Brr

McMurdo during the summer routinely gets above freezing and isn't all too different from Alaska or northern Canada in the early spring. During the winter of course it gets cold.

As for power, McMurdo has a mix of power sources including a number of renewables. For about a decade ('62-'72), McMurdo also had a small nuclear power plant on site as well. This was also only a few years after McMurdo was established ('56). So there was definitely a time where energy was not particularly expensive and the greater issue was the cost per kilo for shipping supplies.

Of course now that shipping logistics are mostly ironed out and nuclear was deemed too problematic, various fossil fuels are used for power and heating a good chunk of the site (whatever the scattering of renewables can't handle).

Wind Turbines: https://brr.fyi/media/hut-point/town.jpg

PM-3A Nuclear Site: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/PM3Anuclearpowerplant.JPG

The linked post "Showering at the South Pole" is interesting as well. From how they get their water to its rationing.

If you arrive on a 90 day journey, you can bank your shower points (not shower) until your last day in the station, and spend your shower credits for a 52 minute shower! (1.3 gallons/minute)

https://brr.fyi/posts/showering-at-the-south-pole

> Reasonable options are as follows:

> Every 3 days: 102.9 shower-seconds. That’s 1 minute, 42.9 seconds. Bold and daring! Can you rinse off in time?

> Every 4 days: 137.2 shower-seconds. That’s 2 minutes, 17.2 seconds. Enjoy the extra time! You’ve earned it.

> Every 5 days: 171.5 shower-seconds. That’s 2 minutes, 51.5 seconds. Approaching luxury territory. Enjoy every precious, hard-earned second!

> Every 6 days: 205.8 shower-seconds. That’s 3 minutes (!!), 25.8 seconds. High risk, high reward. If you can hold out, you’ll be able to enjoy an indulgent, almost decadent shower.

Nice post! There's a lot of stuff here that I had no idea was in built-in already.

I tried making a standalone executable with the command provided, but it produced a .blob which I believe still requires the Node runtime to run. I was able to make a true executable with postject per the Node docs[1], but a simple Hello World resulted in a 110 MB binary. This is probably a drawback worth mentioning.

Also, seeing those arbitrary timeout limits I can't help but think of the guy in Antarctica who had major headaches about hardcoded timeouts.[2]

[1]: https://nodejs.org/api/single-executable-applications.html

[2]: https://brr.fyi/posts/engineering-for-slow-internet

Unsurprisingly, the challenges of getting to, living in, and managing infrastructure in Antarctica is a frequent theme of posts shared here. Some previous discussions of note:

* How to Operate an Airport in Antarctica (also via flightradar24.com): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26340384 (68 comments)

* Nuclear Power at McMurdo Station, Antarctica: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27549484 (192 comments)

And perhaps my favorite blog, brr.fyi makes frequent appearances here. An example:

* South Pole Water Infrastructure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40615530 (63 comments)

For all Antarctica posts: https://brr.fyi/tags#south-pole

Starlink was certainly a game changer for life around here. McMurdo is essentially a small town so many different jobs and routines to make everything go. Some stay inside all the time, some have to work outside a lot.

https://brr.fyi/ is a really good blog from a person nearing the end of a year long deployment who writes much more eloquently than I ever could if you want to read more.

Antarctica: A Year on Ice is an enjoyable film documentary from ~10 years ago.

A Big Dead Place by Nicholas Johnson is also worth a read from the early 2000s.