Vistas of Meteor Crater

Yesterday I blogged about our visit to Meteor Crater and how the private owners have created a swank shopping and educative space in the desert. This is a very successful business model which benefits the individual, visitors and the government. The individual owner of the property preserves, maintains, and promotes the place. Visitors get the opportunity to learn about meteors and other space phenomena and the government gets its taxes. It is a win-all situation from all aspects.
Here are some more pictures of the Meteor Crater. I wish they would allow visitors to go down into the depths of the crater, but since they have done some mining in the past looking for precious metals at the site of the meteor fall, they are little wary of letting people inside the crater. For now visitors have to content themselves looking over the rim of the crater and the museum does offer some guided hiking tours which take visitors half-way round the crater.

Meteor Crater, Arizona

Meteor Crater in Arizona is one of the largest craters in the world formed as a result of impact of meteor showers. Surprisingly this crater is not a government owned national monument, but a privately held museum which offers tours, and allows visitors to look around for a fee. One good thing though is that the private owners of this crater have not modified it or exploited the land for commercial purposes. The location continues to be one huge crater located amidst the rugged desert/ arid state of Arizona in the US. This location has been used by the NASA to train astronauts in the past. There have been allegations that the original moon landing by Neil Armstrong, et al was a hoax and that it was filmed here. I don't know about those conspiracy theories, all I know is that I visited this huge crater and stood on its periphery. The attached exhibition is a great place to learn about space explorations, meteors and comets. It would be a great place to take kids to educate them in a fun filled way about space.