9 ms·

How Antarctic bases went from wooden huts to sci-fi chic

225 points by misotaur 10y ago

cozzyd 10y ago
The plans for the future of McMurdo ( https://www.usap.gov/news/documents/McMurdoMasterPlan_2.1.pdf https://www.usap.gov/news/documents/McMurdoMasterPlan_2.1.pd... ) are quite exciting, but unfortunately, if it comes to fruition, it means less science for some number of seasons as the construction project happens. I'm sure there are vastly more experienced folks here, but I was just McMurdo for a ~month in November-December. I've also spent some time at Summit Station in Greenland, which is a much smaller (but newer! with some buildings on stilts!) station.
- akovaski 10y ago
  Are the building stilts for some kind of insulation from the ice or for some other reason?
  - oh_sigh 10y ago
    They talk about this near the end of the article: Snow blows all over the place, and if you build a structure on the ground, it will eventually be enveloped with snow. These stilts help prevent that.
pilom 10y ago
It says McMurdo was powered by a nuclear reactor for 10 years (ending in 1972). Anybody know why they got rid of it? Edit: Wikipedia to the rescue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Station#Nuclear_power_1962.E2.80.931972 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Station#Nuclear_power_... "As a result of continuing safety issues (hairline cracks in the reactor and water leaks), the U.S. Navy Nuclear Power Program decommissioned the plant in 1972." Still seems cheaper to run another better one than bringing in 8 million gallons of fuel every year?
- bendykstra 10y ago
  There were other issues as well. Decommissioning[1] With a total of 438 malfunctions during its operational lifetime from 1964 to 1972, the reactor at McMurdo proved to be an unreliable source of power generation, available only 72% of the time. Because of this, in May of 1972, it was determined by an independent assessment from the Bechtel Corporation that the PM-3A was not cost effective and that replacement with modern diesel-electric generators would require less staff and would also be more reliable. 1. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/reid2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/reid2/
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    It's really a shame there's so little innovation going on for these sorts of devices. There's nothing inherent about a nuclear device that will make in unreliable.
    - jfoutz 10y ago
      Eh, I'd take a mass produced object over a hand made version any day. Even more important if reliability is an issue. Ferraris are nice and all, but a boring old camery will get you where you need to go for hundreds of thousands of miles. It makes a lot of sense to me to just use what hospitals and data centers and military bases use. Also, if one breaks, you can probably use it for parts for the rest.
      - eru 10y ago
        That ideas was actually proposed to revive nuclear reactors: instead of building them on site, come up with some energy-generating components to be mass produced in a central factory and shipped out. (You can make those parts inert and safe to handle. Even the fuel rods of current reactors are safe to touch before they are spent.)
        jfoutz 10y ago
        IIRC, in France every reactor was the same model. If an issue was discovered, all of them would be upgraded to handle the problem. It also allowed a little more workforce mobility. It is a good idea. I just don't see how we can get there from here. Nuclear isn't particularly cheap (but yes, a good chunk of the expense comes from regulation). So there's no obvious reason to choose that over any alternative. We could certainly change tax structure to force oil and coal to be more expensive, but even simple changes to account for externalities are met with massive massive resistance.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I very much like the German station which keeps stepping up on top of the packed snow. Buildings as really very slow vehicles seems a particularly successful way to build in an environment with a high degree of uncertainty.
- cygx 10y ago
  Coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago I visited a talk by Dr. Lochte from the Alfred-Wegener Institute that runs the station. Interesting tidbit: The ice shelf it stands on rest upon the open sea, so for legal purposes, it's a ship ;)
- bootload 10y ago
  "I very much like the German station which keeps stepping up on top of the packed snow." Interesting. Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) has three stations, Casey, Mowson and Davis. A key feature, they are all on solid ground, rock and still have problems with ice buildup destroying the infrastructure. [0] I think the most interesting thing found building in Antartica is the measurement and acknowledgment of the toxic nature of the building materials (POPs) in western buildings. [1] Reference [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Station ,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawson_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawson_Station and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis_Station [1] Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), "Household pollutants detected around Antarctic stations" http://www.antarctica.gov.au/magazine/2011-2015/issue-28-june-2015/science/household-pollutants-detected-around-antarctic-stations http://www.antarctica.gov.au/magazine/2011-2015/issue-28-jun...
- walrus01 10y ago
