Word: icecaps
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...principle of the Army's Greenland Research Program, with which Philippe has been working since 1953, is to use what it finds on the icecap. What it finds is snow, which gradually turns into solid ice about 15 ft. below the surface. Treated properly, both snow and ice are useful structural materials, easy to excavate and excellent insulators. They melt when exposed to heat, and deform slowly from their own weight, but the engineers have learned to minimize these failings...
...Base. During the coming winter, the first under-ice base will get a thorough test. Named "Fist Clench" (officially Site 2), it is high on the icecap, 200 miles east of the Air Force base at Thule...
Putting the buildings under the ice, the Army figures, will save an enormous amount of fuel, which accounts for three-quarters of the cargo carried to an Arctic base. This alone is a big advantage, but to have military value, any installation on the icecap needs good supply routes to the outside world. Airlift is too expensive and dangerous, and weather on the icecap is often too rough for surface transport. So the engineers are putting roads under the ice too. With a Peters plow they dig a long trench 20 ft. deep. They roof it temporarily with curved, corrugated...
...goal of all this research is active military use of the Greenland icecap, whose strategic position dominates most of the U.S., Europe and the U.S.S.R. Major air bases on the ice are not likely, and in any case, the Army is not much concerned with air bases. More likely it is interested in icecap missile bases, which could be ideal places to station giant rockets in ready-to-go position. Temperature and humidity would be low and constant, deep under the ice, and this is good for delicate mechanism. Under-ice supply routes would lead invisibly in from the coast...
...seafaring family, quit medical school for a job at sea, sailed as a stoker, got his first glimpse of Greenland at 20. He returned thereafter with various expeditions, soon learned to talk, live, love like an Eskimo. In 1912 Freuchen and his friend Knud Rasmussen crossed the north Greenland icecap. Childlike in his daring, steel-girded in his endurance, he once (1923) hammered off the frozen toes of his left foot, hopped actively on a peg leg after a subsequent amputation. With his face also frozen, Freuchen grew a full red beard, only shaved briefly to be less recognizable when...