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I've had to do that job among many others while in Antarctica. And the launches were much worse than in Alaska (where I've also been): insane winds (250+ km/h) or insane temperatures (-80C) . And it doesn't take '8 hours a day of forecaster's time' to launch a balloon, but about 15 minutes, then 2 hours to remotely collect data (while you work on something else) and a few minutes to send the result if you need to setup a manual internet connection. Anyway, just to say that automated launchers have existed for the last 30 years but they've never been reliable, maybe they've finally improved...

I've had to do that job among many others while in Antarctica. And the launches were much worse than in Alaska (where I've also been): insane winds (250+ km/h) or insane temperatures (-80C) . And it doesn't take '8 hours a day of forecaster's time' to launch a balloon, but about 15 minutes, then 2 hours to remotely collect data (while you work on something else) and a few minutes to send the result if you need to setup a manual internet connection. Anyway, just to say that automated launchers have existed for the last 30 years but they've never been reliable, maybe they've finally improved...

Also, why the effing hell would pesticides even need to be mentioned

Haven't RTFA, but I've grown stuff in Antarctica, and in McMurdo they've been growing lots of stuff for a long time and they regularly have problems with the Tobacco mosaic virus as it can be carried by people for a long time.

I post this every time there's some new airplane nightmare... Remember that it is from the 70s.... Quite prophetic.

This prophetic cartoon was drawn in the 70s...

It gets worse: we couldn't pee in the toilets either ! This was insanely hard not to do and took the training of a yogi master. The reason is that the toilets were actually shit burners and liquids would mess them up, if not straight short-circuit them !

Yeah, I don't really understand this rule. It's not like you pee alcohol after drinking it, it's transformed by the body (acetaldehyde, then acetyl).

Also I tested a water recycler for a year while in Antarctica, which was intended for space use (it was an ESA model, probably different from the NASA one), and there was no limit to the amount of alcohol we could drink (fortunately!!!), yet the only issue was with some shampoo and urine: we had to use the officially sanctioned shampoo and we were forbidden to pee in the shower ! Well, now that I think of it, it could have been due to the high alcohol content ! No, seriously, IIRC it was the urea which would damage the reverse osmosis filters.

You have to be crazy enough to want to do a winterover (or a Mars mission).
But you also have to be sane enough to spend over a year in a tin can with a bunch of people you may not like all that much, with nothing much to do, sure death waiting outside and no early exit. I speak from experience.

As someone who has gone to Antarctica to install and run the software I write, I can proudly say I've been doing Devops for decades ! And I just learned the term a minnute ago...

Having lived it, I can assure you there is a great big difference between -40C (not that cold with good clothing), -60C (fucking cold even with good clothing) and -80C ("my lungs are freezing and I feel like I've just fallen in a pool of liquid nitrogen argh cough cough cough")...

Yup, the 'Dent du Geant' is also proeminently visible. I soloed that thing years ago. And climbed many other features in the area, including the Freney pillar on Mt Blanc, partly visible here below the summit.

Same here. I've long wondered why climbing is so chock-full of intellectuals (somewhat less so in the US than in Europe, lots of dirtbags without a job in the former). Most climbers are engineers, researchers, etc... It's certainly not because of money because once you have harness, shoes and rope you are pretty much set for the next few years. Maybe because it's one of the few sports where you can stop and think for as long as you want (or rather as long as your arms can hold).

There are plenty of tools or scripts that will rename your files according to the time the image was taken. Make sure you use some variation of YYYYMMDDHHMMSS as it's in lexicographic order when sorting. I wrote my own.

Kind of... the ability to resist cold for one...

In 1994 I had a liquid nitrogen tube break above my head while preparing an experiment for Antarctica. About 30 liters poured on my head in a second. I felt it go instantly trough my clothing, run over me, and on the floor. Everybody else in the lab ran away, but I couldn't because it formed a dense could, I couldn't see anything and I was behind a lot of equipment and cables. Then the floor exploded: I couldn't see what was going on but very loud cracking and banging noises later proved to be the tiles shattering. Fortunately I was wearing security shoes and just stood my ground. After the fog cleared I saw some faces at the door: "Are you still alive?"

Most storms come from the west.

