[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?
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(page generated 2023-06-08 23:00 UTC)