[meteorite-list] Fall Patterns (& Latest Canadian Meteorite Find)

From: MeteorHntr_at_aol.com <MeteorHntr_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Jul 15 19:13:41 2005
Message-ID: <796C021A.16161E33.0BF9B800_at_aol.com>

Chris and List;

Chris was commenting on my statements about the surge in fall recoveries in India:
****
Here is another hypothesis: Was there a bright person somewhere in the area that all of a sudden, say maybe 10 years ago or so, actually started to follow up on reports of meteorite falls? Maybe they were paid to do this kind of work, or maybe they were just interested. And maybe that person actually went out and started chasing fireball reports, and wonder of all wonders, they started finding some?

I know such a theory would be quite embarrassing to both the Smithsonian and the Canadians, as they had miserable results with their "fireball image capturing networks" over the long time they spent trying.
****

Then Chris stated:
***
Each network had one recovery in about five years of operation. Is that
miserable? I don't know. We've been running four years now, with no
recoveries. Our equipment is better. Still, the problem of recovering
meteorites from meteor data is a difficult one. Even if you know with
perfect accuracy the trajectory of the meteoroid, and you have current,
accurate wind data for all altitudes, there is still an uncertainty of many
square kilometers in calculating the ground position. That is a lot of area
to cover, typically by just a few people.
Personally, I'd consider one recovery every few years in a sparsely
inhabited area pretty good.
***

My point was that one of the hypothesis for the 1 meteorite fall recovered per year over the last 10 years might be that someone(s) might actually be trying to find them now, in contrast to more of them might actually be falling now.

As for one recovery per 5 years being "pretty good," (as Chris stated) that is hard to say. At the start of those projects, was that the definition of "success" was that they were hoping to find one per 5 years?

I might be wrong, but somewhere I picked up that there was a disappointment that after all the time and cost invested that there wasn't a general feeling that the results were "pretty good." Maybe the term "miserable" was a little too extreme. Then again, maybe not.

By the way, what did those two projects end up costing to get the one meteorite per 5 years? Do we have a price per gram known?

You know, this brings up another point. I have asked "cost questions" in the past on this list. I have asked what publicly employed curators and researchers get paid, as well as the cost of projects (like the Indian scientist that did the research for NASA) and I have never once had a reply.

Does anyone know these answers?

Is there an easy way to find these kind of answers?

Now this Tempel1 project cost $333M and that was stated in virtually every newspaper report I read, so I take it financial information is not kept a secret.

Answer the question as to how much it cost to recover the 1 meteorite per 5 years and I will re-evaluate whether the results were indeed "miserable" or not. Maybe the technical terminology of "not so hot" or "not shabby" might be more accurate.

Oh, and then we can compare the cost per gram to what this new record holder in Canada spent to find his two recoveries. ;-)


Steve Arnold
Senor Numero Uno
Received on Fri 15 Jul 2005 07:13:33 PM PDT