6 Nov
2007
6 Nov
'07
1:48 p.m.
On Tue, Nov 06, 2007 at 02:13:14PM -0600, Jim Leonard wrote:
Ethan Dicks wrote:
South Pole.
Even the microVAX that was here 10 years ago was
packed
up and removed years ago.
I hate to sound like someone who is against the environment, but why
bother packing it up and removing it at all? I mean, come on, it's the
North Pole. Wouldn't it be easier, faster, and cheaper to
just dump it
half a mile from the site? It's the North Pole -- what could happen?
There's an international treaty that regulates activities in the
Antarctic - in compliance with that treaty, in 1978, the U.S.
passed the Antarctic Conservation Act, which, among other things
requires that we "pack out our trash".
Before the ACA, the Navy used to dump vehicles in the ocean, have
an open dump at McMurdo (on the coast) with annual trash burns to
reduce the volume, and at Pole, just abandon vehicles and let them
drift over. Now, we have to remove building debris, scrap material,
trash and waste. About the only exception is that we don't remove
our waste-water and sewage - it's pumped into an ice cavern hundreds
of feet below the surface (which will end up in the sea thousands of
years from now).
As for just leaving it outside, if it's equipment we intend to use
again, it's bad to leave electronics where the ambient temperature
gets well below -60F for months at a time. Bad for electrolytic
caps, bad for bonding wires inside ICs, bad for LCDs...
So... for all the PDP-11s and HPs and VAXen, etc., that were ever
here, they are here no longer.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 6-Nov-2007 at 21:40 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -41.4 F (-40.8 C) Windchill -63.6 F (-53.1 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 6.4 kts Grid 99 Barometer 682.5 mb (10534 ft)
Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html