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By Catriona Davies
On
the first day of her first job after university, when
most people would still be working out how to use the
photocopier, Gemma Clarke began designing the world's
largest toboggan.
Miss Clarke, 24, had to help create a building that rests
on skis to prevent it slipping into the Antarctic sea.
The problem was that the British Antarctic Survey base on
the Brunt Ice Shelf, the scientists' most remote and southerly
outpost, is in danger of crashing into the sea because of
the constantly shifting ice it is built on. Its predecessors
have all been buried under snow.
The brief given to Miss Clarke, a structural engineer,
and her colleagues was to build a replacement that would
survive.
Their solution was a building with hydraulic legs, allowing
it to lift itself above the snow, and skis instead of
foundations, allowing it to be towed to a different location
when it approached the edge of the ice shelf. It should
be moved once every 10 years.
Miss Clarke has just returned from a four-month trip
to Antarctica carrying out final tests before work on
the new base begins.
The new base, which like its predecessor will be used mainly
to study climate change, will be called Halley VI because
it is the sixth base to be built on the Brunt Ice Shelf
since 1957.
The first three Halley bases have fallen into the sea,
the fourth, long since abandoned, is buried deep under
the snow, and the fifth -the current base - is expected
to fall into the sea in the next 10 years.
The problem is that the ice shelf, which is attached
to the Antarctic mainland and is fed by glaciers, has
a natural movement pushing ice into the sea.
It is currently moving about 400 metres a year, but in
the past has moved a kilometre a year. Anything built
on it will move at the same rate.
Two years ago, the British Antarctic Survey launched
a contest to replace Halley V.
Last year, it announced that Miss Clarke's engineering
company, Faber Maunsell and Hugh Broughton Architects,
had won the contract.
In addition to the usual bedrooms, laboratories and store
rooms, it has a gym, sauna, games room, climbing wall
and a green house in which fresh fruit and vegetables
can be grown in nutrient-enriched water.
Unlike previous bases, which have been left in the snow
and ice after they have been abandoned, Halley VI will
be removed completely at the end of its life, leaving
minimal impact on the environment.
Miss Clarke began working on the designs on her first
day as an engineer at Faber Maunsell, based in St Albans,
Herts, and was chosen as the only structural engineer
to visit the site between last December and March.
While there she built a 60-ton full-scale prototype of
one pod of the new base and tested dragging it across
the ice shelf. The base will have to be delivered, part-built,
by ship and towed 37 miles across the ice.
Miss Clarke said: "We had been provided with a lot
of information for our design, but to see the environment
and see how the base works will help when we build it.
"I got involved in all the aspects of life on the
base and enjoyed being there.
"On my first day in the job 18 months ago I did
a study on the British Antarctic and have been working
on it ever since. I have worked on other projects, but
this has been the big continuing one.
"As soon as I started working on the project I thought
it was amazing. I had never dreamed I would get the chance
to go."
During her stay, Miss Clarke had to eat 4,000 calories
a day, twice the normal intake, because of the energy
required to keep warm at the summer temperatures of -15C
to -20C.
Four full-time chefs on the base cook for the 56 people
who spend the summer on the base, although only about
15 stay for the winter, when there is 24-hour darkness.
Work will begin on a prototype in Britain this autumn,
before the base is shipped to Antarctica next year. Erecting
it on site will take two years because there is only a
two-month window when the weather is good enough for work.
The base will be handed over to the British Antarctic
Survey in December 2009.
A spokesman for the British Antarctic Survey said: "We
are really excited about the new station. It was essential
that Gemma had on-site experience before the construction
period starts.
"We have a garage there built on skis, but there
has been nothing on the scale of a whole research station."
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Telegraph.co.uk
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