McMurdo at last

I made it!  I am writing from the hanger at the LDB (Long Duration Ballooning) site, about a 30 minute ride from McMurdo.  While I am still not completely checked out to use the internet from McMurdo proper, I can access it from the LDB site because I am behind their firewall.  We made great progress unpacking today.  There were two big sea crates awaiting us upon arrival. We made quick work of them and are now waiting for the instrument itself to arrive.  My guitar made it just fine, and I have checked it out a bit already after tuning it.

I am finding it much colder at this time of the season compared to the December and January I spent here before. Temperatures are single digits (Fahrenheit).  Long johns etc are barely keeping me warm if I stand around outside.  Fortunately, I only have to wait for a bus and walk to meals outside. The rest of my life is inside the hanger, galley, or dorm.

The food is excellent this year. It doesn't take much of a crystal ball to see a pudgier version of myself returning in the future.  Getting larger is a small price to pay.  This place really is magical. I can see Mount Erebus, the southernmost active volcano, smoking in the near distance. The Antarctic mountain chain is glowing a beautiful bright white right now. There is already 24 hours of daylight here, although in the late evening the sun dips enough to turn the mountains a rosy color.  The picture in the title at the top of this blog is a panorama of what I can see from McMurdo.

Christchurch: R.I.P.

As I write this, I am sitting in a hotel room in Christchurch NZ waiting to find out whether we leave for Antarctica (the "Ice") this morning or night. This is the third morning spent waiting like this. Each day I get up at about 4 AM, report to the front desk for a shuttle to the airport, and so far, while waiting, get a phone call from Raytheon (the government contractor operating McMurdo) that we aren't going today.  The weather in McMurdo has been very windy lately, so there are white-out conditions, which make landing a plane dangerous.  (See the McMurdo link to the right for the station webcam.)

Allergy-inducing beauty

So we wait in Christchurch. You are probably thinking "Geez, tough luck! Springtime in New Zealand, with pine forests to hike in, tons of flowers in bloom, and the wonderful city of Christchurch to explore!" Well, you are partially justified in your facetiousness.  I spent my first day walking around the botanical gardens, and my second hiking out of town. (I love the flowers, but so do my allergies.)  Yesterday I joined my colleagues for a short sailing trip in a bay near the town of Lyttleton. (See http://www.jacktarsailing.co.nz)  But Christchurch itself is merely a shadow of its former self.

Jolly Jack Tar Sailing

There have three major earthquakes and countless minor tremblers here over the past year. It started a year ago September.  That was bad, with many buildings damaged, but it was only practice for what happened February 22: a shallow earthquake measuring around 6 on the Richter scale that devastated the city.  Almost 200 people were killed. The once thriving downtown is now referred to as the "Red Zone" and is completely cordoned off.  Every tall building you see is destined to become landfill out in Lyttleton as the dock there is increased in size.  The whole city center was destroyed. The damage here would be major news were it not overshadowed by the much worse quake and tsunami that hit Japan a week later.  To add insult to injury, yet another earthquake hit in June, toppling many already-damaged buildings and damaging even more. As one resident put it, "There's no reason to go downtown anymore, except that there is finally plenty of parking."

All these tall buildings must come down.

So Christchurch as I knew it is gone.  But along the lines of "the king is dead, long live the king," something is emerging from the rubble.  After clearing out a section of the Red Zone, the locals installed a tasteful-looking shopping area created from shipping containers.  It is more a testament to the unquenchable Kiwi spirit than a viable shopping district. But it is a start at restoring something that approaches normal.  Meanwhile, residents are becoming non-residents at an alarming rate. The city's population is shrinking as the suddenly unemployed seek jobs elsewhere in New Zealand and Australia.

Christchurch downtown.

Christchurch as landfill.

Meanwhile, hotel rooms are at such a premium that I am paying high prices and am forced to have a roommate.  Oh well. Practice for McMurdo, I guess, where a roommate is required.

It's not quite 6AM now, so I won't learn whether we fly down today or not for another couple hours.

Getting there

Getting to McMurdo Station in Antarctica is non-trivial. First of all, not just anyone can go. You must have a reason. Mine is as a scientist to prepare the CREST instrument for a flight. McMurdo Station (on the Ross Ice Shelf, at 78 degrees south latitude) started as a US Navy base. After the Antarctic Treaty was signed by all nations interested in claiming territory Antarctica, military operations were not allowed there, and all territorial claims were dropped. The base is for science now.

