When the author refers to AN-8 fuel, do they mean JP-8? Jet fuel / Kerosene?
AN-8 is kerosene, similar to JP-8, but with a lower freezing point specification.
https://erdc-library.erdc.dren.mil/jspui/bitstream/11681/243...
Last Flight Out
131–140 of 322 posts
Re: Last Flight Out
#132Whenever I read about how humans are about to colonize Mars, I think about how much logistics it takes to keep even a single base with a handful of people populated on the South Pole. It's like Mars, but with plentiful oxygen and atmospheric pressure, plentiful (albeit frozen) water, shielded from radiation, low-latency communication with civilization, and is reachable by air and ground vehicles. Given how difficult…
> how difficult and fraught it is to keep a few people alive down there, how does anyone expect to keep a few people alive on Mars, let alone build a colony there? Necessity is the mother of invention. It makes no sense to use precious Antarctic time and space growing all the food when it's cheaper to ship it in. Similar to how civilizations with a history of littoral shipbuilding figured out ocean-faring--if you're…
This is a statement about the absence of immediate first-order incentives.
But there are other incentives, for example, being interested in the problems of actually settling Mars.
Necessity is certainly motivating, but people serious about their ambitions often don't wait for it to motivate their preparations. Would-be serious ocean-farers probably want to become practiced in producing/storing/carrying/consuming/restoring hard tack (or other equivalent sustenance) before relying on it over weeks away from port.
The absence of self-sustaining colonies in harsh outposts on the earth (and similar absence of more local positive terraforming projects) indicate limits in how serious anyone is about colonizing Mars.
Re: Last Flight Out
#133My favorite writing about Antarctica is "Big Dead Place": https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-30/big-dead-place-the-wi...
You can find the blog in the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20120402141259/http://www.bigdea... or grab the book.
Silver medal to Maciej for this one: https://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm
Re: Last Flight Out
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apparently not great if you're a woman: https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/as-antarctic-fieldwo...
Jesus christ. "In one online survey published in PLOS ONE and covered by Science in 2014, 71% of 512 female respondents reported being sexually harassed during fieldwork; 84% of them were trainees." "In the NSF report, one interviewee said she’d been told on her first day at McMurdo to stay clear of a certain building unless she “wanted to be raped.” Another woman said she felt like she was seen as “prey” no matter w…
The documentary "Picture a Scientist" https://www.pictureascientist.com/ describes some of this--it's gutting to watch.
Re: Last Flight Out
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how difficult and fraught it is to keep a few people alive down there, how does anyone expect to keep a few people alive on Mars, let alone build a colony there? Necessity is the mother of invention. It makes no sense to use precious Antarctic time and space growing all the food when it's cheaper to ship it in. Similar to how civilizations with a history of littoral shipbuilding figured out ocean-faring--if you're…
This is a statement about the absence of immediate first-order incentives. But there are other incentives, for example, being interested in the problems of actually settling Mars. Necessity is certainly motivating, but people serious about their ambitions often don't wait for it to motivate their preparations. Would-be serious ocean-farers probably want to become practiced in producing/storing/carrying/consuming/rest…
> absence of self-sustaining colonies in harsh outposts on the earth (and similar absence of more local positive terraforming projects) indicate limits in how serious anyone is about colonizing Mars
This is a stronger argument. I agree. I think there is serious interest in establishing permanent facilities on Mars. But a self-sufficient, self-sustaining population isn't being planned on because there are too many unknowns for any definition of a plan that doesn't overlap hard science fiction.
Re: Last Flight Out
#136One area of research at the opposite side, McMurdo, apparently is around glaciers melting.
> Warming seas are carving into massive Antarctic glacier that could trigger sea level rise https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/02/1...
Q: I wonder if the South Pole station is also involved in active climate research or if the North Pole is somehow more scientifically relevant to near-term climate change?
Enlightning observation:
> [...] researchers have determined that warm water is getting channeled into crevasses in what the researchers called “terraces” — essentially, upside-down trenches — and carving out gaps under the ice. As the ice then flows toward the sea, these channels enlarge and become future potential break points, where the floating ice shelf comes apart and produces huge icebergs.
Re: Last Flight Out
#137I would love to try this out for a week or two, but I can't imagine doing this for 9 months. For me the feeling of claustrophobia and loneliness would be overwhelming.
Perhaps contact a Tibetan Buddhist teaching center. They have meditation and introspection programs ranging from weekend intro courses to multi-month retreats where you isolate in a cabin on site (but you are checked in on). I know a few who have done it for a week or a month, and all say it's very interesting and enlightening, tho also suggest working up to it. The one I'm most familiar with is Karmê Chöling in northern Vermont [0], and there are others. Even the short retreats yield wonderful states of mind. Check it out!
Re: Last Flight Out
#138Whenever I read about how humans are about to colonize Mars, I think about how much logistics it takes to keep even a single base with a handful of people populated on the South Pole. It's like Mars, but with plentiful oxygen and atmospheric pressure, plentiful (albeit frozen) water, shielded from radiation, low-latency communication with civilization, and is reachable by air and ground vehicles. Given how difficult…
humans aren't about to colonize mars. At best we could put people on the surface for a week and return them home safely (with some non-zero probability of death).
What's really crazy is what it would take to build sustainable non-earth infrastructure if earth wasn't available. I mean, sure, start with space robots that can extrude aluminum, but ... if you read the story of the western colonizers, it was brutal especially if they couldn't get resupplied.
Re: Last Flight Out
#139The 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.
> 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 y…
I wonder if there are libido-inhibiting drugs you can take, and whether that would help.
Re: Last Flight Out
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
We enforce rules in our society because they make that society better. Basic shared rules of behaviour are a precondition for social cohesion and prosperity, _not_ a luxury that we can only afford when everything else has been taken care of. This goes 10x in small groups in rigorous environments. I wouldn't call resources in the Antarctic winter "incredibly scarce"; expeditions have been wintering South for decades n…
Yes, you have a personal anecdote but the data suggests that people do indeed become prone to sexually harassing women.
I certainly won't claim that no harassment ever takes place; every wintering team is different, and I have no doubt that plenty of women _do_ experience some form of harassment or unwanted attention. When you live in a small, close-knit community with (generally) a large gender imbalance, there will be tensions.
What I object to is the unsubstantiated claim that Antarctica "brings out the animal in each of us"; that the environment is one of such privation that all those who venture there necessarily regress to some more basic form and that standards of civilized behaviour become something we can't afford, sacrificed on the altar of survival.
This is patently false, and frankly a very limited and limiting view of the human condition.
What you like to dismiss as a "personal anecdote" I'd prefer to call "multiple seasons of lived experience in the environment under discussion."
While I can't speak for the hiring procedures of other nations, the majority of the interview process for the British Antarctic Survey centres around the interpersonal side. If you're sitting in the interview in the first place you're assumed to be technically competent; once that bar is passed they select primarily for people who will survive the isolation and be able to work as independent members of a small society. Are the results perfect? Of course not -- failures happen and bad winters happen. But they are well aware of how important social dynamics are to the overall success of the winter.