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.
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