4 ms·

As a 10x traveler to South Pole, have never heard this assertion. Do you have a reference somewhere I can learn more about this?

idlewords 4y ago
It's fiction.
yodon 4y ago
It looks like I was at Pole about 15-20 years before your earliest trips, back in the days when the Cold War was still a thing (technically just having ended, but still having been a major part of all of our lives). There were a lot of old timers in those days whose era extended back to the early days of the shuttle (and at least one who went back to the Apollo days, but that's a different story). I'm guessing most of those folks retired long ago and those bits of cultural history likely faded away with them. I'll also ask out of curiosity if the pair of guys that constituted the Naval outpost that operated the Ground Controlled Approach radar system at the South Pole runway is still there and still as stand-off-ish from the civilian station as they were back in the day, or whether that was a cold-war-era phenomenon (I always assumed that role was reserved for those individuals who managed to piss off an Admiral in a particularly impressive manner, as it seemed to be an incredibly isolated existence for them, hiking out to and back from the radar station and otherwise pretty much not interacting with anyone).
- eigenhombre 4y ago
  I wonder if that is the same thing as the radome installation I visited in 2010 or so. It was a long, long (cold!) hike almost to the other end of the skiway, and the installation was fascinating. I have to say I remember the people who showed us around being super nice... but it was also thoroughly a civilian operation, distinct from the New York Air Guard crews who would cycle through (and who I also had only good experiences with). Different times, I'm guessing! :-)

4 ms·

As a 10x traveler to South Pole, have never heard this assertion. Do you have a reference somewhere I can learn more about this?

by eigenhombre 4y ago

idlewords 4y ago
It's fiction.
yodon 4y ago
It looks like I was at Pole about 15-20 years before your earliest trips, back in the days when the Cold War was still a thing (technically just having ended, but still having been a major part of all of our lives). There were a lot of old timers in those days whose era extended back to the early days of the shuttle (and at least one who went back to the Apollo days, but that's a different story). I'm guessing most of those folks retired long ago and those bits of cultural history likely faded away with them. I'll also ask out of curiosity if the pair of guys that constituted the Naval outpost that operated the Ground Controlled Approach radar system at the South Pole runway is still there and still as stand-off-ish from the civilian station as they were back in the day, or whether that was a cold-war-era phenomenon (I always assumed that role was reserved for those individuals who managed to piss off an Admiral in a particularly impressive manner, as it seemed to be an incredibly isolated existence for them, hiking out to and back from the radar station and otherwise pretty much not interacting with anyone).
- eigenhombre 4y ago
  I wonder if that is the same thing as the radome installation I visited in 2010 or so. It was a long, long (cold!) hike almost to the other end of the skiway, and the installation was fascinating. I have to say I remember the people who showed us around being super nice... but it was also thoroughly a civilian operation, distinct from the New York Air Guard crews who would cycle through (and who I also had only good experiences with). Different times, I'm guessing! :-)