I wonder what the actual energy and resource cost is to put this recycled plastic solar powered expedition together? Thank goodness they are saving the planet. The hobbies of rich people.~ctm
Here is their expedition website.
Let’s not wish any misfortune upon them.
HT/RoyMC
So how did they get to Antarctica? By Ilyushin jet plane.
And their expedition is backed up with diesel trucks and their film crew!
Their mission, as they state on their website, is to go from a linear to a circular society. I find this disturbing, on several levels. A circular society goes in circles, i.e., nowhere. (They didn’t provide a better definition.) If what they meant was no waste, there will always be waste heat. Perpetual motion machines are impossible. Even primitive hunter/gatherer societies had the sense to move on to new areas when one locale provided diminishing returns, or, more crudely, when defecating in one spot became intolerable. The idea that we can live in harmony with nature forever in a sort of mediocre paradise isn’t real, and science fiction writers have long predicted that Man will exhaust Earth’s resources and invade, er, strike that, I mean colonize, no, not politically correct, I mean explore, other planets which have unintelligent (as we define it) life. So that’s hundreds, or maybe thousands of years off, given the current state of technology and the willingness of governments to invest in space exploration. But a circular society here on Earth? Dream (or nightmare) on…
We known of exactly zero other planets with any life at all, and the same huge number of other habitable planets to which we might move.
And even if we manage to spot some in other solar systems, good luck getting there.
Luckily the earth is big, with lots and lots of all 92 elements in huge supply down there somewhere… and the entire universe, including Earth, is awash in energy, which is the only thing preventing 100% infinite recycling of everything.
Nothing we use is every destroyed or sent off planet and lost to us, except space probes which do not come back.
Even nuclear bombs do not create or destroy any nucleons…they simple release nuclear binding energy, not exactly the same as converting mass to energy as is often portrayed in literature and even scientific writings.
Something else to consider: If there is a plant that could support our kind of like why is everyone assuming it doesn’t support an intelligent life form as well. Uninhabited planet? Sure.
It barely matters.
The journey would take hundreds of years at a minimum, and that if there was one relatively close by. and there would be no way to know for sure what will be found upon arrival.
No one will be building a ship that could make that journey and keep people alive in space all that time, even if we knew where to send it.
And how many could be sent?
I would be very surprised if they get a person to Mars alive in the next 40 years, and coming back alive?
They have no idea how to shield a person from the deadly radiation outside of the Earth’s magnetic field. That journey takes years for a small unmanned probe. The delta vee is humongous.
+100 (from an Anne McCaffrey fan)
Oops, that was supposed to be a reply to Hivemind on December 16, 2018 at 4:28 pm
With the first solar-powered expedition to the South Pole and a sailing think-tank….
What would a bunch of sailers be messing around with solar for? Their current reported wind speed is 7.3 m/s. Assume that means meters/second, figures out to 26 km/hr. Get a good sail on that thing; outfit it with skis. Ought to go faster than 3.9 km/hr on what looks in the picture like pretty level ground.
Willis, what do you think?
I work with plastics. It is not an easy task to choose an appropriate grade of resin that will meet all the technical requirements of even a simple application. Making an antarctic rover is not a simple application.
When molding pure virgin resin there is normally some scrap. This scrap can be ground up and mixed with virgin resin to make it go farther, but normally only to a limit of about 20% regrind. After that the degradation to the polymer from being through the molding machine a second time starts to show up as significant degradation of the finished part. It usually shows up as brittleness. Using 100% recycled plastic in a technical application is, in my opinion, foolhardy.
Most plastics become brittle at cold temperatures. They are using 100% regrind of unknown origin and properties. Scary.
They are also using fused deposition modeling (FDM) for their 3D printing process. FDM parts are never as strong as equivalent injection molded parts. They rely on melted plastic sticking to previously deposited solid plastic. If the melt temperature and other conditions are not exactly right it is easy to get very brittle parts.
An engineering imperative for this application is that the parts must be light weight so the low power solar panels can actually move the contraption. With all this brittleness they would have to make the plastic parts extremely thick and heavy to offset the inferior quality of the material.
