I'm getting close to the end of my deployment. It has truly been the experience of a lifetime. I'm lucky in that if all goes well, I'll be home in time for Christmas. I'm looking forward to that a lot.
In some ways, it's hard to convey what it's like. When I thought of this, it was mostly the cold and the daylight that struck me. I didn't mind the cold, and I still don't. This is my kind of weather. The daylight makes things really interesting. Perhaps one of the best metaphors is the movie Groundhog Day.
I think almost wherever you are, it's normal to fall into a routine. If nothing else, work brings its own rhythm. This is true at the Pole as well, but it's different. You are pretty much stuck within an area of a few square kilometers. As far as the eye can see is nothing but a white plateau. You wake up, you do your work. You find a way to relax, you sleep. You wake up, ...
Time begins to blur. Almost everyone I talk to works to remember what day it is, or when a particular event happened. You will spend every day with pretty much the same 250 people. You'll spend it in pretty much the same place as yesterday. There will be variations, but tomorrow you wake up in the same bed with the same day ahead of you. It's not bad, but it helps you realize how much your time sense is based on the normal diurnal cycle.
There are a ton of little things you never really think about. The only living things I've seen since November 9th are humans and a few plants in the small greenhouse here on station. If it moves, it's either blown by the wind or human. We get a load of laundry per week (cold water only), and two two-minute showers per week. It's extremely dry; effectively zero humidity. I've been lucky in that I haven't suffered the effects of no humidity as acutely as others. Many people get nasty bloody noses, have trouble sleeping, and get the all the fun associated with dry skin. Many people bring humidifiers to their rooms so they can sleep at "night." Cuts don't really heal at all. I have several cuts that were not even deep enough to bleed. Normally, these would have been gone in a day or two, but now happily linger for weeks or months.
I think about the most interesting thing to see here are some of the atmospheric effects. There have been some really spectacular SunDogs. You get those in the north, but not nearly so often. Surprisingly, it doesn't actually snow much here. Most of the snow build up is from snow that blows in from other places. We have had some flurries, but no real snow storms.
Those sorts of little things are really about all that vary. The rest is pretty much the same thing day after day.
It's Groundhog Day! I should really get an alarm clock that plays "I've got you babe".
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Cable pull
All of the strings we put in the ice eventually terminate in one building (the IceCube lab). There, they are plugged into computers (one for each string) containing the custom built cards that read the data coming from the modules. The computers are on the secod floor of the ICL, so the cables are pulled from a pit 10 feet below the base of the building to the second floor. That's about 30 feet or so since the building itself basically stands on stilts.
Our first pull happened last Monday. There were about 12 of us all together. The cable is attached to a couple of ropes; one inside a vertical tower outside the main building, and another inside the main building. A couple people are positioned inside the tower to keep the cable on track. A team outside pushes the cable into the culverts that are the entry way to the tower. The teams on the ropes pull (and pull, and pull). Inside the main building there are a couple people that take care of snags.
My part was on the team handling the inside rope. There were two of us pulling, and a third spooling up the rope. The first guy in the chain (Perry) has a handle that clamps onto the rope. The handle comes off and reattaches to the rope pretty easily. That handle is on a vertical section of rope, so he can put his weight into it. I was at the anchor position. There's a pulley at floor level changing the direction of the rope from vertical to horizontal. I hold that section of rope.
The team outside pushes, we pull. You try to get a rhythm going so things move smoothly. There are stopping points where the ropes must be repositioned, or the cable anchored. There are also snags which stop things unexpectedly. All told there were twelve of us (or so) working to get the cables in. The cables themselves are about 2 inches in diameter and weigh between 3,000 and 4,000 pounds. It's exhausting work.
We pulled in six in two hours last Monday. That's a record and is due largely to having a large team that worked together pretty well. One of the things I will never forget was at a point where Perry was hanging completely off the floor, I was pulling as hard as I could, and Delia (the woman spooling the rope) was advising me not to die. The order from the team leader? Pull harder.
Tomorrow we plan to pull in eight more. Ugh.
Our first pull happened last Monday. There were about 12 of us all together. The cable is attached to a couple of ropes; one inside a vertical tower outside the main building, and another inside the main building. A couple people are positioned inside the tower to keep the cable on track. A team outside pushes the cable into the culverts that are the entry way to the tower. The teams on the ropes pull (and pull, and pull). Inside the main building there are a couple people that take care of snags.
My part was on the team handling the inside rope. There were two of us pulling, and a third spooling up the rope. The first guy in the chain (Perry) has a handle that clamps onto the rope. The handle comes off and reattaches to the rope pretty easily. That handle is on a vertical section of rope, so he can put his weight into it. I was at the anchor position. There's a pulley at floor level changing the direction of the rope from vertical to horizontal. I hold that section of rope.
The team outside pushes, we pull. You try to get a rhythm going so things move smoothly. There are stopping points where the ropes must be repositioned, or the cable anchored. There are also snags which stop things unexpectedly. All told there were twelve of us (or so) working to get the cables in. The cables themselves are about 2 inches in diameter and weigh between 3,000 and 4,000 pounds. It's exhausting work.
We pulled in six in two hours last Monday. That's a record and is due largely to having a large team that worked together pretty well. One of the things I will never forget was at a point where Perry was hanging completely off the floor, I was pulling as hard as I could, and Delia (the woman spooling the rope) was advising me not to die. The order from the team leader? Pull harder.
Tomorrow we plan to pull in eight more. Ugh.
Drilling!
It's a big day for the summer 2009/2010 southpole season: the first hole has been drilled, and the first string deployed into the hole. The IceCube detector will be made up of 86 individual strings (cables) each holding 60 light detecting modules. Installation of a string involves drilling a hole 2.5km into the ice, and then attaching the light detectors toa cable which is lowered into the hole.
The drill itself is a simple device to understand. Heat water, pump it through a long hose into the ice. Easy. Of course, like so many things that are easy to understand, there is a lot of complexity in the actual device itself. In fact, it has taken 30+ people working around the clock since November 11th to reach this point. The drill camp is a group of buildings (basically shipping containers) housing the heaters, pumps, generators, water tanks, and control systems necessary to drive hot water through the drill head. The water is heated to 190F and pumped at 800psi through a 3/4 inch nozzel. The power output is about 5 mega-watts or roughly equivalent to the output of a diesel locomotive at full power.
From the drill camp, the hot water is pumped to the tower operation site (TOS). The TOS is positioned over what is essentially a pilot hole drilled through the top layer of snow (called the firn - about 30 meters deep). The drill head and weight stack (a lot of weight that helps keep the hole straight) are lowered into the hole and away we go. The hose is taped to a support cable as it descends. Of course, it's all more complicated than that for the folks that have to do it. The TOS itself is quiet; nothing more than a hose going down into a hole. About every four meters, a sophisticated timing device goes off telling the person doing the taping to wrap another few rounds of tape around the hose and support cable. The action is all back at the drill camp where the pumps and generators are howling.
It takes anywhere from 24 to 30 hours to drill a hole. The slower you go, the larger the diameter of the hole. For the most part, 24 hours produces a hole large enough for the light sensors. Occasionally, however, we send different devices into the holes, some of which are larger than the typical sensors. To accomodate those devices, a slower drilling speed is used to produce the bigger holes. When the hole is done the drill is pulled out of the hole (a process that takes many hours) leaving a 2.5km column of water in the ice.
At that point, the hose and drill are moved to the second TOS (pain, I tell you), and the deployment team moves in. Deployment is the process of attaching the detectors to a cable which is lowered into the hole. I have not seen that process in person, so I can't comment much more than to say that it takes about 12 hours. There's usually an informal race between the drillers and the deployment team. The drillers try very hard to start the next hole before the deployment team finishes lowering the string into the hole. It's usually close. The string is anchored, and the water slowly freezes around the modules. In 100,000 years, they will reach the ocean.
As always, the first hole of the year has its little glitches. This year was no exception, but for the most part, things went smoothly. In fact, the official schedule says that the start of drilling should be 7 December, so we are already three days or so ahead.
The drill itself is a simple device to understand. Heat water, pump it through a long hose into the ice. Easy. Of course, like so many things that are easy to understand, there is a lot of complexity in the actual device itself. In fact, it has taken 30+ people working around the clock since November 11th to reach this point. The drill camp is a group of buildings (basically shipping containers) housing the heaters, pumps, generators, water tanks, and control systems necessary to drive hot water through the drill head. The water is heated to 190F and pumped at 800psi through a 3/4 inch nozzel. The power output is about 5 mega-watts or roughly equivalent to the output of a diesel locomotive at full power.