  The new pole station was also designed to do this, on legs, after the experience with the previous dome becoming totally buried in snow.
RUG3Y 10y ago
It's a daydream of mine to work in Antarctica for a season. I don't really know how it works and I doubt it's something I could do, I'm not a scientist. Seems like it would be an awesome experience though.
- smcl 10y ago
  I had periods of this feeling too - but I think being so isolated and distant has the potential to supercharge any bad feelings. At this specific moment I'm a bit down generally, if I was on the other side of the world miles away from anywhere I'd be feeling extremely low. At the times when I've felt good and the possibility of Antarctica excited me[1] I could not conceive of the possibility of not being 100% into the idea of being there - right now I'm extremely glad I'm not :) [1] - like when I read Big Dead Place - a book I think you'd enjoy. It's written by someone who'd stayed in a couple of the US antarctic bases (McMurdo and Pole, iirc). Warning it will make you want to go http://feralhouse.com/big-dead-place/ http://feralhouse.com/big-dead-place/
  - RUG3Y 10y ago
    It's definitely not something I would want to do forever. I'd love to do it once and have the experience and also contribute to important and interesting work.
    - smcl 10y ago
      Oh definitely, even at my most enthusiastic I was only ever keen to do a couple of seasons
  - RUG3Y 10y ago
    Thanks for the book recommendation, I'll have to check it out.
- avar 10y ago
  There are lots of non-science jobs, cooks, mechanics, firefighters, divers etc. See http://www.coolantarctica.com/Community/find_a_job_in_antarctica.php http://www.coolantarctica.com/Community/find_a_job_in_antarc...
zevyoura 10y ago
Maciej has a great post about his visit to McMurdo: http://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm http://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm
- blakesterz 10y ago
  I loved this footnote from that one: http://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm#pedantic http://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm#ped...
- vocatus_gate 10y ago
  I love that he got all butthurt about not being able to buy liquor or a lighter. Completely missing the fact that he was in Antarctica...for free.
  - idlewords 10y ago
    I bought the lighter!
zdean 10y ago
"For years afterwards...nothing much fancier than wooden huts went up on the white continent." I think that in 1903, that wooden hut would be thought of as pretty fancy and state of the art. Only in retrospect 114 years later would it seem quaint.
- wolf550e 10y ago
  The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World's Fair. A wooden hut was not state of the art in 1903.
  - zdean 10y ago
    For what could be built in Antarctica in 1903, I bet it was state of the art. In 2015, the Shanghai Tower was built...it doesn't make what they're building in Antarctica today any less state of the art just because it's relatively less ambitious in scale.
dom0 10y ago
I can't help but think about Helix' snow station here.
chippy 10y ago
For those wanting to read about McMurdo, Big Dead Place http://feralhouse.com/big-dead-place/ http://feralhouse.com/big-dead-place/ is the best book to read. Apparently it was due to be made into a TV series....
- billbrown 10y ago
  A documentary that seems like it was made from that book is "Antarctica: A Year on Ice." It was on Netflix but isn't any longer. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2361700/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2361700/
- idlewords 10y ago
  This is by far the best book ever written on Antarctic living. I can't recommend it highly enough.
tunap 10y ago
This tour of Amundsen-Scott Station makes it seem like they're not "roughing it" so much anymore. Sure the sun may not set, pull the blind. Plenty of indoor light for the long nights, as well. Too cold to go outside? Go do a myriad of indoor activities with a whole contingent of other people or get away in the vast indoor spaces. Great walk-through, 30 minutes flew by in interesting fashion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5lQ9DCXIbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5lQ9DCXIbs
- jgalt212 10y ago
  Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World is also amazing. Looks like they have the whole thing on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7edsEUQB-J8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7edsEUQB-J8
- ridgeguy 10y ago
  Thanks for this, really enjoyed the video tour.
username223 10y ago
This guy's site has a great history of the pole station: http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/trivia.html http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/trivia.html
Abishek_Muthian 10y ago
Interesting to see the architectural race kicked off by India's Bharati. The race is to find mineral deposits as Antarctic is the new Africa.
RichardHeart 10y ago
Wouldn't these structures be more energy efficient via less surface area if they built them higher?
- Gracana 10y ago
  I wondered about that as well. There is one example of a pair of cylindrical buildings, which seems pretty efficient. Maybe the use of good insulating materials reduces the trade-off, and with more surface area you get more rooms with windows.
throwaway1892 10y ago
I remember reading a lot about staying during the winter in Antarctica from this: http://www.funraniumlabs.com/category/antarctica/ http://www.funraniumlabs.com/category/antarctica/ Alcohol, lot of alcohol.
fapjacks 10y ago
I want to stay for a winter so bad.

