David Whelihan on Arctic Research Challenges

Transcript

There is a ticking clock, right? It's really how long can you be out there? What makes it sort of gratifying, though, is that it is so unique. Everything is a challenge. And, you know, I like challenges. That's why I'm an engineer. Right? It takes everything we do and it it bumps it up a notch. It makes it so that you really have to think everything through before you go out there. But you still have to be able to improvise on the spot. What's interesting is just, you know, the desolation of the environment and also the engineering to make something that survives there is, to me, fascinating. It's not just about the technology. In fact, when we have placed stuff up there, a lot of the technology was off the shelf, but getting it to a point where it could survive took a lot of thought. It's a unique environment with unique things to measure. We were measuring ice cracking, you know? Well, you can only do that in a place with lots of ice. The ice is thick. It's dynamic. It's fascinating. It's always moving. How do you solve that problem? If you want to build something, build a, a set of sensors and they have to be in a triangle, which is what we did last time we were there. How do you do that when the entire ice floe is moving? Well, you can't use GPS, so you have to come up with alternate methods. It's an environment we really can't ignore. It's not just always going to be locked in with ice and oh forget it, we can't get there anyway. In fact, lots of people and nations are starting to go up there. And we have over a thousand miles of U.S. coastline in the Arctic Circle. It is changing. It is not static. The sea ice is decreasing, but the entire region is, is really experiencing some interesting changes that we need to understand in order to understand how those are going to affect, the parts of our country that are up there and our economic and strategic interests.