‘The Plaza at the Pole’ (Not) Will Replace Aging Antarctic Science Station

AMUNDSON-SCOTT RESEARCH STATION, Antarctica — The new $153-million U.S. research station won’t be The Plaza at the Pole. A Motel 6 may seem deluxe by comparison.

The 8-by-8 bedrooms in the new outpost will be smaller than some prison cells.

But when the temperature plunges to minus-100 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind roars down the Queen Maud Mountains at 200 mph, these cozy little dens will beckon as many as 153 people to the frozen bottom of the world.

“A bedroom is the size of a walk-in closet back home,” concedes Frank Brier, project manager of the new station for the National Science Foundation.

It will be several years--no earlier than 2005--before anyone checks into this polar hotel.

Whether that is soon enough will depend on cooperative weather and careful maintenance of the fabled, but decrepit, existing station protected by a circa-1975 geodesic dome that is being rapidly buried by blowing snow from across Antarctica.

Polar die-hards may wax lyrically of the beloved dome as an ark on a frozen sea.

Others privately ridicule it as an icebound Mir, the balky Russian space station plagued by fires, computer failures and near-fatal decompression. Like any joke, it contains some truth.

“The U.S. would not send a ship to sea or a spacecraft into orbit in such condition,” says Norman Augustine, the CEO of Lockheed Martin who headed the blue-ribbon panel that recommended the new station to Congress in 1997.

Lawmakers agreed, though they appropriated about $40 million less than originally requested for a more elaborate facility.

One of the most formidable construction projects ever attempted is well underway--24 hours a day, six days a week.

An acrid whiff of diesel fuel rides the cold wind through the squatters’ village of temporary shelters known as Summer Camp. It already was overcrowded before 60 construction workers arrived.

Inside the old dome, a burly laborer slumps into a pink plastic cafeteria chair. Wisps of steam rise from his matted hair as he peels off layers of insulated coveralls. Icicles drip from his beard.

“Are we having fun yet?” Wiley Ellis demands as his frost-encrusted comrades clomp past in heavy rubber boots.

Ellis normally makes cabinets in Idaho, but a craving for adventure--not to mention a steady paycheck--has lured him 9,000 miles from home.

Isolation and cold are extreme even by Antarctic standards. Some workers relish the brutal conditions--and the camaraderie. They return to the Pole year after year to work as aircraft “fuelies” or cargo handlers or dozens of other occupations. Others, like Ellis, sign up to assemble the new polar station but are unlikely to return after one four-month hitch. (“We’re all miserable, but we’re company for each other,” he says.)

Any romantic notion of pioneering quickly evaporates aboard a Vietnam War-era cargo plane during a 13-hour flight from New Zealand. Then the white, forever white hits--with all the aesthetic appeal of living in a Styrofoam picnic cooler.

With no place to go and nothing to buy, Ellis is more practical. His aims are to survive and save money.

He could accumulate $10,000 by the time he heads north in February. But even a fat paycheck can’t entirely compensate for the graveyard shift in a place where the sun doesn’t set for five months, yet metal tools crack in the cold.

“The cold is really hard on my body,” Ellis says, rubbing aching legs. In his 40s, he is two decades older than most of his mates. His muscles crave coffee breaks in the cozy cafeteria, where the temperature frequently is 100 degrees warmer than outside.

To simplify things, every piece of the new station will be prefabricated and shipped in Hercules LC-130 cargo planes. They will be assembled like a giant Lego sculpture on the ice. Dozens of cargo planes already arrive weekly to deliver materials and haul away debris. It will take three construction seasons to airlift it all.

“The biggest headache in this project is the logistics,” says NSF project manager Brier. “It accounts for a third of the cost of the new station.”

Flights are so frequent that station officials have installed the only stoplight in Antarctica next to the ice runway at the Pole. The next traffic signal is 3,000 miles north in New Zealand.

Its purpose is not to stop the airplanes. It’s to prevent preoccupied scientists and chilled workers from walking into a Herc’s whirling propellers.

Last summer, workers completed the first of the steel archways on the station that will buffer new garages and heavy-equipment repair shops.

This year, they will erect a second protective arch and install an expanded fuel system and power plant inside. They are already removing the existing fuel system--a collection of giant rubberized bladders filled with 225,000 gallons of diesel and aviation fuels.

A few bladders will be set up outside as a temporary fuel supply. The new system, serving both the dome and the new station, will link nine metal storage tanks holding a total of 450,000 gallons. It will be outfitted with a leak-detection and containment system to protect the pure ice below.

Environmental activists have called on NSF to use cleaner, renewable energy such as wind and sun to power the new station. But conditions are too extreme and the natural sources too vague to use on a large scale, officials say.

Instead, walls and windows will use the latest insulation and heat-absorbing films.

The new station’s design uses a pair of two-story wings. One wing will be a self-contained town: sleeping quarters, dining hall, medical clinic, laundry, store, post office. The other will house offices, labs, computers, telecommunications and a gym.

Gone are the hydroponics greenhouse and other luxuries that congressional critics highlighted.

Some of the more recent outlying buildings at the Pole will be spared, including astronomy and atmospheric chemistry centers. But the old dome will be dismantled.

Some scientists fear that penny-pinching modifications to the new station may reduce computer capacity to process and store terabytes of data.

NSF officials promise the computer system will be capable, but communications problems may persist. The Pole is one of the few places on Earth that does not have continuous satellite coverage, so e-mail and other functions are limited.

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of the station’s design is its foundation. The entire complex will stand on adjustable stilts to allow snow to whistle beneath the station.

Blowing snow has drifted more than 20 feet around the dome entrance, which now sits two stories below the glacier surface. Rock-hard drifts must be blasted with dynamite and excavated--a waste of personnel and precious fuel.

“I’ve spent summers fighting forest fires,” says Erika Nelson of Hood River, Ore., who frequently toils on a snow-shoveling detail. “The work here is right up with that in terms of being physically demanding.”