From the drill camp, the hot water is pumped to the tower operation site (TOS). The TOS is positioned over what is essentially a pilot hole drilled through the top layer of snow (called the firn - about 30 meters deep). The drill head and weight stack (a lot of weight that helps keep the hole straight) are lowered into the hole and away we go. The hose is taped to a support cable as it descends. Of course, it's all more complicated than that for the folks that have to do it. The TOS itself is quiet; nothing more than a hose going down into a hole. About every four meters, a sophisticated timing device goes off telling the person doing the taping to wrap another few rounds of tape around the hose and support cable. The action is all back at the drill camp where the pumps and generators are howling.
It takes anywhere from 24 to 30 hours to drill a hole. The slower you go, the larger the diameter of the hole. For the most part, 24 hours produces a hole large enough for the light sensors. Occasionally, however, we send different devices into the holes, some of which are larger than the typical sensors. To accomodate those devices, a slower drilling speed is used to produce the bigger holes. When the hole is done the drill is pulled out of the hole (a process that takes many hours) leaving a 2.5km column of water in the ice.
At that point, the hose and drill are moved to the second TOS (pain, I tell you), and the deployment team moves in. Deployment is the process of attaching the detectors to a cable which is lowered into the hole. I have not seen that process in person, so I can't comment much more than to say that it takes about 12 hours. There's usually an informal race between the drillers and the deployment team. The drillers try very hard to start the next hole before the deployment team finishes lowering the string into the hole. It's usually close. The string is anchored, and the water slowly freezes around the modules. In 100,000 years, they will reach the ocean.
As always, the first hole of the year has its little glitches. This year was no exception, but for the most part, things went smoothly. In fact, the official schedule says that the start of drilling should be 7 December, so we are already three days or so ahead.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Thanksgiving dinner
At the pole, Thanksgiving dinner is held on Saturday giving just about everyone a two day weekend. There are a few folks who have to stay on duty (once we have water circulating in the drill camp, it's staffed 24/7), but folks rotate with them to make sure that they get dinner too.
Preparation starts in earnest on the Thursday before the dinner. I'm sure that the chef and his crew started preparation well in advance of that, but this is when the volunteer help starts kicking in. I volunteered to peel potatoes. There are about 250 people on station, so that's a lot of potatoes. Fortunately, the chef decided that we would leave the skins on the potatoes (red skinned) and they would just mash them up. All we had to do was dice them up. Just for fun, they threw in some peppers to chop up as well. There were probably sixteen of us, or thereabouts, so it went fast - about half an hour. We escaped with all fingers attached and no lost time injuries. Not bad for a bunch of amateurs in close quarters with knives.
The galley isn't large enough to hold the entire station population, so the dinner itself is actually held in three seatings of 90 minutes each. Half an hour before dinner, hors d'oeuvres and cocktails are served, and some of the more musically inclined polies provide live entertainment. The galley itself was reconfigured for the meal. The tables were rearranged, the windows were shaded, candles were put on the tables, and on the big screen monitors there was a fireplace video. It was pretty nice.
Since it's a big holiday, a lot of people dress up. Most of the time, people are walking around the station in their carharts or snow pants, and boots. It's almost a little weird to see people in nice clothes. The mood is festive. Everyone seemed more relaxed than normal, and everyone is ready for some fun. It's difficult being away from friends and family during the holidays, but if you have to be away, this is a good group to be with.
The food was excellent. We had roasted and deep fried turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, a green bean salad, and a vegetable salad. A group of volunteer wine stewards made sure that everyone had plenty of wine and/or water. For desert we had our choices of pie: pumpkin, pecan, or chocolate silk. These had been prepared the night before by another group of volunteers. They did a pretty good job as far as I could tell.
I was in the first seating, and before long we had to wind down so the next group could get started. The party moved to other parts of the station. The louges filled up, summer camp got rocking, and eventually the galley was converted to a dance hall.
For my part, early on I took a trip out to the old dome which will be torn down in the next couple of weeks. This was the the station which was finished in 1974. The dome acted as a cover for what were essentially a group of cargo containers that comprised the old station. The original design life was 15 years, so it's done pretty well.
Afterwards, I joined the festivities, at least for a little while. For me that meant talking with a few of the folks around the station. It's interesting hearing about some of the different holiday traditions around different parts of the world. By and large, they seem similar. Most of the variations are around the type of food and timing. In many countries, meals are served at much later times, and the celebration dates may be shifted by a few days. But it all seems to follow the same basic theme - good food, good company.
Can't go wrong with that, I guess.
Preparation starts in earnest on the Thursday before the dinner. I'm sure that the chef and his crew started preparation well in advance of that, but this is when the volunteer help starts kicking in. I volunteered to peel potatoes. There are about 250 people on station, so that's a lot of potatoes. Fortunately, the chef decided that we would leave the skins on the potatoes (red skinned) and they would just mash them up. All we had to do was dice them up. Just for fun, they threw in some peppers to chop up as well. There were probably sixteen of us, or thereabouts, so it went fast - about half an hour. We escaped with all fingers attached and no lost time injuries. Not bad for a bunch of amateurs in close quarters with knives.
The galley isn't large enough to hold the entire station population, so the dinner itself is actually held in three seatings of 90 minutes each. Half an hour before dinner, hors d'oeuvres and cocktails are served, and some of the more musically inclined polies provide live entertainment. The galley itself was reconfigured for the meal. The tables were rearranged, the windows were shaded, candles were put on the tables, and on the big screen monitors there was a fireplace video. It was pretty nice.
Since it's a big holiday, a lot of people dress up. Most of the time, people are walking around the station in their carharts or snow pants, and boots. It's almost a little weird to see people in nice clothes. The mood is festive. Everyone seemed more relaxed than normal, and everyone is ready for some fun. It's difficult being away from friends and family during the holidays, but if you have to be away, this is a good group to be with.
The food was excellent. We had roasted and deep fried turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, a green bean salad, and a vegetable salad. A group of volunteer wine stewards made sure that everyone had plenty of wine and/or water. For desert we had our choices of pie: pumpkin, pecan, or chocolate silk. These had been prepared the night before by another group of volunteers. They did a pretty good job as far as I could tell.
I was in the first seating, and before long we had to wind down so the next group could get started. The party moved to other parts of the station. The louges filled up, summer camp got rocking, and eventually the galley was converted to a dance hall.
For my part, early on I took a trip out to the old dome which will be torn down in the next couple of weeks. This was the the station which was finished in 1974. The dome acted as a cover for what were essentially a group of cargo containers that comprised the old station. The original design life was 15 years, so it's done pretty well.
Afterwards, I joined the festivities, at least for a little while. For me that meant talking with a few of the folks around the station. It's interesting hearing about some of the different holiday traditions around different parts of the world. By and large, they seem similar. Most of the variations are around the type of food and timing. In many countries, meals are served at much later times, and the celebration dates may be shifted by a few days. But it all seems to follow the same basic theme - good food, good company.
Can't go wrong with that, I guess.
The people
This is actually one of the tougher posts to write. The people here are really great. They come from a wide variety of backgrounds and have diverse skill sets and interests. I feel privileged to work with such a group so I'd hate to write something that might be taken the wrong way.
It's a very interesting crew at the south pole. Being married with children puts me very much in the minority. I think I can count us on one hand. The rest are mostly single, divorced, married without kids, or married with older children. That's not really too surprising. Most are down here for the entire summer season which starts at the end of October and ends in late February. That's a long time to be away from your family, especially if you have kids, and always over the holiday season.
The ultimate purpose of the station is to support polar science (and, a few cynics note, to maintain a claim in the event the Antarctic Treaty lapses). A large part of that is simply maintaining the station and science buildings in a pretty harsh environment. Maintaining buildings is a very expensive proposition so the science experiments get packed in as tightly as possible. Even so, a few experiments come along that won't fit into existing facilities. IceCube is one such experiment, the South Pole Telescope is another. These groups have dedicated buildings which must be heated, powered, and connected to networks.
So in many ways, the pole is a construction zone during the summer. There are a lot of people who are good with their hands, and good problem solvers. A lot of things that are small problems back home are more difficult here because you can't pop over to the hardware store and pick up a $10 part. There's a machine shop complete with machinist, so in a lot of cases parts can be built, if needed. It's a place where a little ingenuity and a lot of elbow grease go a long way.
There's lots of heavy equipment moving snow, grooming roads or the skiway, moving materials around the camp and supporting construction activity. Along with that comes the operators and mechanics to keep them moving. This can involve some difficult work in brutal conditions. Changing a starter on a D8 Cat in 40 below temps does not sound like a good time, but somehow they do it.
