Chilly research
DANVILLE, Calif. — Lee Mattis won’t mind freezing again for the sake of science.
At the end of January, the Danville engineer will reprise a trip he took more than 30 years ago to the South Pole, an isolated, giant Popsicle of a place.
At that time, he was a young engineer with Temcor, a Southern California engineering firm. Temcor was commissioned to design a huge geodesic dome to encapsulate Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station’s three research buildings, and provide protection from the harsh weather. Mattis helped supervise the construction.
The South Pole Station, where research on astronomy, astrophysics, seismology and some biology is performed, is at an altitude of 9,300 feet. The South Pole Station has a mean temperature of minus-57 degrees Fahrenheit. Its lowest recorded temperature is 117 below zero; the highest, 7.5 degrees above zero.
“When I was there, it never got above zero degrees and that was in the summer,” Mattis said.
Mattis is returning as a consultant to determine whether the dome can be salvaged and used in a planned Seabees museum in Southern California.
The dome has outlived its intended purpose, say officials at the National Science Foundation, which oversees the station.
A new $153 million facility begun in 2000 will be completed in 2007, said Peter West, spokesman for the Virginia-based foundation. The dome’s base is sinking, and it is creeping each year due to ice movement.
“The benefits were worthwhile that the U.S. should remain in the Antarctic. But the South Pole station needed to be replaced with environmental and safety upgrades,” said West, adding that many “polies” are sentimental about the dome.
The old 55-foot-high, 165-foot diameter dome — now nearly covered by creeping ice, but still being used during the transition — encloses a facility to hold 33 men, with no separate bathing or sleeping quarters for women.
“There is a considerable amount of women working there now,” West said, and the new facility is designed accordingly.
While 100 or so people were able to cram into the old station, the new 65,000-square-foot station can handle 200 people during Antarctic summer (our wintertime) and in the winter close to 100 scientists and support staff.
While not as aesthetically appealing as the dome, the new station can be elevated as ice and snow build up. It’s already operational with a new satellite Earth station, high-speed Internet access and an array of new telescopes. A new power plant is online, and there are 13 microwave antennas to measure Earth’s radiation temperature variations. The measurements will help scientists study “dark matter” believed to constitute most of the universe.
The mammoth satellite dish will supplement coverage by NASA and the U.S. Air Force satellites and allow researchers to rapidly transfer large quantities of scientific data gathered year round at the South Pole.
West was at this lonely outpost in December, accompanying journalists.
“There is an endless white plain as far as you can see,” he said. “There is a futuristic structure rising out of the white plain.”
There is little, if any, visible wildlife around the station. Mattis saw some type of Antarctic seagull once when he was there for a few months in the summers of 1971 and 1972.
Researchers have to be in prime physical condition to work there. The air is thin, and this time of year there is perpetual daylight. In the old facility, unheated passageways connected buildings under the dome. Mattis recalls raiding the frigid pantry for crackers he needed to thaw on a heater.
Building the aluminum dome was no easy feat, nor is the construction of the new station. At sub-zero temperatures, cables snap, hydraulic fluids freeze and cranes become immobilized. Building supplies are shipped on C-130 military aircraft specially outfitted to fly and land in glacial conditions.
Workers dress in layers and layers, and must eat high-calorie, high-protein foods such as steak, cookies and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to keep their bodies running warm.
Mattis remembers the cold, and clomping around in blow-up “bunny boots” to stave off the cold. He underwent intensive medical screening before he was given permission to revisit the pole.
It was Bill Hilderbrand, president of the Mississippi-based Seabees Historical Foundation, who tracked down Mattis. The Seabees erected the dome. Disassembly will be done in a year or so by contractors hired by the National Science Foundation. Hilderbrand asked Mattis to go down for a few weeks on behalf of the foundation to see if the dome is salvageable.
The foundation would like to save it and perhaps eventually reassemble it at Port Hueneme as part of a new Seabees museum, Hilderbrand said.
“We’re moving cautiously forward to see if the dome is still solid,” Hilderbrand said. “It wouldn’t have to be put up right away. It would be good to preserve this piece of history.”
Hilderbrand said the Seabees’ acquiring the dome is only in the discussion stages between the science foundation and the U.S. Navy. Funds would have to be raised for the project.
Scientists have occupied the South Pole since 1956. The pole station is named for the first two explorers who reached the pole, Roald Amundsen in 1911, then Robert Scott in 1912.
Hilderbrand said the Seabees’ acquiring the dome is only in the discussion stages between the science foundation and the U.S. Navy. Funds would have to be raised for the project.
Scientists have occupied the South Pole since 1956. The pole station is named for the first two explorers who reached the pole, Roald Amundsen in 1911, then Robert Scott in 1912.