Two spheres

George,

What your saying is just not true. I am a student
of Dr Michael Gaffey, one of the chief scientists of
the NEAR spacecraft and one of the most widely
recognized experts of spectroscopy of asteroids. He
has stated many times to me of the problems we have
had with asteroid research. Sure, you can tell fairly
easy the amount of pyroxene and olivine within an
asteroid using spectroscopy and to a lesser extent
iron and a few others with absolute PERFECT viewing
conditions. But htat is about it. You CANNOT find
uranium with today's techniques. IF your truly
interested in learning this stu,, I highly recommend
you take some astronomy courses to learn more about
spectroscopy before making these claims.

I've already attacked your meteorite claims in a
previous email yet you still cite that. Once again,
there are TRACE amounts of He3 on SOME meteorites.
Not close to the amounts that would be needed to be
mined.

As far as earth mining of meteorite impacts, there is
only one such spot that I am familar with, Sudbury.
>From there we have gotten alot of nickel, copper,
cobalt, platinum, palladium and gold (mostly Ni
though). No He3 though and to my knowledge, not any
uranium that is claimed.

Also, a problem with meteorites that we have on hand
here on Earth: most volatiles burn up in the
atmosphere, so we have no real idea that content of
volatiles on an asteroid.

Bottom line, NEO are a great future mineral resource,
no one on this list will argue with you on that point.
What you are missing is that they are not the only
resource out there, nor are they the best spot to look
for all resources.

Even Mars has things there which are valuable that we
prolly could not get on NEOs or the Moon, precious
gems. Yes, there is ample evidence I have seen to
support the formation of ruby, emeralds and the like
on Mars. To my knowledge, the geological process that
creates these will make it very unlikely that these be
found on the Moon or NEOs.

I am not sure why I am even arguing with you on this
point anymore, you have so far shown no sign of
backing up any assertions you have made and will not
listen to any number of people on this list. You've
even gone so far as to insult a few people with whom I
have a lot of respect for their opinions (even though
I do disagree with them occassionally myself). If all
you want to do is jump around and flap your arms,
fine, I'll quit responding. If you wish to start a
more serious talk on these issues, one backed up with
actual facts, then I'll be happy to continue this
discussion and hopefully we will both learn something
new.

Ryan Z
(who is currently trying to boost up the space-related
content of wikipedia and would love to see others also
participate)

--- George Perkins wrote: