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Comment by ta1243 | Hacker News Reader

The shower page was interesting, you get 4 minutes of shower time a week

https://brr.fyi/posts/showering-at-the-south-pole

I'm surprised they can't just melt snow water to run things like showers.

Oddly no suggestions on the page about doubling up your shower with someone else to have longer or more frequent showers.

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> Everyone is free to stand in the physical shower stall as long as they want! As long as they keep water flow within the allocated quota.

I'm going to be turning on the water to get wet, soaping up, turning on the water to rinse. If I have some extra maybe I'll let the water just run for some seconds to enjoy it.

More people in the shower isn't going to help, they're just going to get in the way.

Also, at least 10 years ago when I heard from someone who was there, the over-winter population at the base was super-majority men, rather homophobic, and flaunting any hetereosexual couplings you had was... fraught, due to issues of jealosy and competition.

I wonder if there are libido-inhibiting drugs you can take, and whether that would help.

The British Army allegedly used Bromide in tea for this purpose in WW2 [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromide#Folk_and_passé_medicin...

Old joke from where I live

Two old vets (in their 90s) are sitting in a bench

The first says - Mate, do you remember the bromide they gave us in the military?

The second - yeah?

The first guy - Well it started to work.

> I'm going to be turning on the water to get wet, soaping up, turning on the water to rinse.

Commonly called a military shower[0], and exactly what I do in my RV when boondocking.

[0] In the military, ironically, even in boot camp we didn't shower this way, we just went very quickly. just the pits...

I've heard that specifically called a Navy shower in most cases not generically military.

Doesn't that post explain that this is just what they do, and that melting the snow is pretty involved?

There's also limited fuel that they have to conserve, so infinite snow does not mean infinite water.

Seems like a decent opportunity to use a nuclear reactor .. something like what you would find on a submarine.

It was tried! http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/reid2/

I wonder what it'd take to adapt NuScale's SMR design. Probably a lot, given the unusual rigors of the Antarctic environment, but for basically the same reasons it seems like something that'd be worth funding.

We already tried that 60 years ago in Greenland, it didn’t end well.

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

There is a fascinating film about that reactor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlmOQJW5Xis

That didn’t fail because of the nuclear reactor, it failed because the ice sheet movement deformed the tunnels over time and collapsed ceilings. Nothing to do with the feasibility of sitting a portable nuclear reactor on top of the ice like the settlements in Antarctica.

With a 30 degree delta between temperature and wind chill, I'd think they're ripe for wind turbines.

Unfortunatly wind turbines are also not really a big fan of the cold. When ice grows on the blades they can become unstable.

2 people in a shower doesn't effectively decrease water usage per person, and the logistics overhead would eat into the 4 minutes.

If done with someone you find attractive, that also finds you attractive, 2 people to a shower, that want to participate in this shared activity of showering together, increases this thing called "fun". (Both parties wanting to participate is requisite for this "fun" to happen. If one or both parties does not want to, this "fun" does not happen. Even if both parties want to, that is not a guarantee that "fun" will happen.) Note that this "fun" is unable to spontaneously generate water, unfortunately. However, every rules lawyer will note that the limit is 4 minutes of water, and not a limit of spending 4 minutes in the shower. (8 minutes of water for two people.) Thus, two people may choose to spend additional time in the shower with the water off. If it is not clear to you what two consenting, attracted, naked, soapy adults could possibly do for "fun", please find and ask an adult that you know and trust.

> Note that this "fun" is unable to spontaneously generate water, unfortunately.

Ummm about that XD

It sure does. It's a lot easier (and thus, conserves more water) to get suds off someone else's body than your own. You spray and they sweep, or you aim it at their hair and they help get the shampoo out with their hands.

There's only a few centimeters of snow per year at the pole, it's a high desert, and digging the ice out is probably not worth the energy?

The same blog has a post referring to snow accumulation (evidently wind-blown, not precipitated) requiring enormous operations and infrastructural efforts to keep the station from being buried [0].

There seems to be plenty of snow available, if you want to melt it. Energy is the issue.

[0] https://brr.fyi/posts/south-pole-topography

Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34658286

I’m game if you are

Strangely enough the South Pole Mega Shower is still shorter than my average shower time.

Maybe you can catch and reuse your own water. Then you’d just need to bring a jerrycan and water heater every time.

I'm more curious about what they do with the greywater. If you just dumped it you'd end up with a giant, evergrowing pile of dirty ice.

There's another post on his blog about visiting the sewage treatment plant at McMurdo (not Pole, I don't know what they do there). At McMurdo it's like any other sewage treatment plant: they release the cleaned water into the sea.

Which can't be done at the pole. The options are either drive it (and all waste) out to McMurdo, or leave it there.

the rodwell where they melt the ice for their water makes a big cavern in the ice. the previous rodwell is used for all greywater/human waste, indeed making a giant shitcicle. when the current freshwater rodwell is done, they start a new one and that one becomes the new dumping one.

>I'm surprised they can't just melt snow

They do get their water by melting snow and they use waste heat from the generation of electricity to do some or all of the melting.

Apparently, it takes a lot of energy to melt snow.

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