21–30 of 67 posts
Where did the wastewater go before the first rodwell was finished?
Fresh water comes from the snow cave, and shoveled into the water melter.
I was also a bit surprised by everything being in Fahrenheit, even in the pictures.
The ice tunnels are really cool. Having grown up with Star Wars, who wouldn't love those?
>"Heating the equivalent of 1 gallon of water from -60°F to a reasonable liquid distribution temperature (50°F) means heating it up by a whopping 110°F. That’s 268 watt-hours of raw energy required just to bring a single gallon of water up to distribution temperature!
This is one of the reasons we’re restricted to two-minute showers."
Everyone reading this should try to get by on a two-minute shower once a day for one week, to see if we could be candidates for this job.
It's always fun seeing these posts, it's a look into such a strange way of living and supporting life. And there's something subtly terrifying about the whole operation too, seemingly teetering on a knife's edge between the ever-forward marching of entropy and all of the energy they need to put in to keep that in check, even more so with it being so cold. How fast it could collapse if, say, there was a generator prob…
There is a lot of redundancy and they're equipped to fix things on site: https://www.jeffreydonenfeld.com/blog/2012/12/the-south-pole...
To think that beneath the south pole lies a metric shit ton of shit. I think some things are better left unknown.
Tomorrow, a nuclear war happens. Next, nuclear winter and the slow death of the human race. Antarctica? Sits untouched for millions of years, then aliens land, and find a mysterious additional lake filled with all sorts of microbes.
TL;DR: They mine the Antarctic for ice, creating huge sinkholes, then fill the holes in with raw sewage, a gift for future generations. Environmentally friendly, right!
>Heating the equivalent of 1 gallon of water from -60°F to a reasonable liquid distribution temperature (50°F) means heating it up by a whopping 110°F. That’s 268 watt-hours of raw energy required just to bring a single gallon of water up to distribution temperature! It's actually more than this, because the phase change from solid to liquid takes a lot of energy too.
The physics term for this is the "latent heat of fusion," or the energy required to change states from liquid to solid, or vice versa.
A few years ago I saw someone calculate the energy required to melt the ice in front of a locomotive (I think) at speed; IIRC it required a (not small!) nuclear reactor's worth of energy. Not practical!
Fascinating! >"Heating the equivalent of 1 gallon of water from -60°F to a reasonable liquid distribution temperature (50°F) means heating it up by a whopping 110°F. That’s 268 watt-hours of raw energy required just to bring a single gallon of water up to distribution temperature! This is one of the reasons we’re restricted to two-minute showers." Everyone reading this should try to get by on a two-minute shower once…
This is pretty typical aboard ship for smaller vessels on long voyages. Not so hard as it sounds: get wet, turn off; lather up, rinse off, turn off. You can do with 20-30 seconds of water and be quite clean, with some practice.
It's not satisfying though. And I can't imagine how those numbers scale if you have long hair, or use conditioner.
It's always fun seeing these posts, it's a look into such a strange way of living and supporting life. And there's something subtly terrifying about the whole operation too, seemingly teetering on a knife's edge between the ever-forward marching of entropy and all of the energy they need to put in to keep that in check, even more so with it being so cold. How fast it could collapse if, say, there was a generator prob…
Nit: McMurdo uses diesel since its climate is more forgiving but the South Pole station the author was at uses kerosene-based JP8 jet fuel since it comes with additives for subzero temperatures. They even have their own arctic recipe called AN8. There is a lot of redundancy and they're equipped to fix things on site: https://www.jeffreydonenfeld.com/blog/2012/12/the-south-pole...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nit: McMurdo uses diesel since its climate is more forgiving but the South Pole station the author was at uses kerosene-based JP8 jet fuel since it comes with additives for subzero temperatures. They even have their own arctic recipe called AN8. There is a lot of redundancy and they're equipped to fix things on site: https://www.jeffreydonenfeld.com/blog/2012/12/the-south-pole...
IIRC McMurdo even had a nuclear reactor for a while. :-)