl Bellotti, shows the first fully operational vehicle of the shuttle fleet orbiting around the central image of the Blue Marble that is our Earth. The obverse displays Raphael Maklouf’s effigy of Queen Elizabeth II.

The outer ring contains 1 ounce (31.140 grams) of .999 fine silver and has a diameter of 38.79 mm and a thickness of 3.75 mm. The central core, showing different views of Earth, is made of a non-precious metal. Mintage is 25,000.

Even before the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, NASA had begun to assess designs for a manned space craft that could achieve orbit and land. After much debate over design capability and cost, the Space Task Group chaired by Vice President Spiro Agnew opted for a reusable winged orbiter to be launched vertically into space via solid rocket boosters fitted with an expendable external tank. NASA’s shuttle program, aka the Space Transportation System, was formally launched on Jan. 5, 1972, by President Nixon.

The first completed shuttle was named Enterprise following a write-in from Trekkies worldwide. It was used to make a series of glide-approach and landing tests to prove the design. The first fully operational space vehicle was OV-102, aka Columbia, followed by Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. Each was designed to have 10 years of operational life, allowing for 100 launches.

Each shuttle can carry five to seven, or even eight, astronauts at a squeeze into low earth orbit along with up to 50,000 pounds of payload. Following launch, a shuttle takes about eight-and-a-half minutes to accelerate to over 17,000 mph and achieve orbit. In order to return, the pilot fires the orbital maneuvering engines to slow the craft and allow it re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. During descent and landing the shuttle behaves as a glider.

To date the combined shuttle fleet has undertaken 131 missions during which Columbia and Challenger were destroyed with the loss of their entire crews of 14 astronauts.

In recent years the remaining vehicles have been used to carry large payloads into space, primarily to the International Space Station, as well as to prolong the life of the highly successful Hubble Space Telescope.

When the assembly of the ISS is completed later this year with the 134th launch, all vehicles will be retired from service. At that point the shuttle program will have consumed some US$174 billion. The total value of equipment on hand is some $12 billion with the program employing more than 5,000 at 654 facilities.

To obtain your own rotating Columbia dollar, try your favorite dealer or go to www.perthmint.com.au or write to Perth Mint, 310 Hay St., East Perth, WA 6004, Australia.



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