How Antarctic bases went from wooden huts to sci-fi chic | Hacker News Reader

How Antarctic bases went from wooden huts to sci-fi chic

bbc.com

225 pointsmisotaur67 comments

It's a daydream of mine to work in Antarctica for a season. I don't really know how it works and I doubt it's something I could do, I'm not a scientist. Seems like it would be an awesome experience though.

I just returned from a winter-over contract in Antarctica, at Palmer Station. It was an incredible experience. If you have any thought you might like it, I say go for it.

I did an AMA while there and it actually made it to the front page of reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5656e1/iama_i_dont_ha...

> Seems like it would be an awesome experience though.

Unless you're there doing research that you enjoy doing, I can tell you that it will not be an awesome experience. For a few days, OK, but beyond that, you probably will be bored to death.

I once spent 30 days in the middle of nowhere doing research. Just a few guys, no females.

When we got back to civilization, everything looked super colorful. The green leaves of plants I first saw, and it remained like that for a few days, after we got back looked absolutely beautiful. I thought I'd never seen green colors that bright.

And the sight of women, omg!

I felt like after a week in winter in Seattle and then returning to summer in Australia. Everything was so bright and colorful.

> you probably will be bored to death

As long as you have a computer (with or without internet) I could never imagine being bored.

"When we got back to civilization, everything looked super colorful... And the sight of women, omg!"

That's how I feel whenever I leave my apartment.

Antarctica wouldn't be such a big change for some.

Speaking of which, for those who are interested, I strongly recommend seeing Antarctica: A Year on Ice.[1] It's a bit of a rose-colored-glasses view, I think, but will still give you a sense of how dull and dangerous working and living there can be.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica:_A_Year_on_Ice

It couldn't be worse than being stuck in a FOB in the desert in Iraq.

Even if there are members of whatever sex you're interested in, I think that there is a general rule (official or unofficial) against getting involved (romantically/sexually) with others when you're in that sort of environment.

Antarctic Winterer here. Hahahahahaha! Erm, yeah, suuuuuuuure.

I remember there being an Reddit AMA from someone that was going to winter in Antarctica and that's where I got that from. So maybe that's the 'official word' or people doing different jobs have different amounts of care for that "rule." I dunno. It seemed to make sense to me that getting involved with each other could have fallout when it comes to getting actual things done if there are hard feelings, etc.

I think the rule template is:

What happens in %REMOTE_PLACE%, stays in %REMOTE_PLACE%.

Yea, good luck with that.

There are lots of non-science jobs, cooks, mechanics, firefighters, divers etc. See http://www.coolantarctica.com/Community/find_a_job_in_antarc...

I had periods of this feeling too - but I think being so isolated and distant has the potential to supercharge any bad feelings. At this specific moment I'm a bit down generally, if I was on the other side of the world miles away from anywhere I'd be feeling extremely low. At the times when I've felt good and the possibility of Antarctica excited me[1] I could not conceive of the possibility of not being 100% into the idea of being there - right now I'm extremely glad I'm not :)

[1] - like when I read Big Dead Place - a book I think you'd enjoy. It's written by someone who'd stayed in a couple of the US antarctic bases (McMurdo and Pole, iirc). Warning it will make you want to go http://feralhouse.com/big-dead-place/

It's definitely not something I would want to do forever. I'd love to do it once and have the experience and also contribute to important and interesting work.

Oh definitely, even at my most enthusiastic I was only ever keen to do a couple of seasons

Thanks for the book recommendation, I'll have to check it out.

From friends that have done it, I've heard that it's quite the opposite. Harsh, depressing climate and heavy alcoholism.

The climate isn't so bad in summer (when most people go), but the all-day sunlight can be hard to deal with for some. On the plus side, McMurdo has 24-hour pizza!

I just returned from a winter-over contract and loved it. Incredible experience.

Ex-BAS Winterer here, currently at Halley for the move season. I'd second this -- it's an experience you can't get anywhere else, as long as you go into it with the right mindset. It isn't like being at home, and if you expect that you'll be disappointed -- the harsh climate and the light/dark are part of the challenge that makes it appealing.

Sounds a bit like the Baltic states - there's a reason why alcoholism is so high here :D If you like winter it can be nice for the first few weeks, but after three months of cold and dark it's very easy to get depressed. At least the internet is good here.

