How to Operate an Airport in Antarctica | Hacker News Reader

How to Operate an Airport in Antarctica

flightradar24.com

299 pointsArnt68 comments

Video of an aircraft landing at the airfield:

https://mobile.twitter.com/flightradar24/status/136633455367...

and liftoff: https://www.instagram.com/p/CL4kfpxjDXM/

I hope the pilot could make out the runway better than I could.

Absolutely. Not by looking out of the windows though, but because of the magnitude of instruments pilots have in front of them to "see" the world around them.

But I don't think that's fully correct -- my understanding was that the Antarctic runways do not have instrument precision approaches. GPS etc. gets you to the airfield approx. location, but the landing is done visually.

Or am I recalling incorrectly? I seem to remember this from an Air & Space article or National Geographic or something similar.

They have large metal triangles below the snow that instruments can see - more for getting the location and orientation of the runway itself. (Family friend works on constructing these runways among other things and I'm going off of memory here)

> Jet A-1 fuel is sent to Troll once a year in 200 liter barrels aboard the re-supply ship that docks at the edge of the ice shelf about mid-summer season. All of the supplies, including the fuel, are then taken via tracked vehicles and sledges on a 250 km journey back to the station. That long journey from Denmark helps explain why fuel is so expensive at Troll.

The Norwegian polar institute buys its jet fuel from Denmark?! I knew they are supposed to be close buddies, but that was a surprise.

The ship is coming from Denmark. The cost of transporting the fuel on that ship across the ocean is probably miniscule compared to the cost of dragging it over land from the ship to the airstrip. Moving heavy things by ship is remarkably cost-efficient, a few dollars per ton to move something across the planet. Getting it that last few miles from ship to customer is where the real costs start.

Exactly. I had a bunch of servers on that ship sent from Norway by truck.

OpenStack and Kubernetes coming to Troll this season!

You know why you use a Danish port? Do they need their icebreakers the least or something? Or is it some historical reason?

Most of the cargo doesn't come from Norway. We try to ship as much as possible from vendors directly to the ship, and not via Northern Norway where the entities involved are located.

Denmark then becomes ideal as we are close with the Danes politically and it's already a shipping hub.

We could have used Cape Town, but it would be harder to have control. Very little cargo fits on these planes and the flights are extremely expensive. We operate a satellite ground station there used for critical missions.

> Moving heavy things by ship is remarkably cost-efficient

This assumes you have sending a huge tanker full of fuel.

When you have a smaller ship to send a handful of barrels of fuel I guess the calculation changes. If not, everybody would be sending fuel in small ships in barrels.

The ship carries all the supplies not just the fuel and since the fuel needs to be transported across land on a tracked vehicle it's easier to do that in barrels than to have a specialty sled made and maintain a tank on the slowly shifting glacier.

Another nuance is likely environmental. They probably could transport the fuel in a big tank and then offload it to smaller containers, but that is a bulk fueling procedure that could go wrong/leak/spill. It is environmentally safer to transport fuel in closed containers all the way to the final destination.

There's tons of reasons traditional tanked shipping makes little sense. Volume, they're going to get quite a bit of fuel but it's still a tiny amount compared to the volume of a tanker. They're also sending down a lot of non liquid cargo, so being able to send it all on one ship makes sense.

A bulk container would be more space-efficient, but on a ship it is the mass that counts against fuel efficiency rather than bulk. The price differences would only be significant when it comes to loading/unloading which, in Antarctica, are a very special case.

The price difference comes from operational overhead on a tiny delivery (of which loading/unloading is a part), not from fuel inefficiency.

The potential additional distance between Denmark and Norway is nothing compared to the overall distance of sailing halfway round the globe to Antartica.

I mean, even sending the ship from Denmark is rather strange, it's not like Norway lacks a coast. Neither is any spot in Denmark the closest spot to Antarctica in continental Europe...

Possibly the danes have the closest port that is home port to an ice breaker?

