Fun with cryogen

Well, I escaped the usual daily activities by helping our Cryogenics Tech Chris do a liquid nitrogen fill for one of the telescopes over in the Dark Sector. We collected the four dewars from the Dark Sector Lab (insulated flasks in which cryogens are stored and transported), hoisted them down from the second floor, and took them over to MAPO on a snow mobile sled to where the N2 plant is located. We filled the dewars up with more liquid nitrogen, and then returned them all to DSL so the telescope grantee could use it to cool his instrument. It was a nice change of scene and pace.

In the evening I joined some friends out in ARO to watch the truly atrocious movie "Ladyhawke". We blocked off all the windows to shut out the omnipresent sunshine, and had a nice relaxing time despite the movie's shortcomings.

Loads of emergency respondin'

This week has been a huge one for the emergency responders here at Pole. Tuesday we had our first large drill of the season. One patient was simulated having experience electrical shock, which also set off a (false) carbon monoxide alarm in the IceCube Lab. The fire brigade (Team 2, of which I'm the lead) had an extremely rapid response time. It was pretty chilly on the sleds being towed by snow mobiles, but we pretty much all took necessary precautions to protect our gear from the frigid temperatures. We mustered well, and got the building search done quickly, despite some communications problems. The ICL is encased in a copper mesh cage to prevent radio transmission in and out of the building, due to sensitive equipment that they have inside. We're working on some redundant comms plans to address this issue at ICL and in other radio-unfriendly facilities. There was a second patient (a fall victim) out at the IceCube drilling camp, but Team 2 was not required to assist with that scene.

Wednesday night Team 2 had our own debriefing about how the drill went. It was good to hear everybody's spin on how things transpired. We had another false fire alarm here in the Elevated Station. Somebody's nebulizer set off the alarm in their dorm room, and we had to scramble to address the issue. There are stainless steel fire doors that swing shut out in the hall, and as I was coming from the far end of the station I glimpsed this grey color further down and thought for a bit that it was a wall of smoke pouring out of the far end of the station. Luckily, it wasn't, but that sure got my attention. Responding inside the station is pretty difficult compared to remote buildings outside. For lack of a better comparison, I'd liken it to urban warfare versus battle out in the open field. The quarters are cramped, there is potential for lots of people to get cut off by fire very quickly, and communications are made extremely difficult. It was a good learning experience, and again was thankfully just a false alarm.

Thursday night we had a big meeting of the emergency responder team leads. There was a lot of good discussion, and we will hopefully be able to make some adjustments to how things are organized that will really help us out for the next drill or (hopefully not) real emergency. I definitely feel like of the team leads that Team 2 gets the most attention or scrutiny. I guess it's appropriate due to the more complex nature of our gear, and the higher danger we encounter by entering hazardous atmospheres and attacking combustion events. The meeting was a good 1.5 hours well spent.

So, I mentioned trouble on the road out to the SPRESSO vault on Tuesday. Well, what it was was a leak in our cooling system, which left a trail of glycol along our path until it started billowing smoke and we knew something was wrong.

Road trip!

Yesterday I actually left the station proper. The Science Support staff loaded up in an LMC (an ancient tracked vehicle) and headed off for the SPRESSO Vault several miles from Pole Station. There was no groomed road, so we just drove across the sastrugi, which made for quite a bumpy ride. We had weather come through while dealing with some technical difficulties on the road, and it was interesting to feel the temperature drop as the breeze picked up and the sun got obscured by clouds.



Once we got out to the SPRESSO vault, 8 kilometers from the station, We had to dig down about three feet to find the hatch covering the entrance to the vault itself. I'm a total Indiana Jones nerd, so of course it was like uncovering the Well of Souls in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in my mind.



The other guys went down and worked on the seismometers while I stayed up top to continue clearing snow from around the entrance and act as radio relay to somebody we were working with back at the station.



The view from that far out was pretty neat. The station was just a blip on the horizon, and once the really bad visibility hit it was totally obscured.

Manic week ahead

Well, the agenda for this week keeps getting more chock-a-block with new activities. I'll save writing about them as they happen to avoid repeating myself.

The weather here has been extremely comfortable, with the ambient temperatures hovering in the mid-minus-30s. On my walks to/from ARO I haven't been wearing more than my light jacket (unzipped) and glove liners in addition to my insulated Carhartt overalls. It's amazing how much warmth the sun provides, especially when you get all that energy (well, 90% of it) reflected back up off the snow/ice surface. I'd better enjoy it while I can, because in not too long a time it'll be back to bitter cold.

In a couple hours the science support group, myself included, will be heading out to the SPRESSO Vault. This is an isolated facility that houses a lot of seismic sensors. We'll drive the several miles out there away from the station, which will still be in sight, and then dig out the entrance hatch to get access down into the vault. It should be a lot of fun, and I hope the big emergency response drill set for sometime this weeks doesn't get initiated while I'm away from the station.

Speaking of seismic issues, we're looking into whether some sort of ice quake or vibrations transmitted all the way from some earthquakes off the coast of Indonesia might have caused some settling of the station yesterday. It'd be pretty wild if it turns out to be the case. Stay tuned.

