{"id":1969,"date":"2015-01-17T07:26:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-16T18:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/?p=1969"},"modified":"2015-01-16T16:48:18","modified_gmt":"2015-01-16T21:48:18","slug":"a-short-treatise-on-our-epic-awesome-harcawesomeness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/2015\/01\/17\/a-short-treatise-on-our-epic-awesome-harcawesomeness\/","title":{"rendered":"A Short Treatise on our Epic Awesome Harcawesomeness!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Here\u2019s where we stood just after lunch. The image doesn\u2019t have the resolution to show it properly, but the flags are dense all the way to the edge of the image in the moraine.<\/p><\/div>\n

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I don\u2019t remember why Jim decided he needed to chip this flag out, but I\u2019m sure it made sense at the time. Still, that\u2019s some serious skill. No comment about scales in this image.<\/p><\/div>\n

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This was taken at the same time as the previous picture. These are the meteorites we had collected over the previous few hours. Again, this was the approximate density of the meteorites throughout that whole moraine. Every time we collected a meteorite, it seemed like someone would find another one (or another 5).<\/p><\/div>\n

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Did you ever wonder what 108 meteorites in a back-pack looked like (I\u2019m sure the Miller range crew is curious)? Now you know. Don\u2019t forget we had another 64 in the other collection kit.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Our salvation\u2026the groomer. You know it\u2019s robust because it survived grooming all of us (even Johnny) as well!<\/p><\/div>\n

I know yesterday I said I was going to write about why we collect meteorites today. I lied. Turns out I do that kind of a lot. To be fair, I do have a pretty good excuse (this time), namely that I\u2019m tired and it is late. Also, the sciency bits of why we collect meteorites can be a little boring (which is sort of like saying CSPAN is a \u201clittle bit\u201d boring). Never fear, the boring parts will be attended to later. For now, I\u2019d like to spend a little bit more time talking about why we\u2019re so Hard Core Awesome (i.e., Harcawesome; last time I am defining it\u2026pay attention people).<\/p>\n

Now, being tired may seem contradictory for one who is Harcawesome (and yes, it should ALWAYS be capitalized), but when you collected 172 meteorites in one day, even Harcawesome people have earned the right to be a little fatigued. Oh, you read that number right. 1-7-2\u2026in one day\u2026from\u00a09:00 till 5:30<\/span><\/span>\u00a0(not counting lunch and commute time). Let that sink in for a second. We worked for 480 minutes today, which means we collected (praise excel) over 20 meteorites per hour, or one every 3 minutes (I\u2019ll wait while the geologists in the audience take off their shoes and socks to check my math; geophysicists have 60 minutes to write a short program to check our math, though I imagine you\u2019ll need another 3 hours to debug it). Since each GPS record takes 2.5 minutes to register, we worked at nearly maximum capacity.<\/p>\n

But wait, it\u2019s so much better than that.<\/p>\n

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What would you like to do after 9 hours of hard work\u2026yes, sort through 172 meteorites, that\u2019s what I said too! Jim on the left for scale.<\/p><\/div>\n

As you\u2019ll have noticed in yesterday\u2019s blog, we found about 62 meteorites (in two hours) that we left flagged but uncollected. We collected those before lunch with 5 people. In the meantime, the other 3 people started searching for new meteorites. Not long after lunch, we sent a team of two people back to camp to start grooming the runway (more on that later), and then the rest of us collected\/searched simultaneously in the moraine we are tentatively calling meteorite beach. So the final numbers on the day are 172 meteorites collected in a single day, 110 meteorites found and collected in a single day, and 119 meteorites found in a single day (we found but didn\u2019t collect 9).<\/p>\n

Near as we can tell, the previous record for most meteorites collected in a day was 105 at Roberts Massif in 2004 and a close second was 100 at Miller Range in 2010. Aren\u2019t those nice cute numbers? I mean, I\u2019d particularly like to thank the 2010 team (Hosie, Lindsay, Marc, Vera, Neyda) for making a valiant effort (even if \u00bd your samples that day were flakes of carbonaceous chondrite fusion crust), and hopefully next time you\u2019re down in Antarctica, you\u2019ll be able to put up a grownup number. We didn\u2019t annihilate the existing record so much as we obliterated it. In fact, we just got a text message on our phone from Mac Ops who informed us that pieces of the old record just damaged some buildings at WAIS divide camp in West Antarctica. We actually feel a little bad about that (okay, Jim feels bad, I\u2019m still too busy doing the victory dance).<\/p>\n

To quote the noble sage Barney Stinson, \u201cit was Legen\u2026wait for\u2026Dary\u201d.<\/p>\n

In news other than how awesome we are, it turns out we\u2019re on for a Basler pull out. It simply means we get to take 3 Basler (which is Canadian for DC-3) flights directly back to McMurdo rather than 9 twin otter flights to CTAM, followed by a pair of C-130 flights to McMurdo. The only draw back to this is that the Basler is a tail dragger, so we need to create — or groom — a ~2000\u2019 runway for them to land on (that\u2019s 2\/5\u2019s of a mile, or ~6 football fields including the end zones). Grooming a runway means you slowly drive up and down the runway dragging a heavy snow groomer, which gradually wears down the 2-3\u2019 sasgrugi and bumps on the runway (and fills in the low spots). Near as we can tell, it will take 12-18 hours to prepare the runway, in fact I can hear someone (likely Devon) out there grooming at\u00a09:30 PM<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, we\u2019ve got about 2 \u00bd days of collecting left, then \u00bd a day of prep to start pulling out, then 3 days to get everyone back to McMurdo. You know, assuming everything goes exactly to plan. Course, this is Antarctica so what are the chances of anything going wrong? Exactly. We\u2019ve got 541 meteorites collected, and I\u2019ll be disappointed with anything less than 600! Stay tuned for future installments of the \u201cRyan thinks he is funny blog.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lesson Learned 1: Don\u2019t try to fill the water pot with ice directly from a 5 gallon bucket! No matter how good of an idea it seems, it\u2019s not. On an unrelated note, our stove is now very clean, as is the tent floor, and large portions of our Thermarests.<\/p>\n

Lesson Learned 2: When the water pot is boiling, it is REALLY hot. Always.<\/p>\n

Lesson Learned 3: Collecting 172 meteorites in a single day is tiring! You know you\u2019re tired when choice between closing door (means getting up) or just turning both burners on full isn\u2019t really a choice.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Ryan, Davis-Ward,\u00a0Friday January 16, 2015<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

P.S. Hello to my beautiful wife! I\u2019m sitting her drinking my hot cider out of the most wonderful coffee mug. Everyone is so jealous of my mug!<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

I know yesterday I said I was going to write about why we collect meteorites today. I lied. Turns out I do that kind of a lot. To be fair, I do have a pretty good excuse (this time), namely that I\u2019m tired and it is late. Also, the sciency bits of why we collect meteorites can be a little boring (which is sort of like saying CSPAN is a \u201clittle bit\u201d boring). Never fear, the boring parts will be attended to later. For now, I\u2019d like to spend a little bit more time talking about why we\u2019re so Hard Core Awesome (i.e.,<\/p>\n

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