[meteorite-list] A New Question

From: Mike Bandli <fuzzfoot_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 00:04:17 +0000
Message-ID: <051420080004.16534.482A2C80000BA7520000409622007621949B01010096969A00_at_comcast.net>

David,

Here is a great post made by Frank P. in 2002 regarding the topic:

http://www.mail-archive.com/meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com/msg05261.html

Cheers,

Mike Bandli

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: mexicodoug at aim.com
> "Does anyone know What is the reasoning behind the ban?"
>
> Hi David,
>
> There is no "ban". Interested collectors from many nations have been
> obviously stocking up collections for years with Antarctic meteorites.
>
> Anyone (including commercial tour operators) can put together a
> scientific plan for collecting Antarctic meteorites - at your co$$$t-
> and apply for a permit. You cannot b denied the permit in your
> jurisdiction as long as you can make convincing guarantees as judged by
> administrators that you can provide at your cost, the required
> scientific care in collecting, curating and furnishing the meteorites
> basically free, to bonafide researchers for scientific studies, with
> the caveat that if any time during the perpetuity that follows you can
> no longer do this, you must transfer everything to an entity that
> properly can.
>
> The reason is simple, the Antarctic is a scientific preserve where the
> natural resources are protected, like, say, the Old Faithful Geyser in
> Yellowstone Park. If someone decided to drill out and cap the geyser
> and pipe out the hot water for commercial use, how would that play on
> your sense of morality? I think it would bother me... The scientific
> preserve creation is a lucky windfall for environmentalists. The real
> motivation behind this government collaboration is the worry that
> brazen nations (and there is never a shortage of these) might abuse
> this "no-man's land" while other "well behaved nations" stood by and
> got jealous, disadvantaged, or had their security threatened. So the
> countries agreed that military, disposal or commercial (i.e., mining,
> harvesting flora or fauna) acivities by any treaty signatories was
> mutually prohibited.
>
> This is the "ban" you mention, no commercial meteorite hunters may
> apply unless they plan on shouldering all the trip and collection
> expenses by themselves and then giving away the meteorites to qualified
> scientific interests only under the perpetually self-financed curating
> scheme already mentioned. If this non-commercial ban were not in
> effect, anyone could go to this frozen paradise and dump toxic wastes,
> drill for oil and leave their holes uncovered, tear down the mountains
> to make cement, colonize the place ignoring the unclear set of prior
> claims of souvreinty (which others put on hold with promises that no
> one else could ever jump their claim) and put explosive mines and guns
> pointed everywhere (like big boy nations do anyway with their floating
> and flying fleets on our polluted deep oceans). So politicians sided
> with Greenpeace once this past millenia and decided that making it a
> place to observe but not disturb was the only way to go.
>
> Today, Antarctica is a pristine, white, wonderland, teaming with a
> unique spectrum of life, a veritable fantasyland but for real, a
> fragile window into an environment that is just as much Earth as the
> Amazon jungle - which very few will every have the opportunity to
> admire in person, unless they seriously take up a career in the
> sciences and make contributions to society from studues there. It is
> not a live battlefield subject where children are forced to work the
> mines for $0.25 per day without medical care for all the fingers and
> toes lost to frostbite, just so we can buy disposible containers with
> Coca Cola's lithographed logotype.
>
> I don't know, but I would think it is not impossible to get meteorites
> from permitted curating institutions in trades for special material
> with perfect provenance traced back to its orientation on the ice.
> However, good luck trading as I don't think anyone wants to have to
> justify to administrators who always manage to attack with hindsight -
> why they made a dumb trade of material that has been cataloged and
> never unfrozen, and acts as a control as well as a variable, since the
> day it was found. Had Tagish Lake happened in Alaska and collecting
> been done like a space mission by private individuals, we could put the
> concept to a real test.
>
> Put another way, the parties realized there is no such thing as putting
> it half-way in and not making other suitors jealous.
>
> Best wishes
> Doug
> P.S. This is the only place I know where governments consider costs to
> be incremental costs (and don't even give you credit for your meteorite
> scale cube or double baggies). Everywhere else governments seem to
> have a concept of cost that includes all the fat that they produce.
> Ah...human governance...
>
> PPS The Antarctic is but a coming attraction of what is to come in
> Space... Probably it will be immoral to mine an asteroid in the
> "Federation National Parks of the Asteroid Belt" at some point ...
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David & Kitt Deyarmin <bobadebt at ec.rr.com>
> To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> Sent: Tue, 13 May 2008 5:04 pm
> Subject: [meteorite-list] A New Question
>
>
> Does anyone know What is the reasoning behind the ban??
Received on Tue 13 May 2008 08:04:17 PM PDT