201–210 of 322 posts
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My friend who wintered over claimed that the Pole doesn't have "plentiful oxygen and atmospheric pressure" - it's high above sea level, the earth's spin reduces the pressure at the poles and if a low pressure weather system comes in people suffer from altitude sickness https://www.usap.gov/USAPgov/travelAndDeployment/documents/M...
Compared to Mars?
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> the purpose of Mars is being a lifeboat for some life-ending disaster on Earth, why doesn't that group of people go and build a self-sufficient colony in the Antarctic? There are various reasons for wanting to go to Mars. I don't think most people's primary motivation is species-level survival.
Like what? A research outpost? You have to get into a knife fight with your peers to get a grad student who works for ramen on your lab's funding proposal, you're not going to get the amortized cost of a real lab on Mars approved. For that money, there's a thousand languishing research proposals that we should be looking into instead. There are no economic reasons to go there, either. It's too far away, it's too dang…
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> the purpose of Mars is being a lifeboat for some life-ending disaster on Earth, why doesn't that group of people go and build a self-sufficient colony in the Antarctic? There are various reasons for wanting to go to Mars. I don't think most people's primary motivation is species-level survival.
Like what? A research outpost? You have to get into a knife fight with your peers to get a grad student who works for ramen on your lab's funding proposal, you're not going to get the amortized cost of a real lab on Mars approved. For that money, there's a thousand languishing research proposals that we should be looking into instead. There are no economic reasons to go there, either. It's too far away, it's too dang…
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.
> 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…
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...
Is there anything a C-130 cannot do? What an incredible aircraft. That landing, complete with reverse thrust, was incredible.
[0] https://avgeekery.com/watch-fat-albert-rockets-into-airshow-...
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How do you figure 120 years? The first South Pole Station was Old Amudsen Scott which started operations in 1957 (65 years ago), the winter of 57-58 was the first time humans stayed through the long night at the pole.
Wikipedia is claiming that the Omond House - 1903 - was the first permanent base. Renamed to Orcadas Base in 1904 and permanently inhabited since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcadas_Base
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If you really want to go, be a dishwasher or cook or something similar. I've had 4 friends do exactly that. The work was crap, but the experience was well, well worth it.
How do you apply though? I'd assume vacancies would be extremely rare - quite interesting you've had four friends do it.
Just apply with whatever country applies to you
https://www.google.com/search?q=work+in+antarctica
US: https://www.usap.gov/jobsandopportunities/
Australian: https://jobs.antarctica.gov.au/jobs-in-antarctica/
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This is a latency vs. throughput / pipeline problem in disguise. You could send a food truck's worth of food every hour towards Mars; the first few months will be peaceful and quiet, but things change when a food truck appears in orbit every hour or so.
That only helps if they need lunch not some specific part or medicine etc. Also, Earth Mars transfers get dramatically more expensive outside of specific timing and of course actually sending multiple packages gets ruinously expensive. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer_orbit
...though it might make matters a bit difficult that expected durations vary between 300-ish days and 4 years when I run the numbers in NASA's Trajectory Browser: https://trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov/
Whenever 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…