[meteorite-list] Ice Diary 3: Cheer for Team Meteorite

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:23:46 2004
Message-ID: <200303061904.LAA21568_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=391&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Ice Diary 3: Cheer for Team Meteorite
Astrobiology Magazine
March 6, 2003

Summary: The Ice Diary series explores the adventures of a dedicated group
of meteor hunters. The National Science Foundation, NASA and the Smithsonian
collect and curate extraterrestrial samples scoured from the South Pole.
This week's chronicle highlights the food, history and ecosystem of their
southern astronomical window on the universe.

Ice Diary 3

Cheer for Team Meteorite

Ed. note: On March 4, the U.S. McMurdo station said that fifty U.S. workers
will be airlifted off Antarctica on a special flight to spare them from
spending the winter on the frozen continent. The mission will come a week
after U.S. flights to Antarctica ended for months as round-the-clock
darkness descended on the continent. If the Americans don't leave soon, they
will have to spend the next six months at an Antarctic base because plunging
temperatures make it too risky to fly. The temperature was likely to be down
to 22 degrees below zero on the ice.

3 December, 2002

We're delayed again today from our field deployment, not by weather, but by
a medical emergency. Someone coming out of the Dry Valleys experienced an
aneurysm and had to be evacuated to New Zealand. This tied up the C-130s and
has delayed us until tomorrow.

There could be much worse places to be stranded than McMurdo. In fact, this
has given each of us a chance to see other types of research taking place
here and a chance to explore a little.

Some of the most interesting work being done here is the study of the marine
biology just below the sea ice. Divers go into this sub-freezing water to
study the ecosystems that exist below. One might be inclined to think that
little exists below the ice, but actually life is thriving. Some of the
animals are represented in the McMurdo aquarium, a room full of holding
tanks where these animals are being studied. I was most impressed by the
Antarctic cod that were over 3 feet long.

They also had one of the largest sea stars I've ever seen. The tanks were
full of several other invertebrates, including urchins, chitins, and other
mollusks.

After visiting the aquarium, Alan offered to show us the desalination plant.
This is an amazing marvel of chemistry and engineering. Prior to 1996, a
distillation process produced all of McMurdo's fresh water. The seawater was
heated, and the steam was then condensed and recaptured. This caused water
rationing due to its inefficiency. In 1996, they installed a reverse-osmosis
filtration system that pumps seawater through a series of filters until
fresh water is produced. Alan opened a valve right on the filter to let us
taste the water. It was delicious.

The water's acidity (pH) is adjusted and chlorine is added before the water
is sent to the buildings. It is not an inexpensive solution. Each filter
costs $250,000. Earlier this year, tetrapods (small marine invertebrates
similar to jellyfish) were getting caught in the filters. A screen had to be
set up where the water is drawn from the sea to catch the tetrapods before
they got into the filters. They seem to have the problem solved and there is
plenty of fresh water at McMurdo.

4 December, 2002

Well, our chances of getting out to the field site looked good this morning.
We heard the pilots were resting and we would be going soon after. Then the
weather took a turn, and our flights were cancelled again. I woke up not
feeling my best this morning, and several members of the team have
complained of the same sore throat and runny nose. I didn't think much of it
until Jamie and Lynn mentioned I didn't sound too good at lunch. I decided
to check out the McMurdo clinic.

Jerry Seinfeld says that you're required to wait when you go to the doctor;
that's why it's called a "waiting room." But this doctor saw me right away.
He said he's seen many people with the same symptoms. He took one look at my
throat and gave me some amazing New Zealand lozenges that not only soothe my
throat, but also put my tongue to sleep. When I got back to the dorm,
several other members of the team wanted to try them for themselves.

Dr. Dean Eppler shared with me his description of living in the tents and
what to expect in the field. The following is an excerpt of one of his
e-mails: This is the 25th season the ANSMET folks have been in the field
down here, and for John Schutt, the mountaineer who's going to be
accompanying my group, it's the 22nd season. In that time, they've come up
with a pretty good system for living working in the field that revolves
around Scott tents, good sleeping bags, and small backpacking stoves. Scott
tents are named after Robert Falcon Scott, who froze to death in one after
returning from his first trip to the Pole in the early 1900s. They are
large, four-poled tents that are very easily and quickly set up, even in a
high wind, and provide a floor space about 10 feet on a side.

We sleep two to a tent (Johnny and I will occupy one and Cady Coleman, an
astronaut, and Diane DiMassa, a Mechanical Engineering Professor from
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, will occupy the other). The floor is
a rubberized canvas on which we put double closed cell foam. On top of that
we set up an additional foam pad and, finally, our sleeping bags. Between
the two occupants is an area about 4' by 10' on which we set up food boxes,
two stoves and all the other accoutrements we drag around in field (extra
clothes, extra clothes for the extra clothes, and even extra mittens, gloves
and hats). When you get two people in the tent and start a couple of stoves,
it's pretty warm and toasty. All jesting aside, it is certainly the nicest
living accommodations I've had in many years of climbing, backpacking and
camping in the back of my truck.

