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South Pole to Get Highway
tetrad writes "The New Scientist magazine reports that the US is building a road to the South Pole. The "highway" would cross the Ross Ice Shelf and then pass through the Transantarctic Mountains (map here). Convoys of tractors will be the only traffic on the road, bringing fuel and heavy equipment to the South Pole, as well as enabling the installation of a $250M fibre-optic communications cable (discussed previously)."
All I can say is "about time!" I've been waiting for this for years. I mean, now I can finally go to South Pole Disneyland.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Yay! Now people can contribute to global warming and measure it at the same time!
All of this money that they're wasting could go to feed all of the starving programmers... ...oh wait, I figured it out now. This is where they're SENDING the starving programmers.
Did they ask the rest of the world, or did they just assume ownership of the south pole??
Traffic should be pretty light, and I bet I can speed with abandon, but I gotta believe that the tolls will be a bitch!
A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.
Okay, so they're building a road across Antarctica. Are they going to clear all the snow and ice, and build the road on actual terra firma? Or are they just going to build it on top of ice? If they build it on ice, and in 20-50 years that ice melts down somewhat because of (manmade global warming/natural global warming/my ass), the road would be in fairly rough shape if not impassable. I'm imagining this is going to be a costly project and any roadway that they're going to pour THAT kind of money into they are going to expect a fairly long lifespan from.
Can't we just give them segways with snow wheels instead?
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. --Edmund Burke
Wouldn't that have some significant problems in structural stability. I mean it's built on an ice shelf. Ice floats. Antarctic ice shelves have been known to dissapear
Sounds like a waste of money to me!
Now they'll be 0wning me at Quake, in between sexing penguins or whatever they do ;-)
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Wonder if they'll have the signs on the highway that say "Last chance for gas - next station 1000km away"
And..how about the poor soul that has to actually WORK at that station!
hitchhiker: hey man, you going south to Florida?
trucker: No I'm goi... err. yeahhh.. hop in little buddy!
Trolling is a art,
This reminds me of a story in The Onion's 'Our Dumb Century' book. It was something along the lines of, "US military find last unspoilt place on Earth, blows it to hell."
There was a penguin driving his car down a desert road.
It was a really hot day, and his car is really a really old convertible. Up ahead he saw a small town.
All of a sudden, his hood burst open and oil shot into the air.
He pulled it into the first mechanic he saw in the town and cleaned himself off. The mechanic told him it could be a little while, so he waddled across the street to the ice-cream stand.
He got a dish of vanilla ice-cream, and since he had no arms, just flippers, he had to fling it towards his mouth. Well, after he finished his ice-cream, and was covered with vanilla ice-cream, he waddled across the street back to the mechanic.
The mechanic was looking at the engine and said, "Well, it looks like you blew a seal."
The penguin says, "I did NOT! It's just ice-cream!"
Worst. Sig. Ever.
On a side note, "Both Chile and Argentina have gone to great lengths to make their claims in Antarctica part of their national territory. While there has been no recognition of these claims by any other sovereign state, both countries have great nationalistic pride in these claims. In August of 1973, an Argentine cabinet meeting was held in the area claimed by Argentina. Chile's president Pinochet spent a week in Antarctica in 1977 which caused Argentina to devise the boldest plans for claiming sovereignty. In the fall of 1978, a pregnant Argentine woman was send to live in Antarctica and in Jan. 1979, Emile Marco Palma was the first child born in Antarctica. Following the pattern in colonialism as seen in North America, Emile takes his place in history along side Virginia Dare. The Argentines followed with a wedding in Feb. 1979. Both countries have maintained colonies of civilian dependents living year round at their bases and tourism from bases both in Chile and Argentina has grown significantly in the last decades." So perhaps this means...WAR! Yes, let's fight over a piece of ice.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
If there's going to be a permanent presence on the South Pole, this kind of infrastructure is necessary. I worked on a satellite communications system that talked with the NOAA polar-orbit spacecraft. At the poles, you'll see the spacecraft every 90 minutes. Near the equator, you'll only see them 3 times a day for about 10-20 minutes (usable time) per. The polar research stations use the NOAA satellites as a primary communications store-and-forward service, as they can't see the geostationary satellites. Makes communicating with the research stations difficult.
Don't go expecting an asphalt two-lane road. Calling it a "highway" is misleading. A "conditioned ice-road" is more appropriate.
'In the next few weeks the ice road should have crossed the wide expanse of the Ross ice shelf, which permanently covers the ocean, and be approaching the Transantarctic Mountains. The mountains mark the halfway point to the Pole.'
The road is going to be ICE, not pavement. All they are doing is plowint the snow off of a section of the ice shelf.
how many millions (or billions) of dollars will be spent for this?