Transport between Denmark and Greenland probably means Denmark has more suitable shops than Norway.

On the other hand, the northern half of Norway is basically just coast and that a lot of iron ore from Sweden goes by ship from a Norwegian port above the Arctic circle?

Then there's also all that shipping of oil that Norway does...

But that might mean Norway has bulk carriers and tankers, plus coastal vessels.

Denmark should have ocean going mixed freight ships for the Arctic.

I'd say it is likely both countries have both ..

Related: Ice Pilots NWT was a reality show (free on prime video) about an airline company called Buffalo airways in the northwest territory of Canada. They fly in and out of very remote, iced over regions, with VERY old aircraft, and it’s fascinating to watch.

Flying Wild Alaska was similar, a documentary series about a family-run airline in Alaska. It is a bit less sensational than Ice Pilots NWT. Somewhat less "will they - won't they" repetitiveness and more calm wide nature shots. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Wild_Alaska

There’s also Mikey’s YouTube channel

https://youtube.com/c/MikeyMcBryan

Full of behind the scenes videos about the planes and the logistics of their operation.

Newer aircraft aren't available with a gravel kit so they sometimes stick to older models.

http://www.b737.org.uk/unpavedstripkit.htm

thanks for the rec! going to give it a watch

Another interesting problem with the weather sometimes is "high" temperatures, negatively impacting the friction characteristics of the blue ice runway.

> Before 2005, getting personnel to the Norwegian Polar Institute’s Troll Research Station (AT27/QAT) in Antarctica involved a weeks-long boat ride followed by a 250 kilometer trek over snow, ice, and rock.

Things were so grueling at the time.

I know it was probably not very romantic in reality, but I can't help but imagine a Star Trek style adventure and the exciting challenges that come along with it.

Being an outdoorsy type, I would say such an adventure is exciting and all :)

They approached this earthbound problem pragmatically. Imagine taking such arduous journeys at regular intervals.

The link below is to an interview where the Norwegian King is trolling(phun intended) the queen when talking about this airport/science station.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXw9jGTdBy0

It's worth noting that the word "troll" in norwegian references a type of being in scandinavian folklore, not your typical "internet-troll".

People used to speak of Saabs being from Trollhättan like they do of Porsches being from Stuttgart. I guess Swedes have trolls too?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Sa...

"As of 2011 Trollhättan hosts a film production complex known as Trollywood"

This is a really good movie:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trollhunter

And where exactly did you think the internet troll's name was derived?

Trolling, the fishing method. For me, a internet troll is a person that says something provocation hoping that someone will "bite" and waste time arguing.

Trolling is indeed a fishing method, but "don't feed the troll" was a common phrase on Usenet.

Both meaning were probably intended.

I always figured it just meant Troll as in the fairy tale creature who are notoriously not nice.

> trolling, the fishing method.

I am pretty sure that one is "trawling".

I had the same thought, but they're both a thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing)

Trawling is with a net. E.g. commercial fishing. Trolling is traditional rod/reel/bait.

> The original construction of the runway was done over two years and accomplished using a laser cutter

We live in science fiction.

Like other commenters, I unfortunately don't think that's true.

The Wikipedia [1] page says:

To build a permanent airfield at Troll, the Norwegian Polar Institute bought a snow groomer and a tracked vehicle with a snow blower, flatbed and ice cutter. The works was organized with a land-based Global Positioning System laser system.

So that might very well be where the idea that the actual cutting was done using laser came from. I wasn't able to quickly goog up some example of what it probably was (an accessory on some kind of tracked heavy equipment), but perhaps someone else knows?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_Airfield

They probably mean a laser-based "grade control system" - such as the Trimble GCS900, CAT Accugrade and similar.

The idea is, instead of having the heavy equipment operator move some dirt then someone following with survey equipment and telling him he removed too much or too little, the survey equipment is mounted right on the blade/bucket and automatically gets the height right on the first pass.

