Pluto a fan favorite, but not stellar enough

Let the debate begin.

Pluto's career as a full-fledged planet apparently has come to a close with the celestial body having been placed on irrevocable waivers by the International Astronomical Union.

Unless Pluto decides to play in the minors -- and the idea of it competing against the less-talented asteroids that populate the Dwarf Planet League is inconceivable -- its only other option is retirement.

So let us commence the discussion: After a career that many Milky Way followers consider stellar, do Pluto's outer space accomplishments merit its eventual induction into the Hall of Fame?

I'm going to disappoint a lot of fans of that cold, desolate hunk of rock, but the answer is no.

Though it was a gritty competitor, the fact remains that Pluto always ranked among the league cellar dwellers in such key statistical categories as planetary mass, mean orbital velocity, inclination of axis and equator gravity levels.

There were good reasons for its underwhelming numbers. Pluto was undersized and long had to battle the belief that it was too small to play for the IAU.

No one ever expected it to be as large as Jupiter, which nearly ate itself out of the league a few years ago. But even average-sized planets such as Venus and Mars appeared gigantic when compared to Pluto.

Pluto also wasn't exceptionally speedy, and quickness is a trait more and more astronomers are looking for these days in attempting to build championship-caliber solar systems.

It's no Mercury, certainly, but the Earth's time in the dreaded training camp orbit-around-the-sun drill was a respectable one year. By contrast, Pluto was clocked at a virtually stationary time of 247.7 years.

Pluto also went about its business without much fanfare. Consequently, it never received the headlines of Saturn, Uranus or Neptune -- spotlight-grabbing planets constantly flashing their rings and bling to the cosmos.

Even had Pluto possessed the size, speed and glitz of some of the other celestial bodies, it probably would have difficulty gaining easy entry into the Hall of Fame.

The planet likely would have suffered the same fate as former Steelers wide receiver Lynn Swann, who for years wasn't admitted to the hall because he did not have a particularly lengthy career. Pluto played a relatively brief 76 years before being cut.

Ultimately, Pluto wasn't a bust as a planet.

But it just isn't worthy of a bust in the Hall of Fame.

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