Showering at the South Pole • Hacker News Board

Re: Showering at the South Pole

#41

Post by jiehong » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 9:02 AM UTC

As water is the actual metered resource at 0.74 gallons per day, I’d prefer having it all poured into a bucket and use that to shower along with a glass or a sponge.

It’s much easier to manage, and is pretty common practice in India (albeit with maybe 2 or 3 gallons buckets)

Re: Showering at the South Pole

#42

Post by bitcharmer » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 9:20 AM UTC

jiehong wrote: post #41

As water is the actual metered resource at 0.74 gallons per day, I’d prefer having it all poured into a bucket and use that to shower along with a glass or a sponge. It’s much easier to manage, and is pretty common practice in India (albeit with maybe 2 or 3 gallons buckets)

For those of us who don't use burger units: 0.73 gallons = 2.8 l

Re: Showering at the South Pole

#43

Post by nibbleshifter » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 9:41 AM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #38

metadat wrote: post #35

With water being so scarce, what are the toilet bowls filled with? I'm not clear whether all water is rationed down there, or only hot water.

It seems likely that the standard for that it lower; you kind of need clean water to bathe, both practically and for sanitary/health reasons, but you can flush toilets with dirtier water. ...Actually, now I'm wondering if you could run toilets with water from showers.

You can.

Re: Showering at the South Pole

#44

Post by tagersenim » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 9:48 AM UTC

The url is surely, given the topic, one of the better ones I've ever seen.

Re: Showering at the South Pole

#45

Post by mnd999 » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 9:51 AM UTC

I'm guessing there aren't many folks with long curly hair at the south pole. There's no way that's gonna rinse out in 2 mins.

Re: Showering at the South Pole

#46

Post by Moru » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 9:52 AM UTC

dalys wrote: post #32

pottertheotter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. In the picture of Gary, what is the contraption in front of his mouth?

Guessing it is a breathing mask like https://www.airtrim.se/eng/default.asp to make the air you breathe in warm and moist. Common for athletes here in the Nordics. Not sure about the exact science but I remember hearing exercising outdoors starts to be bad for the lungs around -15 to -20C (5 to -4F) Because the air is so dry.

And if you have asthma it's bad even below 0 C. I use my Lungplus [1] as soon as the weather hits +5 C, makes me able to actually do something outdoors in the winter. It's just a heat exchanger in your mounth, storing heat from the exhaust air, and heating up the intake air [2] :-)

[1] https://www.lungplus.se/databl_e.html

[2] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=lungplus&iax=images&ia=imag...

Re: Showering at the South Pole

#47

Post by FastEatSlow » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 10:08 AM UTC

undersuit wrote: post #28

I'll double check tomorrow but I think my shower takes at least 15 seconds to warm up. I'd probably go stinky a bit so I could enjoy more shower time instead of wasting half my rations every day having cold water cramp up my muscles.

Their shower water's not heated beyond cold, so it doesn't make a difference.

Re: Showering at the South Pole

#48

Post by Kostchei » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 10:14 AM UTC

metadat wrote: post #35

With water being so scarce, what are the toilet bowls filled with? I'm not clear whether all water is rationed down there, or only hot water.

no reason not to be a dry drop. It would be frozen and no longer ... active... after a few minutes

Re: Showering at the South Pole

#49

Post by atemerev » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 10:21 AM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #36

umvi wrote: post #9

...why not just have a nuclear reactor to provide an infinite heat source? Submarines at the bottom of ocean have more shower time than south pole stations.

"why not just use a nuclear reactor" might be the most insane "why not just" I've ever seen in my life. :D

Come on, nuclear is not black magic. There are nuclear reactors in submarines and carriers, so why not at the polar station.

Re: Showering at the South Pole

#50

Post by aljungberg » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 10:31 AM UTC

I wanted to provide a clever insight here saying they should bring some more solar panels, but unless my back of the napkin calculations are totally off that would work poorly. To begin with, there’s very little sunlight at the south pole and efficiency of panels is 10% of normal. Admittedly I’m only glancing through this paper, but an installation to generate an average continuous 2.5kW would have a total cost $250k [1].

The good news is that if you did do that, 2.5kW would allow you to heat a very significant amount of water per hour, even from ice to shower temperature. Like a US gallon in 4 minutes from 0º to 35ºC.

1: https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10092/14220/Jam...