[vannrox]

Well, this article certainly hit me blindside!

[Thane_Banquo]

Your tax dollars at work.

Forget defending our nation. Forget paying off our debt. Forget returning money to the people who earned it. We're going to build a road from nowhere to nowhere.

[Corin Stormhands]

In related news Cracker Barrel announced the location of their newest restaurant...

[Iscool]

What a blatant waste of my money....

[davisfh]

"Well, this article certainly hit me blindside! "

Yes. Me too. But it does make scientific sense to have that sort of access and communications to the south pole. Good post. Thanks.

[Freeper 007]

Obviously this is where the Bush administration holds it's negotiations with the secret alien base. They must be stepping up the time table to take over the Earth since they are buliding a road to get back and forth more easily.

/Tinfoil...Sarcasm...light-hearted joking.....


: )

[HIDEK6]

I think this is one of the permissable uses of government, to fund basic research.

With no commercial incentive to explore the Antarctic wilderness, government is properly used to do this, as it was to begin space travel.

It sure beats pissing away the money on some welfare scheme.

[HarryDunne]

Ice Cube is expected to generate 20 gigabytes of data a day when it is completed in about five years' time.

[avg_freeper]

Wasn't there something wacky going on at the South Pole last year as reported on FreeRepublic?

I seem to recollect Raytheon / DARPA doing lots of <spookyvoice> mysterious </spookyvoice> research and construction down there. Scientists going wacky and having to be air lifted out. Tin-foil stuff.

[BaBaStooey]

pave paradise, put up a parking lot bump!

[onedoug]

Pave it. Pave it all!

[ChicagoRepublican]

We're going to step up the development of missions in the Antarctic, and Alaska. In a few years NASA will set up training bases, and we'll attempt to build bases completely out of robot probes. With humans landing on Mars in a decade or so we'll need the practice. After all the first landing will set up a permanent base up. The United States is truly moving humanity into a glorious path civilizations thousands of years from now will look up to.

[Junior]

I wonder how long it will be before the first Stuckey's is built.

[pabianice]

So much for the cover story. My bet is that it will have a military application.

[mvpel]

They need a nuclear reactor down there, that way they wouldn't have to lug so much fuel down there. http://www.atomicengines.com/

[Peter Zimbelman]

Am I the only one to see the "biddness" potential of a 1600km downhill run? Some places would be flat (ice skating and hocky) while the medium slope for bobsleding and the steep roadSIDE for skiing. How about a 62 mile ski run?

[lavaroise]

I can see a great place to incarcerate muslim terrorists and their liberal friends away from attention.

[johnny7]

Could be a route above Lake Vostok... largest underwater lake on the continent.

3 miles below the ice, Lake Vostok simmers under a canopy of methane.

As large as Lake Ontario, Vostok remains warm from deep, fissures in the Atlantic rift.

It's been sealed in ice for 5-10 million years.