AIMS

I have been back in Colorado for a little over a month. The combination of recovery, the holidays, and now a run of deadlines at work has made it an eventful last month. One of the items I alluded to a few times throughout the field season was the rebuild of McMurdo Station. Officially, it is referred to as AIMS, the Antarctic Infrastructure Modernization for Science project.

McMurdo Station was opened at the primary base in Antarctica for the United States in February 1956. McMurdo was built to be the center of US operations for the International Geophysical Year (1957-58), which is the start of the modern era of Antarctica scientific research. McMurdo Station was built by the US Navy and the Navy continued to provide the support and logistics for US science in Antarctica through the 1980s under the codename Operation Deep Freeze. Because of the long history with the Navy, McMurdo has a strong influence of the Navy throughout. For example, the cafeteria is referred to as The Galley, as it would be called on a ship. Some of the heavy equipment machinery is still stamped "Property of the US Navy". Starting in the 1980s, more and more Navy supported functions were progressively turned over to the civilian contractor. This continued through the late 1990s with one of the last major functions being the helicopter support being transferred to a civilian contractor.

Aerial shot of McMurdo Station from 2015. Most of the buildings that make up the infrastucture are on the left side of the photo. Facilities, such as the Carp Shop and Vehicle Maintenance Facility are on the right side of the photo.

McMurdo Station is composed of numerous individual buildings. Most of the buildings are assigned a number (e.g. Building 155), except the numbers make no sense and are useless in helping you locate a building. In the early to mid-1990s there was a new science facility constructed, as well as several new dorms for lodging. Other than that wave of construction, most all of the buildings are decades old and it should come as no surprise that they are extremely energy inefficient. That is sort of big deal when the average winter temperature is around -15F and can get as cold as -50F. (The temperatures in McMurdo Station are frequently quite a bit warmer than they are even 10+ miles out onto the Ross Ice Shelf.) Most all of the buildings are disconnected from each other, which creates problems during Condition 1 weather when all personnel are confined to their current building, wherever that may be.

The Science Cargo (left) and Berg Field Center (right) are classic examples of key buildings in current McMurdo that are decades old, isolated, and extremely energy inefficient.

Building 155 is the large blue building in this photo. Bldg. 155 is one of the primary buildings in current McMurdo. Some of the functions include the galley, the store, rec offices and equipment, and a number of dorm rooms.

The Crary Science and Engineering Center is the home of all of the science labs and offices. It was built in the early 1990s and will continue to be a key facility in the future McMurdo Station.

In the early 2010s a Blue Ribbon Panel concluded that keeping up with the old and inefficient infrastructure would be prohibitively costly and would not provide adequate support for science. A modernization of the infrastructure was proposed with an effort to make it operationally efficient, increase the energy efficiency, and to provide an infrastructure to last over 30-50 years. Over the following several years, architectural firms and review panels put together plans to rebuild McMurdo Station. A little under a year ago it was announced that the McMurdo Station rebuild, AIMS, would happen. Over the next approximately 10 years, McMurdo Station will be a continual construction zone as a large percentage of the current, inefficient buildings will be removed to make way for the more energy efficient structures with a consolidated footprint of the new McMurdo.

The ongoing construction of the IT&C building, which is next to the Science Support Center.

AIMS is a big part of the current field season and will continue to be going forward. The new Information Technology and Communications (IT&C) building has been under construction since the winter. I'm not sure if the IT&C building is officially a part of AIMS because it has been in the plans for about 15 years. However, it represents one of the critical first steps. Many of the operations and resources currently being handled in other buildings, will be moved to the IT&C building allowing those other buildings to be removed. Several of the C-17 cargo flights during the cargo delays in November were used to deliver equipment and supplies for the IT&C construction. There are also a number of activities going on around town that are being done in preparation for the much larger construction to begin over the winter and continue into next field season. For the last five years I have stayed in the 203 dorms. The 203 dorms, the coffee house, the "gerbil" (cardio) gym, one of the bars, and a current IT building are scheduled to be demolished and removed, staring a couple months, to make way for the main building that will be the hub of the new McMurdo Station.

The 203 dorms and the four other buildings that will be removed to make way for the beginning of the construction of the new main building for the future McMurdo Station.

If interested, you can watch a video of AIMS showing aerial footage of the current McMurdo Station and an animation of the proposed new McMurdo.
https://future.usap.gov/aims-video/
I have been telling friends and colleagues that I don't think I'll ever see the final McMurdo Station. The first and most obvious reason is because I currently do not have any plans or funded projects for another field season. That could change in a year or so if a new project gets funded. However, given the general slowness that it takes to get things done, the 10 year plans for completion seems optimistic. I have left Antarctic field work twice before for over 10 years so I guess it is conceivable, and some people would say likely, that I will get to experience the new McMurdo Station, someday. We'll see.