...and the most violent winds, the 300km/h katabatic winds, come full blast from the south. But they just slide over the sea ice: it's flat so there's no resistance, no traction. I have plenty of info and pics on my site as I used to be a climate scientist, the kind that goes on the field to take measurements.

I was about to ask the same question. I shat for a year in a 'burner'. It took some practise and self control to get used to piss and shit separately. But also that shit-burner (a resistor in our case), stank to all hell. Normally the smoke would go outside in a chimney... Until it froze. Imagine having the smell of cooking shit all over the building. I had to rappel down the building in -65C temperatures to fix the chimney ! Complete story here.

You don't know what you are talking about and you are also confusing your vocabulary. 'Free climbing' is climbing with hands and feet and a rope for protection. It is what most climbers do, as opposed to 'aid climbing' which is pulling on gear. 'Solo climbing' is simply being alone (no climbing partner) and can be done with or without rope. There are some big wall solo aid climbers and the risk is very low. 'Free soloers' are the guys in the commercials... or just about any other climber when you are on easy enough terrain.
Few climbers actually like free soloing (I do); and also very few people die from free soloing. Accidents when rock climbing are usually due to falling rocks, errors during maneuvers (usually on rappels), bad anchors, tripping on trails on the way down... and car accidents when you drive back tired from a long day of climbing.

On normal maps of Antarctica it's hard to see where the (rock) mountains are. I made a script for that 15 years ago, and it's still there.

• check the price and availabilty of the inks before buying the printer
• print regularly (at least twice a week) to avoid clogged heads
• for printing photos, get a printer calibrator (you can share it with other people since you need to calibrate only once for each set of printer / ink / paper). While you are at it, calibrate your screen.

Here. I guess Google must be moving to Texas.

I've had Champagne with ice from the last core from Epica, 3280m deep, and it was quite an experience: it was tingling in the glass like a glass xylophone. The 300 bars of pressure still held by bubbles of air in the ice being released by the melting. That and the sweet taste of drilling fluid.

• difficulty in cooling systems: the thinner and dryer air means than there's less evacuation of heat. Meaning you need to run your fans at higher speed, meaning they don't last long. I exhausted all my spares halfway through. Your disks and CPUs run at higher temps, which is particularly hard on the disks.
• problems with hard drives which I have no proof but wonder if the head floating on air is closer to the surface, inducing damage to the surface. I never understood why hard drives (even the latest 4Tb which I hold in my hand right now) have a 'do not cover' hole to let air in. Why don't they seal them ?!? I lost all my spare drives.
• problems with thermal fluctuations: power goes out, temperature drops to -40 in an hour, power comes back, PC tries to boot automatically, hard drive with deformed platters screams in pain...

There's plenty of papers about them, but they give different scopes. Usually Antarctic cores are more precise and less sensitive to random fluctuations. They also measure more things (temperature, humidity, direct CO2 levels...). In the case of TFA, a 40m core is less than impressive if you compare it to 4km long cores from Vostok or Concordia, but the gist of the article is that it will be very precise for each year.

I've eaten one year old yogurts and eggs (raw too). One out of 3 yogurts would blow in your face upon opening, and one out of 3 eggs was black evilness. The eggs were waxed and irradiated to keep them for so long. It was in Antarctica and since then I've stopped reading date limits.

Personally, I'd rather hang out with some mountain climbers than a bunch of sloppy drunks.

As a hardcore climber and a home brewer, I'm sure there's a compliment in there somewhere, but I'm not sure where.

Personally, I'd rather hang out with some mountain climbers than a bunch of sloppy drunks.

As a hardcore climber and a home brewer, I'm sure there's a compliment in there somewhere, but I'm not sure where.

Thank you very much! Very interesting stuff.

Two follow up questions:

How many coders have been working on the software?

What kind of version control system do you use?

The bus factor is 1 for the software and 2 for the hardware. A lot more people work on the mechanics and obviously on the research. I use SVN.

(BTW your site www.gdargaud.net rocks!)

Haven't updated it much recently. It's a lot less photogenic to do nuclear software than polar software...

Thank you very much! Very interesting stuff.

Two follow up questions:

How many coders have been working on the software?

What kind of version control system do you use?

