Page 226 - Lunacy and the Age of Deception

The map above, copied from the Popular Science article, shows some of the locations the NASA
administrators visited. Were the reasons for the visit listed in the Popular Science article merely a
cover for other NASA activities? Was the trip’s true purpose to organize the collection of a sufficient
supply of meteorites to be used in the place of Moon rocks, since the astronauts would not actually
be going to the Moon? A strong argument can be made to support such a conclusion. We can start
by recognizing that Antarctica is the best location in the world for collecting meteorites.

Why Antarctica?
Antarctica is the world’s premier meteorite hunting-ground for two reasons. Although meteorites
fall in a random fashion all over the globe, the likelihood of finding a meteorite is enhanced if the
background material is plain and the accumulation rate of indigenous sediment is low. Consequently
the East Antarctic icesheet, a desert of ice, provides an ideal background for meteorite recovery-
go to the right place, and any rock you find must have fallen from the sky. This allows the recovery
of meteorites without bias toward types that look most different from earth rocks (a problem on the
inhabited continents) and without bias toward larger sizes.

But another factor may be equally important. As the East Antarctic ice sheet flows toward the
margins of the continent, its progress is occasionally blocked by mountains or obstructions below
the surface of the ice. In these areas, old deep ice is pushed to the surface and can become stagnant,
with very little outflow and consistent, slow inflow... Over significant stretches of time (tens of
thousands of years) phenomenal concentrations of meteorites can develop, as high as 1 per square
meter in some locations.
[Source: http://caslabs.case.edu/ansmet/faqs/]

ANSMET Personnel Searching for Meteorites in Antarctica

Since 1975, the organization called ANSMET (The Antarctic Search For Meteorites), has sent
personnel to collect meteorites during the Antarctic Summer, each mission lasting approximately 6
weeks. As of 2015, ANSMET has collected approximately 21,000 meteorites, the largest of which
weighed approximately 60 pounds. They annually bring back an average of 550 meteorites collected
by a small team of 8-13 people. Among the meteorites collected are lunaites, which are meteorites
determined to have been blasted to Earth during asteroid collisions on the Moon.

Who funds ANSMET, and who receives their meteorites? The answer in both cases is NASA.