225 points by misotaur 10y ago

The plans for the future of McMurdo ( https://www.usap.gov/news/documents/McMurdoMasterPlan_2.1.pdf https://www.usap.gov/news/documents/McMurdoMasterPlan_2.1.pd... ) are quite exciting, but unfortunately, if it comes to fruition, it means less science for some number of seasons as the construction project happens. I'm sure there are vastly more experienced folks here, but I was just McMurdo for a ~month in November-December. I've also spent some time at Summit Station in Greenland, which is a much smaller (but newer! with some buildings on stilts!) station.

akovaski 10y ago
Are the building stilts for some kind of insulation from the ice or for some other reason?
- oh_sigh 10y ago
  They talk about this near the end of the article: Snow blows all over the place, and if you build a structure on the ground, it will eventually be enveloped with snow. These stilts help prevent that.

pilom 10y ago

It says McMurdo was powered by a nuclear reactor for 10 years (ending in 1972). Anybody know why they got rid of it? Edit: Wikipedia to the rescue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Station#Nuclear_power_1962.E2.80.931972 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Station#Nuclear_power_... "As a result of continuing safety issues (hairline cracks in the reactor and water leaks), the U.S. Navy Nuclear Power Program decommissioned the plant in 1972." Still seems cheaper to run another better one than bringing in 8 million gallons of fuel every year?

bendykstra 10y ago
There were other issues as well. Decommissioning[1] With a total of 438 malfunctions during its operational lifetime from 1964 to 1972, the reactor at McMurdo proved to be an unreliable source of power generation, available only 72% of the time. Because of this, in May of 1972, it was determined by an independent assessment from the Bechtel Corporation that the PM-3A was not cost effective and that replacement with modern diesel-electric generators would require less staff and would also be more reliable. 1. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/reid2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/reid2/
- jessriedel 10y ago
  It's really a shame there's so little innovation going on for these sorts of devices. There's nothing inherent about a nuclear device that will make in unreliable.
  - jfoutz 10y ago
    Eh, I'd take a mass produced object over a hand made version any day. Even more important if reliability is an issue. Ferraris are nice and all, but a boring old camery will get you where you need to go for hundreds of thousands of miles. It makes a lot of sense to me to just use what hospitals and data centers and military bases use. Also, if one breaks, you can probably use it for parts for the rest.
    - eru 10y ago
      That ideas was actually proposed to revive nuclear reactors: instead of building them on site, come up with some energy-generating components to be mass produced in a central factory and shipped out. (You can make those parts inert and safe to handle. Even the fuel rods of current reactors are safe to touch before they are spent.)
      - jfoutz 10y ago
        IIRC, in France every reactor was the same model. If an issue was discovered, all of them would be upgraded to handle the problem. It also allowed a little more workforce mobility. It is a good idea. I just don't see how we can get there from here. Nuclear isn't particularly cheap (but yes, a good chunk of the expense comes from regulation). So there's no obvious reason to choose that over any alternative. We could certainly change tax structure to force oil and coal to be more expensive, but even simple changes to account for externalities are met with massive massive resistance.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I very much like the German station which keeps stepping up on top of the packed snow. Buildings as really very slow vehicles seems a particularly successful way to build in an environment with a high degree of uncertainty.

cygx 10y ago
Coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago I visited a talk by Dr. Lochte from the Alfred-Wegener Institute that runs the station. Interesting tidbit: The ice shelf it stands on rest upon the open sea, so for legal purposes, it's a ship ;)
bootload 10y ago
"I very much like the German station which keeps stepping up on top of the packed snow." Interesting. Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) has three stations, Casey, Mowson and Davis. A key feature, they are all on solid ground, rock and still have problems with ice buildup destroying the infrastructure. [0] I think the most interesting thing found building in Antartica is the measurement and acknowledgment of the toxic nature of the building materials (POPs) in western buildings. [1] Reference [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Station ,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawson_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawson_Station and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis_Station [1] Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), "Household pollutants detected around Antarctic stations" http://www.antarctica.gov.au/magazine/2011-2015/issue-28-june-2015/science/household-pollutants-detected-around-antarctic-stations http://www.antarctica.gov.au/magazine/2011-2015/issue-28-jun...
walrus01 10y ago
The new pole station was also designed to do this, on legs, after the experience with the previous dome becoming totally buried in snow.

