SOUTH POLE TRIVIA

[originally written at South Pole in February, 1987. I made minor 
revisions in 1999 to repair old references and dates]

Bill Spindler

being a collection of useless information regarding the 
facilities and their history.  Any additions, corrections and or 
additional information would be welcomed by the author.

Although Old Pole was formally closed down in early 1975 after 
the present station was dedicated, the last science project to 
use it was S-109 Pomerantz which operated the old Cosray lab over 
there for several days in November 1976.

Other apocryphal events that occurred during that month (which 
also happened to be when I got here the first time) included the 
spectacular fire at summer camp #1, the dropping of a D8 battery 
into the snow melter, and the breaking of the original glass ball 
which had been airdropped to Paul Siple in 1956, the parachute 
just barely opened in time, and the ball had been on top of the 
Ceremonial pole ever since.  Shortly thereafter the ball was 
replaced temporarily with a bowling ball painted silver, sent out 
from McMurdo. This artifact (the bowling ball) was supposedly 
still around Pole [in 1987]. A duplicate of the real artifact 
(the other glass ball airdropped to Paul Siple) is in the museum 
in Christchurch.  These supposedly were globes stolen off of 
Christchurch streetlights and silvered for use in aurora 
photography.

There really was a small Rodrigues well at Old Pole in 1972-73.
It was put in on an experimental basis by NCEL supposedly as an
experiment for the new station.  It worked very well during the
summer. Unfortunately it was not deep enough or adequately
winterized, so it froze up because the DFA to the boiler got too
cold to flow easily.  If someone had thought to put heat tape on
the fuel line from the day tank we might be enjoying long hot
daily showers today. 

The first year of New Pole (75-76) it was very quickly discovered
that the small original snow melter (stainless steel tank) and
its rather complex conveyor system, did not work.  The immediate
result was a hurriedly contrived makeshift winterover project to
make something that worked, as well as a shortage of water for
the first winter. The following year a new melter was airlifted
in and installed outside of the power plant, where these things
have been ever since. 

One more piece of trivia about the snow melter--the reason there 
were two separate heat exchangers off of each engine, one for the 
glycol heating loop and one for the snowmelter loop--was that the
snowmelter loop was to use water as a heat medium (remember the
melter itself was inside the power plant so the lines wouldn't
freeze). This changed when the snowmelter was moved outside the
arch. 

[this got redone in 1990 with the new generators and may no longer
be relevant with the Rodrigues well...]

Originally the CO2 system in the power plant was connected up to 
the fire alarm system for that building so it would go off 
automatically.  It did, at least once.  It is no longer connected 
up that way.

In most of the buildings there are one or more round holes 
located up near the ceiling--an example is on the wall in the 
science computer room.  These holes were intended for chimneys of 
oil-fired stoves to be used to keep the buildings warm if the 
power plant failed.  Originally there were chimneys and stoves 
furnished and on site for each and every hole.  The stoves were 
cheap imitations of Preways and have fortunately long since 
disappeared, but that is why there is so much stovepipe in 
supply.

One day during the 79-80 summer an airplane arrived that needed 
fuel.  Unfortunately there was no JP4 on hand, so the Gorman-Rupp 
pump was hooked up to the DFA line and the aircraft was refueled 
with DFA.  The procedure for this (which is duly documented in 
the turnover files should it ever be needed again) includes the 
requirement to prime the pump by having 5-10 people jump and down 
on the bladder in the fuel arch. [that may be harder to do these 
days with those new steel tanks]

The Annex was originally supposed to be 1/2 (2 of 4 modules) of a 
permanent emergency camp building (#7) to have been built in a 
separate arch some distance away from the station.  No one knows 
why this did not happen, although one story was that one of the 
other two modules was dropped or otherwise destroyed on its way
here.  I saw one of the missing modules, heavily damaged, in McM
in 1977. Another story is that the arch was needed elsewhere,
perhaps it was used about 1972 to house a garage at old Pole, to
replace one of the ones that burned over there. Anyway, notice
that some of the annex walls are "original" and the doors have
lever handles.  The added doors have different louvers and round
handles. 

In 1978-79 there were not one but two Skidoos at Pole.  One of 
them was assigned to GCA for transportation to/from their site as 
well as to check the runway before each flight.

The original South Pole minicomputer system was installed in 
1975-6 as part of a UC Davis micrometeorology project.  These HP 
machines with 64K of memory and tape drives typically took 
several hours to sort, say, a 400-item food inventory.  At that 
time there was a text editor and a program to convert the text to 
teletype code and send it over to comms, where it would punch out 
paper tape for the teletypes.  Remember that at that time the 
terms "word processing" and "software" didn't exist and that it 
would be 5 years before IBM came out with the PC. Meanwhile, even 
though the paper tape machines in comms have been relegated to 
museum status, one of the HP computers was still hooked up
[until 1989].

Just after sunrise in 1977, the hatch covers were removed from 
the top of the dome.  As it was about -95 out, the dome interior 
got a lot colder.  About that time it was noticed that there were 
a few small cracks in the snow behind comm.  They were about 1/8" 
wide and everyone thought they were probably due to the thermal 
contraction of the snow surface.
 
When the station was designed in 1971, the designers had to make 
some educated guesses about what science projects would be needed 
and what types of space would be required.  At that time there 
was a medical program underway, including studies on insomnia, 
bigeye etc., so a room was provided in upper berthing identified 
as the "Sleep Preparation Room" (!) later otherwise known as the 
sewing room [this room was next to the mechanical room; in 1989
UB was reconfigured]. Additionally, one of the rooms in Biomed now 
used for berthing was originally designated as the animal keeping 
room--that's the one in the back corner with a floor drain to
facilitate cleaning out the cages... The science building was 
equipped with an air conditioning system sized to cool mainframe-size 
computers (this equipment used to be in the near-empty fan room).

There is a myth that the Seabees (who started construction of 
this station) did not survey the station accurately according to 
the plot plan, and as a result the station was laid out at the 
wrong angle relative to the prevailing wind.  It is standard 
practice to lay out buildings (such as the summer camp Jamesways)
parallel to the wind to minimize drifting.  The station arch was 
not built this way.  For a comparison of the results it is only 
necessary to look at the USGS color aerial photograph. However, 
this was not the Seabees' fault. The station layout is in 
accordance with the design drawings approved for construction.

Also, if you project the movement of the real pole across the
icecap it appears that the station was located in 1970 so that the
2020 pole would have been in the center of the dome. Since then
the glacier movement has been determined more accurately, and the
2020 pole will be somewhere between the dome and skylab...