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http://www.southpolestation.co...

Try again when you've actually done the research.

"The sun rises on September 25th and sets around March 20th. During this
time, the sun circles through all four horizons but never sets. The weather is mostly clear.
According to the sun card data collection during 9/07 and 3/08, there are 3272 sunny hours out
of 4224 total hours. White snow has a very high albedo (reflectance index) so that short-waved
irradiation is reflected into all directions increasing the input on the solar panels. Further,
photovoltaic panels work best when being cooled. Therefore, the South Pole environment is an
optimal place for utilizing solar panels. "

That's actually wrong.

http://www.southpolestation.co...

"The sun rises on September 25th and sets around March 20th. During this
time, the sun circles through all four horizons but never sets. The weather is mostly clear.
According to the sun card data collection during 9/07 and 3/08, there are 3272 sunny hours out
of 4224 total hours. White snow has a very high albedo (reflectance index) so that short-waved
irradiation is reflected into all directions increasing the input on the solar panels. Further,
photovoltaic panels work best when being cooled. Therefore, the South Pole environment is an
optimal place for utilizing solar panels. "

Highest returns happen with solar panels at the poles.

Nah, two guys should be sufficient.

The Amundsen–Scott polar station has been manned year-long for a long time now:
http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/wo.html

We can keep people alive in orbit, which is much harder. It's simply a matter of resource dedication.

Whether we have the money is not the right question- we definitely do, and a whole lot of ignorance is required to believe otherwise. The question is what do we expect to gain by spending the money, and how important is that compared to the things on which we are already spending money.

They should just go study these folks. It's definitely and isolated, extreme environment.

I'm one of the 47 down here for the 2010 Winter season, the crew is missing the Dome. It was an icon in Antarctica, and this place feels like it's missing something without it. Someone pointed earlier to Spindler's website http://www.southpolesation.com/ where there is much more on the deconstruction from the unofficial South Pole historian. -- http://www.artificialpulse.com/

Here are deconstruction photos of the former dome station.

many will be glad to see the eyesores turn down.

These people are gigantic fucking idiots. There is no other way for me to describe them. Mod me asshole if you want, but you cannot even begin to compare the eyesore of an actual fossil fuel plant (let alone what they want it to look like) or a nuclear plant (the image is the relevant part, but I always like nuclear dangers articles, they're fun!) with a wind farm. A collection of pinwheels, or a smoking concrete monstrosity? On appearance alone, the wind farm wins. I like to mention Moss Landing because there's a junkyard right next to it, a pick and pull I think. I've been there, and the power plant only gets uglier as you get closer. It's right on Highway 1, so unlike wind farms, you have to look at it up close. See, "conventional" power plants need water for cooling, so they're built on lakes, rivers, or the ocean... you know, places where people actually want to live, unlike the bumfuck nowhere locations where they build wind farms.

I occasionally drive past the bird-killing Altamont Pass Wind Farm which I find to be quite attractive. Too bad about the birds, but newer designs are larger, higher up, and slower, mitigating this problem. And how many birds do you think die every year from lung cancer, due to breathing particulates from fossil fuel power plants? We can find smokestacks emitting excessive crap in this country as fast as we can pay people to climb up them and check them. Birds have extremely fragile respiratory systems. We all pay the same toxic debt.

Ultimately, I think that there is a place for Nuclear in our system, at least until we get space-based solar up to speed. But wind clearly has a place as well...

About the closest comparison to something on Earth would be the South Pole researchers, who are stuck there (particularly during the southern hemisphere's winter) w/out recourse to outside help. A little research drug (no pun intended) up a timeline of events at the station. What's interesting from just a cursory review of it is the number of cases of apendicitis in the first few years of the station. There has also been at least one case of a torn knee tendon.

So in the space arena, whether it's required on ISS, on the moon, or during a Mars mission, it makes good sense to plan ahead and have something like this available. After all, even if one of the crew members is a doctor, it'd still be reasonable to be minimally invasive with any surgical procedures, and to have an expert in whatever the problem is review the proceedings back on Earth.

You mean like Nukey Poo

If this TV show adds anything to the story above (which I rather doubt), apologies.

An initial purpose for the highway will be to help lay a $250-million fibre-optic cable to the Scott-Amundsen base. The cable, which should be completed within five years, will revolutionise communications at the Pole.