yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

They Turn Ice Into Ice Cubes | Continent 7: Antarctica


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

[Music] The Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star is the most powerful icebreaker in the world. Our mission is to cut a channel that's 18 miles long through 8 to 12 feet of ice so that the supply ships can resupply the continent. This is where we earn our money. The ship is 40 years old, older than most of the people on board.

"What's our current speed?"

"Current speed: 10 knots. You ready for a start? I'm Lieutenant Junior Grade Morrison. I'm the fueling officer on board and the auxiliary division officer."

"But rightful on again—rightful rudder, rightful rudder."

Aye, the Polar Star is America's only heavy icebreaker, and it is the only one that can break that channel. So I've got the entire continent relying on me. I have to turn that ice into ice cubes.

"About to make our approach on the fast ice, which is McMurdo Sound. It's solid ice from shore to shore; it has no relief when we go to break them. Most boats don't like to go through even a thin layer of ice, and we’re going through 60-ton chunks of ice continuously."

"Mac Ops is B St six over. Main control is the brain or EP center for the engineering propulsion plant. It's secured."

"Roger."

When we break ice, it's like—imagine a 10 to 12 on the Richter scale earthquake. To be on board during that experience, just imagine yourself in an earthquake for a week nonstop. This goes against all sense in seamanship and navigation.

Looking behind you when you're driving a ship, we preach to our young ship handlers to always look forward. But they look behind us to make sure we're driving in a straight line, which makes it a lot easier for the supply ship to navigate in when we escort them.

It's much more practical and efficient to look behind you, try to keep it straight. We don't have to worry about other contacts and other ships out here. The ice channel is the lifeblood to Antarctica and the science missions.

"You ready, Augustine?"

The young men and women down below deck sacrifice their time and their families and holiday seasons. They work night and day to make sure the ship stays underway, that those propellers keep turning. I'm very, very proud of these young people.

"We are at 6 knots. It's pretty amazing to see what they can do." [Music]

More Articles

View All
Price Discrimination: Charge Some People More
Are there any other microeconomic concepts outside of zero marginal cost of replication and scale economies that you think are important for people to understand? I think price discrimination is an important thing to understand. What it means is that you…
Why Are 96,000,000 Black Balls on This Reservoir?
(Shade balls rolling) - These are shade balls. They’re being dumped into this water reservoir in Los Angeles. And contrary to what you may have heard, their main purpose is not to reduce evaporation. So what are they really for? To find out, I’m visiting …
Scorpion Kill Survival Skills | The Great Human Race
That is a scorpion. As drought ravaged the once lush Arabian Peninsula, early Homo sapiens moving through the desert to the monsoon-soaked areas along the coast would be forced to adjust to a drastic change in their diet. It’s going to come for you. With…
Conditional probability tree diagram example | Probability | AP Statistics | Khan Academy
Accompany screens job applicants for illegal drug use at a certain stage in their hiring process. The specific test they use has a false positive rate of 2% and a false negative rate of 1%. Suppose that 5% of all their applicants are actually using illega…
Take a Ride on One of India's Legendary Mountain Railways | National Geographic
[Music] The rugged mountainous terrain of India contains unmatched adventure. Their three historic railways are grouped into a single World Heritage site known as the Mountain Railways of India. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, the Nilgiri Mountain Railw…
Comparing Roman and Byzantine Empires | AP US History | Khan Academy
We already have several videos talking about the Byzantine Empire, which is really just the continuation of the Roman Empire after its fall. They even called themselves the Roman Empire. But what I want to do in this video is a bit of a deep dive to make …