Rough turkey day

Well, work was work yesterday, except far few others on station were doing so as well. I finally got to quit around 6:00 p.m., changed clothes, and joined the growing crowd of folks for my third seating of Thanksgiving dinner in the hallway for hors d'oeuvres. The fresh veggies tasted great, but the baked brie stole the show. When we went into the galley for the meal the windows were all blocked out, so it was actually dark in there. Christmas lights had been hung overhead, and all the tables had been rearranged. The food was great, and I barely had room enough left for a piece of pumpkin pie when it was all said and done with. Most people were dressed very nicely, especially the ladies. I just wore an old turtleneck of mine, but got a few compliments on how I looked in something other than Carhartt overalls. One person said I looked like Spock, but his girlfriend nearly bit his head off when she heard that.

A dance party tried to get started in the galley after the meal, but the stereo kept having technical difficulties, so many left to cut a rug out at the Summer Camp Lounge. I'd only gotten 2 hours of sleep the night before, so was feeling pretty knackered. This didn't do very good things for my social demeanor, which (as it has been since way back when I started going to dances/parties in middle school) usually involves me standing on the sidelines of the party or in some dark corner just watching others doing all that party stuff. I finally called it quits and walked back to the station. I started putting the dining room back together and cleaning it up, and got help from a few other folks.

After that I hit the sack, but it was only for an hour as the fire alarm went off, and I had to get out to my locker and start donning my bunker gear and SCBA. Given how tired and disoriented I was, it's amazing how quickly the gear was out of the locker and onto my body. We got a call that it was a false alarm, and then had several other false alarms as the tech reset the inadvertently engaged system out at Summer Camp. So, with all that adrenaline coursing through my system it took another two hours to get to sleep after the hour spent getting into my gear over and over again.

Consequentially, this morning (as I've started yet another full day at work whilst others slumber peacefully in their beds) I'm again pretty much limping into the knackers' yard. Who needs controlled substances to wake up feeling like a truck has run you over when sleep deprivation is so much more cost effective?

No rest for the weary

Well, it's a holiday weekend here at Pole, but the science doesn't stop. Like the rest of the year, I don't get any days off for holidays, but will hopefully manage not to put in a full 13-hour day "at the office". I worked plenty of holidays far from home during my three years at NASA, so this won't be too traumatic.

Last night I finally broke down and watched a movie, "Casino Royale", the latest James Bond flick with some friends. I have been opting for other forms of entertainment besides movie watching, since so many winter-overs said they were sick of watching movies after nine months of doing too much of that. I also have my Russian lessons to work through, a gym and weight room to utilize, and plenty of books, so I don't anticipate tiring of movies anytime soon.

Two nights ago the fire brigade took a tour of the IceCube Drilling Camp and Lab. This is a huge project down here installing arrays of sensors that detect the radiation emitted when neutrinos collide with ice atom nuclei. They have about three more seasons of drilling to install the rest of the sensors. Their lab, shown below, lends at least aesthetic credence to my belief that being down here is good experience for somebody that wants to work in the manned space flight business. It looks a bit other-worldly...



The big columns off to each side of the lab are where the cables from the detector array enter the structure.

Next week we have some Distinguished Visitors from the National Science Board coming to Pole. One of them, Dr. Kathryn Sullivan, was the first U.S. female astronaut to perform a space walk. It'd be nice if I get a chance to mention I'm an aspiring astronaut. I don't know what interaction, if any, I'll have with the DV groups, but my Research Associate job description includes giving facilities tours.

Life's been good

Things have been hopping here. On top of the usual antics have been enhanced by the installation and training for a new all-sky camera from the University of Nagoya, Japan. It's now installed in the mezzanine area of the B2 science lab in the elevated station, and I'll get to be the tech to support it through this winter. It's too sensitive to use during the summer (pictures are just saturated white), but on April 10th or so we will turn it of for the duration of the winter. It has some nifty fish-eye optics that let it take pictures covering the whole sky, from horizon to horizon in all directions. The researchers will use it to study the aurora australis.

The infrastructure is changing here a lot this summer. The old Dome entrance is in the process of being removed, and the arches are being raised to accommodate a new logistics facility. I've heard lots of folks say it's the end of an era, and I tend to agree.

I've mentioned the Atmospheric Research Observatory (ARO) plenty of times, so thought I should show it to you. It's about a quarter-mile from the station in the generally upwind direction from the rest of the station. My projects are located on the second story, and the sensors are on the leftmost part of the roof in this picture. My UV spectroradiometer's rack of electronics is shown in the other picture.


The elevated station is also changing its skin, or receiving more of its skin for the first time. There is a big crew of workers here installing Tyvek membrane and this black sheathing on the new station's exterior. It'll look a lot different once that's all in place. I don't know if it will be completely clad by the end of the summer, but they are making good progress as far as I can discern.


Life has been good, but the name of this post is actually due to the fact that I've had Joe Walsh's song "Life's Been Good" stuck in my head for the last THREE DAYS. It must be something about that Maserati that does 185...