The harsh climate is what appeals to me, of course I wouldn't want to experience it long-term.

Same. I'm Australian, but to get a job doing something there I'd probably have to be their IT guru (something I'm not particularly keen on, but I'm not a research scientist or somesuch). But I wouldn't mind the isolation, and the opportunity to get some astronomy done.

Assuming you fit the stereotypical HN demographic, these might be appealing:

https://ghgcorp.applicantpro.com/jobs/

Also, plenty of science groups hire "technicians" and "engineers" and other sorts of things to go build stuff.

For the really hardcore, you can try something like https://wipac.wisc.edu/careers/winterover-experiments-operat...

Any idea how open these positions are to software developers applying to do sysadmin work?

I was there as a "grantee" (i.e. Scientist) so I don't know much about the contractor side of it.

On the user-facing side, it seems to be a Microsoft-heavy place (we got active directory accounts, etc. and had to log into one of the Windows machines in the cluster to change our password).

My interaction with the IT people was mostly asking for port forwarding / static IP reservations for some some of our computers that needed to be accessible from up North, and for that they seemed to forward those requests to Denver (where the contractor HQ is).

It's definitely one of my dreams to do as well. I just need to get the gumption to actually do it (and the luck to actually land a contract).

At one point I saw a job posting for a Linux admin to go there for the summer. It's certainly possible.

This tour of Amundsen-Scott Station makes it seem like they're not "roughing it" so much anymore. Sure the sun may not set, pull the blind. Plenty of indoor light for the long nights, as well. Too cold to go outside? Go do a myriad of indoor activities with a whole contingent of other people or get away in the vast indoor spaces.

Great walk-through, 30 minutes flew by in interesting fashion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5lQ9DCXIbs

Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World is also amazing. Looks like they have the whole thing on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7edsEUQB-J8

Thanks for this, really enjoyed the video tour.

It says McMurdo was powered by a nuclear reactor for 10 years (ending in 1972). Anybody know why they got rid of it?

Edit: Wikipedia to the rescue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Station#Nuclear_power_... "As a result of continuing safety issues (hairline cracks in the reactor and water leaks), the U.S. Navy Nuclear Power Program decommissioned the plant in 1972."

Still seems cheaper to run another better one than bringing in 8 million gallons of fuel every year?

There were other issues as well.

Decommissioning[1]

With a total of 438 malfunctions during its operational lifetime from 1964 to 1972, the reactor at McMurdo proved to be an unreliable source of power generation, available only 72% of the time. Because of this, in May of 1972, it was determined by an independent assessment from the Bechtel Corporation that the PM-3A was not cost effective and that replacement with modern diesel-electric generators would require less staff and would also be more reliable.

1. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/reid2/

It's really a shame there's so little innovation going on for these sorts of devices. There's nothing inherent about a nuclear device that will make in unreliable.

Eh, I'd take a mass produced object over a hand made version any day. Even more important if reliability is an issue.

Ferraris are nice and all, but a boring old camery will get you where you need to go for hundreds of thousands of miles.

It makes a lot of sense to me to just use what hospitals and data centers and military bases use. Also, if one breaks, you can probably use it for parts for the rest.

That ideas was actually proposed to revive nuclear reactors: instead of building them on site, come up with some energy-generating components to be mass produced in a central factory and shipped out.

(You can make those parts inert and safe to handle. Even the fuel rods of current reactors are safe to touch before they are spent.)

IIRC, in France every reactor was the same model. If an issue was discovered, all of them would be upgraded to handle the problem. It also allowed a little more workforce mobility. It is a good idea.

I just don't see how we can get there from here. Nuclear isn't particularly cheap (but yes, a good chunk of the expense comes from regulation). So there's no obvious reason to choose that over any alternative. We could certainly change tax structure to force oil and coal to be more expensive, but even simple changes to account for externalities are met with massive massive resistance.

Pricing the exernalities of oil and coal into them might be quite a good idea---especially since it encourages boring things like just using less heating or driving less. Those boring options are seldom encouraged in `politician picks the winner in a beauty contest' subsidies.

But yes, we won't see that..

I wonder why noone has ever tried selling eg a carbon tax (or any kind of broad and useful tax) in combination with basic income? If you earmark the windfall from a carbon tax to be equally shared by all residents, you get quite a few natural allies and take the wind out of the sail of arguments along the lines of "think of all the poor people".

