Station Close!
15 Feb 2017
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| The last members of the summer crew board the last passenger flight out of South Pole |
The South Pole winter is too cold to operate aircraft. Below temps of -45 C or so (typical these days, with a windchill around -60 C), engines are difficult to start and hydraulic fluid freezes in the lines. The departure of the last plane is known here as "Station Close," and it marks the official beginning of winter.
There are 46 of us here for the 2017 season. 41 men, 5 women. There's now no way in or out of the station until flights resume in the spring, around late Oct. Only approximately 1500 people have spent the winter at south pole, fewer than have climbed Mt Everest. The ultimate clearing house for stats and info about winter-overs is maintained by Bill Spindler. His site is fascinating and you can dive way into minutiae there.
It is traditional for the last plane leaving to give the station a flyby and dip its wings in salute. My NOAA counterpart, Gavin, is a video editing whiz and put together a short video of the event which you can download here.
A few of our photos are going to be featured on the homepage of noaa.gov on Tuesday* as part of a story about our mission down here an station close. Be sure to check it out! Apparently NOAA might also be sending a twittering or putting things on that facebook thing I hear so much about. Not sure about the URLs for those things, but I trust you to find them if you're so inclined :-)
A few of our photos are going to be featured on the homepage of noaa.gov on Tuesday* as part of a story about our mission down here an station close. Be sure to check it out! Apparently NOAA might also be sending a twittering or putting things on that facebook thing I hear so much about. Not sure about the URLs for those things, but I trust you to find them if you're so inclined :-)
Tonight (actually in about 15 minutes) we're celebrating another South Pole tradition with a marathon screening of all three versions of "The Thing." The original 1950s version is set at the North Pole, but the other 2 (from 1982 and 2011) are set down here and all three have become cult classics among the Antarctica set.
I'm excited. This is what I came here for. We have about a month of daylight left, then 2-3 weeks of twilight, and then it will be complete darkness until mid-September. There's no turning back now, and the only way home is through November.
EDIT: *The story is now up at http://www.noaa.gov/stories/
EDIT: *The story is now up at http://www.noaa.gov/stories/
Wow
ReplyDeleteSeconded.
DeleteI wish I could send you hugs and bottles of gongura. I looked into the latter, apparently it's impossible :(
ReplyDeleteThe 1982 version is my personal favorite.
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize that the M/F ratio would be quite so lopsided. Makes me wonder if it'd be a good analog for a long term space mission.
Good luck!
The 50's version is *awful*. The general theme is that scientists are cold, unemotional, and naive. The lead scientist gives a speech in which he praises how the alien must have a way to reproduce which is sullied with pleasure, and then argues that it is the duty of everyone at the station to die in order to please a higher, wiser form of life. Instead, trust the good ol' military folks who don't waste time with brain thinkin' or understanding what the nerds say. Of course, the very first thing the military does, literally 1 second after the alien emerges from the ice, is to open fire. Terrible film. All the wrong messages.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, watching all three versions back to back does reveal some nice connections between them. There's a character in the 2011 version who is a clear homage to the 50s scientist, and a nice moment at the end which gives some hints as to the ambiguous ending of the 1982 film.
A bunch of us down here have space watches! NASA is funding a study of long-term isolation and stress levels down here. Participants (like me) wear a watch which monitors activity and sleep patterns (kind of like a fit-bit). A few times a month we contribute saliva samples that will presumably have cortisol levels measured (an indicator of stress). Once a month we take some mental acuity tests on a computer that measure speed and accuracy, and answer some questions about our feelings. Roughly (and I'm not a physiologist) they're looking to see if our mood declines, our sleep patterns get messed up, our stress levels go up and if our mental sharpness declines (a phenomenon called being "toasty" in Antarctic parlance) during isolation. I may never make it to Mars myself, but my physiological data will inform the design of the mission that does. Science!