[HN Gopher] The Last Egg ___________________________________________________________________ The Last Egg Author : focusedone Score : 363 points Date : 2023-06-08 13:43 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (brr.fyi) (TXT) w3m dump (brr.fyi) | 3m wrote: | There's something comical about having freezers in Antartica, | even when you understand the reason why they are there. | progbits wrote: | Technically they are warmers :) | bacon_waffle wrote: | The freezers are in the heated main station, however since | the "waste heat" from the generators is put to use it's not | as inefficient a system as one might assume. | | The comical part of the food storage situation is that the | station was basically built without anywhere near enough of | it. The main "dry store" is in a room on a different level | from the kitchen, labelled "Science Storage", and most of the | near-to-hand frozen stuff is on an outside loading deck near | the galley. | progbits wrote: | I have no insights beyond what I read in the OP, but my | point was that those freezers are actually warmer than | outside. So "anywhere near enough" might in fact be enough | if you can store deep-frozen things outside on the loading | deck. | | You only need enough freezer capacity to "warm up" the | outside stuff to normal freezer temperatures (the article | mentions this). This only depends on the warm up time, and | number of people / consumption rate. Mission duration only | impacts how much outdoor space is used. | bacon_waffle wrote: | My observation is based on spending over a year in that | station, and being close with someone who was a chef | there. | | It really isn't as simple as those "only" statements. | There are other uses for freezers than warming stuff up | to normal freezer temperature. The on-station food | storage situation is a real hack. Shoveling snow off | boxes of food in your too-small outdoor deep-freeze | doesn't need to be part of the chef's job. Reading red | printing on those cardboard boxes, is rather difficult | under the red light that tends to be preferred outside in | winter. | muhammadusman wrote: | This is the sort of content that makes the internet so amazing, | someone sharing a slice of life from so far away and so remote | that 100 years ago this would've been unimaginable! | krupan wrote: | I learned that powdered milk makes perfectly fine yogurt and | after that keeping some as emergency storage hasn't seemed so | depressing | jitl wrote: | I wonder how much trouble keeping chickens in the greenhouse | would be. I feel like some partially agua culture setup that's | closed loop and consumes the compost could work well, but is | probably too expensive in terms of heated square footage to make | sense. | gnfargbl wrote: | I'd be concerned about the health risks. Poultry can spread a | few nasty bacterial diseases to humans, and in a closed and | isolated environment like this contagion is surely something to | be strenuously avoided. | tantalor wrote: | Sure but these chickens would be isolated from the outside | world, like a lab setting, so how would they come in contact | with something that could harm humans? | teh_klev wrote: | > Sure but these chickens would be isolated from the | outside world, like a lab setting | | Until one day that security setting breaks down. | saulpw wrote: | classic paper from 1973: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3862013 "An Outbreak of Common | Colds at an Antarctic Base after Seventeen Weeks of | Complete Isolation" | | There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than | are dreamt of in your philosophy. | kleer001 wrote: | Oh, like raised from the egg kind of situation? | | I think there still an issue of cross contamination with | things that don't grow on humans or objects, but love | chickens in the air or incidental dusts. | 0xbadcafebee wrote: | Weird they don't stock UHT milk. I buy milk for 6 months and keep | it in my pantry. I honestly can't tell the difference between | modern UHT milk and mass-produced "fresh" milk (at 2% anyway). | They could in theory ship in UHT milk instead of fresh, and stock | enough extra to last a few more months in winter. It would be fun | to make your own cheese down there as a hobby! | | Eating by the seasons is also pretty interesting, I think. It | forces you to expand your gastronomic horizons, explore the | cuisine of different regional cultures. Some cultures don't use | milk (and thus cheese or butter), some don't use much oil, some | are vegetarian while some are nearly all meat. There's | preservation by fermentation, by drying, by salting, by burying, | by sealing in hardened butter. Some just eat a lot of soup. | There's really an infinite number of dishes that express flavor, | aroma and texture. If you ever get bored of your food, you can | fix that. | bitdivision wrote: | I'm surprised you can't tell the difference between UHT and | regular milk. I've tried a few brands in the UK, and there's a | clear difference in tea / coffee, and it's particularly marked | if you're drinking milk on its own. | | Maybe the UK is lagging behind on UHT? Or I'm just buying the | wrong brand. | DoughnutHole wrote: | Coming from drinking Irish milk, American milk already tastes | like water. I can understand UHT being interchangeable if the | baseline product is already bland. | ericd wrote: | American milk is very varied, sounds like you're describing | plastic gallon jug skim milk. If you want something a bit | heartier, you can probably find creamline milk from a local | farm. | Symbiote wrote: | Plastic litres jug milk sold in Ireland and the UK is | what both commenters were comparing to the bland UHT | milk. | | Generally everything is available in the USA, but there | are some surprising cases where the default product is of | noticeable lower quality than the default in Europe. | WJW wrote: | Not gonna comment on something as subjective as | "quality", but just the taste of Coca Cola is noticeably | different in the US vs at home in the EU. | scrlk wrote: | High-fructose corn syrup is used as the sweetener in US | Coca-Cola, rather than sugar. | ericd wrote: | Yeah, I'd say that the default in the US is generally | cheaper and lower quality than the default in France, at | least (no experience with Ireland). | [deleted] | crazygringo wrote: | Are you just talking about normal milk in Ireland like | this? | | https://www.tesco.ie/groceries/en-IE/products/250005606 | | It's essentially identical to whole milk in the US. | Nutritionally, compositionally, and flavor-wise. | | I really can't imagine what you're talking about "tasting | like water" unless you switched to skim milk or 2% in the | US without realizing it? | yamazakiwi wrote: | In my personal experience I prefer the taste of UHT over | traditional milk. I do however buy UHT from a local dairy. | justsomehnguy wrote: | > mass-produced "fresh" milk (at 2% anyway) | | At 2% I would not even bother considering this product as a | milk. | krupan wrote: | I don't think you deserve all the down votes. I grew up in | the U.S. in the 90's drinking healthy 1% or skim milk, then | lived in Europe for two years drinking probably 3.5% or 4% | and I tried going back to low fat milk and just can't. | Whole milk all the way | ddoolin wrote: | The taste difference between 2% and skim is vast to me, | but the difference between 2% and 3.5% seems much less | noticeable. I regularly buy either 2% or whole for no | particular reason other than my mood and they are | interchangeable, at least to my taste buds. Skim milk is | just milky water as far as I'm concerned. | justsomehnguy wrote: | That's angry American guys, probably *grin* | | The other guy deleted his comment, but: | | > it's 3.5%. | | Thanks, I know, I say this about the taste and.. texture? | At 2% it's just a watery fluid with a hint of milk _for | me_. Back when I had milk in ny house I never bought | anything with less than 3.5%, it was pointless for me. | dontlaugh wrote: | 2% is semi-skimmed. I can't imagine confusing what with | whole milk. Even 3.5% and 5% are quite different from | each other. | [deleted] | lambic wrote: | I don't think the UK pasteurizes their milk to the same | degree as North America. When I lived in the UK a pint of | milk would last a week or so at most, but here in Canada it | can last a month. | iainmerrick wrote: | A month??? That's definitely different. | 3m wrote: | UHT milk is terrible. As a brit, when I'm abroad I notice it | immediately and it ruins an otherwise good cup of tea or | coffee. | jcranmer wrote: | > They could in theory ship in UHT milk instead of fresh, and | stock enough extra to last a few more months in winter. | | From a prior post [1], the no-flight period for the South pole | is ~8 months, which really stretches the shelf life of UHT | milk. | | [1] https://brr.fyi/posts/last-flight-out | ComputerGuru wrote: | If you ignore the "best by" label on UHT milk, it can easily | (safely) last 8 months. Especially if you store it at | 32/33deg F. | | But more practically, there are different types of containers | for UHT milk hermetically sealed to different extents. The | more expensive kinds can last years. The US Military says 10 | months for "normal" UHT milk stored under "normal" conditions | [0]. The more expensive kinds can go much longer. | | [0]: https://www.dla.mil/Troop- | Support/Subsistence/Operational-ra... | thewopr wrote: | I'll also add, most food products down there are "expired" | already. When I was down there, it was often a challenge to | find the oldest piece of food. I think we found 5 years + | beyond the Best By date. | | Best by dates for shelf stable/frozen food are often not | safety related, so the antarctic program just charges | forward with whatever they have. | thewopr wrote: | (creds: I was down to McMurdo as a researcher three times) | | I suspect this has to do with space and weight constraints, and | probably a touch of old-school procurement practices. | | In the not-too-distant past, basically everything was flown to | south pole station, so weight was at a premium. Powdered milk | weights a lot less than UHT milk. Now they do a traverse to the | pole with sleds and tractors, so weight is less of an issue, | but volume might still be. | | On top of that, procurement may be slow to change. If, in fact, | weight is no longer a constraint, it might take years for | procurement to change to include buying UHT milk. | MiguelVieira wrote: | Whoa I had no idea: | | "To reduce the cost and increase the efficiency and | reliability of transporting fuel and materials to South Pole | Station, USAP established an overland traverse route from | McMurdo Station to the South Pole. The traverse route is | approximately 1,030 miles long and took several years of | route-finding to prove and to mitigate areas with crevassing. | This route is traveled by the South Pole Traverse (SPoT), a | tractor train that hauls supplies and fuel using specialized | sleds. SPoT tractors ascend more than 9,300 feet along the | route to Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. On average, it | takes 52 days for the round trip from McMurdo to Pole and | back." | | https://www.southpole.aq/activities/station-logistics.html | WJW wrote: | I am perversely drawn to applying to this job, even though | I know it is at least 500% more shitty than what I | currently do. | honkycat wrote: | Reading this I am picturing a blowing blizzard and massive | tractors crawling over the barren landscape. INTENSE! | earthscienceman wrote: | It's both intense and the most boring thing you could | imagine. Picture day after day in a tractor traveling | across a white landscape with another tractor in front | and another tractor behind. I have only traveled such | things by snowmobile, but I've befriended a few of the | traverse folks in Greenland and Antarctica and they | described it as "intensely exhilarating and extremely | boring". | AceJohnny2 wrote: | > _ascend more than 9,300 feet_ | | Ah yes, the Mountains of Madness pass. | | (ref: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Mountains_of_Madness) | olddustytrail wrote: | Really surprised you can't tell the difference between regular | milk and UHT. I always assumed UHT was the inspiration for the | Dog's Milk scene from Red Dwarf! | jfengel wrote: | UHT milk doesn't generally make good cheese. It can be used to | make some simple cheeses, like ricotta, but the high | temperature changes the proteins enough to make most rennet- | curdled cheeses fail. | | https://cheesemaking.com/blogs/fun-along-the-whey/problems-w... | | I've heard that you're more likely to have success with | reconstituted dry milk than with UHT milk, but I haven't tried | it. | aembleton wrote: | Milk freezes well. If they can afford to carry UHT milk all the | way there, then you might as well take the fresh stuff and | freeze it. Then it'll keep. | goodpoint wrote: | > Eating by the seasons is also pretty interesting | | Eating by the seasons is mundane and normal almost everywhere | in the world. | masfuerte wrote: | Are you sure? Obesity, caused by eating processed food, is | normal almost everywhere. | cush wrote: | Most milk is ultrapasteurized and homogenized, making the | difference between shelf stable milk pretty unnoticeable. Good | cream-top milk is on another plane of reality. | everyone wrote: | I thought the link was gonna be this... https://egggame.org/ | wizpig64 wrote: | I was not expecting the last egg to look like that. | cubefox wrote: | I like the blog being called "brr". | JohnMakin wrote: | And people think we're gonna colonize mars. We can't even | colonize the south pole, a much more hospitable environment. | deanCommie wrote: | Well, we're going to have to colonize mars at one point. That's | not a debate. | | We can't survive as a species with all our eggs in one basket | (pun intended, given the context) where a single rock flying | through space can wipe out all the gains of our civilization. | | In the long term, this will require planetary-scale | terraforming. | | In the short term, this will require seasonal unmanned supply | drops and so the experience will not be dissimilar to McMurdo | and Mars Colonists will also be cooking their "last egg of the | year" | | In the medium term, I have to imagine we will have to conduct | experiments with either developing livestock on Mars, or | growing satisfactory animal protein replacements in a lab. | kgeist wrote: | You forget indigenous tribes in Siberia, some of them | experience -70C without modern technology. | AlotOfReading wrote: | The indigenous people of the Arctic have gear that's _very_ | competitive with modern kit. I 've only been down to | somewhere below -50C (where my thermometer stopped), but the | stuff I had for that wasn't nearly as good as the fur | clothing I've seen Inuits use. | tekla wrote: | The south pole IS colonized. There is literally a colony there | since 1956 | idlewords wrote: | A colony implies sustained long-term habitation by the same | people; that's not true for the South Pole station, which is | a research facility where people rotate out. | | As far as I know, the only country to try colonizing | Antarctica proper has been Argentina, with a small number of | families settling at Esperanza Base (at the north end of the | Antarctic Penninsula) and a big fuss made about the first | kids born on the Antarctic mainland. | | Chile maintains a little civilian settlement called Villa Las | Estrellas on an offshore Antarctic island with similar | motives as the