There are certainly other parts of Antarctica you can visit. They are primarily on the peninsula.  It costs a bundle! Most tours go by ship from the southern tip of South America. It takes two or three days just to get from there to the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula.

So how do I get there?  First, I go to Christchurch, New Zealand (just about due north of the Ross Ice Shelf). From there, after a couple days, I catch a military transport plane  to McMurdo. Christchurch is a traditional jumping off point for Antarctic travelers. Scott and Amundsen started there on their race to the South Pole in the early part of the last century.

From Cincinnati, it took me 28 hours to reach Christchurch. The flight to McMurdo is 5 (C130 turboprop) or 8 (C17 jet) hours long. I am scheduled for a C17 flight.

All of this is paid for by NASA (who sponsors the research project) and the National Science Foundation (NSF, who oversees McMurdo Station). So really, this is your tax dollars at work.

Going away party

I had a pleasant surprise today. My research student threw a little going away party, complete with hand-made party hats, noise makers, and balloons. They clearly put a lot of time into it. The hats had clever sayings on them, and they made good use of a Happy Birthday balloon by turning it into a Happy CREST Flight balloon. The little object dangling from the balloon was labeled "CREST instrument."

Awesome!

Thanks, Nick, Kirk, and Adam!

Why Antarctica?

Good question. To answer that, consider that I am sending a huge instrument essentially to outer space, hanging from a monstrous helium-filled balloon. CREST weighs about 7000 lbs. What would happen if that came crashing into your living room? Nothing good, I think.  To avoid dropping our instrument Wizard-of-Oz-like uninvited into something man-made we go where the likelihood of finding human structures is very small. This includes places like northern Canada, Australia, the oceans, New Mexico, and Antarctica.

A balloon and instrument just after launch.  The pre-deployed parachute is visible.

Still, with all those choices, the question remains: why Antarctica?  Consider what happens after our instrument achieves float altitude at 120,000 feet. (Challenge: How many miles is that? How many kilometers?) It begins to drift with the wind, just like a hot air balloon would.  But at 120,000 ft, winds blow either east to west or west to east, depending on the time of year.  And the wind speed is usually quite high: many tens of mph. This means that the balloon and instrument cover a lot of ground very quickly. What may have started as empty country (eg New Mexico) quickly ends up being populated (eg Los Angeles!). 

A balloon and instrument at float altitude, fully expanded (seen through a telescope).

Antarctica has the advantage that east and west directions form tight circles about the south pole. So a balloon sent up from McMurdo Station will take about 10 or 15 days to go around the pole and end up back at McMurdo. Very convenient, since then we can decide whether to take one more time around or bring it down. And all along we never have to worry about running into someplace like Los Angeles or Buenos Aires.  Any other launch site mentioned above runs that risk.  Plus, there is no chance that our instrument will get tangled up in a tree in Antarctica.

Here I go again....

Well, it's fall 2011, and I am heading back to McMurdo Station in Antarctica for the third time. Previously I visited there in 2005 and 2008. You can view a blog about those trips at http://antarctic-scott.blogspot.com.

The first time (December 2005) I went as a team member on the CREAM experiment (http://cosmicray.umd.edu/cream/cream.html), which is designed to detect cosmic ray elements (hydrogen through iron) at high energies. CREAM has flown 6 times now - or is it 7? Lots. My duties were to help prepare the instrument for flight. I got to see it launched on the high altitude balloon by a NASA team. In January 2008 I went back to participate in recovery of the instrument after it came back to earth, at the end of the flight. I was there and saw a different part of the summer season in McMurdo.

Now I am going to prepare the CREST instrument for launch. I'll be with the early crew - arriving in Antarctica about November 1, 2011. This is springtime in Antarctica. Days are very close to 24 hours long already at McMurdo (78 degrees south latitude, above the Antarctic Circle, which starts at 67 degrees latitude).

Going to Antarctica is a once in a lifetime experience I am getting to do for the third time now. I never thought my physics PhD would take me to such a place. Each time I go I think it is my last time, but hope it is not. In this blog, I'll share living conditions, progress on CREST, and any other random thoughts I deem worth sharing. I plan to provide lots of pictures. Sit back and enjoy!