...as you would have known if you had RTFA. All they are doing is pushing the snow aside and flattening out the ice. No blasting, no rocks, no pavement, no paint.
Twelve
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
We ran a story on this topic yesterday over on SciFi Today with quite a few additional information links. A list of ALL of our recent stories is here. You can put SciFi Today Headlines on your Slashdot frontpage by clicking here and putting a checkmark in the SciFi Today box. Check us out!!!
Since nobody seems to actually read articles:
$12-million project
1600 kilometres
20 days for the inland trip
10 days for the return to the coast (downhill!)
(That's a staggering average speed of 3.33 KPH for the trip to the pole, 6.66 KPH for the trip to the coast)
The traffic will consist of slow-moving convoys of caterpillar tractors, towing sleds with supplies.
The Scott-Amundsen base is only currently accessible by air, which places limits on cargo and relies on good weather. The road could be open to heavy traffic for up to 100 days a year during the austral summer.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
Except for maybe the outer few miles, it's completely safe. The earth won't warm that much, and the shelf will only melt at the edges (where it's within a degree or so of 0C now). Within, there's about no chance. The ice in that shelf is *incredibly* old - that's why they take ice cores from it to get a picture of the atmosphere tens of thousande of years ago.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
C'mon, people, it's NOT THAT HARD to click on a link and read for a few minutes. This is not a "road" as we understand them. Basically, they will clear a path on the ice so it is free from snow and debris, and fill in any crevices, etc., with (presumably) ice, etc. As some have suggested, no, the road will not be dug down and laid on terra ferma. They would have to dig hundreds of feet to do that. Basically, they'll take big bulldozers and clear the way for large caterpillar-type vehicles to carry fuel and supplies. Now, everything must be brought in by air, and that's gotta be expensive!
It pretty clearly states that the road is to be built over ice, and that one of the major issues is going to be verifying that no crevasses, ice shifts, etc, have occurred. Since the Antarctic continent is buried in ice sheets that are kilometers thick, clearing away the ice doesn't seem like a practical option. Sean
It's going to cost $12 million for a 1600km back-country road. It's not a high speed 6 lane super highway. No asphalt. No lines. It's a compressed snow/ice road that they are smoothing out and filling in crevices.
While I have not ever gone to the south pole, pictures I've seen indicate that it is pretty much frozen year round. I don't think that they are going to have to worry a whole lot about melting ice/snow in the imediate future.
The National Science Foundation is funding the entire road project...not the US Government directly. Yes the NSF is funded by the government, but I'd imagine that it has a regular line-item entry on the fiscal budget each year so it really isn't anything extra. I'd rather they build this road then have any polition go on a "fact-finding" junket.
Also, the road is justified. They are starting research at the south pole (Ice Cube Project) that requires heavy equipment to be brought in. Currently the only way to get their is by air, which places limits on the weight of cargo and they have to have clear skies. This road will help with both of those limitations.
- Ice(!). Yes indeed, in many part of the world, fresh water is so rare that it's now a valued commodity.
- Coal.
- Petroleum. Antarctica has never been explored for oil, but it's assumed that where there's coal, there might also be oil.
- Metallic minerals such as cobalt, chromium, nickel, vanadium, copper, iron, uranium, lead and platinum.
The main problem thusfar has been that despite Antarctica's mineral weath, it's been too expensive to mine those minerals. But a road to the South Pole would make it much more economical to explore for and exploit the resources.
The slashdot summary is oddly misleading, I think there would be a lot fewer 'wasted tax dollars' complaints if it was written this way round:
Plane for One Kilometer Cube Neutrino Telescope Goes Ahead
IceCube is a one-cubic-kilometer international high-energy neutrino observatory, located deep under the ice at the south pole, where the effects of the eath's magnetic fields will inferfere less with the observations.
Because the cost of flying all the necessary materials in by air is prohibitive, $12m of the $204m budget will be spent on pushing some ice out of the way so that the components can travel overland.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
What do you be that there's something terribly secret down there that needs $250 million to develop. These weird "scientific explorations" are often just fascades for weird political operations. The Glomar Challenger, after all, was searching for Russian subs not manganese nodules or whatever the cover story said.
Now penguins can post to slashdot, but will we notice the difference?
--Stupid Sig Here--
I can see this as being a good thing. For one I don't think this will lead to some kind of tourist attraction adding a bunch of vehicles and pollution. This is Antarctica we're talking about, nothing to see. The south pole is home to my interesting scientific experiments, whether it be astronomy related since the view into space from there I would imagine to be much clearer of radio signals and terrestrial light. They mentioned studying neutrinos and what little I know of this area, terrestrial radio noise plays a factor.