Argentines. Everyone else just ignores this | embarrassing rivalry. | gumby wrote: | I interpret the OP's use of the term "colonize" to mean | "permanently relocate to" | mkaic wrote: | I'd argue that we absolutely could colonize the south pole if | people were as excited about it as we are about colonizing | Mars. I think it's less that we "can't" and more that | governments don't really care about it as much. | idlewords wrote: | It's instructive that none of the solutions proposed for | growing fresh food on Mars have been tried at either McMurdo | (which is a huge and lavishly outfitted research base) or the | South Pole. | | This is part of what I think of as the Martian fallacy, the | idea that stuff that's hard to do on Earth somehow becomes | easier on Mars. | PMunch wrote: | Well some of the solutions have been tried elsewhere. It's | not hard to simulate "no stuff from the outside", that's not | something you need to go to the south pole to do. There is an | argument to be made for the disease vector thing, but even | that would probably be cheaper to do in a completely closed | loop system somewhere more hospitable. | ComputerGuru wrote: | That second greenhouse picture is a nightmare! If it were | anywhere else on the planet, I'd say someone needs to trim the | tomatoes and give them some breathing room to avoid fungal | infections but the low humidity and the carefully cultured | environment probably take care of that. | pavel_lishin wrote: | That tomato plant looks like something out of a pulp-era comic | book - It Came From The Greenhouse! | droopyEyelids wrote: | How do people deal with zero humidity? Does everyone use a CPAP | to sleep? | teh_klev wrote: | I'm fairly certain the air will be conditioned and inside | humidity kept to an acceptable standard. | focusedone wrote: | Fantastic blog on infrastructure at the bottom of the world from | the perspective of an IT guy. Super cool stuff! | karaterobot wrote: | I want to know who got that egg, and how they decided. Egg | lottery? | bombcar wrote: | I'm going to assume it's like the scene from Don Rosa's _Hearts | of the Yukon_. | | https://ibb.co/8rw8VdF | kleer001 wrote: | That or planned out ahead of time. Like, there's 10 people and | 120 eggs? Easy division. | bpodgursky wrote: | Imagine how many fresh vegetables they could have with a | miniaturized nuclear reactor on-site! | | The limit right now is how much diesel they want to waste. | Imagine the alternatives! | marssaxman wrote: | No need to imagine; it's been tried - McMurdo installed a | nuclear power plant back in 1962. The reactor proved to be | expensive and unreliable, so the Navy removed it a decade | later. Cleaning up the mess took another seven years. | AlbertCory wrote: | There was a Googler who spent some time at the South Pole station | and gave a talk about it. I won't name him here, but maybe he's | reading this? | | What I recall was him walking around and over the _actual_ Pole | and trying to get his GPS to register 90.0 degrees. It wouldn 't | go beyond 89.999. | earthscienceman wrote: | Hackers would probably also love to consider that a lot of | hardware that has code that depends on lat/lon for internal | calculations can have all sorts of weird problems. When you are | exactly at the pole longitude can switch from +180 to -180 | rapidly and that can be a catastrophic edge case for anything | that needs to do positioning. | | I had the pleasure of watching an expensive drone crash into | hull of a ship and sink into the ocean at the north pole for | this exact reason. | EMCymatics wrote: | How was your food up there? | DirectorKrennic wrote: | How come you were at the North Pole? | golem14 wrote: | Pablo Cohn, I believe? | AlbertCory wrote: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBaQtsft2bM | | yup. It didn't occur to me that it was on YouTube. | system2 wrote: | Why wouldn't you name him here? | AlbertCory wrote: | Why do you care? | [deleted] | shepherdjerred wrote: | Well, I personally would be interested to see the | talk/learn more about those in tech who have gone to the | pole. | AlbertCory wrote: | well, since someone else named him (and btw, I just | thought it was rude, that's all): | | I think this is the talk: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBaQtsft2bM | LeonenTheDK wrote: | Always love when this blog is posted. Seeing the day-to-day in | one of the least mundane places humans exist is a special kind of | interesting. | echelon wrote: | It's such a special treat! I really love it. | jcranmer wrote: | The author has the same curiosity I have in how the mundane is | provided, in perhaps the least hospitable inhabited place on | the planet. | beefman wrote: | November?! How hard could it be to supply the station with fresh | food once a month? | david2ndaccount wrote: | See one of their previous posts: <https://brr.fyi/posts/last- | flight-out> | idlewords wrote: | It's really hard! Reasons include: | | - Ambient temperatures too low for most fuels and lubricants, | and out of spec for most other parts of the aircraft | | - No hope of rescue if the plane goes down or gets lost | | - No reliable way to light the runway. In the past they've