(BTW your site www.gdargaud.net rocks!)

"I bet the people of Gomorrah felt like they got the short end of the stick. After all, they didn't get a perversion named after them." — Mike Miles.

Having worked there and seen attempts at recovering energy from the wind, I can tell you it's not easy. It can blow at 250km/h on the coast, and rocks and good sized chunks of ice fly with it, destroying blades from windmills easily. I've seen specially designed prototypes (horizontal blades, self-braking, etc) destroyed before they were even turned on !

A quick googling shows that about 10960 athletes from 204 countries have come together in competition within one city. If you can't find the value in that, then I feel sorry for you.

No I don't. For me sport is what I do, not what I show other people I do. If people want to run, FINE, but competitions are just as dumb as a pissing contest.

I build scientific instruments, actually I write the software for them, but since I end up being the only one who knows how to use them (unless they RTFM), I often go on the field to install them. I worked for 15 years in atmospheric science and spent 3 years running around Antarctica setting up and running various instruments. Now I do cosmology and nuclear physics, but it's the same and I end up installing cosminc ray or neutrino detectors on some nice mountains.

But like others have already suggested, the best way to stay active is probably to bike to work. I have my own tricks for that...: live high, work low, ride dirt in the morning and, err, take the bus back home in the evening...

I build scientific instruments, actually I write the software for them, but since I end up being the only one who knows how to use them (unless they RTFM), I often go on the field to install them. I worked for 15 years in atmospheric science and spent 3 years running around Antarctica setting up and running various instruments. Now I do cosmology and nuclear physics, but it's the same and I end up installing cosminc ray or neutrino detectors on some nice mountains.

But like others have already suggested, the best way to stay active is probably to bike to work. I have my own tricks for that...: live high, work low, ride dirt in the morning and, err, take the bus back home in the evening...

As for earbuds falling out, you can make your own custom earbuds. As for the pain after freezing skin: it comes back to normal if you use it regularly. It took me 6 months for the pain to go away each time I froze my toes. But for an ear, which you don't touch often, I don't know. You should try massaging it when your hands are not on the keyboard... C;-)

Your pics from a 300 Club event or it didn't happen! :D

(BTW, is the answer "136.575 Kelvins"?)

Here (in 1996) and here (in 2005). Happy ?

You mean -136.575 Celsius, right ? C;-)

Your pics from a 300 Club event or it didn't happen! :D

(BTW, is the answer "136.575 Kelvins"?)

Here (in 1996) and here (in 2005). Happy ?

You mean -136.575 Celsius, right ? C;-)

And yes, I've been there just to check... C;-)

Your pics from a 300 Club event or it didn't happen! :D

(BTW, is the answer "136.575 Kelvins"?)

The funny thing is that I keep getting asked about penguin poop... And now they've found a use for it (counting them).

That's how I explain it to people who ask question such as "What was before the Big Bang?". The question doesn't make any sense because time was created at the same time than the Big Bang. It's exactly like asking "What is farther south than the south pole ?!?". And yes, I've been there just to check... C;-)

Having done construction work in polar regions, I can't imagine how much money and energy must have gone into that thing. Cool, yes, but how much useful, peaceful scientific research could have been conducted there for the same budget ?!? Compare to now where instead instead of wasting it on useless and scary bombs, we waste it on useless and scary traders. Hmmm.

For useful science, what if we sent the scary and useless traders to the ice base and nuked them from orbit, just to be sure.

Having done construction work in polar regions, I can't imagine how much money and energy must have gone into that thing. Cool, yes, but how much useful, peaceful scientific research could have been conducted there for the same budget ?!? Compare to now where instead instead of wasting it on useless and scary bombs, we waste it on useless and scary traders. Hmmm.

A more contemporary question is how much peaceful scientific research could have been conducted in the US for the cost of military operations in Afganistan and Iraq.

My car could be driving itself by now...

Having done construction work in polar regions, I can't imagine how much money and energy must have gone into that thing. Cool, yes, but how much useful, peaceful scientific research could have been conducted there for the same budget ?!? Compare to now where instead instead of wasting it on useless and scary bombs, we waste it on useless and scary traders. Hmmm.