RUG3Y 10y ago

It's a daydream of mine to work in Antarctica for a season. I don't really know how it works and I doubt it's something I could do, I'm not a scientist. Seems like it would be an awesome experience though.

smcl 10y ago
I had periods of this feeling too - but I think being so isolated and distant has the potential to supercharge any bad feelings. At this specific moment I'm a bit down generally, if I was on the other side of the world miles away from anywhere I'd be feeling extremely low. At the times when I've felt good and the possibility of Antarctica excited me[1] I could not conceive of the possibility of not being 100% into the idea of being there - right now I'm extremely glad I'm not :) [1] - like when I read Big Dead Place - a book I think you'd enjoy. It's written by someone who'd stayed in a couple of the US antarctic bases (McMurdo and Pole, iirc). Warning it will make you want to go http://feralhouse.com/big-dead-place/ http://feralhouse.com/big-dead-place/
- RUG3Y 10y ago
  It's definitely not something I would want to do forever. I'd love to do it once and have the experience and also contribute to important and interesting work.
  - smcl 10y ago
    Oh definitely, even at my most enthusiastic I was only ever keen to do a couple of seasons
- RUG3Y 10y ago
  Thanks for the book recommendation, I'll have to check it out.
avar 10y ago
There are lots of non-science jobs, cooks, mechanics, firefighters, divers etc. See http://www.coolantarctica.com/Community/find_a_job_in_antarctica.php http://www.coolantarctica.com/Community/find_a_job_in_antarc...

zevyoura 10y ago

Maciej has a great post about his visit to McMurdo: http://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm http://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm

blakesterz 10y ago
I loved this footnote from that one: http://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm#pedantic http://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm#ped...
vocatus_gate 10y ago
I love that he got all butthurt about not being able to buy liquor or a lighter. Completely missing the fact that he was in Antarctica...for free.
- idlewords 10y ago
  I bought the lighter!

zdean 10y ago

"For years afterwards...nothing much fancier than wooden huts went up on the white continent." I think that in 1903, that wooden hut would be thought of as pretty fancy and state of the art. Only in retrospect 114 years later would it seem quaint.

wolf550e 10y ago
The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World's Fair. A wooden hut was not state of the art in 1903.
- zdean 10y ago
  For what could be built in Antarctica in 1903, I bet it was state of the art. In 2015, the Shanghai Tower was built...it doesn't make what they're building in Antarctica today any less state of the art just because it's relatively less ambitious in scale.

dom0 10y ago

I can't help but think about Helix' snow station here.

chippy 10y ago

For those wanting to read about McMurdo, Big Dead Place http://feralhouse.com/big-dead-place/ http://feralhouse.com/big-dead-place/ is the best book to read. Apparently it was due to be made into a TV series....

billbrown 10y ago
A documentary that seems like it was made from that book is "Antarctica: A Year on Ice." It was on Netflix but isn't any longer. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2361700/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2361700/
idlewords 10y ago
This is by far the best book ever written on Antarctic living. I can't recommend it highly enough.

tunap 10y ago

This tour of Amundsen-Scott Station makes it seem like they're not "roughing it" so much anymore. Sure the sun may not set, pull the blind. Plenty of indoor light for the long nights, as well. Too cold to go outside? Go do a myriad of indoor activities with a whole contingent of other people or get away in the vast indoor spaces. Great walk-through, 30 minutes flew by in interesting fashion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5lQ9DCXIbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5lQ9DCXIbs

jgalt212 10y ago
Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World is also amazing. Looks like they have the whole thing on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7edsEUQB-J8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7edsEUQB-J8
ridgeguy 10y ago
Thanks for this, really enjoyed the video tour.

username223 10y ago

This guy's site has a great history of the pole station: http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/trivia.html http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/trivia.html

Abishek_Muthian 10y ago

Interesting to see the architectural race kicked off by India's Bharati. The race is to find mineral deposits as Antarctic is the new Africa.

RichardHeart 10y ago

Wouldn't these structures be more energy efficient via less surface area if they built them higher?

Gracana 10y ago
I wondered about that as well. There is one example of a pair of cylindrical buildings, which seems pretty efficient. Maybe the use of good insulating materials reduces the trade-off, and with more surface area you get more rooms with windows.

throwaway1892 10y ago

I remember reading a lot about staying during the winter in Antarctica from this: http://www.funraniumlabs.com/category/antarctica/ http://www.funraniumlabs.com/category/antarctica/ Alcohol, lot of alcohol.

fapjacks 10y ago

I want to stay for a winter so bad.