http://www.stampandcoin.co.uk FEBRUARY 2016^15Sign up for the free Stamp & Coin Mart e-newsletter and receive news direct to your inbox every month. Sign up at: http://stamp.cm/esign-upNew stamps
Romfilatelia have issued a set of poignant
‘Angel’s Tears’ stamps to mark the tragic fire
at a nightclub that killed sixty people in the
Romanian city of Bucharest in October 2015.
The funds raised from the sale of the stamps
will be donated to the Floreasca Clinical
Emergency Hospital, where many of the
victims are still recovering.The Falkland Islands have issued a six-stamp
set depicting birds of prey. The stamps show
the barn owl (on a 31p value), short-eared
owl (31p), red-backed buzzard (76p), crested
caracara (76p), peregrine falcon (£1.01) and
striated caracara (£1.22). The stamps, issued
on 13 January, were designed by Georgina
Strange and printed by BDT International
Security Printing.Singapore Post and India Post have issued
a joint stamp set featuring presidential
residences to mark the fiftieth anniversary
of the establishment of diplomatic relations
between two countries. The stamps were
jointly launched by Singapore Prime
Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Indian Prime
Minister Narendra Modi during Modi’s
recent visit to Singapore.A new set of definitive stamps from Tristan
da Cunha, one the most remote inhabited
islands in the world, depicts ships that carried
mail to and from the island between 1904
and 1953. Designed by Andrew Robinson
and printed by BDT International, the stamps
show HMS Odin (1p), RMS Asturias (2p), SS
Empress Of France (5p), HMS Carlisle (10p),
Barque Ponape (25p), RMS Atlantis (35p),
Sailing Ship Cap Pilar (45p), RMS Franconia
(60p), HMS Queen Of Bermuda (£1), HMS
Carnarvon Castle (£1.50), RMS Darro (£2),
and MV Pequena (£5).Competition winners
Congratulations to the following readers, who
won Long To Reign Over Us presentation
packs, courtesy of Royal Mail, in our
November issue: Mr R Fielder, Weymouth;
John Foulger, Norwich; Ron Mansley,
Darlington; Susan Prentice, Stirling; Mr S
Wilton, Smalley; Mr G Bates, Sheffield; James
Elliott, Glossop; Dave Olden, Farnham; Miss
S Innes, Edinburgh; James Stott, Montrose.Five-year-old budding astronaut Oliver Giddings
recently set Royal Mail a tough challenge by asking how
much it would cost to send a letter to Mars, prompting
the postal service to actually find out.
Perhaps spotting a good PR opportunity, Royal Mail
customer services decided to find out the cost, firstly
by contacting the NASA team Kennedy Space Centre
in Florida for help with their calculations. Taking into
account the weight of the card on the next mission to
Mars, the distance and the cost of the fuel, Royal Mail
revealed that it would cost Oliver a cool £11,602.25.
‘Wow! That’s a lot of money,’ said Oliver, who lives near Lytham St Anne’s on the Fylde
coast. His mum Melanie added: ‘Oliver has always been an inquisitive little boy and is very
keen on anything to do with space, stars and planets. He was so excited to get such a great
letter back from Royal Mail.’
The response from Royal Mail, following advice from the NASA Mars Outreach Team,
began with the distance from Mars to Earth, some 567 million kilometres away. Royal Mail
senior customer advisor, Andrew Smout, said in his reply to Oliver: ‘NASA also told me that
their last visit to Mars, carrying the Curiosity rover, cost about $700 million. The spaceship
itself is very small, so storage is at a premium. Based on how much the spaceship weighed,
compared to how much it costs to get to Mars; they said that something weighing up to 100
grams would cost them approximately $18,000 to fly to Mars.’
Royal Mail also considered the cost of sending the letter to any of the current NASA launch
sites in the USA, Republic of the Marshall Islands and Alaska, along with the cost of rocket
fuel. The letter continued: ‘The team reached a conclusion about the price, based on the
information NASA provided and Royal Mail’s current pricing. We decided that, if you wanted
to send a normal letter to someone living on Mars, it would cost about £11,602 and 25
pence. That’s 18,416 First Class stamps or 21,486 Second Class stamps!’Mail to Mars costs over £11,
Astronaut Major Tim Peake recently began his six-month mission on
the International Space Station (ISS), and took along seven covers
produced by Isle of Man Post Office which he will sign and send back.
The special covers mark Major Peake’s journey as the first British
astronaut on the International Space Station (ISS). A spokesperson
for the Isle of Man Post Office explained: ‘He will sign the seven
covers while on the ISS on 12 January, the actual date of the
150th Anniversary of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) who
have worked with Isle of Man Post Office to bring this project all
together. The covers will then be sent back by supply rocket to
Earth. Once back on Earth, one of the covers will be sent to Isle of
Man Post Office and the remaining ones will be distributed to
the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) where some of these will
then go on display at aviation museums both in the UK and
the United States.’
The special covers feature all eight stamps from the RAeS
150th anniversary collection due for release on 12 January.
Find out more at http://www.iomstamps.comFor stories of real life rocket mail and quirky postal delivery
methods, don’t miss our new ‘Postal Curiosities’ series starting
in next month’s Stamp & Coin Mart!...and IOM covers taken to space station
From red postbox to red planet? That will
need over 18,000 1st Class stampsThe IOM covers will be signed in space
before being returned in a supply rocketp09 Stamp update.indd 15 21/12/2015 09: