> > Brunnen-"was explaining to Stephen the other day how I missed out on a chance to go and work in Antarctica -- ANTARCTICA!!!! -- just because I didn't leave school at 15 and become a janitor. Blah."G
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> Interesting. I was just watching a Nature show on Antarctica's McMurdo Station out near the Ross Ice Shelf. Let's see, temperatures there can reach a balmy 8°C in the summer, and a bracing -50°C in the winter. There are five months of total darkness followed by five months of 24-hour sunshine. On-land wind speed occasionally reaches 100 knots (185 kph. The Katabatik wind can reach 400 kph, apparently). All that darkness/brightness, cold, hostile atmosphere, and isolation is ideal for training people for space missions. I bet highly introspective persons who can handle being alone are probably designed to rule in Space.
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> Wolfspirit

In Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, all of the people chosen to go to Mars were trained in Antartica, for the cold, and the isolation among other things.

ding"nearly got to go to Antarctica on a school trip"dong