used | gasoline filled drums, but it can get so cold that the gasoline | vapor pressure is too low and it won't light. | | - Extreme isolation--there's really nowhere a flight can divert | to south of New Zealand apart from McMurdo, which has its own | problems | | Remember that the South Pole station is just a small structure | on top of a featureless high plateau. There are no paved | runways, navigational aids, no heated hangars, no | infrastructure of any kind to support aircraft arriving in the | dead of night. The risk has been worth taking for urgent | medevac flights, but no one is going to gamble with aircrews' | lives over a bunch of eggs. | lmm wrote: | It's not hard, just expensive. Airdropping supplies through | winter was routine until it was cut for budgetary reasons. | PettingRabbits wrote: | I wonder if a one-way UAV cargo plane could make the trip. | Might not be worth it for eggs, but maybe something more | important. | bacon_waffle wrote: | Planes like C17 can overfly and airdrop stuff. | | https://weaknuclearforce.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/up-on- | the-... | bombcar wrote: | various places say you can keep _unwashed_ eggs in a fridge for | up to six months: https://www.outdoorhappens.com/how-long-do- | farm-fresh-eggs-l... | | > Unwashed farm fresh eggs last for two weeks to a month at room | temperature. After that, you must store them in the fridge. If | you refrigerate freshly laid eggs, they should last for three to | six months in an airtight container. | | However, Americans have an obsession with washing eggs, which | makes them not last as long. I wonder if they could get | permission to have unwashed eggs. | goda90 wrote: | Unwashed eggs can also be stored in a water-lime solution for | potentially years. It's called water glassing.They might not | taste as good as fresh eggs, but like for an omelet with | flavorings, you probably wouldn't notice, and you definitely | wouldn't notice for baking, but I guess there are powdered eggs | for that. | Symbiote wrote: | It would be interesting to know where the supplies come from -- | do the American ship everything halfway across the world from | the USA, or buy things from New Zealand? | bizzyb wrote: | both. (for mcmurdo/south pole) most of the dry/canned/frozen | food is procured in the USA and loaded on a vessel in port | hueneme for the once a year resupply vessel. "freshies" are | ordered from new zealand and flown down on available flights. | proto_lambda wrote: | The last flight was 4 months ago, a washed egg probably | wouldn't have survived this long. | tantalor wrote: | What about penguin eggs? | jefftk wrote: | This is the south pole, near the center of the continent. | Penguins are coastal. | pimlottc wrote: | The penguins are also protected. You're generally not even | supposed to touch them, let alone eat them. | jefftk wrote: | That's also a reason, but the closest penguin being 500+ | miles away through the Antarctic winter seems like a much | larger barrier. | shepherdjerred wrote: | Does eating an egg count as eating a penguin? | pimlottc wrote: | Let's not get all philosophical here | wahahah wrote: | Let's not get all political here | dottedmag wrote: | This expedition gives us a peek at the future life of habitats | outside of Earth. It makes one very thankful for the planetary | environment we live in. | yboris wrote: | Micro-related: _A Place Further than the Universe_ - a lovely | anime about four high school girls going to Antarctica. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Place_Further_than_the_Unive... | davidhaymond wrote: | One of my favorite anime series! It is one of my top | recommendations for newcomers to anime. I'm looking forward to | the long-overdue Blu-ray release in North America by Anime | Limited. | poulsbohemian wrote: | I'm surprised the greenhouse isn't larger and/or there isn't | significant research there about growing under man-made | conditions. I would think for example NASA might be able to use | it as a research center while also benefitting the diets of the | rest of the researchers there. | austhrow743 wrote: | If the goal is to research growing in man made conditions then | you don't really get anything out of the logistical difficulty | of Antartica. The natural conditions are the whole point. | shepherdjerred wrote: | Wouldn't a larger greenhouse require more power and therefore | more fuel for the generators? I would figure that's a major | reason why. | | I was wonder why they don't have chickens somewhere so that | they can have fresh eggs/meat/etc. It could potentially be a | good way to re-use food scraps, although I'm sure they're | already doing something useful with those. | teh_klev wrote: | > I was wonder why they don't have chickens somewhere | | It's probably a bio security thing. If these chickens escape | into the wild there's the risk of infecting the local bird | life with new diseases or viruses that the local population | have no defences against. | cwkoss wrote: | If the chickens escaped, wouldn't they be frozen solid in | minutes and effectively biologically inert? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-06-08 23:00 UTC)