In this video an excavator operator explains the use of a very simple laser grading system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sklWQQGnC4o

And of course there are much more sophisticated systems available including automated control of the blade. Pretty much standard equipment on any construction project today.

This must be a mistranslation or something. They would have used a laser for surveying but there's no way they used a laser to cut any ice -- that just doesn't make physical sense.

Here's a claim of some sort of Russian laser ice cutter from several years ago:

https://www.rbth.com/science_and_tech/2015/05/14/laser-equip...

Could you not use a IR laser to gradually engrave the pattern into the ice from afar?

Practically it seems dangerous and a waste of money but in principle...

Well, you'd have to heat it faster than the heat conducts away through the ice, so that's a bigger heat flux than you can easily deliver with em radiation. You're doing a big area if you want a runway so you'd probably be better off with a floodlight than a laser. And you're just gonna melt the ice to water so you probably want a pump or something to remove the water.

It's not clear what they mean by this. Is it an actual laser doing the cutting? Or a traditional implement guided or verified by a laser (to my ears more plausible)?

My guess is they used something akin to a laser level to identify the high and low spots. Then you grade down the highs and fill in the lows with the machines.

Fantastic blog series. I also learned that oktas are a unit of cloud coverage!

I just learnt today about Okta, a Cloud Auth SaaS buying up Auth0 another Cloud Authentication SaaS... So I will have to now add this asterisk to my mental entry, so much for a second language.. pheww

Here's also an amusing fact I keep in my mind:

Who serves the route between New Zealand and McMurdo Station?

The New York Air National Guard.

What would be nice to know is if the 767 shown in the photos is typical for the aircraft using this airport? I can't imagine that they need the plane's passenger capacity (~200), but maybe they use it for cargo? Also, if they want to make the trip from Cape Town and back without refueling, they probably need a widebody airplane (EDIT: according to the aircraft's page, it's even an "Extended Range" model)...

I assume it's been selected entirely for range.

All narrow body aircraft only have enough range to do a one-way flight. The 767-300ER can land, do a return flight and have plenty of fuel left over for reserves.

When I flew down to the Antarctic peninsula from Chile in 2016 we went on a BAe 146 I think (1) The explanation given was that it had landing gear that was toughened for rough airstrips, had a relatively short takeoff, and the 4 high-mounted engines were good for landing in snow/ice and offered good redundancy.

It felt pretty cramped on the inside compared to "normal" planes, especially when wearing all your cold weather gear during the flight (you stepped off right onto the snow - no airport buildings)

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Aerospace_146

I might be the start/end of season transfer? Wiki says Troll station has ~40 summer staff (and 6 winter). The combination of range, cargo, and the awkward amount of people probably makes something like a 767 pretty reasonable.

To take all the cargo for 40 people to live there probably involves many trips of a 767 each year.

Just bringing in the fuel for the generators to keep everything heated and lit for a year is probably the cargo capacity for a 767.

That stuff would normally move by ship to other continents, but with no nearby port, I guess everything is moved by air.

TFA says fuel is delivered to the nearest port and brought in with tracked vehicles pulling it in 200l drums on sledges. The cost is commensurate with the length of the supply chain. They prefer it if planes can fly in with enough fuel to fly back home unrefueled for that reason among others.

Good opportunity to share one of my favorite Vimeo documentaries about Union Glacier in Antarctica: https://vimeo.com/107231188

A twin otter seems like the right plane for landing down there.

The twin otter doesn't have enough range to fly from Cape Town to Troll research base. That's why they use the 767-300ER.

They do use the twin otter for internal flights, but they have to be ferried down via south america (without passengers)

With about 40 people coming down for the summer season and all their luggage plus some equipment it's probably too small for the job of the main load in and out of people. Plus it has to refuel there where fuel is many times more expensive so that also makes the smaller planes less economical than they would otherwise be.

They are quite common in Antarctica for sure. On south pole station it was mainly those and hercs...

The article says it's commonly used at Troll.

Yeah. And has a nice photo. I love that plane.

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