In addition, there is a sizeable support staff working in the galley, as janitors, technical support, communications, logistics, you name it. It's really a small town where everybody tries to do their part to keep things moving along. During the summer season, there's a professional firefighting crew on station as well as a couple doctors and medical staff to keep us moving.
A very large number of the people return regularly. It seems as though you either love it here, or hate it. The people who love it just keep coming back. Many work as contractors for the summer season, and look for other work in the off-season until it's time to return. This is definitely not a group that works nine to five jobs. Many work at other seasonal jobs during the winter season (construction, trail crews at national parks, part-time jobs).
The population is mostly US, but there are sizeable chunks from other parts of the world as well. Most are very well traveled. Many take the opportunity to tour India or various Asian countries on their return trips home. It makes for some very interesting stories and some interesting perspectives on life.
Of course, like any small community, there are disagreements and spats, cliques, and all of the usual human behaviors. There's a pretty good rumor mill, and the general approach is "don't believe everything you hear, but be sure to pass it on." Despite those things, people generally seem to get along pretty well.
It's a good bunch to work with.
It's a very interesting crew at the south pole. Being married with children puts me very much in the minority. I think I can count us on one hand. The rest are mostly single, divorced, married without kids, or married with older children. That's not really too surprising. Most are down here for the entire summer season which starts at the end of October and ends in late February. That's a long time to be away from your family, especially if you have kids, and always over the holiday season.
The ultimate purpose of the station is to support polar science (and, a few cynics note, to maintain a claim in the event the Antarctic Treaty lapses). A large part of that is simply maintaining the station and science buildings in a pretty harsh environment. Maintaining buildings is a very expensive proposition so the science experiments get packed in as tightly as possible. Even so, a few experiments come along that won't fit into existing facilities. IceCube is one such experiment, the South Pole Telescope is another. These groups have dedicated buildings which must be heated, powered, and connected to networks.
So in many ways, the pole is a construction zone during the summer. There are a lot of people who are good with their hands, and good problem solvers. A lot of things that are small problems back home are more difficult here because you can't pop over to the hardware store and pick up a $10 part. There's a machine shop complete with machinist, so in a lot of cases parts can be built, if needed. It's a place where a little ingenuity and a lot of elbow grease go a long way.
There's lots of heavy equipment moving snow, grooming roads or the skiway, moving materials around the camp and supporting construction activity. Along with that comes the operators and mechanics to keep them moving. This can involve some difficult work in brutal conditions. Changing a starter on a D8 Cat in 40 below temps does not sound like a good time, but somehow they do it.
In addition, there is a sizeable support staff working in the galley, as janitors, technical support, communications, logistics, you name it. It's really a small town where everybody tries to do their part to keep things moving along. During the summer season, there's a professional firefighting crew on station as well as a couple doctors and medical staff to keep us moving.
A very large number of the people return regularly. It seems as though you either love it here, or hate it. The people who love it just keep coming back. Many work as contractors for the summer season, and look for other work in the off-season until it's time to return. This is definitely not a group that works nine to five jobs. Many work at other seasonal jobs during the winter season (construction, trail crews at national parks, part-time jobs).
The population is mostly US, but there are sizeable chunks from other parts of the world as well. Most are very well traveled. Many take the opportunity to tour India or various Asian countries on their return trips home. It makes for some very interesting stories and some interesting perspectives on life.
Of course, like any small community, there are disagreements and spats, cliques, and all of the usual human behaviors. There's a pretty good rumor mill, and the general approach is "don't believe everything you hear, but be sure to pass it on." Despite those things, people generally seem to get along pretty well.
It's a good bunch to work with.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
A day in the life
It doesn't take long for life at the station to fall into a routine. There are four meals a day: breakfast(5:30am-8:00am), lunch(11:30-1:00), dinner(5:30-7:00), and midnight rartions "mid-rats" (12:00-1:30). There are crews working 24/7, hence the extra meal. For me, these form sort of a clock given that the daylight is constant.
I wake up at about 6:30 for breakfast. Breakfast is a "tyipcal" American breakfast: eggs, bacon/sausage, pancake/waffle/french toast, etc. I'm usually moving slow until the first pot of coffee, so I wander in around 7:00. It's not uncommon to run into some of the swing shift folks who are enjoying eggs for dinner yet again. It's a good chance to hear about how things are going in drill camp.
After breakfast, there's a meeting at 8:00 every day. This is where we go over "the plan" to see how we're doing and make sure that we have people where we need them. The drilling part of the operation is pretty self sufficient. Most of them have done this in previous years, so they have a pretty good idea of what they should be doing. But there's a lot of other stuff that needs to be done. Some of it is highly specialized work that only a few people know how to do, and this is where the flight delays can be a real hassle. When that sort of thing happens, we find a way to get things set up and ready as much as possible so that when they arrive things are mostly ready to go. That means that the plan is sometimes shifted and you end up working on things you aren't terribly familiar with.
After that, the day begins. The snowmobiles leave for drill camp at 8:45, so you usually have about 15 minutes to get into your gear if you're heading in that direction. The drill camp is about a mile from the station, so even if you miss the sled, it's not a bad walk. I don't have a lot to do at drill camp. Usually, I'll end up stopping where the computers are which is along the way to drill camp. To date, we're still waiting on some cargo, so some of my work is sliding. I've been fighting with some annoying disk systems that we've been moving around for no good reason (it's a long story that I'd rather forget) which actually keeps me at the station quite a bit. For the most part, it's like a normal day of work.
It's different for the folks who are outside all the time. You're lugging around heavy gear, and many times trying to do some fairly precise work with gloves on. You do get used to the temperatures after a while. It is summer, so it's getting warmer, but it's still cold (-35F is typical for the last few days). Even so, at this point as long as the wind isn't blowing, it's no longer necessary to keep your face fully covered, and if you're not going far, you might not need much more than your jacket and some light boots. Still, you do need to be a little careful as frostbite can sneak up on you, and if you're going to be out for an hour or more, you'll still want your gear.
When you're not working, there's plenty to do. Each berthing wing has a set of bathrooms. It is the responsibility of the residents of that wing to clean the bathrooms. This is called House Mouse, and you are assigned a day of the week based on your room number. I've got Mondays. There are usually a number of people to help out, so it doesn't take long. You can also volunteer for station duty (dishes, hauling food, folding T-shirts for the store). Otherwise, there are many recreational opportunities.
There's a small gym (big enough for a volleyball court), a weight and circuit room, a reading room, a craft room, a music room, a movie room, and a game room. There's a library of books which are mostly books that were brought down and left behind. There are regularly scheduled events if you like to be social. The only one I usually participate in is Friday night football. A certain number of NFL games are recorded (with permission) and the best is played in the movie room on Friday nights.
We work six days a week (Mon-Sat). That's not too bad, really. After all, they flew me here and keep me alive at great expese, so some extra work doesn't seem like a bad deal. Saturday night is party night. This is usually out in summer camp (some temporary shelters with semi-permanent buildings adjoining them) and goes until all hours of the night. Sunday morning is brunch with omellets made to order. The rest of the day is yours to burn. Calling home is common, as is laundry. It's usually pretty mellow.
Kinda reminds me of college.
I wake up at about 6:30 for breakfast. Breakfast is a "tyipcal" American breakfast: eggs, bacon/sausage, pancake/waffle/french toast, etc. I'm usually moving slow until the first pot of coffee, so I wander in around 7:00. It's not uncommon to run into some of the swing shift folks who are enjoying eggs for dinner yet again. It's a good chance to hear about how things are going in drill camp.
After breakfast, there's a meeting at 8:00 every day. This is where we go over "the plan" to see how we're doing and make sure that we have people where we need them. The drilling part of the operation is pretty self sufficient. Most of them have done this in previous years, so they have a pretty good idea of what they should be doing. But there's a lot of other stuff that needs to be done. Some of it is highly specialized work that only a few people know how to do, and this is where the flight delays can be a real hassle. When that sort of thing happens, we find a way to get things set up and ready as much as possible so that when they arrive things are mostly ready to go. That means that the plan is sometimes shifted and you end up working on things you aren't terribly familiar with.
After that, the day begins. The snowmobiles leave for drill camp at 8:45, so you usually have about 15 minutes to get into your gear if you're heading in that direction. The drill camp is about a mile from the station, so even if you miss the sled, it's not a bad walk. I don't have a lot to do at drill camp. Usually, I'll end up stopping where the computers are which is along the way to drill camp. To date, we're still waiting on some cargo, so some of my work is sliding. I've been fighting with some annoying disk systems that we've been moving around for no good reason (it's a long story that I'd rather forget) which actually keeps me at the station quite a bit. For the most part, it's like a normal day of work.
