Arctic use/reinforcing for ice/"expedition class"

[bpw]

Question from a tropical guy; Why would anyone want to go to Antarctica? The place is barren, miserably uncomfortable and fraught with danger.

Scientific research people, OK. They have a reason to be there despite the misery, isolation, and...oh yeah, danger.

At about 5 degrees lat there is a collossal hole in the ice that is 2820 meters deep. Bed rock is at the bottom of the hole. There is a research station on stilts, on top of the hole. There are 86 cables dispersed such that they go down into the hole. Each cable has basketball sized globes that collectively contain 5160 optical sensors. In the deep core there are eight cables spaced so that they are optimized for lower energies and there are 480 of the basketballs that aim at this objective. What the hell are they looking for? Neutrinos. The whole layout has the thoroughly appropriate name; Ice Cube.

Aside from searching for neutrinos, why else would anyone want to be there? I'll bet that those recently rescued tourist people have jolly well had enough of Antartica depite their legitimate claim to temporary fame.

It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, and not as dangerous of a trip as you would think, there are about a dozen sailboats doing charters to Antarctica, most 3-4 trips a year and they have been doing it for years without any of them getting in serious trouble (though one did come back yesterday without the top half of her mast, but it was unrelated to being in high latitudes, just fell down in about 30 knots of wind near cape horn.)

The weather is actually not bad in the summer, in the week I was on the pennisula we had 4-5 days of sunny weather and temps just around freezing. We also had our share of sleet and snow, but not that bad overall.

I can see why people fall in love with the ice and keep going back year after year. I would like to go again someday on a boat of my own so I could spend a month or two there. Though my favorite place to sail so far was the channels of southern Chile.

 

[Mr Efficiency]

It should be possible to shut down the reactors and tow the icebreaker with large tug over the areas with too warm water. Or upgrade the heat exchanger to work in warmer water. After all nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines operate just fine in tropical waters.

Whatever the reason, they never went south, apparently. Maybe the design is tailored to, and requires cold water. In any event, there would likely be much more important work to do in the extensive Russian Arctic, whereas there is no pressing commercial need to satisfy in Antarctica. Just occurred to me that that class of vessel would be unlikely to get stuck, the way the smaller Russian icebreaker is.