[meteorite-list] A New Question

[Mike Bandli]

David,

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

http://www.mail-archive.com/meteorite-list@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?Â