It's different for the folks who are outside all the time. You're lugging around heavy gear, and many times trying to do some fairly precise work with gloves on. You do get used to the temperatures after a while. It is summer, so it's getting warmer, but it's still cold (-35F is typical for the last few days). Even so, at this point as long as the wind isn't blowing, it's no longer necessary to keep your face fully covered, and if you're not going far, you might not need much more than your jacket and some light boots. Still, you do need to be a little careful as frostbite can sneak up on you, and if you're going to be out for an hour or more, you'll still want your gear.
When you're not working, there's plenty to do. Each berthing wing has a set of bathrooms. It is the responsibility of the residents of that wing to clean the bathrooms. This is called House Mouse, and you are assigned a day of the week based on your room number. I've got Mondays. There are usually a number of people to help out, so it doesn't take long. You can also volunteer for station duty (dishes, hauling food, folding T-shirts for the store). Otherwise, there are many recreational opportunities.
There's a small gym (big enough for a volleyball court), a weight and circuit room, a reading room, a craft room, a music room, a movie room, and a game room. There's a library of books which are mostly books that were brought down and left behind. There are regularly scheduled events if you like to be social. The only one I usually participate in is Friday night football. A certain number of NFL games are recorded (with permission) and the best is played in the movie room on Friday nights.
We work six days a week (Mon-Sat). That's not too bad, really. After all, they flew me here and keep me alive at great expese, so some extra work doesn't seem like a bad deal. Saturday night is party night. This is usually out in summer camp (some temporary shelters with semi-permanent buildings adjoining them) and goes until all hours of the night. Sunday morning is brunch with omellets made to order. The rest of the day is yours to burn. Calling home is common, as is laundry. It's usually pretty mellow.
Kinda reminds me of college.
Friday, November 20, 2009
About IceCube
It's been a little over a week and the routines are settling in somewhat. So what do we do? Well, we are here to build a neutrino detector. Neutrinos are subatmic particles that almost never interact with normal matter. The most natural question at this point is: "why do we care?" One of the more interesting applications is as a telescope. Visible light is easily blocked by inconveniently placed dust clouds or other objects in the universe. In addition, strong electromagnetic fields distort the paths of many particles making it difficult or impossible to determine the location of the source.
Neutrinos, on the other hand, will pass through these cosmic obstacles and you can trace their origins by bascally reconstructing a straight line. This is very neat, but it presents certain practical difficulties. After all, if these things don't interact with normal matter very often how do you detect them. Well, in fact we never detect them directly; we detect a particle called a muon which is the result of a neutrino interacting with normal matter. But given that this seldom happens, you need to watch a lot of matter in order to see even a few of these interactions.
The IceCube detector, when completed, will effectively watch one cubic kilometer of ice. The ice at the south pole is very clear and very dark. This makes it ideal for detecting the light pulses given off when an interaction happens. So to detect this, we use very sensitive light detectors (photo multiplier tubes) attached to cables which are lowered into deep holes in the ice. The holes are drilled 2500 meters deep using hot water. When the hole is complete, the drill is pulled back to the surface and the cable with the light detectors is lowered into the hole. There they are left to freeze into the ice where they spend their useful lives reporting on tiny little flashes of light.
This requires a fairly large logistics operation. This year, we will move approximately 600,000 pounds of cargo to the south pole. To date we have moved approximately 3.8 million pounds of cargo to the pole. This obviously requires a lot of planning, but happily, we have quite a bit of time to do that. It's really only possible to get planes to the pole starting around late October and ending in early March. After that, the sun sets and getting in or out becomes basically impossible. So we spend the winter (our summer in the north) working out all of the logistics and planning everything as well as possible.
Then in late October, it's go time. The sun rises, and we're on the clock. The drilling won't start until the beginning of December. First, we have to dig out, get power and heating hooked back up, and get all of the equipment basically rebuilt after having been broken down and stored for the winter. This involes moving a large amount of snow, a number of buildings, and lots of odds and ends.
It also involves getting the people and new cargo in, and that can be a real problem. This year we have had many flight delays which have stranded people and cargo for days. This is built into the schedule somewhat, but we are using all of the wiggle room we have this year. We try to work the plan with the people we've got as best we can. That means you get to try new things all the time. In this case, perfection isn't the important thing, keeping things roughly on schedule is. In my case, it meant working on getting one of our testing facilities set up while our experts were stuck in Christchurch. There were a couple of us working on it, and at least one of the guys was roughly familiar with the setup, but we got a couple things wrong. Fortunately, nothing serious. And we're only a day behind now, which means we're OK.
Neutrinos, on the other hand, will pass through these cosmic obstacles and you can trace their origins by bascally reconstructing a straight line. This is very neat, but it presents certain practical difficulties. After all, if these things don't interact with normal matter very often how do you detect them. Well, in fact we never detect them directly; we detect a particle called a muon which is the result of a neutrino interacting with normal matter. But given that this seldom happens, you need to watch a lot of matter in order to see even a few of these interactions.
The IceCube detector, when completed, will effectively watch one cubic kilometer of ice. The ice at the south pole is very clear and very dark. This makes it ideal for detecting the light pulses given off when an interaction happens. So to detect this, we use very sensitive light detectors (photo multiplier tubes) attached to cables which are lowered into deep holes in the ice. The holes are drilled 2500 meters deep using hot water. When the hole is complete, the drill is pulled back to the surface and the cable with the light detectors is lowered into the hole. There they are left to freeze into the ice where they spend their useful lives reporting on tiny little flashes of light.
This requires a fairly large logistics operation. This year, we will move approximately 600,000 pounds of cargo to the south pole. To date we have moved approximately 3.8 million pounds of cargo to the pole. This obviously requires a lot of planning, but happily, we have quite a bit of time to do that. It's really only possible to get planes to the pole starting around late October and ending in early March. After that, the sun sets and getting in or out becomes basically impossible. So we spend the winter (our summer in the north) working out all of the logistics and planning everything as well as possible.
Then in late October, it's go time. The sun rises, and we're on the clock. The drilling won't start until the beginning of December. First, we have to dig out, get power and heating hooked back up, and get all of the equipment basically rebuilt after having been broken down and stored for the winter. This involes moving a large amount of snow, a number of buildings, and lots of odds and ends.
It also involves getting the people and new cargo in, and that can be a real problem. This year we have had many flight delays which have stranded people and cargo for days. This is built into the schedule somewhat, but we are using all of the wiggle room we have this year. We try to work the plan with the people we've got as best we can. That means you get to try new things all the time. In this case, perfection isn't the important thing, keeping things roughly on schedule is. In my case, it meant working on getting one of our testing facilities set up while our experts were stuck in Christchurch. There were a couple of us working on it, and at least one of the guys was roughly familiar with the setup, but we got a couple things wrong. Fortunately, nothing serious. And we're only a day behind now, which means we're OK.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Getting started
Of course, the first thing for us newbs is the inevitable briefing. This one is a video with a bit of station orientation. In this case, largely conservation. We get two two-minute showers per week, and one load of laundry per week. This is to save water. There's another bit about the layout of the area around the station and the rules of the road for traveling around. There's also a lecture from the doctor reminding us that we are at altitude, what to expect, and where to find medical.
We're given our room assignments and sent on our way. I'm in A4-204 which has to do with the way the station is laid out. I walk into something roughly the size of a large walk-in closet. I can stand near the center of the room (not quite at center because the bed is in the way) and put four finger tips on the opposite walls. For reference, my arm span finger tip to finger tip is 6'4". It's about half again that long. However, I am very lucky as I have an interior room - no windows.
That may seem a strange way to be lucky, but it will make sense shortly. If I am to believe some of the scuttlebutt I've heard floating around, the station was apparently designed by an Hawaiian architecture firm. Whether that's true or not, they apparently didn't spend much time at the pole because they put in a lot of windows. The sad part is they did not include any method to cover the windows. Keep in mind that it is perpetual daylight for half the year, and perpetual light for half the year. So if you have a room with a window, you are left to scrounge for something that can cover the window so you can sleep which can be a chore. During the winter all or most of the windows are covered because there are astronomy experiments going on that don't want light pollution from the station. So as you can see, I am indeed lucky to have a room with no windows as I can sleep in the dark easily.
After that, I stopped off in one of the rooms set aside for the science folks and ran into our winter overs (the guys who will be staying on station over the winter). We ate lunch and they gave me a walking tour of the station. It's not very big (maybe 100 yards long by 50 yards wide), but there's a lot of activity crammed into that space.
For the first few days my job is to get acclimated to the altitude. No strenuous activity, plenty of water, no alcohol, cut the caffeine (now them's fightin' words), Diamox. Early on, I'm getting a little winded just walking up the stairs. I take some time to catch up on email and get unpacked and ready to go.
