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Doors of McMurdo

brr.fyi

61–70 of 131 posts

Re: Doors of McMurdo

#61

When I hear McMurdo Station, I think of a single solitary building with maybe a dozen people. I had no idea McMurdo was so large with so many buildings! I spent a few minutes trying to find a decent map of the entire station, but came up short.

OSM seems to have it quite well mapped: https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=-77.846323&mlon=166.6682...

Of course, I wanted to know what "FSTP Snow School" was, but garbage blogspam gives first-search-results like this: https://mapcarta.com/N8759058406

Re: Doors of McMurdo

#62

This is not a master-planned community. Rather, it is a series of organic responses to evolving operational needs. over time i have become more and more convinced that this state of affairs is _better_.

That is the central thesis of The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander, which I highly recommend.

Re: Doors of McMurdo

#63
Man this brings me back. I did a year at McMurdo in 2004. We got hit with such a bad storm that conex boxes were tossed all over the yards. Snow drifts covered up some doors, but... they opened inward ;)

Re: Doors of McMurdo

#64
post #20

I'm curious why many of the doors have deadbolts. In an environment where you presumably know every single human on the site and there are probably no other humans in any direction for 1000 km, is there a need for locks on anything other than bedrooms and bathrooms?

> I'm curious why many of the doors have deadbolts.

to keep the Thing out

Re: Doors of McMurdo

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSM seems to have it quite well mapped: https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=-77.846323&mlon=166.6682...

Of course, I wanted to know what "FSTP Snow School" was, but garbage blogspam gives first-search-results like this: https://mapcarta.com/N8759058406

I can help! I went through it 7 times.

FSTP, prounounced "F-stop" like the camera setting, was the "field safety training program" and basically it refers to the group of mountaineers that the US Antarctic Program's contractor hires to live in Antarctica and help out with fieldwork. It also refers to the classes that they teach in McMurdo.

Basic FSTP "snow school" used to be required for everyone at McMurdo, and for many, it was the most fun thing you would get to do the whole season. You would learn to set up camp, cook, use radios, sleep out on the sea ice for one night (in a tent, igloo, snow trench, depending on the year and instructors).

I did a bunch of other FSTP-organized courses too, including how to travel on sea ice, and some mountaineering.

We had FSTP mountaineers with us up on Erebus and the joke was "the F stops here."

I think it got renamed to something else in 2017 or so... around when the BFC stopped referring to themselves as the building fulla chicks...

Re: Doors of McMurdo

#66
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certain things lend themselves well to master-planning. TCP/IP, or where transit lines are run before the city builds up around them . But only things that really need to be master-planned do better when planned that way; much of the best "large things" seem to work out better when many of the aspects are organic and human-scale.

> where transit lines are run before the city builds up around them. I'm not sure even this is true. The city may not build up in the way the planners anticipated. Even if it does, it will change over time.

Maybe not so much the where, but the how (zoning regs) matter. In SLC, the roads are pleasantly wide for a city it's age. Turns out they had to be wide enough for a wagon to turn around.

Trying to avoid painting yourself into a corner without over thinking is the game.

Re: Doors of McMurdo

#67
This made me homesick for Antarctica.

Tempted to do a "Doors of Erebus" in this style... They would mostly be tent flaps, but there is a garage door and a really great outhouse door.

Re: Doors of McMurdo

#68
post #20

I'm curious why many of the doors have deadbolts. In an environment where you presumably know every single human on the site and there are probably no other humans in any direction for 1000 km, is there a need for locks on anything other than bedrooms and bathrooms?

Penguins. Penguins can't open deadbolts. (/s, obviously...)

But if you merely hide the key under the doormat, a Yeti can.

Re: Doors of McMurdo

#69

When I hear McMurdo Station, I think of a single solitary building with maybe a dozen people. I had no idea McMurdo was so large with so many buildings! I spent a few minutes trying to find a decent map of the entire station, but came up short.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Antarctica, a twenty-minutes-into-the-future ecothriller, is much recommended reading for anyone who'd like to know more about McMurdo, the South Pole Station, and about the history of Antarctica's exploration and its geography and ecology. As is usually the case, KSR has definitely done his homework. (Disclaimer: you might fall in love with Antarctica, or at least develop a serious crush, as a result of reading this novel.)

Re: Doors of McMurdo

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't independent, the city will tend to build up along the transit lines due to the easy access to transit. E.g., the NYC outer boroughs and the DC metro area.

That may be true for immovable train lines, but vehicle transit such as buses have routes which are subject to change, and therefore developers cannot depend on the transit lines being there in 10-20 years. Bus lines instead tend to follow where the traffic wants to go. Around here, many shopping malls double as bus stations because the primary aim of transit seems to be circulating consumers around places they will…

Consider the income levels of the staff that work at shopping malls and what that implies for their ability to pay for reliable personal transportation.
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