Conclusion: It makes absolutely no sense to build an antarctic rover out of recycled plastic.
Oh well, at least they can stay warm by burning the rover while they are waitinv to be rescued.
Bill Thomson December 16, 2018 at 8:11 pm
Hi Bill. “brittle” The same problem if they are using the 3D printers on any metal parts.
There is something else missing, food. The trip was to take 40 days. Not much pantry space on that contraption. Water you can melt but that takes electric power.
Can anyone tell me if Domino’s delivers at the south pole?
They do but you have to tip the driver like 300,000,000%.
Or, they wait for the wind to be onshore at around 200mph, and get some frisbee experts on the top of coastal mountain with a stack of frozen pies (flash freezing is surprisingly cheap in Antarctica), and…
They are carrying freeze dried food and plan to use the sun to melt snow. That say they will carry the waste packaging from the food, but there is no mention of the human waste they will produce.
https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2018/EGU2018-1964.pdf
Since this article is about Antarctica, I can assume i’m not that much off topic here. There was an article at WUWT by Dave Middleton in April 12, 2018 about the above study.
Apart from the headline of this relatively new study , making us all scratch our heads as to why?, I have another important question. In the abstract there is this interesting quote.
*************************************************************************************
‘There is growing evidence that the AIS(Antarctic Ice Sheet) has been losing
mass in recent decades, while mass gains are predicted under future climate warming scenarios.”
*************************************************************************************************
A 2015 study by NASA shows that Antarctica has been gaining ice.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses
now there have been other studies that say Antarctica is losing ice mass: To quote one study “The actual number of metric tons lost of ice between 1992-2017 is around 2,720 billion tonnes, and the actual total mass of Antarctica is 24.5 million billion tonnes (metric). =.01% lost per year or .000111”
Not very scary and also the error bars are so large as to dwarf the amount of loss claimed.
So obviously the 1st part of the above quote that I surrounded with *s , is subject to a lot of debate and indeed was debated heavily in the WUWT articel quoted above. However I want to concentrate on the 2nd part.
Can some one explain from 1st principles as to how mass gains of snow and ice are predicted under global warming scenarios over the Antarctic when even in the summer time it never gets above zero except in very very few spots around the coast. Appreciable global warming (even if it was possible) would never affect the Antarctica. To have much evaporation , you need either warm waters or you get warm air masses delivering moisture to colder land masses . Most of Antarctica is over ice frigid land and there is little evaporation. To quote Wikipedia: “Most of Antarctica is a polar desert, with annual precipitation of only 200 mm (8 in) along the coast and far less inland.”
The little snow that does fall in Antarctica comes from the katabatic winds that form cyclones off the coast of Antarctica. Antarctica is the highest of all continents on average 1.4 miles high. In the winter Antarctica doubles in size due to the sea ice. Antarctica has no trees or bushes, so Michael Mann can’t use it to get his hockey stick. As to the summer time, there is some evaporation from the Antarctica waters, but the Antarctic waters circulate cold water around the land mass in a clockwise direction that actually presents a barrier to the more temporate ocean waters much farther out to sea. Of course this conveyor belt of cold water is thousands of km in width. To quote the following web site:
https://discoveringantarctica.org.uk/oceans-atmosphere-landscape/atmosphere-weather-and-climate/key-factors-behind-antarcticas-climate/
“The heat that is transported into Antarctica is largely from low pressure systems that form out to sea between 60 and 65°S in an area known as the circumpolar trough. The large temperature difference between cold Antarctic air masses and mild maritime air masses from the mid-latitudes creates a frontal boundary in the atmosphere over the Southern Ocean that causes frequent storms to develop which move east and south-east due to the prevailing winds. Not only do these storm systems take moist air towards Antarctica, but they also account for the notoriously rough seas encountered in the Southern Ocean.”
So I repeat how in the HELL are you going to get more ice mass in Antarctica under a global warming scenario? The climate scientists have predicted this because the models say so. This then proves that the climate scientists don’t know what they are doing. The models have been programmed to affect the Gulf stream and other airborne conveyor belts by as much as 25% under global warming scenarios so that all the bad effects will happen in the models which will then be blamed on increased CO2 effects. Who knows how much they tinkered with the ocean water conveyor belts under global warming scenarios? These models are not only warmanistas but cock a doodle doo istas. 97 % of Climate science is such a farce.