For me, the routine has developed mostly around meal times. No matter what time you look out the window, it's early afternoon. The only real way to get a sense of time is to look at which windows the sun is hitting at the moment. For these first couple days a feel kind of like a third wheel. There's some stuff I can do, but the part of the project I'm most involved with is providing computing resources to the scientists. That means all of "my stuff" is now half a world away and accessible only by satellite.
On my first day, I mostly hand around the station. On the second day, I get snowmobile training, and then catch a ride to the IceCube Lab (ICL). This is a building a kilometer from the station where all of the cables from our detector are hooked to computers. During the winter it's also a storage facility. I look around a bit to get familiar with it, and walk back with one of our winter overs.
That was a humbling experience. By the time I got back to the station I was sweating and winded. The temps have been unseasonably high so far. At one point, we set a new record in the area of -13 F or so. Typically, temps are in the -30 to -40 range at this time of the year. In any case, the gear is pretty good, so even just walking can get you pretty warm.
On the third day, they finally put me to work as a mover. A bunch of stuff in the Lab needed to move to locations in the drill camp or to testing facilities. In the morning, I moved some freeze control units which are used to make clear ice, and about 120 DOMs (Digital Optical Modules) which are what the detector is all about. Luckily, we had lots of help, including heavy equipment so it was done fairly quickly. Still, this is something that back home would have been a good morning's work. Here, it was a full day and I was feeling it.
But I slept really well.
We're given our room assignments and sent on our way. I'm in A4-204 which has to do with the way the station is laid out. I walk into something roughly the size of a large walk-in closet. I can stand near the center of the room (not quite at center because the bed is in the way) and put four finger tips on the opposite walls. For reference, my arm span finger tip to finger tip is 6'4". It's about half again that long. However, I am very lucky as I have an interior room - no windows.
That may seem a strange way to be lucky, but it will make sense shortly. If I am to believe some of the scuttlebutt I've heard floating around, the station was apparently designed by an Hawaiian architecture firm. Whether that's true or not, they apparently didn't spend much time at the pole because they put in a lot of windows. The sad part is they did not include any method to cover the windows. Keep in mind that it is perpetual daylight for half the year, and perpetual light for half the year. So if you have a room with a window, you are left to scrounge for something that can cover the window so you can sleep which can be a chore. During the winter all or most of the windows are covered because there are astronomy experiments going on that don't want light pollution from the station. So as you can see, I am indeed lucky to have a room with no windows as I can sleep in the dark easily.
After that, I stopped off in one of the rooms set aside for the science folks and ran into our winter overs (the guys who will be staying on station over the winter). We ate lunch and they gave me a walking tour of the station. It's not very big (maybe 100 yards long by 50 yards wide), but there's a lot of activity crammed into that space.
For the first few days my job is to get acclimated to the altitude. No strenuous activity, plenty of water, no alcohol, cut the caffeine (now them's fightin' words), Diamox. Early on, I'm getting a little winded just walking up the stairs. I take some time to catch up on email and get unpacked and ready to go.
For me, the routine has developed mostly around meal times. No matter what time you look out the window, it's early afternoon. The only real way to get a sense of time is to look at which windows the sun is hitting at the moment. For these first couple days a feel kind of like a third wheel. There's some stuff I can do, but the part of the project I'm most involved with is providing computing resources to the scientists. That means all of "my stuff" is now half a world away and accessible only by satellite.
On my first day, I mostly hand around the station. On the second day, I get snowmobile training, and then catch a ride to the IceCube Lab (ICL). This is a building a kilometer from the station where all of the cables from our detector are hooked to computers. During the winter it's also a storage facility. I look around a bit to get familiar with it, and walk back with one of our winter overs.
That was a humbling experience. By the time I got back to the station I was sweating and winded. The temps have been unseasonably high so far. At one point, we set a new record in the area of -13 F or so. Typically, temps are in the -30 to -40 range at this time of the year. In any case, the gear is pretty good, so even just walking can get you pretty warm.
On the third day, they finally put me to work as a mover. A bunch of stuff in the Lab needed to move to locations in the drill camp or to testing facilities. In the morning, I moved some freeze control units which are used to make clear ice, and about 120 DOMs (Digital Optical Modules) which are what the detector is all about. Luckily, we had lots of help, including heavy equipment so it was done fairly quickly. Still, this is something that back home would have been a good morning's work. Here, it was a full day and I was feeling it.
But I slept really well.
Friday, November 13, 2009
McMurdo station is a pretty large (by Antarctic standards) logistics hub for the rest of the stations on the ice. Most US cargo flows through there at some point. As far as I understand it, the C-17s are too heavy to land at the south pole
station. So all cargo (including us) is unloaded and reloaded onto the "hercs" (LC-130s). These are much smaller prop driven planes and the accommodations are much more spartan than on the C-17s.
In any case, having unloaded, we hop into vehicles (some of which appear to be at least as old as anyone reading this) and are driven to a building containing the mess hall and laundry. I have to warn you that my descriptions will be a bit vague. Being that we are "Polies" and therefore transients, they do not waste maps on us. We are given a pretty simple briefing dominated mostly by safety, waste, and medical, a bit about return travel, our Diamox (more about that in a bit), and sent on our merry way.
The safety part of the briefing boils down to reinforcing that the environment has many interesting ways to kill you. Make sure you gear up appropriately, and stay on any marked trails if you decide to go touring. Stay away from critters (not that they're dangerous, but we are all about wildlife preservation), have fun. Watch out for the big machinery that can squish you. The basics.
Waste is a big deal. There are probably 50 categories of waste. All of it has to be shipped back to the states. In addition, water is a precious commodity, so they get you started on thinking about your water usage right away. The only water usage they don't worry about is drinking water. In fact, they encourage you to drink a lot.
Medical is a bigger deal for the Polies than most of the rest. The pole is at a elevation of 9300 feet. Throw in low temps and varying barometric pressure, and you can hit well over 10,000 feet. In fact, a veteran of several winters has experienced elevation over 14000 feet. We don't get the luxury of acclimating slowly since they fly us in. This puts us at risk of altitude sickness. There are two serious forms of altitude sickness that can kill you, so you need to be aware of it. To help you acclimate, they give you a drug called diamox. It helps remove some of the byproducts of acclimatization from your blood stream. Major side effects include peeing a lot, tingling in random parts of your body, and altering the flavor of carbonated substances (for the worse).
Our job at this point is to find the laundry to pick up our bedding and find our rooms. Since they didn't give us maps, this is a terribly amusing operation. Buildings are designated entirely by number, but all of them have aliases handed out by the more permanent population. We have no map, so we are reduced to wandering around and hoping that someone will take pity on us and point us in the right direction. This is a dangerous proposition as practical jokers are rampant. However, I eventually find my room in HoCal (Hotel California); aka "man camp."
It's a bunk room with about 30 guys packed into close quarters. It's hot in the room, and crowded. Ear plugs are a good, good thing.
The temps were mild, around 15F, so we could easily walk around in nothing heavier than a fleece and tennis shoes. I walk up to the checkin building to rifle my luggage for the battery charger for my camera. I didn't find it, and was feeling fairly miserable. So I repacked a bit to get all of my unnecessary gear into checked baggage, so I wasn't lugging around so much weight. Back in my room I found the charger for the camera stashed in a small bag of misc stuff. Sadly, I had packed the camera into the checked bag rather than lug around a brick, so still no pictures - arrrgh.
Fortunately, we got what I'll call a "sling-shot" meaning that our flight left as scheduled the next day.
It's an interesting dynamic with the Polies and McMurdo. Talking to long time Polies, you would swear McMurdo is a kind of purgatory. The worst thing that can happen is to get stuck there for a few days, or sometimes a week or two. I've seen this before on my trips to Isle Royale. Actually, there are a lot of similarities between wilderness camping and a trip to the pole. In any case, at Isle Royale, you arrive at the main port (Rock Harbor) and get a briefing. The veterans have to get the briefing too, and you can see them chomping at the bit to get moving. As soon as the briefing is over, they grab their gear, get registered and bug out to make sure they get to their destination early so they can grab their favorite spots.
That's what it's like at McMurdo. In addition, you have no real work there, so you kind of get to feel like a third wheel pretty fast.
But for us, we fly right on through and one noisy plane ride later, I finally arrived at the south pole station, my new home for the next six weeks. After six days of travel (OK, five due to the dateline), I stepped off the plane with the temperature a balmy -44F.
station. So all cargo (including us) is unloaded and reloaded onto the "hercs" (LC-130s). These are much smaller prop driven planes and the accommodations are much more spartan than on the C-17s.
