With all the talk about global warming these days I have to ask: Is your real estate down there shrinking?

There is definite satellite photograph evidence about shrinking of the pack ice, and an acceleration of glacier flow rates leading to the ocean. A lot more studying needs to be done in the field to really quantify the rates.

When I went to the official South Pole web site and viewed the station through the Web cam, I noticed that the camera was pointing at a downward angle such that I couldn't see the top of the building. Was that just out of alignment?

No. We had to do that because at the beginning of the summer season the sun, instead of going up and over the horizon, basically circles the horizon at a certain elevation. In the early part of the year the sun is so low that if you point the camera straight at the building the sun would burn out the iris in the camera. Now that the sun is higher we've raised it so you might get a better view.

Time zones are usually determined by longitudinal distance from Greenwich. Since all longitudes converge at the pole, how do you decide what time it is there?

We could pick any time. It would be most convenient for us to go by Denver time, since that's where our headquarters is, but we use New Zealand standard time. All of our aid flights come from New Zealand and from a logistical standpoint it is much simpler to coordinate their flights with ours.

Describe your most interesting experience at the South Pole.

My first year down here we had a guy that ended up tearing a tendon in his knee. It wasn't a life threatening injury. but if we didn't repair it surgically he would not have been able to walk normally for the rest of his life. We ended up using this primitive videoconferencing system and we did remote telesurgery down here.

We had an orthopedic surgeon in the states watching and telling our doctor how to repair the tendon. The satellites weren't nearly as stable as they are now. We had several dropouts during the surgery and our guys were scrambling around at night to get the signal restored. We didn't want to leave this poor guy on the table with no doctor to guide us on what to do. But we restored the signal and [the doctor] finished successfully.

Do all communications go through the satellites?

Absolutely. The ice sheet that the station is on moves about 30 feet a year. We're 600 mile from the nearest base. Trying to lay cable on a moving target like that would be problematic.

What happens when those satellites finally stop working?

We expect to start using [other] satellites over the next few years because these are beyond their design lifetimes. Things are going to get worse for us before they get better, with a lot less bidrectional comminications. NSF is looking to lease time on some of the newer satellites. That will cost somewhere around US$130 a minute.

Data centers consume a lot of power. Is power an issue?

We have the capability to produce about a megawatt of power, but when we do that it really stretches our fuel supplies. It's tough to keep generators running down here. They don't tend to like the altitude and we do have brownouts on occasion.

The limiting factor to the amount of power we can produce is the amount of fuel we can store. Every bit of fuel has to be flown in here, and there's only so much we can do in a four-month summer season of flights. Once the station is shut up for the winter there are no flights for the next eight to nine months.