Other stations on the coast (up to 65deg south) could point to geosync orbit but it usually cost too much, so they rely on short data connections via Irridium. Almost only limited to mail. Scientific data is via sneakernet in summer, on the supply ships. There are regularly ambitious plans, like a couple years ago laying an optical fiber for 1500km between the pole and Dome C and building a big antenna there, but the Antarctic Treaty precludes leaving permanent installations there, as would be a fiber on the ice.

The reason for the two-way seawater was to continuously recirculate it to avoid freezing. And since sea-water is less prone to freezing than clear water, it was also a bonus. It wasn't actually sea-water but the even saltier (and warmer) remains from the dessalination process. And it was used for flushing.

Because I think it's boring.

I agree that jogging or lifting weight is dead boring. Then do something exciting: climbing (even indoors), or just about any other mountain activity. Also because being scared cleans all the shit out of your head. But of course it helps if you are near some mountains...

As the saying goes:

"Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness." -- Edward Stanley, the Earl of Derby, 1873.

Aurora occur in rings centered on the magnetic poles

Sorry, but that is not correct. Auroras occur in rings centered on the geomagnetic poles, which are more or less between the geographic pole and the magnetic pole. Look at the small map I did here to explain the choice of Dome C for astronomy: it's smack near the geomagnetic pole, meaning we hardly ever see auroras down there... C:-(

From this page:

The geomagnetic pole, located somewhat between the magnetic and geographic pole, is harder to define. The Earth is surrounded by a magnetic field that extends far away in space and protects us from the solar radiations. This layer converges on the Earth at the geomagnetic poles. You can also consider it as the true axis of the 'magnet Earth' (the dipole equivalent). It is approximately 1200 kilometers from the south pole, close to Vostok Station (roughly halfway between geographic and magnetic pole). The maximum amount of auroras tend to happen on a 1000km radius circle centered on this pole.

Aurora occur in rings centered on the magnetic poles

Sorry, but that is not correct. Auroras occur in rings centered on the geomagnetic poles, which are more or less between the geographic pole and the magnetic pole. Look at the small map I did here to explain the choice of Dome C for astronomy: it's smack near the geomagnetic pole, meaning we hardly ever see auroras down there... C:-(

From this page:

The geomagnetic pole, located somewhat between the magnetic and geographic pole, is harder to define. The Earth is surrounded by a magnetic field that extends far away in space and protects us from the solar radiations. This layer converges on the Earth at the geomagnetic poles. You can also consider it as the true axis of the 'magnet Earth' (the dipole equivalent). It is approximately 1200 kilometers from the south pole, close to Vostok Station (roughly halfway between geographic and magnetic pole). The maximum amount of auroras tend to happen on a 1000km radius circle centered on this pole.

Aurora occur in rings centered on the magnetic poles

Sorry, but that is not correct. Auroras occur in rings centered on the geomagnetic poles, which are more or less between the geographic pole and the magnetic pole. Look at the small map I did here to explain the choice of Dome C for astronomy: it's smack near the geomagnetic pole, meaning we hardly ever see auroras down there... C:-(

From this page:

The geomagnetic pole, located somewhat between the magnetic and geographic pole, is harder to define. The Earth is surrounded by a magnetic field that extends far away in space and protects us from the solar radiations. This layer converges on the Earth at the geomagnetic poles. You can also consider it as the true axis of the 'magnet Earth' (the dipole equivalent). It is approximately 1200 kilometers from the south pole, close to Vostok Station (roughly halfway between geographic and magnetic pole). The maximum amount of auroras tend to happen on a 1000km radius circle centered on this pole.

• Most plastics become hard and brittle. The soles of the shoes (huge boots designed for the cold) would break if you jumped on something hard.
• Normal electrical cabling turns to raw spaghetti and breaks to the touch.
• Teflon electric cables, which don't break, don't conduct electricity properly anymore because their dielectric properties change ! After 1km you get half the voltage (~100V) you got at -40C.
• Mechanical equipment break in unexpected places.
• Your nose hair freeze all the way down your throat when you breath in.
• You glasses cover in solid fog in less than a minute
• You eyes freeze open if you don't wear glasses
• Boiling tea in a 1L thermos freezes in less time than it takes you to reach your destination... Etc...