I'm glad you liked the article, though I don't consider myself cynical.
It is odd that you chose to derive this from first principles. People have been building in polar regions for years and this stuff has been thoroughly studied and the trade-offs documented.
For example, note that the fire hazards in the Antarctic are extreme, and this precludes just building one big multi-story building, even if that kind of construction were possible there.
Keeping trash in situ would violate the 1991 Madrid Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty. So would mining the pile for minerals!
You clearly know a lot about this stuff, so consider reading up on newer bases like Scott Base and the South Korean base at Terra Nova, and adjusting your plan accordingly. I'd be curious to read what you came up with.
Usually I like to derive things from first principles before I go off and read about all the reasons my ideas were dumb. Every once in a while I come up with an idea that isn't dumb that I wouldn't have come up with by reading about them first. Generally people who are struggling to stay alive in dangerous conditions don't waste their time trying out crazy new ideas, which means they miss most of the good ones, too.
Thanks for the references! I wouldn't say I know a lot about this stuff. I know almost nothing.
Fire hazards are largely an artifact of building things out of combustible materials like wood. (Or polyisocyanurate foam.) Concrete, sheetrock, steel beams, and expanded sheet steel don't have fire hazards. Even so, it would probably be a good idea to have a refuge to escape to if a transformer or something caught on fire inside your arcology and started emitting toxic fumes.
Stuff has caught fire at McMurdo multiple times - if it's not exterior, stuff inside the building is certainly flammable. McMurdo actually has their own 6-person fire department specifically because it's such a hazard.
At the South Pole station, all winter-overs take a weeklong firefighting training course with the Denver Fire Dept., since they don't have the luxury of a dedicated team.
It is odd that you chose to derive this from first principles. People have been building in polar regions for years and this stuff has been thoroughly studied and the trade-offs documented.
For example, note that the fire hazards in the Antarctic are extreme, and this precludes just building one big multi-story building, even if that kind of construction were possible there.
Keeping trash in situ would violate the 1991 Madrid Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty. So would mining the pile for minerals!
You clearly know a lot about this stuff, so consider reading up on newer bases like Scott Base and the South Korean base at Terra Nova, and adjusting your plan accordingly. I'd be curious to read what you came up with.