If the ocean warms evaporation will increase, and on average this will likely lead to higher humidity levels.
If the air advecting to the interior is even slightly more humid, snowfall rates will increase, if all else remains equal.
Yes Menicholas: This is exactly how it works in a steam plant. Turn up the heat and the power output increases as the cycle speeds up . All done at CONSTANT TEMPERATURE.!!
The atmospheric Rankine Cycle runs to the same principles.
They made the vehicle especially light, so the puny electric motors could power it. So this thing will be on its back, at the first breeze.
Do they know how much force a ‘wing’ like this creates? A 15 m2 wing will give 700 kg of lift at 60 knots. One of these panels is about 8 m2. Presumably they place them horizontal (feathered) in windy conditions. But if you are not careful, that may be the best aerodynamic position for creating lift (up or down). And that could lift these carts off the ground.
R
They seem to have found out about wind, see https://www.clean2antarctica.nl/en/updates/blog-antarctica-turbulence
Note the guy lines to stop the contraption blowing over.
I am wondering what the cable going off frame to the bottom right connects to. A nice big diesel generator perhaps.
remelt/extrusion/3dprinters…lotta embodied energy there
wonder if that got counted?
the following diesel trucks is a hoot.
the cost to get the thing there as well
all a stageshow for the daft /gullibles /feelgood inanity
plenty of people recycling plastics for myriad uses
and you could heat it using the lenses from discarded tvs projection sort
Ive seen those melt tube steel rather well
and rocks n glass
i dont have to wish them bad cess
they’ll find it all by themselves i reckon
I’ve read the mission statement and goals multiple times and I still don’t understand what the purpose is. What is gained by driving a solar powered vehicle to the South Pole? Is there a science part to the mission that I’m missing?
It is quite simply a publicity stunt. A fake event made to get media attention.
No not a fake event. Just more hypocrit champagne socialists being defeated by mother nature and basic physics. Allegedly their car doesn’t work when it’s a bit cloudy and windy hence they are on their way home already (either that or once they couldn’t get Google maps to connect to the internet they were doomed 😂). These folks keep me entertained all year round. Only another 6 months until the Northwest passage brigade starts again.
The fact that they are unnecessarily poluting the Antarctic environment by making a pointless expedition followed by diesel trucks and camera crews says it all for me. Just another version of that stupid solar powered aeroplane that took two years to go round the world and was supported by kerosene powered jet transport planes. The stupidity of it all in the name of virtue signalling is unbelievable. I hope they do not die, but when they are rescued and all their trash is left behind I hope they take a serious look at what they are doing.
Splendid, informative and entertaining thread! One of the best thank you CTM.
An after thought if I may be so bold:
Nick Stokes and the excess round-the-clock solar irradiatiance at the TOA which Menicholas correctly noted was not where the Dutch device was collecting its solar energy.
Most of that solar irradiance especially the UV stuff is busy filling up the Ozone Hole generated in the Antipodean winter months when the sun was busy melting ice in the Arctic instead of making Ozone over Antarctica.. and the cold dark dense ozone rich air mass was descending over the Southpole heading North in every direction as the katabatic wind, leaving behind the Ozone hole, on its way, with a little help from Signor Coriollis, to the Southern circumpolar vortex.
Sorry if I oversimplify but we have some STEM challenged followers… Griff and Ivan come to mind.
Merry Christmas to all
Cheers
Mike
Hahahaha!
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-46614102/weather-stops-plastic-waste-car-reaching-south-pole
AHH, beat me to it.
An update! https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-46614102/weather-stops-plastic-waste-car-reaching-south-pole Bad weather in Antarctica, who knew?!?!?!?
Think the best bit is that having been thwarted within the first few days, rather than wait for the weather to clear and have another go they are going home and NEVER coming back. Don’t worry though there are not going to throw-away their throw-away “vehicle/plastic milk float” they are donating it to a museum to gather dust and for them to throw it away in a few years.