7 ms·

A couple other threads (on Project Iceworm and its tunnels), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42262547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42262547 ("NASA

A couple other threads (on Project Iceworm and its tunnels), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42262547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42262547 ("NASA aircraft uncover Cold War nuclear missile tunnels under Greenland ice sheet (space.com)"—42 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42249801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42249801 ("California scientists accidentally find nuclear fever dream in Arctic snow (sfgate.com)"—4 commments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28374013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28374013 ("The U.S. Army tried portable nuclear power at remote bases 60 years ago (atlasobscura.com)" (2021)—152 comments)

keepamovin 1y ago
There's very interesting bases in Greenland even today.
- runjake 1y ago
  Such as? Presumably, you mean Pituffik Space Base[1], formerly Thule Air Base, and Thule Site J? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pituffik_Space_Base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pituffik_Space_Base 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Site_J https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Site_J
  - keepamovin 1y ago
    OK there's that (Site J is fascinating). But there's also another in-mountain base near Helheim Glacier, and an under ice research base midway between Helheim and Jacobshavn Glacier (Site G or H?) lol given your background you should probably definitely know!
  - hammock 1y ago
    The most interesting ones are probably secret. “Helix” was a fictional TV show about a bio lab in the arctic.
  - ipdashc 1y ago
    Thule/Pituffik is why the whole "buying Greenland" thing never made sense to me, no matter how you try to look at it or steelman it... Before they were threatened with being purchased and invaded, Greenland and Denmark were our allies, and it's not like Greenland had a shortage of (non-green) land. If it was about military access, we could have just asked to build another base.
    - 20after4 1y ago
      Are there mineral/energy resources there to extract? That's the only thing that would make sense to me.
      - seniorThrowaway 1y ago
        yes, significant amounts
      - ngangaga 1y ago
        https://www.mining.com/web/factbox-greenlands-rich-but-largely-untapped-mineral-resources/ https://www.mining.com/web/factbox-greenlands-rich-but-large...
        perihelions 1y ago
        It's the wrong question though! The US is sitting on piles of rare earth deposits—it still doesn't mine them. It can't compete on pure cost with the mining industry in China. It's discussed extensively (e.g. here[0]) that the mining, and particularly chemical processing of ores, is labor/resource-intensive, expensive, and hazardous to ecology and to humans. It has nothing to do with the raw availability—these are super abundant ores, not rare at all, despite the name. Jack Lifton in [0] adds the perspective that rare earth processing involves a large amount of institutional knowledge, that would take time for the US to reacquire, since we forget everything when we stopped mining many decades ago. While in the interim, China has spent its time as the world's rare earth monopoly optimizing the chemical processes, widening their moat. It's like the manufacturing question, where's it about institutional knowledge and industrial ecosystems—nothing at all like oil/gas where it's solely about where the minerals are. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43953272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43953272

keepamovin 1y ago

There's very interesting bases in Greenland even today.

runjake 1y ago
Such as? Presumably, you mean Pituffik Space Base[1], formerly Thule Air Base, and Thule Site J? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pituffik_Space_Base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pituffik_Space_Base 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Site_J https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Site_J
- keepamovin 1y ago
  OK there's that (Site J is fascinating). But there's also another in-mountain base near Helheim Glacier, and an under ice research base midway between Helheim and Jacobshavn Glacier (Site G or H?) lol given your background you should probably definitely know!
- hammock 1y ago
  The most interesting ones are probably secret. “Helix” was a fictional TV show about a bio lab in the arctic.
- ipdashc 1y ago
  Thule/Pituffik is why the whole "buying Greenland" thing never made sense to me, no matter how you try to look at it or steelman it... Before they were threatened with being purchased and invaded, Greenland and Denmark were our allies, and it's not like Greenland had a shortage of (non-green) land. If it was about military access, we could have just asked to build another base.
  - 20after4 1y ago
    Are there mineral/energy resources there to extract? That's the only thing that would make sense to me.
    - seniorThrowaway 1y ago
      yes, significant amounts
    - ngangaga 1y ago
      https://www.mining.com/web/factbox-greenlands-rich-but-largely-untapped-mineral-resources/ https://www.mining.com/web/factbox-greenlands-rich-but-large...
      - perihelions 1y ago
        It's the wrong question though! The US is sitting on piles of rare earth deposits—it still doesn't mine them. It can't compete on pure cost with the mining industry in China. It's discussed extensively (e.g. here[0]) that the mining, and particularly chemical processing of ores, is labor/resource-intensive, expensive, and hazardous to ecology and to humans. It has nothing to do with the raw availability—these are super abundant ores, not rare at all, despite the name. Jack Lifton in [0] adds the perspective that rare earth processing involves a large amount of institutional knowledge, that would take time for the US to reacquire, since we forget everything when we stopped mining many decades ago. While in the interim, China has spent its time as the world's rare earth monopoly optimizing the chemical processes, widening their moat. It's like the manufacturing question, where's it about institutional knowledge and industrial ecosystems—nothing at all like oil/gas where it's solely about where the minerals are. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43953272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43953272