In any case, having unloaded, we hop into vehicles (some of which appear to be at least as old as anyone reading this) and are driven to a building containing the mess hall and laundry. I have to warn you that my descriptions will be a bit vague. Being that we are "Polies" and therefore transients, they do not waste maps on us. We are given a pretty simple briefing dominated mostly by safety, waste, and medical, a bit about return travel, our Diamox (more about that in a bit), and sent on our merry way.
The safety part of the briefing boils down to reinforcing that the environment has many interesting ways to kill you. Make sure you gear up appropriately, and stay on any marked trails if you decide to go touring. Stay away from critters (not that they're dangerous, but we are all about wildlife preservation), have fun. Watch out for the big machinery that can squish you. The basics.
Waste is a big deal. There are probably 50 categories of waste. All of it has to be shipped back to the states. In addition, water is a precious commodity, so they get you started on thinking about your water usage right away. The only water usage they don't worry about is drinking water. In fact, they encourage you to drink a lot.
Medical is a bigger deal for the Polies than most of the rest. The pole is at a elevation of 9300 feet. Throw in low temps and varying barometric pressure, and you can hit well over 10,000 feet. In fact, a veteran of several winters has experienced elevation over 14000 feet. We don't get the luxury of acclimating slowly since they fly us in. This puts us at risk of altitude sickness. There are two serious forms of altitude sickness that can kill you, so you need to be aware of it. To help you acclimate, they give you a drug called diamox. It helps remove some of the byproducts of acclimatization from your blood stream. Major side effects include peeing a lot, tingling in random parts of your body, and altering the flavor of carbonated substances (for the worse).
Our job at this point is to find the laundry to pick up our bedding and find our rooms. Since they didn't give us maps, this is a terribly amusing operation. Buildings are designated entirely by number, but all of them have aliases handed out by the more permanent population. We have no map, so we are reduced to wandering around and hoping that someone will take pity on us and point us in the right direction. This is a dangerous proposition as practical jokers are rampant. However, I eventually find my room in HoCal (Hotel California); aka "man camp."
It's a bunk room with about 30 guys packed into close quarters. It's hot in the room, and crowded. Ear plugs are a good, good thing.
The temps were mild, around 15F, so we could easily walk around in nothing heavier than a fleece and tennis shoes. I walk up to the checkin building to rifle my luggage for the battery charger for my camera. I didn't find it, and was feeling fairly miserable. So I repacked a bit to get all of my unnecessary gear into checked baggage, so I wasn't lugging around so much weight. Back in my room I found the charger for the camera stashed in a small bag of misc stuff. Sadly, I had packed the camera into the checked bag rather than lug around a brick, so still no pictures - arrrgh.
Fortunately, we got what I'll call a "sling-shot" meaning that our flight left as scheduled the next day.
It's an interesting dynamic with the Polies and McMurdo. Talking to long time Polies, you would swear McMurdo is a kind of purgatory. The worst thing that can happen is to get stuck there for a few days, or sometimes a week or two. I've seen this before on my trips to Isle Royale. Actually, there are a lot of similarities between wilderness camping and a trip to the pole. In any case, at Isle Royale, you arrive at the main port (Rock Harbor) and get a briefing. The veterans have to get the briefing too, and you can see them chomping at the bit to get moving. As soon as the briefing is over, they grab their gear, get registered and bug out to make sure they get to their destination early so they can grab their favorite spots.
That's what it's like at McMurdo. In addition, you have no real work there, so you kind of get to feel like a third wheel pretty fast.
But for us, we fly right on through and one noisy plane ride later, I finally arrived at the south pole station, my new home for the next six weeks. After six days of travel (OK, five due to the dateline), I stepped off the plane with the temperature a balmy -44F.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Why are things so sporadic?
The updates to this blog are a bit sporadic. This is due largely to the work schedule and the satellite schedule. The pole operates on the NZ time zone which is 5 hours behind central time. For us satellite rise is at aout 7:00am and it sets at about 2:00pm. That made things a bit tough for me today as I was carting gear all over the pole.
A word about satellites. The only means of communication with the pole is via satellite. There are three main families of satellite for use: Iridium, GOES, TDRSS.
The Iridium system is actually a constellation of satellites in low earth orbit. They were launched back in the mid 1990s as a platform for replacing wired communication systems. It was never economically viable, yet somehow still operates. Rumor has it there's a three letter agency involved. In any case, at least one of the satellites is visible at all times, but they are slow and expensive to use. However, we can send small email messages over this system any time. That's handy. It seems that in this case "if you build it, they will come" is also part of the equation and so some money is now
actually flowing (certainly we send our share).
The main satellite is GOES-3 an old weather satellite that's out of fuel and so drifts into view of the pole for about seven hours per day. During that time we enjoy really slow internet access. It's slower than the broadband you're probably using to read this, but it's better than nothing.
The third system is TDRSS (pronounced tee dris). These are actual communications satellites and as such are fast. We use these to transmit bulk science data back to the northern hemisphere. For IceCube, that means about 70 GB/day. It is also used for normal internet access, but that traffic has lower priority, so it's still slow. We used to use TDRSS F1 for this. However, that satellite lost vacuum in its last transmitter about a month ago (question: you're in space, where did the vacuum go? :-) ). So now we use a newer TDRSS satellite (F6), but that's primarily a NASA bird, so we can only use it when they're not which means that you never quite know when you will have a time slot. We also have it for less time (just as well, I think we pay like $160/minute or something - and you thought ATT was bad), but it's much faster so we still get the same amount of data across.
An added bonus is that when GOES and TDRSS are visible, we can actually make phone calls. These phone calls appear to originate in Denver, so it's not even an international call. All you need is a calling card.
It's a far cry from the old days, that's for sure.
A word about satellites. The only means of communication with the pole is via satellite. There are three main families of satellite for use: Iridium, GOES, TDRSS.
The Iridium system is actually a constellation of satellites in low earth orbit. They were launched back in the mid 1990s as a platform for replacing wired communication systems. It was never economically viable, yet somehow still operates. Rumor has it there's a three letter agency involved. In any case, at least one of the satellites is visible at all times, but they are slow and expensive to use. However, we can send small email messages over this system any time. That's handy. It seems that in this case "if you build it, they will come" is also part of the equation and so some money is now
actually flowing (certainly we send our share).
The main satellite is GOES-3 an old weather satellite that's out of fuel and so drifts into view of the pole for about seven hours per day. During that time we enjoy really slow internet access. It's slower than the broadband you're probably using to read this, but it's better than nothing.
The third system is TDRSS (pronounced tee dris). These are actual communications satellites and as such are fast. We use these to transmit bulk science data back to the northern hemisphere. For IceCube, that means about 70 GB/day. It is also used for normal internet access, but that traffic has lower priority, so it's still slow. We used to use TDRSS F1 for this. However, that satellite lost vacuum in its last transmitter about a month ago (question: you're in space, where did the vacuum go? :-) ). So now we use a newer TDRSS satellite (F6), but that's primarily a NASA bird, so we can only use it when they're not which means that you never quite know when you will have a time slot. We also have it for less time (just as well, I think we pay like $160/minute or something - and you thought ATT was bad), but it's much faster so we still get the same amount of data across.
An added bonus is that when GOES and TDRSS are visible, we can actually make phone calls. These phone calls appear to originate in Denver, so it's not even an international call. All you need is a calling card.
It's a far cry from the old days, that's for sure.
First Departure
So the big day finally arrived. I am trundled off to the USAP Antarctic Center which is right near the CHC airport. There you pick up the gear you tried out the day before and head over to check in your checked bag and pick up your boarding pass. The annoying part is that you must wear a complete set of Extremely Cold Weather Gear (ECW) onto the plane. They prefer that you don't discover that you left some piece of gear lying on the floor somewhere when you reach McMurdo.
OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration. You don't have to wear all your gear all the time. In fact, while waiting most people ditch their gear in a waiting area and get some coffee and/or breakfast. However, they do want you in your snow pants boots and parka in hand to board the plane. That can get to be a fairly long wait. The flight was a 10:00am flight and we were at the departure point at around 7:00am. Check in is similar to a normal airport except they weigh you and your gear. Oh, and the security checks are quicker. A lot if it is handled by dogs beforehand.
This is where my terrible tourist abilities really manifest themselves. I managed to get a few pictures running around Christchurch and had noticed that the battery on my camera was getting low. No worries, I'd be able to recharge at McMurdo or the pole. Unfortunately, the battery was completely flat. This is a pitty as for me, this is where the trip starts getting interesting. That made me a bit grumpy, and a bit fearful for my life when Jodi finds out about that. Fortunately, I'll be a few continents away when that happens.
