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Design Wanted For Antarctic Base
colonist writes "According to the BBC, The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) have begun a major international competition to design a new scientific research station at Antarctica. The old station, Halley Research Station, was built in 1992 and its ice shelf will break off by 2010." According to the article: "The first four bases were built on the surface and gradually got covered with snow and ultimately got so deep they became crushed by the weight of ice and had to be replaced", though the "current base on stilts" fared better until the ice shelf problems.
Getting covered in snow is very uniform loading.
The article says winds reach 80mph (130km/h). I'm not sure it would be uniform loading, though a dome would still have an advantage if the stresses are uneven.
Igloos are made of snow, actually. You just have to find the right snow: a drift at least 60 cm deep and very hard packed by the wind. Then you cut blocks with a snowknife (a saw works surprisingly well, too). And yeah, I've built plenty of 'em.
You're right in saying you can't build them too big, though; I'd guess about 3 metres at the peak would be a practical limit. They're good for storage, and surprisingly warm and comfortable if the cracks are stuffed with snow.
Back to the base - I think the stilts idea is a good one. I'd modify it though, so the stilts terminate in some kind of long, chain-driven, very deeply threaded screws (almost like an ice auger if you're ever seen one). Snow piling up and compacting into ice? Use a very slow gear to back the screws out a metre or two.
In the arctic, OTOH, we used plain old pre-fab panels (plywood sandwich with 10 cm of foam insulation in between) on beams. The beams in turn were laid on a really simple foundation: cardboard boxes placed over exposed bedrock and filled with more foam. Once the foam hardens it stays in place, and you saw all the tops to the same level.
We got snow up to the roof pretty reliably every winter, but it melted in the summer. I guess they can't count on that down south, though. Cheers!
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