German scientists to live under ice

Press, 2 April 1979, Page 12

German scientists to live under ice

By

HORST ZIMMERMAN,

of the “Stuttgarter Nachrichten.”

Reprinted from the “German Tribune.”

From the spring of 1980, 30 scientists and technicians manning West Germany’s first Antarctic research base will lead cavemen’s lives. Tunnels under the Antarctic ice will be their home, the snow overhead providing insulation from solar radiation (in summer temperatures can be as high as zero). From one year to the next they will live in a M-shaped tube system designed by Dorsch Consult, Munich, for Volker Hauff’s Bonn Ministry of Research and Technology. The Munich planners know what they are doing. They are associated with work on the Alaskan oil pipeline. At first glance the design resembles either a nuclear fallout shelter or a collection of nissen huts, consisting of three tubes 6.45 m (21ft) tall and 96m (315 ft long.

The first tube houses the doctor, his sick-bay and sleeping quarters for the crew. The second includes a keep-fit room, toilets, showers, sauna bath, laundry, office and radio, lounge, library and cinema, dining room, kitchen and pantry, garage and workshop. Tube three houses the laboratories for atmospheric research, geophysics, geodesy, geology and glaciology, and the dark room, computer, electronics workshop, heating, water, power generator and waste incinerator. The exact location of the 0.4 ha (one acre) site has yet to be decided: 75 degrees south and 45 degrees west is as far as the ice-men are prepared to commit themselves. An approximate Ideation is to be decided soon with the aid of satellite photographs and aerial reconnaissance of an area roughly 2000 miles south of Cape Horn. In spring, a six-man advance command complete with a mobile base station will be shipped to the Filchner ice shelf by a Hercules of the Luftwaffe transport command. Its main task will be to choose the final location. It must be a stable site with no crevices, ensuring satisfactory 1100 m (3600 ft landing strips for the expedition’s two Twin Otter-aircraft. Wilhelm Filchner was a Bavarian infantry officer who led an Antarctic expedition in 1911 with the aid of a grant from the Government of Bavaria.

In memory of his patron he named a region about 400 km (250 miles) away from the site where the new base is to be established Prince Regent Luitpold Land. In the spring of 1980, an ice-going freighter will ship the prefabricated research station to the antarctic. Sledges and tracked vehicles will haul the sections to the edge of the ice shelf. There they will be

hoisted by crane and helicopter the 48m (160 ft up on to the shelf, the men working round the clock in two shifts. A supply vessel will only be able to call once a year, if that, so the base camp will have to be self-supporting for two years. It will also have emergency rations and a survival raft containing emergency clothing, fuel, hammocks and food for fifty people for a fortnight. In the Antarctic summer, the crew will consist of 18 scientists and technicians, four pilots and eight operators (three engineers, a doctor, a radio operator, an electrician, a cook and a steward). In winter a skeleton crew of six to eight will keep the camp ticking over. Vehicles will include four snowmobiles and five mobile base camps for crews of up to six, five motor sledges, two tracked vehicles, freight sledges and makeshift bridges to span crevaces in the ice. Equipment will cost about SIOM plus S4OM to SSOM to get it there. Research Minister Volker Hauff is shortly to decide where the polar research institute will be housed. Kiel and Bremerhaven are favourites. In Hamburg the shipbuilding research institute is designing a polar research vessel that is to be commissioned later this year. Antarctic research is expected to cost SISM a year. It is high time Bonn pulled its Antarctic socks up. In 1975 and 1978 research vessels scoured Antarctic waters to learn more about krill, the pro-tein-rich shrimp that was once the staple diet of the whale. The krill is reputedly the largest untapped reserve of fish protein in the world and membercountries of the Antarctic pact told Bonn in no uncertain terms it would not be allowed to participiate in the proceeds without investing in basic research. On February 5 Bonn joined the pact as an ordinary member and would like to become a full member as soon as possible. In order to qualify it has to embark on comprehensive Antarctic research of its own. It is expected to set up an Antarctic base camp, fit out a research vessel and establish a research institute back home. Member-countries of the Antarctic pact are shortly to allocate exploitation rights in the region, and outsiders need not expect to get a look-in. Antarctica is 50 times the size of West Germany and clad in ice up to skm (three miles) thick. It definitely has reserves of natural gas, petroleum and col. It will also probably yield iron.

zinc, copper, uranium and gold. New mining techniques that would render them accessible are no longer regarded as wishful thinking. Mining in the Antarctic should prove easier than on the Moon. Volker Hauff is softpedalling the Antarctic as a potential source of raw materials. Bonn as a latecomer wants to avoid creating the impression of merely having joined to make a quick killing. “For the Federal Republic of Germany basic research ranks foremost, not long-term prospects of an additional source of raw materials,” he says.