A recent book by architectural writer Ruth Slavid,
Ice Station: The Creation of Halley VI - Britain's Pioneering Antarctic Research Station, highlights the features of this habitat in a very inhospitable area of our globe. The Amazon book summary states:
For more than fifty years, Halley Research Station—located on the Brunt
Ice Shelf in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea—has collected a continuous stream
of meteorological and atmospheric data critical to our understanding of
polar atmospheric chemistry, rising sea levels, and the depletion of the
ozone layer. Since the station’s establishment in 1956, there have
been six Halley stations, each designed to withstand the difficult
climatic conditions. The first four stations were crushed by snow. The
fifth featured a steel platform, allowing it to rise above snow cover,
but it, too, had to be abandoned when it moved too far from the
mainland, making its habitation precarious.
Ms. Slavid wrote about this station in July 2010 in The Architectural Review, pointing out the harsh living conditions:
Temperatures regularly plummet to below -50˚C, winds can reach over 100mph and nearly a third of the year is spent in total darkness. Each year the ice shelf moves 700m and over a metre of snowfall accumulates on its surface, gradually entombing and crushing built structures.
Halley VI was completed in 2012 and will hopefully stand for many more years. But does it offer a model for the cold surface of Mars? I would imagine it's lessons are more about isolation than construction. For instance, radiation exposure, as well as the absence of water and breathable air, would the bigger concern on Mars. That said, the ice station shows humans are very adaptable to new locations and challenges. Something we will certainly need for Mars.
