Russia's research bases in Antarctica

Shitty news, I'm sad to report

Apparently Sevmorput suffered propeller malfunction off the coast of Africa while en route to Antarctica and as a result components of the new habitat for Vostok Station will not be delivered on time which will delay construction for a year

https://bmpd.livejournal.com/4197545.html



This is now the whole habitat looks when packaged and loaded up:

So they have an extra year to get the plans in place to make it work... shit happens.

Or they could offload its cargo & send An-22/124s &/ IL-76s to deliver it to Vostok directly.

An An-124 can´t land there and you would need 500+ flights with the Il-76. The current Wostok station worked for decades, it will survive another year.

• Take-off run (maximum take-off weight): 3,000 m (9,800 ft)
  
• Landing roll (maximum landing weight): 900 m (3,000 ft)
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-124_Ruslan#Specifications_(An-124-100M)
  

[th]Runways[/th]

[th]Direction[/th][th]Length[/th][th]Surface[/th][th]ft[/th][th]m[/th] 03/21 11,933 3,637 Ice

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_Station#History

From the above, they can land & take off with full load on that airfield. 

C-17/5s used similar length airstrips: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen%E2%80%93Scott_South_Pole_Station#Transportation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Runway

GarryB wrote:So they have an extra year to get the plans in place to make it work... shit happens.

There are no upsides to this just delay and hassle

They might consider building additional ships of thing class after this, while Sevmorput seemed like a dead end 30 years ago it has proven to be very useful lately but fact remains that it was sitting in port for decades before it was recommissioned, that leaves consequences

They have blueprints and shipyard now so they might as well cranck out another one or two

The length of the landing area doesn´t count, it is the weight of the plane. They´re operating on ice strips down there.

Back in the 80´s the plan was to build at least 6 ships of that class but then came Gorbi, Chernobyl and Jelzin. Don´t know which one was the worst "accident".

Hole wrote:The length of the landing area doesn´t count, it is the weight of the plane. They´re operating on ice strips down there.

The sea ice needs to be at least two meters thick to support the weight of a jet.
https://www.nsf.gov/geo/opp/support/jettrans.jsp

Pilots landing C-17 Globemaster III cargo aircraft on the sea ice runway report that the surface is stable, not unlike landing on concrete.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Runway


The Russian stations there have runways on glacier/land, not sea, & when needed, they can maintain 2m thick ice on them.  Field experiments show that an artificial ice platform up to 3m thick could be built by watering.
https://documents.ats.aq/ATCM25/wp/ATCM25_wp015_e.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BeIOLwQOKY

There are no upsides to this just delay and hassle

They might consider building additional ships of thing class after this, while Sevmorput seemed like a dead end 30 years ago it has proven to be very useful lately but fact remains that it was sitting in port for decades before it was recommissioned, that leaves consequences

They have blueprints and shipyard now so they might as well cranck out another one or two

The fact that they would build another few ships on its own shows a potential upside... a delay and hassle is no big deal... it is not like they are sitting on bare ice waiting for these new buildings to arrive... they can get by another year with the facilities they have in place and next year they get the big upgrade.

Tsavo... look at the image of the ship and the parts and pieces stacked high on that rather large ship... it is like a kitset house... except it is actually a kitset compound in the middle of nowhere. Delivering bits at a time, slowly, would not be the ideal way of doing it... what if bits go missing or it is delivered in the wrong order so they can't start building until the last flight delivers its load?

Makes much more sense to deliver it in one go by ship and then vehicle transport across the ice like they planned.

Max. weight C-17: 263tons
Max. weight An-124: 405tons

Nuff said.

If they could handle C-5s, why can't they handle An-124s, which could be of the same weight with 24Ts less cargo?

The simple fact is that they are not going to use aircraft to deliver the base.

It will go down next year.

Russia's only nuclear powered container ship Sevmorput of FGUP Atomflot (ФГУП " АтомФлот "), as posted by some weeks ago, suffered a technical damage by loss of one of it's blades of the propeller during cruising near the equator to Antarctic to deliver Russia's newest research station "Vostok". Because of that techniscal snag, Sevmorput was cruising back to safe water near the angolan coast in front of the port of Luanda to carry out a repair.
This video is a visual documentation about the overall travel, the damaged propeller and the repair of it. It took 96 hours to dive and 48 to cut the opposite blade with 1250 exothermal electrodes. 52 bottles of oxygen where used for diving operations. This critical operation was done by three divers and finished on December 1st. The operation took overall 24 days without the possibility to be fully maneuverable.
On December 31st, Sevmorput reached the russian port of St. Petersburg for unloading and repair - to make a possible second attempt by the end of this year to deliver the research station.

Akademik Treshnikov research vessel reaches Antarctic with first wintering team

In particular, the ship brought components for the new wintering complex for the Vostok station, as well as food for the Russian polar stations

ST. PETERSBURG, January 15. /TASS/. The Akademik Treshnikov science expedition vessel arrived to the unloading point near the Russia’s Progress Antarctic station, the expedition’s bulletin for January 7 to 14 says.

