Two dead at U.S. Antarctic stationAn accident of some kind has apparently killed two individuals at the U.S. McMurdo station in Antarctica yesterday.
The National Science Foundation says two technicians working on a fire-suppression system at an Antarctica scientific station were found unconscious and died.
The foundation said Wednesday the two had been working in a building at McMurdo Station, which is on Ross Island. It says they were found on the floor by a helicopter pilot who had landed after spotting what appeared to be smoke from the building.
Nothing more is as yet known.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
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An accident of some kind has apparently killed two individuals at the U.S. McMurdo station in Antarctica yesterday.
The National Science Foundation says two technicians working on a fire-suppression system at an Antarctica scientific station were found unconscious and died.
The foundation said Wednesday the two had been working in a building at McMurdo Station, which is on Ross Island. It says they were found on the floor by a helicopter pilot who had landed after spotting what appeared to be smoke from the building.
Nothing more is as yet known.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Hmmm, did they see a dog running around?
This unfortunately sounds like a malfunction or a misfiring of the system that they were installing, if I were to take a wild guess. Fire suppression systems starve fire of oxygen and any thing else that is enveloped by it.
????
Halon
Are there not far better alternates to halon?
I forget the product name (Novek?) but I remember a product that suppressed the fire but did not remove the all the O2. It was also nonconductive- you could submerse a laptop in it without fear of shorting it out.
Perhaps halon is required in the cold of Antarctica but the risks are well known and I think alternatives exist.
Wodun
good one.
Chris–
(thanks for that tidbit!)
here we go…. ( it’s a fluoroketone, “developed as a halon replacement and hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) alternative.” )
“3M Brand Novec 1230” Fire Protection Fluid
https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/novec-us/applications/fire-suppression/
(with embedded video)
“Novec 1230 fluid extinguishes a fire before it starts by rapidly removing heat. In a typical total flooding system, the fluid is stored as a liquid in cylinders pressurized with nitrogen. Automatic detection sensors trigger release when the fire is at the incipient stage, extinguishing it in mere seconds. Novec 1230 fluid evaporates 50 times faster than water. In fact, you could soak a paperback book in a bath of Novec 1230 fluid and within a minute, pick it up and read where you left off.”
“The Thing” (1951)
-excerpt-
https://youtu.be/tp1UPGesJCE
1:46