[meteorite-list] Prospectors, Scientists Vie for Rocks More Precious Than Gold (Meteorites)

[stan .]

>This worries some scientists who study meteorites for clues about the
>early life of our solar system. They wonder how many new finds they'll
>get access to before the space rocks are sliced into collectible
>fragments and disappear into private collections.
*snip*
>''I don't think of them as my competition," Lauretta said, ''because
>they're out there pounding the hot desert ground, making new
>discoveries, when I don't have time to do that."

am i the only person who finds the 'push' of these articles about Kilgore's 
efforts personally offensive?

comemrcial meteorite exploration - most of it int he last decade - has 
resulted in more new types of meteorites and more precious planetary samples 
than the combined historic efforts of research collection. i'm not faulting 
the academics, they have limited time and money to work with, but quite 
simply the oly way these rocks would never be avalible for study is if they 
were left in the desert - something the academic world seems largely content 
to do. very rarely is an unusual stone found that isnt formally classified 
at some point. when this is done the type specimin is curated at the 
classifying laboratory and avalible for study by any qualified researcher 
who wants it. the faster exciting new material comes to the collectors 
market the faster type specimins of scientifically important material will 
be avalible to researchers - at no cost to science I might ad (AFIK no one 
lab is paying for the privalge of doing classifications, if anything the 
reverse is true)

I'm going to write the author of this article and sugegst anyone who might 
feel the same as i do should as well...