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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
And..how about the poor soul that has to actually WORK at that station!
Well, it ain't that bad. I work for the Amanda/IceCube experiment. I did not yet go there myself, but a colleague just returned and she found it absolutely great there. For several reasons: the natural phenomena there are quite special, for instance the halo of the sun. Also the working atmosphere is very different from normal, the "level of enthusiasm" among the few hundred researchers (of several different sciences) there is much higher, either because of the oxygen levels (?) and/or because of the adventurous feeling as if you are on a different planet. It seems to be also refreshing to be so far away from (the rest of human) civilization for a while. The place is even addictive, she (my colleague) is still feeling very homesick to that place.
To be there as a winter-over (8 months, from Februari till November) is a different matter. Then there are much less people (between 50 and 70), typically the only activities are maintainance and routine data taking and you'd better not be somebody like me who gets depressed by longterm lack of sunlight. Still, winter-overs are volunteers and there are actually people taking this job for several years.
Next winter (that is, during the austral summer) I will also go there for a 5 week stay, I am really looking forward to it. It is actually one of the reasons why I joined this experiment...
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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It's just the normal noises in here.