Growing up in the 1960’s, I am as interested in NASA and the astronauts as I am with coins. It was known that Gus Grissom carried several dimes with him in his Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule. If you saw the movie, The Right Stuff there was an overly dramatized scene in the movie showing dimes pouring out of his space suit while he was being briefed after his capsule sank. That was not what happened. I had known those dimes to be lost. I did find one old auction of a purported Grissom dime but I believe that it was not genuine. The astronauts carried personal effects pouches with them mostly for personal photos. Grissom did have some dimes in his personal pouch but they sank with his Mercury capsule. I just discovered that the dimes were recovered with the Mercury capsule in 1999 and the dimes are currently on display at the Cosmosphere museum in Kansas.
Wow. The first dimes in space! And to think, just a few short decades ago, nobody thought it was possible!
Elon Musk has made wildly optimistic claims about the eventual cost-to-low-Earth-orbit for his Big Falcon Rocket. He promises to bring launch costs down to around $75 per kilogram. At that rate, launching a dime into orbit would cost 16 cents or so. Why on Earth would anyone... oh, never mind.
Coins are sent into space quite regularly. Some are made special just for the trip. I have read some articles about it. But did not save any links. I have a Franklin Mint Mini-coin made from a special melt containing Silver that was carried to the moon on Apollo 14. Yea-ha!! Presented to the Members of the Franklin Mint Collectors Society. Which I am not.