Eventually, things get rolling. We are ushered through a final security checkpoint and onto a bus to reach our aircraft. Our flight is operated by the US Air Force. It is a C-17 cargo transport rigged for carrying both cargo and personnel. There are quite a few of us (120 - due to an earlier flight that was canceled) so it's a sea of red coats in the plane and some cargo at the back. The plane itself is huge. Not as big as the airbus 380 I flew from LAX to SYD, but still big. Being a military craft, there's not a lot of extra effort put into creature comforts. Certain niceties like interior walls are just extra weight which limits cargo capacity and operating range. So you get to see some of the guts of an airplane.
For passengers, there are two types of seating: traditional airplane seats, and combat seats. The combat seats are pretty basic and highly prized. The traditional airplane seats are actually mounted on a modified shipping pallet that can be loaded onto the plane in the same way as normal cargo pallets. I can now say that I have flown "cargo class." The seats are about the same size as normal airline seats, but are spaced a little farther apart than most airline seats. The Air Force crew is really good. They get us in, seated, and briefed. The briefing is similar to the normal briefing you get on an airplane except here you have to pay a bit of attention as there is different equipment and it's all stowed under your seat in some way.
After that, it's up, up, and away - hopefully to McMurdo. I say hopefully because the weather on the ice can change rapidly. It is not uncommon to get most of the way there only to discover that you can't land and have to return to CHC. This is called a "boomerang" and it can truly suck. Depending on the timing of the flight, you can arrive back at CHC fairly late, and then get up early and do it all over again. For this purpose you designate one bag as your "boomerang bag." This bag will be returned to you in the event of a boomerang. The others stay in the pallet they're shipped in.
The flight itself is similar to most commercial flights. However, another creature comfort which is conspicuously absent is noise reduction. It is loud. They issue you earplugs for the flight. So basically, it's a decent flight you spend mostly in isolation. Books are good. There aren't really many windows and honestly not a lot to see as far as I could tell.
We got lucky - the weather in McMurdo was good and was dominated by a massive high pressure system. We touched down pretty much on time, and I stepped onto the Southernmost continent ...
OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration. You don't have to wear all your gear all the time. In fact, while waiting most people ditch their gear in a waiting area and get some coffee and/or breakfast. However, they do want you in your snow pants boots and parka in hand to board the plane. That can get to be a fairly long wait. The flight was a 10:00am flight and we were at the departure point at around 7:00am. Check in is similar to a normal airport except they weigh you and your gear. Oh, and the security checks are quicker. A lot if it is handled by dogs beforehand.
This is where my terrible tourist abilities really manifest themselves. I managed to get a few pictures running around Christchurch and had noticed that the battery on my camera was getting low. No worries, I'd be able to recharge at McMurdo or the pole. Unfortunately, the battery was completely flat. This is a pitty as for me, this is where the trip starts getting interesting. That made me a bit grumpy, and a bit fearful for my life when Jodi finds out about that. Fortunately, I'll be a few continents away when that happens.
Eventually, things get rolling. We are ushered through a final security checkpoint and onto a bus to reach our aircraft. Our flight is operated by the US Air Force. It is a C-17 cargo transport rigged for carrying both cargo and personnel. There are quite a few of us (120 - due to an earlier flight that was canceled) so it's a sea of red coats in the plane and some cargo at the back. The plane itself is huge. Not as big as the airbus 380 I flew from LAX to SYD, but still big. Being a military craft, there's not a lot of extra effort put into creature comforts. Certain niceties like interior walls are just extra weight which limits cargo capacity and operating range. So you get to see some of the guts of an airplane.
For passengers, there are two types of seating: traditional airplane seats, and combat seats. The combat seats are pretty basic and highly prized. The traditional airplane seats are actually mounted on a modified shipping pallet that can be loaded onto the plane in the same way as normal cargo pallets. I can now say that I have flown "cargo class." The seats are about the same size as normal airline seats, but are spaced a little farther apart than most airline seats. The Air Force crew is really good. They get us in, seated, and briefed. The briefing is similar to the normal briefing you get on an airplane except here you have to pay a bit of attention as there is different equipment and it's all stowed under your seat in some way.
After that, it's up, up, and away - hopefully to McMurdo. I say hopefully because the weather on the ice can change rapidly. It is not uncommon to get most of the way there only to discover that you can't land and have to return to CHC. This is called a "boomerang" and it can truly suck. Depending on the timing of the flight, you can arrive back at CHC fairly late, and then get up early and do it all over again. For this purpose you designate one bag as your "boomerang bag." This bag will be returned to you in the event of a boomerang. The others stay in the pallet they're shipped in.
The flight itself is similar to most commercial flights. However, another creature comfort which is conspicuously absent is noise reduction. It is loud. They issue you earplugs for the flight. So basically, it's a decent flight you spend mostly in isolation. Books are good. There aren't really many windows and honestly not a lot to see as far as I could tell.
We got lucky - the weather in McMurdo was good and was dominated by a massive high pressure system. We touched down pretty much on time, and I stepped onto the Southernmost continent ...
Saturday, November 7, 2009
It's the 8th of November in NZ. That means Clothing Issue. This is where they give us all of the cold weather gear we'll need to survive at the pole. Or at least so we hope. This was at 1:00 local time so I had some time to kill before then.
I went out for breakfast at one of the local breakfast diners in the area. While I was there I saw a guy wearing an IceCube T-shirt and naturally assumed he was one of "us." It turns out he was actually working for another project, but had one of the shirts apparently as as exchange item of some sort. In any case, we struck up a conversation and he eventually invited me to tour a local acquarium with his group.
It turns out that one of his group is a marine biologist. If you've never had a chance to go some place with interesting flora and fauna in the presence of a biologist, you should find a way to do so. They seem to have an amazing repository of knowledge dealing in obscure facts about things you see every day. It's also possible that they are extremely talented BSers. How could you tell? In any case, we got a great commentary about the various critters in the acquarium.
We also saw a kiwi. That part of the tour was pretty neat. They only let small groups in. No phones, no cameras, and "shut-up" are the rules. The little room is dark, but we ended up getting a pretty good view of the bird. Think of a cross between an ostrich, an anteater, and a porcupine standing about a foot tall. I guess Oz doesn't have a monopoly on weird critters.
After the tour I headed pretty much straight to the clothing distribution center (CDC). There we got a couple bags packed with gear. As a newb, I tried on all the gear. They give you a form to fill out with guesses as to size and base the first round of clothing on that. It mostly fit, but there were a few things that needed to be exchanged. It took about an hour, all told. At this point, my bags are pretty much packed and ready to go.
Our flight leaves tomorrow at 10:00am local time. Our check-in time is 7:00am. Watching the video, it looks remarkably similar to a commercial flight. The only thing to be careful of is that your checked luggage is put on pallets and boxed up. In the event of a boomerang ("Hey look, we took off but the weather is too crappy to land, so let's go home") you will get one bag back. The rest stay on the pallet for the next three days or so. Choose carefully.
The flight itself is a C17 transport plane. Basically, it's a big military cargo plane. This one is going to be pretty full of people as the Friday flight was canceled due to mechanical problems. My understanding is that the planes are reasonably comfortable, but very loud. We shall see. I have my earplugs.
At this point, the machine is in motion and it's a logistics exercise. Tomorrow's flight is to McMurdo station. If all goes well, we spend a night there and then fly to the South Pole station. In practice, you are lucky if there is only one night in McMurdo. The weather usually holds you an extra day or two. That wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. McMurdo is where the life and activity is. There may be some chance of seeing penguins or other interesting costal areas.
Once you hit the pole, it's white and bright. Always. Until winter ...
I went out for breakfast at one of the local breakfast diners in the area. While I was there I saw a guy wearing an IceCube T-shirt and naturally assumed he was one of "us." It turns out he was actually working for another project, but had one of the shirts apparently as as exchange item of some sort. In any case, we struck up a conversation and he eventually invited me to tour a local acquarium with his group.
It turns out that one of his group is a marine biologist. If you've never had a chance to go some place with interesting flora and fauna in the presence of a biologist, you should find a way to do so. They seem to have an amazing repository of knowledge dealing in obscure facts about things you see every day. It's also possible that they are extremely talented BSers. How could you tell? In any case, we got a great commentary about the various critters in the acquarium.
We also saw a kiwi. That part of the tour was pretty neat. They only let small groups in. No phones, no cameras, and "shut-up" are the rules. The little room is dark, but we ended up getting a pretty good view of the bird. Think of a cross between an ostrich, an anteater, and a porcupine standing about a foot tall. I guess Oz doesn't have a monopoly on weird critters.
