Maybe some of you stayed up until the wee hours of the morning this month of November to watch the fiery spectacle of the Leonid meteors. Bits of the Tempel-Tuttle comet entered the earthy atmosphere to give us quite a light show.

Sometimes, it is not just packed ice and dirt that fall on our planet, but solid metals.

Once these meteorites reach the surface of the planet, it is definitely for them a different world altogether. They left the corrosion-free environment of interplanetary space to enter the warm and humid atmosphere of Earth. While they lasted many a year without suffering oxidation, they now could turn into a pile of rust in less time than it takes the average high school graduate to name our solar system planets. Fortunately for space aficionados, some of them end up in our capable hands. Take for example the one that landed in China. It has now been cleaned using our VCI cleaners. To extend its life we have used devices to simulate conditions close to intergalactic space. Well, almost. It is actually protected with one of our coatings.

For you opportunists, think about all the meteorites rusting in dusty warehouses throughout the world.

Closer to home, we can protect metals that have been on our planet for a much longer time. Now that they have been processed and turned into useful metal parts, it is definitely our mission to ensure that they stay free of corrosion.

Several new products are introduced in this newsletter. They range from water treatment and paint additives to cleaners to MCIs. We are sure excited about them. Actually, quite a few of them have already been purchased by several customers. It is hard sometimes to keep quiet about tremendous new products. Well, all we can say is that they were developed for this very purpose. Rest assured that it is certainly not too late to get on the bandwagon.

Did somebody mention coatings? Well, Cliff Cracauer, Technical Service Engineer, addresses typical questions about coatings. Actually, Cliff is the person who worked on the meteorite as our VP of R&D, Art Ahlbrecht, reports later in this newsletter.