This has been a busy, shocking afternoon, as our existing plans for this season were completely tossed out and new, leaner plans are being built on the foundations.<\/p>\n
It all started about 1:30 this afternoon when I saw a friend in the Crary lab that shouldn’t be there- it was someone from one of the other science parties operating out of Shackleton this year, and I had thought they were on the plane that flew to Shackleton this morning. \u00a0Turns out their field season, the whole thing, \u00a0has been cancelled, as had the field season of another Shackleton group. \u00a0As I listened to his\u00a0story the NSF rep approached me and asked for a moment of my time. \u00a0 That’s an “oh-oh” moment for sure.<\/p>\n
What she told me was that the LC-130 schedule was a mess, and as a result Shackleton was a mess, with only a minor percentage of the flights it needed to operate and a similar inadequate supply of fuel for airplanes. \u00a0She went on to say that we’d just barely snuck over the cancellation bar- had they not known of our legendary flexibility, our field season would have been another victim of cuts. As it stood the only way our field season could survive was either to massively cut back our Shackleton plans or completely give them up and work somewhere reachable from McMurdo.<\/p>\n
I volunteered to come up with a prioritized list of\u00a0alternative plans, and we agreed to try\u00a0meeting again at 3:30 or so. \u00a0 I quickly went hunting for John, Jim and Brian.<\/p>\n
The four of us met at 2:30 and brainstormed. \u00a0 We pretty quickly came up with our list, \u00a0ruthlessly questioning each other on the details so that we not only had concensus but also had solid reasons for everything cut or kept. \u00a0Armed with a few notes I went looking for the NSF rep only to be told they were looking for me- and within a few minutes Jim and I were in one of McMurdo’s biggest meeting rooms.<\/p>\n
I won’t go into the details of the meeting\u00a0since the results are not yet in. \u00a0I will say it felt constructive, open and I think our suggestions were well-received- there were a lot more smiles and expressions of relief than headshakes. While one alternative plan seemed pretty clearly the best,\u00a0\u00a0final decisions have not yet been\u00a0made- \u00a0we’ll meet again tomorrow. \u00a0 But the following changes are either very likely or already happened……<\/p>\n
ANSMET is lucky in that we have lots of good targets for meteorite recovery across the Transantarctic mountains, so coming up with new plans is relatively easy for us, \u00a0and we’re in the habit of having alternate plans in our pocket ready-to-go. We are also lucky that the community trusts us to be flexible, so much so that we’ve been given a chance to design\u00a0our own cutbacks rather than have them imposed upon us. The latter might have seen our field season eliminated entirely.<\/p>\n
More on this tomorrow. \u00a0Now it’s time for a trip to the coffee house. \u00a0Lamentably,\u00a0\u00a0Monday night is “dry” in McMurdo.<\/p>\n
Posted by rph from McMurdo.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This has been a busy, shocking afternoon, as our existing plans for this season were completely tossed out and new, leaner plans are being built on the foundations.<\/p>\n It all started about 1:30 this afternoon when I saw a friend in the Crary lab that shouldn’t be there- it was someone from one of the other science parties operating out of Shackleton this year, and I had thought they were on the plane that flew to Shackleton this morning. \u00a0Turns out their field season, the whole thing, \u00a0has been cancelled, as had the field season of another Shackleton group. \u00a0<\/p>\n