After the tour I headed pretty much straight to the clothing distribution center (CDC). There we got a couple bags packed with gear. As a newb, I tried on all the gear. They give you a form to fill out with guesses as to size and base the first round of clothing on that. It mostly fit, but there were a few things that needed to be exchanged. It took about an hour, all told. At this point, my bags are pretty much packed and ready to go.
Our flight leaves tomorrow at 10:00am local time. Our check-in time is 7:00am. Watching the video, it looks remarkably similar to a commercial flight. The only thing to be careful of is that your checked luggage is put on pallets and boxed up. In the event of a boomerang ("Hey look, we took off but the weather is too crappy to land, so let's go home") you will get one bag back. The rest stay on the pallet for the next three days or so. Choose carefully.
The flight itself is a C17 transport plane. Basically, it's a big military cargo plane. This one is going to be pretty full of people as the Friday flight was canceled due to mechanical problems. My understanding is that the planes are reasonably comfortable, but very loud. We shall see. I have my earplugs.
At this point, the machine is in motion and it's a logistics exercise. Tomorrow's flight is to McMurdo station. If all goes well, we spend a night there and then fly to the South Pole station. In practice, you are lucky if there is only one night in McMurdo. The weather usually holds you an extra day or two. That wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. McMurdo is where the life and activity is. There may be some chance of seeing penguins or other interesting costal areas.
Once you hit the pole, it's white and bright. Always. Until winter ...
Friday, November 6, 2009
The trip to go to the pole starts in about April or May. That's when we decide who's going and make the initial shot at the deployment schedule. I wish I had known that there was some wiggle room in the scheduling earlier on. As it is, I ended up in the Nov-Dec time slot despite asking for the January-February time slot. An artifact of sitting in an office too far away from where the decision was made, I guess. In any case, after a summer of dithering for various reasons, it was time to take the first steps to making the trip.
The south pole is a fairly extreme place. The elevation is about 10,000 feet, the average summer time temp is -30F. During the summer, it is always daylight. It is windy and dry. The only regular access to the pole is via helicopter or transport plane. There is a doctor on station, but you are at least 12 hours from modern medical facilities in the best cases. As a result, we need a fairly thourough medical and dental physical. We refer to this as the PQ (Physical Qualification) process.
The dental part of the process can be pretty quick - just X-Rays if you're lucky. I was not lucky. I still had my wisdom teeth. My dentist had been on me for years to get them pulled and would not sign the waiver that would let me keep them for the trip. More about this later.
The medical part of the process is your normal physical on steroids. They take at least six tubes of varying sizes of blood and run it through 14 tests (many with subtests). They also run a TB test. They run down a pretty extensive (8 page) medical history form. In addition, I got a flu shot and Tetanus booster just for fun (I hate shots). If you are over 40 you also have to do a stress test periodically, as well as a prostate check. There are more than a few reasons why it's good be (just) under 40 I guess.
There is only a limited psychology requirement unless you're going to spend the winter at the pole. If you're doing that, you get a long (at least half day) assessment out in Denver. The only questions in the medical history that seemed aimed at psychology were about how much alcohol you drink, if you feel that you drink too much, if you are an alcoholic, if you've ever been arrested for DUI, and if you have had suicidal thoughts. Curiously, they neglected to ask about homicidal thoughts which, in my mind, are of a bit more interest.
So having survived all of that, I was off to the oral surgeon for the extraction of wisdom teeth. This was on Sept. 15th (Jason's birthday). There the oral surgeon pointed to some areas on my X-Ray and showed me that sooner or later I was going to make his acquaintance. This was somehow apparent to him, but not immediately obvious to me. He also explained that because of my advanced age (38) I was not the ideal candidate for this procedure. I opted for the full anesthesia, so the only part of the whole thing I remember is the needle being placed, an incidental comment that I should begin feeling sleepy, and then hearing people laughing and then checking to see if I was awake.
I was awake, and the parts of my face which were not numb desperately wished they were. I had enough gauze in my mouth to make the Blue Man Group proud, but I was otherwise OK. I didn't have any of the lasting effects of anesthetic and was soon out the door with a few prescriptions and a pat on the back. Jodi managed to drive me home without laughing too much and pretty much took care of me for the rest of the day. All in all, it was't too bad. I got by on Ibuprofen and was back to work on the 17th.
Now here's the funny part. We hadn't heard back yet about the medical part of the physical. This had happened during the week prior to pulling the teeth. So I gave things a bit of time and called Raytheon (the contractor that handles things at the pole) to see what was up. Well, they hadn't seen the medical forms yet, however, the dental was cleared. As long as I was going to deploy for less than six weeks, all was good; otherwise, get the wisdom teeth pulled. My deployment dates? November 10th through December 15th. You do the math. Oh well, it's all in good fun. I called back a few days later and found that medical was cleared as well and I was PQ (physically qualified).
The revenge came on October 15th. On the lower jaw, a piece of bone decided to make its presence felt in the side of my tongue. This actually happened a couple days before the 15th, but it was the 15th when I finally made it back to the oral surgeon. Three shots of novacaine, a scalpel, and a bone file later, all was right once again and I went on my merry way.
After this, things moved quickly ...
The south pole is a fairly extreme place. The elevation is about 10,000 feet, the average summer time temp is -30F. During the summer, it is always daylight. It is windy and dry. The only regular access to the pole is via helicopter or transport plane. There is a doctor on station, but you are at least 12 hours from modern medical facilities in the best cases. As a result, we need a fairly thourough medical and dental physical. We refer to this as the PQ (Physical Qualification) process.
The dental part of the process can be pretty quick - just X-Rays if you're lucky. I was not lucky. I still had my wisdom teeth. My dentist had been on me for years to get them pulled and would not sign the waiver that would let me keep them for the trip. More about this later.
The medical part of the process is your normal physical on steroids. They take at least six tubes of varying sizes of blood and run it through 14 tests (many with subtests). They also run a TB test. They run down a pretty extensive (8 page) medical history form. In addition, I got a flu shot and Tetanus booster just for fun (I hate shots). If you are over 40 you also have to do a stress test periodically, as well as a prostate check. There are more than a few reasons why it's good be (just) under 40 I guess.
There is only a limited psychology requirement unless you're going to spend the winter at the pole. If you're doing that, you get a long (at least half day) assessment out in Denver. The only questions in the medical history that seemed aimed at psychology were about how much alcohol you drink, if you feel that you drink too much, if you are an alcoholic, if you've ever been arrested for DUI, and if you have had suicidal thoughts. Curiously, they neglected to ask about homicidal thoughts which, in my mind, are of a bit more interest.
So having survived all of that, I was off to the oral surgeon for the extraction of wisdom teeth. This was on Sept. 15th (Jason's birthday). There the oral surgeon pointed to some areas on my X-Ray and showed me that sooner or later I was going to make his acquaintance. This was somehow apparent to him, but not immediately obvious to me. He also explained that because of my advanced age (38) I was not the ideal candidate for this procedure. I opted for the full anesthesia, so the only part of the whole thing I remember is the needle being placed, an incidental comment that I should begin feeling sleepy, and then hearing people laughing and then checking to see if I was awake.
I was awake, and the parts of my face which were not numb desperately wished they were. I had enough gauze in my mouth to make the Blue Man Group proud, but I was otherwise OK. I didn't have any of the lasting effects of anesthetic and was soon out the door with a few prescriptions and a pat on the back. Jodi managed to drive me home without laughing too much and pretty much took care of me for the rest of the day. All in all, it was't too bad. I got by on Ibuprofen and was back to work on the 17th.
Now here's the funny part. We hadn't heard back yet about the medical part of the physical. This had happened during the week prior to pulling the teeth. So I gave things a bit of time and called Raytheon (the contractor that handles things at the pole) to see what was up. Well, they hadn't seen the medical forms yet, however, the dental was cleared. As long as I was going to deploy for less than six weeks, all was good; otherwise, get the wisdom teeth pulled. My deployment dates? November 10th through December 15th. You do the math. Oh well, it's all in good fun. I called back a few days later and found that medical was cleared as well and I was PQ (physically qualified).
The revenge came on October 15th. On the lower jaw, a piece of bone decided to make its presence felt in the side of my tongue. This actually happened a couple days before the 15th, but it was the 15th when I finally made it back to the oral surgeon. Three shots of novacaine, a scalpel, and a bone file later, all was right once again and I went on my merry way.
After this, things moved quickly ...
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
How did it ever come to this?
Once upon a time, I said I would never live in Waunakee (the residents are terrible drivers). Well, that turned out to be wrong. The residents are still terribly drivers, but the schools are good. When I started working for IceCube (http://www.icecube.wisc.edu) I said I wouldn't go to the pole.
It turns out it's possible to be wrong more than once in a lifetime ...
It turns out it's possible to be wrong more than once in a lifetime ...
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