Alien Spaceship? Or Antarctic Research Station?

Actually, it is a solar panel covered research station operated by tiny Belgium, of all countries.

Constructed on stilts on top of a ridge just north of the Soer Rondane Mountains, the base will focus on analyzing nearby deep ice shelves.


Teams of scientists, including glaciologists, are already at work there from Belgium, Japan, France, Britain and the United States.


Belgian Defense Minister Pieter De Crem and other government officials inaugurated the station on Sunday.


De Crem told VRT television from Antarctica: "It is really important that as a small country we can show our participation in large international efforts here in Antarctica."


"The base is in an isolated area where there has been little research done," said Maaike Van Cauwenbergh, from the Belgian Science Policy Office.


She said the steel-encased station is located in a vast 600-mile zone between the Russian and Japanese research stations.


The Princess Elisabeth uses microorganisms and decomposition that allows scientists to re-use shower and toilet water up to five times before discarding it down a crevasse.

Wind turbines on the Utsteinen mountain ridge provide the station with power, while solar panels on the bug-like, three-story building ensure the base has hot water. _RedOrbit

It is important that humans learn to live in polar conditions, given the inevitability of another global ice age in the coming future. It is also important to collect environmental and climate data from more points within the Antarctic continent, to avoid the type of pseudo-science recently perpetrated by Steig and Mann.

The problem of sustainable power supply in a polar winter has still not been solved. Solar panels are clearly worthless during the sunless and minimal sun months. Conventional wind turbines are unreliable, and easily overcome by severe winter conditions. In Antarctica, enhanced geothermal energy makes sense. Nuclear energy is, of course, the most sensible approach -- once reactors that allow many decades between refuelings are perfected.

For Pykrete structures floating on/in Arctic sea ice, a cold cycle form of OTEC has been proposed (as suggested in comments previously by a reader, and mentioned in Wikipedia).