Antarctica Traffic Control.

[The Companyman]

What has the future of Antarctica became? Is it a giant parking lot, or just a universal trafficing station with a dish over one half its size burried under the ice? Does it even have ice anymore?

Is it now too over populated like the future of Earth might be? Or was it just a paid homage to the 50's classic The Thing from Another World?

[SM]

It's the only landmass that has decent 24/7 line of sight (without using relays) for any incoming and outgoing ships that are riding the solar ecliptic.  Which would put traffic control in Palmer Land (more Thing homage... ooooweeeeeoooo - nevermind the TFAW was set in the Arctic and there was no one called Palmer until Carpenters film, which was based on Who Goes There? which WAS set in the Antarctic - ahem) or Marie Byrd to compensate for axial tilt.  I think.

Beyond that I don't think it's much different to now.

EDIT - I don't think the 'compensation for axial tilt locations' are correct after all that guff.  They're too far north.  Unless they have different seasonal facilities

[deezelboy]

Adding to SM's answer:

The Nostromo's coming in from Zeta 2 Reticuli, which is visible from Earth's Southern Hemisphere.  In order to send a message to Earth, they would have to be sending it to the Southern Hemisphere (the Northern Hemisphere being blocked by Earth's mass).

As the Earth rotates, a central receiving station would need to be right at the centre of the Earth's rotation - the North and South axial poles.  This is so that any ships coming in from Southern or Northern hemispheres would be able to contact the station 24 hours a day, rather than the 12 hours that the traffic control is facing the incoming ship.

As a result, Antarctica Traffic Control would be situated bang on where the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station currently is. 

I see it as more a question of practicality (and Scott/O'Bannon's leaning towards the realistic end of the SF spectrum) than a homage to Campbell.

I dunno how the future goes in Alien, but in this world, Arctic Traffic Control would have to be on a tethered, floating platform.  Good likelihood of an ice free Arctic this summer.

SM - you still in to the whole astrocartography thing?  If so, I might have a treat for you in a few days time.

[The Companyman]

Fascinating replies.

[Tryfan915]

Good likelihood of an ice free Arctic this summer.

Isn't that excessively pessimistic, deez, even for you. 

Not this year, surely? 

[deezelboy]

Sorry - it's happening much faster than anybody even dared to think, even myself. 

Here's the good news: this summer's Arctic ice melt means an early start to the Hudson Bay shipping season.

Forecasts show Coast Guard icebreakers will no longer be necessary for shipping to Churchill after July 16.

That's 15 days earlier than the average ice-free shipping date of July 31, which means re-supply barges should able to reach communities in Nunavut's Kivalliq and Kitikmeot regions that much earlier.

But the down side to the retreat of the Arctic's thin ice cover is a 50-50 chance that the North Pole will become ice-free this September - for the first time in more than 100,000 years.


http://www.nunatsiaq.com/archives/2008/805/80523/news/climate/80523_1219.html

Last year Lewis Gordon Pugh  became the first human being to take a swim in the North Pole.  (Link).

Everything's happening too fast.

[Tryfan915]

Oh shit. 

[InspectorDC]

Color me ignorant, but will the lack of ice have any effect on the magnetic poles?

[deezelboy]

Nah, AFAIK it's entirely conincidental that the magnetic poles lie under the ice caps at the moment. 

[BlackWatch]

There's some current research going around that proposes our climactic changes rely heavily on solar activity (sun spots, solar storms, etc) and that the Earth would actually cool significantly during one of these solar cycles offsetting the effects of man made global warming. However, once the activity on the sun changed back to the opposite end of the spectrum (can't remember if high solar activity = warmer climate or cooler climate, but anyway) then the climate of Earth would once again heat up, and if we haven't made sufficient changes to the way we pollute the planet, would experience global warming far beyond anything predicted so far.

I probably haven't explained it very well, but there's actually a lot of research behind this, and from what I remember sounds reasonable.

[SM]

SM - you still in to the whole astrocartography thing?  If so, I might have a treat for you in a few days time.

Please.

The Nostromo's coming in from Zeta 2 Reticuli, which is visible from Earth's Southern Hemisphere.  In order to send a message to Earth, they would have to be sending it to the Southern Hemisphere (the Northern Hemisphere being blocked by Earth's mass).

Except they didn't know where they were when Ripley contacted traffic control.

However, if, as suspected, Thedus is that planet they found orbiting Epsilon Reticuli - that's also a southern hemisphere star so it still works. 

[deezelboy]

I stand corrected! 

There's some current research going around that proposes our climactic changes rely heavily on solar activity (sun spots, solar storms, etc) and that the Earth would actually cool significantly during one of these solar cycles offsetting the effects of man made global warming.

Yeah, the sun goes through a regular 11-year sunspot cycle, causing a +/- 0.1C global temperature change for the Earth.  The sun's currently at its minimum (-0.1C), and will rise to its maximum output in 2012(+0.1C).  So it's really quite worrying!

Latest date suggests the Earth has risen in temperature by 0.6C over the last century.  25% of this is due to solar output, the rest's down to greenhouse gases. 

There are larger cycles - like the one that was partially responsible for the Little Ice Age in Europe around the 17th Century - and the really big ones that are partially responsible for the Ice Ages, but I think we'd be really lucky if one of these happened now (there's enough CO2 equivalent in our atmopshere now to rise global temperature to +3C or higher, and it'll take maybe a century to accomplish this, so if an Ice Age happens now we'd just see a return to 'normal' temperatures rather than what we'd expect to see in an Ice Age!)