It's not like they are going to be building a 6 lane highway. Probably won't be much than a gravel back road.
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
Pristine?
What is pristine and holy about crapholes like an antartic ice plain or mosquito filled Alaska bogs?
Why isn't anyone complaining about Egyptian expansion into the Sahara and destruction of the pristine desert? Why hasn't anyone taken Iraq to task for the destruction of the swamps around Basra?
Film at 11.
PAVE THE PLANET
Fucking bullshit. You call this progress?
Somedays I'm ashamed to be human.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
Yeah, and how long until the first Starbucks shows up on the transantarctic?
"Okay, I'll have an iced cappuccino, an iced tea and an iced iced mocha..."
:eof
Antarctica is jointly managed by several countries. The purpose of this "road" is to move scientific equipment to the research station that cannot be moved by C-130. See the below links, we are building a telescope.
t ml
The cost of any commercial interest in antartica would far exceed the gain. Why on earth would the USA dig for coal, minerals, etc. at the south pole when we can get it cheaper elsewhere?
See:
http://www.wisconline.com/UWMadisonNews/IceCube.h
or
http://icecube.wisc.edu/
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USA, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Sweden.
Flame if you must,
Enjoy.
It's just the normal noises in here.
When I was there (McMurdo) in '94/'95, the convention was to drive the 'American' way. Scott Base, a New Zealand facility, is right next to McMurdo, and shares a lot of its infrastructure: airstrips, ship docks, etc. I expect the American convention won out because the American station has a lot more vehicles than the Kiwis.
I am curious about how they're going to lay fiber over the ice, and keep it intact. The ice does shift, and the conditions (wind and cold) are brutal.
Currently all comms traffic leaves McMurdo for the unmanned earth station at Black Island, just to the southwest. (Black Island can see geosync birds over Mt Erebus, Erebus obscures the view from McMurdo itself.) The traffic to BI (telephony and data/internet) goes over a microwave link. When I was there we did helo and GPS surveys with NASA of areas closer to MacTown to try to find a place to build an earthstation that could be linked by fiber, for greater bandwidth. No one had yet figured out how to keep fiber alive atop shifting ice in those conditions.
-- There is no truth. There is only Perception. To Percieve is to Exist.
Given that there are very strict rules for handling human impact in Antarctica, isn't this road, which will draw even more tourists and researchers, cause a real logistical nightmare? It's hard enough to haul the trash generated from shore, but if you start carrying truckloads of junk to the pole itself... you have to truck it out too. That's the trash collection job to end all trash collection jobs. From the McMurdo Station website for incoming Antarctic visitors:
WASTE MANAGEMENT
In 1990, McMurdo Station developed and implemented its first formal recycling program. Since then, Waste Management has continuously upgraded the program to maximize recycling efforts. During the 1993-94 season, the USAP recycled 70% of hazardous and non-hazardous waste. The program stands as a model for other communities and is a point of pride for the USAP community.
Except for human waste, all waste generated by the USAP is removed from Antarctica and returned to the United States for disposal. Because of strict Federal and State regulations on this process, it is crucial that waste be handled effectively.
The key to McMurdo's recycling program is careful source segregation: as careless separation of waste in McMurdo can result in material being unfit for recycling, it is everyone's responsibility to separate waste effectively. You will be briefed on the details of McMurdo's recycling program. Please be sure you gain a thorough understanding of your part in the recycling process; make sure your questions are answered. With a little practice, you'll find the separation of waste materials into a myriad of containers will become second nature--a process you expect to continue when you return to the world.
Antarctica is actually a desert, with little annual accumulation.
That's certainly true of the South Pole area itself, but from what I've read the edges of the continent get more than their fair share of snow. Reading the account of the Ross Sea party in Shackleton's book it certainly seemed like it snows there all the time!
But you're right, I find, that the problem at the South Pole station isn't new snow falling; it's the drifts of existing snow that buried the dome.
The WHOLE POINT of putting a scientific base in the south pole is to access data you only find in remote places that are not affected by human activity (fresh ice that "keeps samples" of the earth's atmosphere in the air bubbles, etc etc). So if they start to trash the south pole with a road, heavy machinery (diesel engines) to build it and more supplies for the scientists to consume, then the whole point of the camp disappears. Otherwise, well, they'd just have set it up in New Jersey or something... But well; I guess they have a point with this fiber-optic internet connection stuff there: more porn for those solitary, frustrated south-pole-scientists! Yay!
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
You know, if you had actually bothered to read the article, you'd see that they're not so much building what we would think of as a "road", just flattening out some ice, filling some crevasses, etc. The environmental impact of this is nil... even environmentalist groups familiar with the plan think so.
Of course, I really can't blame you, given the ridiculous headline about a "highway" being constructed.