[meteorite-list] Pairing discussion/questions

From: Chladnis Heirs <news_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:07:12 +0100
Message-ID: <000601ca993a$9d56ba20$07b22959_at_name86d88d87e2>

Hello Jeff,

>This statement, appearing in some of the recent emails, is wrong.

Really? I was speaking about "different meteorites".

M.Lindstrom & R.Score
came to the the result,

"that the average number of Antarctic meteorites per pairing group is 5."

M.Lindstrom, R.Score:
Populations, Paring and Rare Meteorites in the U.S. Antarctic Meteorite
Collection

http://www-curator.jsc.nasa.gov/antmet/ppr.cfm


>And where in the world did this
>figure of billions of dollars being spent by the US to collect its
>20,000 meteorites come from?

Not the U.S. - USA, Japan, China, Europe together.

Antarctic is an expensive place to work and to live.
You need special equipment, you have to transport everything there, you have
to maintain the infrastructure, and like with any other program, you have
the running costs for the personnel (salaries, social insurances, working
place costs).

The figures are scattered over the web.
There you can read, only to give some examples, that one standard ANSMET
team causes 800,000$ primary costs without secondary costs for 6 weeks on
the ice - and that the whole Antarctic summer semester over would be hunted.

Somewhere you will find, that the supply and the transport of fuels
to maintain the McMurdo Station costed 70 millions $ in one year.

And so on.

Personnel costs too, remember EUROMET, who had basic costs for personnel
without any expedition yet of 20 millions $ per year (they went also to
Antarctica).

Labs, tertiary costs -

it will be all difficult to amount.
(Would be interesting, if someone would do this once).

Well and then think, that not only the U.S. are hunting there, but for a
similar long time NIPR, then the few EUROMET trips, as well as China.

Well and that for 33 years...

....will easily sum up to a total of far more than a billion.


Personnel, equipment, insurances, pension plan, fuels, transportation,
administration,....
These costs the public hasn't to pay, if they are buying NWAs.

The Bulletins you know.
Seen the tkws and the numbers from almost all rarest, rare and semi-rare
types - it was meanwhile more found in NWA than in Antarctica.

An unclassified averagely weathered kg NWA-OC delivered to your doorstep
costs you around 30$.
What does it cost to recover 1kg of an averagely weathered OC in Antarctica?

How long does it take and what did it cost to find 19 different lunaites in
Antarctica for USA, Japan, Europe and China together? 33 years.
How long takes the same task in the private desert sector? 5 years.

What does cost 1 1/4 kg of an classified R-Chondrite from NWA? 12,000$?
In 33 years of Antarctic expeditions in total R-chondrites were found:
1 1/4kg.

A scientist is accepted to take part in an ANSMET-hunt.
He steps out of the door in sunny Arizona - will 12,000$ be enough to reach
his final destination?

Jeff, don't get me wrong please.

It is not my intention to play the cold desert hunts off against the hot
desert hunts.

The Antarctic meteorite programs are wonderful, great, absolutely necessary
and the expenses more than justified.

But in my opinion it would also extremely stupid, if science would abstain
from the NWA and Oman finds, and wouldn't work additionally on them.
Because they are meanwhile even more manifold than the Antarctic finds,
outweigh them by mass,
and cost the public compared to the Antarctic finds virtually almost nothing
at all.

To set them aside would IMHO also not directly justifiable to the public,
because, sorry to say that, but sometimes it is forgotten, ANSMET, NIPR,
PRIC, ect. are paid with public tax-money.

I'd say,
Martin



-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von Jeff
Grossman
Gesendet: Dienstag, 19. Januar 2010 13:46
An: Meteorite-list
Betreff: Re: [meteorite-list] Pairing discussion/questions

> Make your homework. How many different meteorites do we have from
> Antarctica after a third of a century hunting and spending billions of
> USD? 7000.
This statement, appearing in some of the recent emails, is wrong. There
are over 16,000 classified meteorites from the ANSMET expeditions, plus
a few thousand unclassified. Counting the Japanese, Chinese,European,
Korean, and minor collections, There ~27,000 classified Antarctic
meteorites, and probably close to 20,000 not yet classified (mostly in
the Japanese and Chinese collections). And where in the world did this
figure of billions of dollars being spent by the US to collect its
20,000 meteorites come from?

Also, don't overlook the fact that Antarctic meteorite have proven to be
vastly more valuable scientifically than NWA meteorites. They probably
occur as subjects of scientific publications at >10x the frequency as
NWA meteorites (I posted statistics on this some years ago, but can't
locate it at the moment). This is because the main masses are well curated.

Jeff

-- 
Dr. Jeffrey N. Grossman       phone: (703) 648-6184
US Geological Survey          fax:   (703) 648-6383
954 National Center
Reston, VA 20192, USA
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Received on Tue 19 Jan 2010 02:07:12 PM PST