> Even the fuel rods of current reactors are safe to touch before they are spent

What? Fuel rods consist of uranium, which alpha-decays into thorium (a sheet of paper is enough to shield the alpha particles), but the next decay step is beta-decay to thorium, and that needs more shielding. No way one can touch a fuel rod without getting a load of radiation.

The half life of U-235 is hundreds of millions of years, and U-238 even longer. So it's not decaying fast enough to be dangerous.

Yeah, maybe there's some other model, but there would be no reason for a Spent Fuel Pool [1] if you could handle the things.

There's also an interesting anecdote about spent fuel here [2]. You can get pretty close, if it's under water... but it gets very dangerous very fast.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool [2] https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/

Spent fuel is dangerous to handle. That's why I specifically mentioned the unspent fuel.

Some of the electricity at McMurdo is generated by wind turbines. Nearby active Mt. Erebus could potentially be a source of geothermal power, but I don't know if it would be legal to do that under the Antarctic Treaty.

I very much like the German station which keeps stepping up on top of the packed snow. Buildings as really very slow vehicles seems a particularly successful way to build in an environment with a high degree of uncertainty.

Coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago I visited a talk by Dr. Lochte from the Alfred-Wegener Institute that runs the station.

Interesting tidbit: The ice shelf it stands on rest upon the open sea, so for legal purposes, it's a ship ;)

"I very much like the German station which keeps stepping up on top of the packed snow."

Interesting. Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) has three stations, Casey, Mowson and Davis. A key feature, they are all on solid ground, rock and still have problems with ice buildup destroying the infrastructure. [0] I think the most interesting thing found building in Antartica is the measurement and acknowledgment of the toxic nature of the building materials (POPs) in western buildings. [1]

Reference

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Station ,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawson_Station and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis_Station

[1] Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), "Household pollutants detected around Antarctic stations"

http://www.antarctica.gov.au/magazine/2011-2015/issue-28-jun...

The new pole station was also designed to do this, on legs, after the experience with the previous dome becoming totally buried in snow.

Maciej has a great post about his visit to McMurdo: http://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm

I loved this footnote from that one:

http://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm#ped...

The plans for the future of McMurdo ( https://www.usap.gov/news/documents/McMurdoMasterPlan_2.1.pd... ) are quite exciting, but unfortunately, if it comes to fruition, it means less science for some number of seasons as the construction project happens.

I'm sure there are vastly more experienced folks here, but I was just McMurdo for a ~month in November-December. I've also spent some time at Summit Station in Greenland, which is a much smaller (but newer! with some buildings on stilts!) station.

Are the building stilts for some kind of insulation from the ice or for some other reason?

They talk about this near the end of the article: Snow blows all over the place, and if you build a structure on the ground, it will eventually be enveloped with snow. These stilts help prevent that.

For those wanting to read about McMurdo, Big Dead Place http://feralhouse.com/big-dead-place/ is the best book to read. Apparently it was due to be made into a TV series....

A documentary that seems like it was made from that book is "Antarctica: A Year on Ice." It was on Netflix but isn't any longer.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2361700/

This is by far the best book ever written on Antarctic living. I can't recommend it highly enough.

"For years afterwards...nothing much fancier than wooden huts went up on the white continent."

I think that in 1903, that wooden hut would be thought of as pretty fancy and state of the art. Only in retrospect 114 years later would it seem quaint.

The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World's Fair. A wooden hut was not state of the art in 1903.

For what could be built in Antarctica in 1903, I bet it was state of the art. In 2015, the Shanghai Tower was built...it doesn't make what they're building in Antarctica today any less state of the art just because it's relatively less ambitious in scale.

I remember reading a lot about staying during the winter in Antarctica from this: http://www.funraniumlabs.com/category/antarctica/

Alcohol, lot of alcohol.

This guy's site has a great history of the pole station: http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/trivia.html

I can't help but think about Helix' snow station here.

Interesting to see the architectural race kicked off by India's Bharati. The race is to find mineral deposits as Antarctic is the new Africa.

Wouldn't these structures be more energy efficient via less surface area if they built them higher?

I wondered about that as well. There is one example of a pair of cylindrical buildings, which seems pretty efficient. Maybe the use of good insulating materials reduces the trade-off, and with more surface area you get more rooms with windows.

I want to stay for a winter so bad.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com