Since it is light 24 hours a day, the inside of the tent has a nice sunny
shade all the time. Sleeping can be a problem, but frankly, if Snowcraft
School is any indication, I'm going to be so whipped every day, the bigger
problem will be to stay awake long enough to get food and water down my
gullet. We store most of our food outside, as well as tools, rock boxes, and
anything else not integral to our personal comfort and maintenance.

The food we eat is a pretty good mix of normal stuff you would buy in any
grocery store in the States. We carry a LOT of food - Johnny and I will be
shipping in 300 pounds of food, most of it high in calories, carbs, and fat.
To stay warm, we need to ingest, on average, 5,000 to 7,500 calories A DAY.
Even at that rate, we will probably not lose weight. In most cases, for me,
losing weight would be a good thing, but in this environment, if you-re not
getting enough to eat, the body starts to digest itself rather
indiscriminately, not only taking it off the fat on my gut, but from muscle
tissue in places like the heart and in other places like the nervous system
and brain (what brain, you ask if I'm here, the point could be made it
disappeared a long time ago ). So we spend a lot of time every day eating.

The other critical thing is to melt enough snow and ice to stay hydrated.
With every breath, we dump several quarts of hydrated, heated air out of our
lungs. That water goes into the environment, and freezes out on things like
face masks, moustaches, and beards, but it's lost to the body. Blood volume
drops, and blood is the body's primary heat transfer medium. So if you're
not getting enough water you start to have heating problems, with toes and
fingers freezing. Johnny tells me we will have to be drinking, on average,
four to six liters per day. That means we have to have ice brought in,
melted, and stored in bottles almost constantly, as well as drinking things
like New Zealand "Kool-Aid" (called Raro), cocoa, tea, etc. Well, when
you're drinking that much, it goes out not only through the lungs but urine
as well, so (and I'm sorry if this is gross to some of you) but we keep a
"P" bottle in the tent for late night calls of nature.

I'm lucky to tent with Johnny, a mountaineer who has an incredible
reputation on several continents this guy is a living legend. He knows how
to do this stuff in his sleep, so I will be in good hands as long as I
follow what he says -- something I'm definitely planning to do. Given the
experience of the guy our tents are named after, I'm infinitely luckier.
Scott and his three companions died of scurvy and hypothermia less than 30
miles from where I'm now sitting. When their bodies were found the following
year, their shipmates collapsed the tent over them and left them in the
snow, to be slowly borne to the sea by the motion of the Ross Ice Shelf.

A glaciologist did an estimate of the rate of movement of the ice sheet, and
calculated that Scott and his mates were finally carried into the Antarctic
Ocean sometime in the last 10 years. Somehow that seems fitting, and it
eases my mind after reading about Scott and his expedition. They were, after
all, British naval officers, and burial at sea would have been their custom.
Thanks, Dean, for submitting this.

6 December, 2002

The Search Team went in to the field yesterday, and is scheduled to spend
all of today on a long snowmobile traverse to their first field camp. They
are aiming for Goodwin Nunataks. When the Search team gets camp set up and
communication established, they should start sending reports directly from
the field.

The four of us still at McMurdo have spent these days completing final
packing and checking out communications and weather. Diane has been testing
an experimental wind generator that will be taken to the field next week. We
have also had time for a bit of sightseeing, photography, and a full-body
salute to ANSMET the Antarctic Search for Meteorites.
Give me an A!!
Give me an N!!
Give me an S!!
Give me an M!!
Give me an E!!
Give me a T!! What do you get? BEST METEORITE HUNTERS ON THE PLANET!! GO
TEAM!!
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Since 1976, the Antarctic Search for Meteorites program (ANSMET), funded by
the Office of Polar Programs of the National Science Foundation, has
recovered more than 10,000 specimens from meteorite stranding surfaces along
the Transantarctic Mountains. Dr. Ralph Harvey and John Schutt are members
of each field party, serving as ANSMET continues to be one of the few
Antarctic research projects that invites graduate students and senior
researchers from other institutions to participate in our field work on a
volunteer basis--including the Teacher Experiencing Antarctica (TEA)
program. As a multi-agency collaboration, the NSF supports field operations,
NASA supports storage curation, distribution and notification of recovered
samples, and the Smithsonian provides long term curation facilities for the
collection and assist in sample characterization.

In this multi-part Ice Diary series, all commentary are attributed to Andy
Caldwell unless otherwise noted, and reprinted by permission as part of his
participation in the TEA program.
Received on Thu 06 Mar 2003 02:04:49 PM PST