Design Wanted For Antarctic Base

colonist writes "According to the BBC, The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) have begun a major international competition to design a new scientific research station at Antarctica. The old station, Halley Research Station, was built in 1992 and its ice shelf will break off by 2010." According to the article: "The first four bases were built on the surface and gradually got covered with snow and ultimately got so deep they became crushed by the weight of ice and had to be replaced", though the "current base on stilts" fared better until the ice shelf problems.

Igloos.

[Anonymous Coward]

That way, you would not have to transport any building materials except maybe shovels and saws.

Why do I suddenly get the image of...

[okmnji]

... a bunch of AT-AT's storming the rebel base on Hoth?

A question...

[lxt]

...I read the BBC article (unusual for here...), but it didn't seem to say whether or not the designers of the 1992 base knew the shelf would eventually break off...will this new base be designed to be easily expendable?

Cheaper alternative

[aoasus]

As long as the current base is operative, could the thing just be towed a few miles or however far the thing has to go? Of course it might actually be worthwile to ditch the old one & start new, but why give up on a perfectly good building?

are under-ice bases so bad?

[WormholeFiend]

They could build a base to resist the weight of accumulated snow and ice, and just expand the passageways as the base further gets buried... until they have to move to another ice-shelf.

Here... free...

[nametaken]

1) Put in the water, on pylons. Concrete ice-breaker pylons like they use on bridges.

or maybe..

2) Don't fight the mounting ice. Use a modular, extendable lift system, and build down into the ice. Much like the ice caves they build into glaciers, but with structural reinforcement and climate control + serious bilge pumps. Your computers will love it down there.

Obvious..

[dustinbarbour]

How about a research station with a heated roof to melt the snow and such? I would have thougth that was obvious.

Submarine style?

[Barumpus]

With out knowing the physical limitations or the like from the average submarine, why not use something of this style. The deepest diving subs can tolerate pressures on the hull far that of the average structure on land. Could something of this general style sustain the pressures exerted by a large amount of snow piled on top of it? Plus it would have the added benefit of being able to handle the under water conditions after the next ledge breaks off sending the base into the cold seas.

Re:Terrorist proof

[agentZ]

Don't laugh too hard. The weather down there can play hell with aircraft, and safety is a huge concern while flying. Granted, the odds of hitting the building versus the vast expanses of uninhabited ice or water are slim, but I wouldn't want to be out of house and home when it's minus sixty below!

Re:Igloos.

[Rei]

Not permanent. We need some serious work in permanent ice bases. I mean, seriously, while most of the Slashdot crowd is really into going to Mars, it doesn't cost tens of billions of dollars per person to go to Antartica, a whole friggin continent that has been almost unexplored.

I wish Greenpeace and related organiztions would lay off the idea of turning all of Antarctica into a big protected park. Why turn something into a big protected park when there is essentially nothing there? I mean, I could understand the antarctic coastline - it's a breeding ground for a ton of marine life. But the inner parts of the continent are almost (not quite, but close) a dead zone. Why not declare, say, the congo to be a big protected park, and shift mining operations to antarctica, if you really care about the environment? Even waste spills are less damaging, as you have hundreds of thousands of years to clean them up before they pollute the world's water supply (barring really extreme levels of global warming).

re: obvious...

[ed.han]

that's so obvious i'm positive there are reasons why that isn't feasible although it seems no physicists or meteorologists have weighed in yet. as possibilities i'll advance:

1) you can't melt the stuff fast enough for it to flow off.
2) even if you could, you need to shunt it someplace, in heated pipes or other methods, to deposit the mess someplace where it won't accumulate and create the situation you're trying to avoid.
3) daunting power requirements to heat the exterior of any structure of adequate size.

my guess is that it's impossible to heat the exterior sufficiently to cope w/ the overnight lows they routinely experience there.

ed

Re:Igloos.

[TamMan2000]

Still have the same problem of getting covered in snow and crushed.

I don't think so... I think they would get covered in snow and get stronger. one of the beauties of a dome is that it can take huge loads provided that they are fairly uniform. Getting covered in snow is very uniform loading. Snow, when under enough presure turns in to ice. Ice is the material the igloo is made of. I am pretty sure that the igloo walls would just thicken with time.

You would still have to worry about shifting ice causing asymetric loading of your dome.

Also you couldn't make it one big igloo, it would have to an interconected network of smaller ones. The thickness of wall required to construct an unsuported span (dome in this case) is pretty damn non-linear, and it would not be practicle to build ice walls large enough to support big rooms, when you could just make 4 smaller ones, and get twice the space...

Big Dead Place

[olivermoffat]

For more reading about living and working in Antartica, see Big Dead Place [bigdeadplace.com]

Re:In other News...

[at_kernel_99]

Although what I really want to do is to imagine a Beowulf cluster of these...

I don't think you're far off. I'm thinking modular base. each unit being moveable / liftable to 1) stay on top of accumulated snowfall and 2) move away from the calving edge of the ice shelf.

Oil in Antartica

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Seems to me if the Continental Drift [bbc.co.uk] theory is correct, there SHOULD be large oil fields in Antartica; as it was once an equatorial continent.

Re:Igloos.

[gl4ss]

so if a building made of some strong materials can't take it then an igloo would???

digging a base into the ice is a good idea but it's not a good long term solution i'm afraid(the ice 'lives', is on the move and so on..).

Re:Igloos.

[mangu]

I am pretty sure that the igloo walls would just thicken with time.

And would slowly melt from the inside. It would grow until it reached an unstable size, because neither the snow falling outside nor the melting inside would be completely uniform.

If it needs to be moved...

[innerweb]

...then why not use NASA's solution for the launch pads. Using a treaded vehicle to move it would allow the base to be recycled, or at least provide a platform to build a more solid structure that would then have a longer potential lifetime.

As the snow built up around the base, you would simply drive the vehicle/base forward up and over the new snow/ice. Of course, there is the problem of the extreme cold and what it does to machinery of any kind, and how much weight could be handled under each tread (there would have to be enough space covered by the treads to distribute the weight enough to allow the treads to safely move the base.)

But, a mobile base would allow for some interesting investments to be made in the research capabilities. It would also allow the base to eventually move further inland with much less effort/risk as compared to building a new base closer to the pole (since you would have your habitat right there with you ;-). IANAA(I am not an architect), but I can still dream.

InnerWeb

Re:Igloos.

[dgatwood]

Tractors. They need tractors. Not the kind of tractors that you use to plough a field. The kind of tractors that carry the space shuttle stack out to the launch pad. For any reasonably-sized shelter structure, it should only take one.

You have tank treads to move the thing, so if the ice shelf is breaking off, you can crawl farther inland. Better, when snow builds up on top, you can move around a bit and shake it off... or just use a heater on the outside of a dome.

Alternately, you could just add tank treads to a Winnebago....

Re:Igloos.

[ziggy_zero]

Geodesic domes anyone?

The US Military (I forget what branch) want to test RADAR back in the day and they were looking for ways to protect their dishes from the Arctic snow and heavy winds.

Bucky Fuller gave them the geodesic dome idea and they tested it out and worked great. Snow merely rolled off of it, and of course geodesic domes are so structurally sound that they couldn't even break it when they stress-tested it.