The South Pole Homepage
January/February 1998-2001 by Jacob Kooi
Admunsten-Scott U.S. South-Pole station at (-90.0'' latitude)
The geographic South-pole. You know you have arrived when the
freezing cold air hits your face and the sun circles around in the
sky every 24 hours. Because the sun circles, and never sets therefore,
light intensity is contant and so is temperature. Time is relative,
though New-Zealand time is the offical time. It seemed to me that much
of the life at the pole is oriented around the airplane, which comes
as no surprise since life is simply not sustainable without it.
Simply said, there is nothing at the pole but ice. No sound, smell,
animal life, flora, fauna, mountains, scenery. Just ice, ice and
ice. No wonder that Scott wrote in his diary upon
arriving at the pole in 1907 something to this effect, "My God, what
an awefull place".
Actually I rather enjoyed being there, but missed the fresh food. Everything freezes by
default and so energy (jet-fuel, JP6) is needed to keep food from freezing, to
provide drinking water, prevent people from freezing etc. Water is
obtained from 200 meters down the 2.5km thick glacier. This means that
we all drank H2O from 1300 AD. Showers were limited to two 2 minute
showers/week.
Total population at the pole is around 150 in the summer and 26 in the
winter. The first flight in is late October, and the last flight out
is the middle of February. Reason being that between march-october the
temperature is so cold so that the hydrolics that operate the LC-130
airplane jellow-up (<-50C). It is dark from about march - september,
though the moon is up five days/month and incidental light(photons)
are available from the Aurora-Aurtralis (southern light).
In July (winter) temperatures can drop to -80C with windchills up to
-160C
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Pictures
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Jacob (Wim) met NL Flag
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Dome taken at 3am in the morning
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Playing Golf at bottom Earth
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Panorama in Infrared light
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Panorama in Visual light
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At Southpole in Infrared light
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Front view LC-130 Tanker
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LC-130 takeoff on ice runway
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LC-130 takeoff in front of Dome
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