most meteorites are primarily iron

I have to note that this is not correct. Chondrites make up the vast majority of meteorites, and even the most iron-rich chondrites contain much less than 50% iron by weight.

I haven’t been to Barringer Crater and I don’t know all the sweet, gory details of the big bolide that made it, but LPI seems to have a nice summary. The estimated 30 tons of meteoritic iron retrieved from the site certainly isn’t very much, and I have heard a variant of Agent641’s story before, so I’ll refrain on commenting there.

I’m a little sad thinking about all that oxidized iron, though. On Luna that stuff gets reduced instead, so that the regolith is peppered with little spheres of iron. Of course, here, we don’t get the little balls of iron, or much in the way of intact craters at all… damn it, we could use a few more.

Sighs Earth. For all the predators and the continent-busting rifts here, this place just isn’t very hardcore sometimes.