"On January 7, the ship approached the unloading point, prepared by the Progress station hydrologists in the bay of Tala. […] Some 1,000 tonnes of cargo was unloaded from the ship," the bulletin says.

In particular, the ship brought components for the new wintering complex for the Vostok station, as well as food for the Russian polar stations.

"On January 11, the ship began moving out of the Progress station area," the bulletin says, adding that, due to heavy ice conditions, it only reached clear water by January 13 and headed towards Mirny, where it plans to arrive on January 16.

https://tass.com/science/1245443

Second attempt: The delivery of the new Russian antarctic research station "Vostok" was cancelled last year after the nuclear container ship Sevmorput suffered a technical glitch. The station was now loaded on the conventionel container ship Mys Dezhneva and is now on it's journey to antarctic. Different from original planning with Sevmorput, there will be now three delivery steps of the station over four years instead of one and build up in one year. The additional need of fuel for those conventionel ships needs a overall larger freight volume and additional ships for support.

https://topspb.tv/news/2021/09/11/iz-peterburga-v-antarktidu-dostavyat-moduli-stancii-vostok-v-arktiku-supersovremennuyu-ledostojkuyu-platformu/?fbclid=IwAR2HlDrVrpNe176vkzOOLDNKG62q0hin1mubH2Beyd_2hYvceDmtvd-Fw0o

Three years?

This sucks donkey balls

Can't believe that ship had to croak at that precise moment...

Feel bad for the researchers having to continue to use the old station while being cockteased by the new one.

Why the delayed schedule? I get nuclear ships have nigh infinite endurance but it's not like suffer from low payload or something, or is it a limitation to need huge horsepower to go through ice?

So you were going to get a brand new state of the art school with all the modern features all brand new and shiny and 21st C and shiny and warm and efficient that just makes things easier to do... at first it was going to be this year but now it is going to be done in stages over three years... who cares if there is a delay?

There is no alternative.... and flying everything down on AN-124s is not an option... you would need 500 flights at least and unlike US C-5 flights they wont be from Christchurch New Zealand... they will be over much greater distances and therefore also much much more expensive...

Learn some patience for goodness sake... you are like a child... everything has to be now.

Why the delayed schedule? I get nuclear ships have nigh infinite endurance but it's not like suffer from low payload or something, or is it a limitation to need huge horsepower to go through ice?

Consider it to be like the AN-225 was going to do the job but it has a fault that will take time to fix so instead of a trip with the AN-225 they are going to make three trips with an An-124... but the journey is from Russia to Antarctica and will take a month or two for the voyage and when it gets to Antarctica they need to take it off the ship and transport it by land vehicle to the location of the new base which probably will take a week or two as well and all this depending on the weather... by the time you get everything to the build location... you then have to build it which would also be weather permitting.

Breaking it down into three jobs makes a lot of sense... will be interesting to see how they break it down in terms of loads... it is supposed to be modular so I suspect the centre module first and then the outer modules broken into two separate loads.

Their existing facilities are not terrible AFAIK... these will just be a lot better.

The new Vostok station complex will provide comfortable work for scientists in Antarctica

Four transport ships with modules of the new Vostok station complex reached Antarctica and began unloading. The complex, consisting of 133 modules, as well as fuel and equipment, were delivered to Antarctica by the Mys Dezhneva, Yaroslav the Wise, Kapitan Khlebnikov and Andrey Osipov vessels.

After unloading, the complex will be moved to Vostok station by sledge-caterpillar trips, where it will slowly gather. It takes four years to move the entire complex and assemble, since work can be carried out in a favorable season, and this is the period of December-February in Antarctica, the rest of the time it is impossible to carry out work.

After assembly, the complex will replace the outdated 1957 assembly and allow scientists to conduct research in comfortable conditions. The station will stand on 36 pylons 3 meters high, which will allow it to remain uncovered for many years. All systems have double or triple redundancy, a two-year supply of fuel and products is provided.

The new Vostok station complex will provide comfortable work for scientists in Antarctica for 15 people for the winter and 35 people for the season.

It will be based one and a half thousand kilometers from the coast at an altitude of about 3500 meters above sea level. The complex consists of modules with a total area of ​​2,5 thousand square meters. Areas for housing and recreation of polar explorers, laboratory, power plant

- said the Minister of Natural Resources and Environment of Russia Alexander Kozlov.

https://en.topwar.ru/189885-novyj-kompleks-stancii-vostok-obespechit-komfortnuju-rabotu-uchenyh-v-uslovijah-antarktidy.html

Here is a nice footage for the George's entrance :



But in Russian only, sorry

ALAMO wrote:Here is a nice footage for the George's entrance :



But in Russian only, sorry

thats why there is a autotranslate option.

Ah, so the entire package has been delivered to the continent but it will take 4 years to complete the whole thing on site