Re: A test on US geography

Andrew Stephenson <ames@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> kfl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx "Keith F. Lynch" writes:
>> Robert Scott also brought ponies. That worked out spectacularly
>> poorly. He got hungry enough to eat a horse. So he did. But he
>> and all his men died horribly anyway. All to be the leader of the
>> second team to reach the most worthless real estate on the planet.

> ISTR (one of those TV documentaries on <portentous> the Conquest
> Of The South Pole </portentous> ) that one reason his rivals (the
> Norwegians?) beat him to the SP was that they were ready to make
> brutally objective decisions: they knew food and effort would be
> two huge problems, so they took dogs (to tow sledges and relieve
> the humans of the effort) which were eaten, once not needed. An
> extra benefit of dogs was they were Proven Technology for arctic
> (used as a generic adjective) conditions. No horsing about IOW.

Robert Scott also brought dogs. And tractors. Of the three, the
tractors worked worst, and the dogs worked best.

What was different about Amundsen was that he *planned* to eat the
dogs, rather than doing it as a desperation measure. Everything went
according to plan, so the expedition wasn't very interesting. So they
were first to the pole. Yawn.

The British history of polar exploration makes much better stories,
for much the same reason that people like to hear about SF cons where
something went horribly wrong rather than ones where everything went
smoothly.

Who can forget the Franklin expedition, which got their ship frozen
in the ice for several *years*. And after they ran out of food,
they proceeded to set out to march two thousand miles, hauling their
library and their cast-iron oven uphill and downhill across hummocky
ice, while refusing to dress warmly or to eat the foods favored by
Eskimos. Amazingly, some of them survived for nearly ten miles
before falling over dead.

Then there was the Shackleton expedition where they returned to
the antarctic coast a few days too late, and saw their ship on the
horizon, sailing away. There were enough supplies to last a year or
two, but no ship was likely to return by then. So what did they do?
They set fire to all their supplies, to attract the attention of the
ship! And it worked, too. They don't make them like that anymore.
And it's a good thing, too.

A later Shackleton expedition was so arduous that men were relieved.
when they finally got to leave the antarctic for a relaxing time in
WWI trench warfare instead.

But has anyone ever crossed the andes by frog?

I wonder if space exploration will ever have similar stories.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
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