It's always fun seeing these posts, it's a look into such a strange way of living and supporting life. And there's something subtly terrifying about the whole operation too, seemingly teetering on a knife's edge between the ever-forward marching of entropy and all of the energy they need to put in to keep that in check, even more so with it being so cold. How fast it could collapse if, say, there was a generator problem and how diesel fuel is the only thing that's keeping it afloat.
I'd love to see a post, maybe there is, about maintenance of all of this, perhaps a story or two about an issue that maybe had some existential threat to the station and how it was overcome. I look at the majority of the infrastructure there and just keep in the back of my mind how fragile it all seems. And yes, obviously there are redundancies, but even with redundancy, things can still fail, they exist in the physical world after all.
Nit: McMurdo uses diesel since its climate is more forgiving but the South Pole station the author was at uses kerosene-based JP8 jet fuel since it comes with additives for subzero temperatures. They even have their own arctic recipe called AN8.
I'd love to see a post, maybe there is, about maintenance of all of this, perhaps a story or two about an issue that maybe had some existential threat to the station and how it was overcome. I look at the majority of the infrastructure there and just keep in the back of my mind how fragile it all seems. And yes, obviously there are redundancies, but even with redundancy, things can still fail, they exist in the physical world after all.