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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for an older episode

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Speaker 1: of the show. This one originally published on uh not October,

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Speaker 1: What was I gonna say? This is August six. This

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Speaker 1: is our episode on pie Crete. This was a good one.

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Speaker 1: I think it generated a lot of listener mail, and

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Speaker 1: it was It was a load of fun. All right,

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Speaker 1: let's jump right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your

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Speaker 1: Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb

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Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're gonna be talking about

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Speaker 1: materials today. But this is a really fun materials episode

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Speaker 1: that will shatter like glass in our hands, or will it.

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Speaker 1: I guess it's a big question mark. Yeah, we're gonna

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Speaker 1: be talking a lot about ice, but a lot of

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Speaker 1: exciting stuff about ice. You're gonna learn some new things

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Speaker 1: about ice, I think, and you're also going to think,

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Speaker 1: uh a bit more deeply about what can be done

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Speaker 1: and also what perhaps cannot or should not be done

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Speaker 1: with ice. So if you've read any of George rr.

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Speaker 1: Martin's a Song of Ice and Fire. If you've read

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Speaker 1: that saga, or if you've viewed the TV adaptation Game

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Speaker 1: of Thrones, you're well acquainted with the Wall. But to

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Speaker 1: Reaquain everybody, this is a fantasy world that's based on

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Speaker 1: sort of a medieval European model, and in the Far

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Speaker 1: North you have this massive three hundred mile long, seven

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Speaker 1: hundred foot tall wall of ice that we're told has

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Speaker 1: stood there for eight thousand years as a barrier against

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Speaker 1: the people's and the supernatural horrors of the Far North. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's basically Hadrian's Wall, except much bigger and made of magic. Yes. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're told it was built by Brandon the Builder, with

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Speaker 1: the aid of giants and the magical children of the forest.

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Speaker 1: So we're definitely to understand that there is actual magic

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Speaker 1: in its construction. But also there's this idea that Brandon

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Speaker 1: was a master engineer, that he's in the vein of

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Speaker 1: these various engineering cultural heroes that you see in various cultures.

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Speaker 1: But of course, the real standout feature that makes this

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Speaker 1: wall unique is that it is built out of ice,

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Speaker 1: not out of stone, but out of frozen water. Yes,

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Speaker 1: it is a wall of ice. So um, you know,

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Speaker 1: ignoring the magic for a second here, it sounds like

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Speaker 1: a great plan, right. I mean humans have been known

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Speaker 1: to make shelters out of ice, glaciers and snow have

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Speaker 1: served as natural barriers to travel. So why wouldn't it

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Speaker 1: be ideal to construct this far northern barrier which is

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Speaker 1: going to be dealing with, you know, with far northern climate,

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Speaker 1: why not build it out of ice? Good question? Is

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Speaker 1: a block of ice not just as good as a

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Speaker 1: stone brick? Yeah? So I was looking around about this,

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Speaker 1: and fortunately there is already a great book out there

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Speaker 1: that dives into this very question. It's titled Fire, Ice

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Speaker 1: and Physics, The Science of Game of Thrones by Rebecca C. Thompson, PhD,

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Speaker 1: a physicist and author of the popular Spectra series of

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Speaker 1: comic books about physics. And I should also note that

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Speaker 1: Sean Carroll wrote the intro. Cool so she Uh. First

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Speaker 1: of all, this is just a really fun book if

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Speaker 1: you if if you're interested in Game of Thrones and science,

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Speaker 1: I encourage you to pick it up. But I love

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Speaker 1: books like this. Uh, you know, I have one about done,

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Speaker 1: I've been eyeing one about Star wars um. But she

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Speaker 1: goes through various aspects of the books and the world

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Speaker 1: of West Roast and breaks them about scientifically, and does

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Speaker 1: so in a very engaging, humorous but also um, you know,

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Speaker 1: wester Roast loving style. So so there's there's one section

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Speaker 1: in there where she tackles the wall and she points

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Speaker 1: out that ultimately this question would an ice wall work.

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Speaker 1: It's a lot more complex than you might think. So

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Speaker 1: for starters, there's not just one type of ice crystal.

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Speaker 1: There are seventeen types of crystalline ice that we oh off.

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Speaker 1: Plus there are three different types of a Morpheus ice

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Speaker 1: and three theoretically says there might be as many as

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Speaker 1: three hundred different phases of ice. Uh, you know, depending

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Speaker 1: on some of the research out there. Right. The different

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Speaker 1: phases of ice having different physical properties is something that's

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Speaker 1: been explored in science fiction for a while. Actually, it's

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Speaker 1: in the novel Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, which invents

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Speaker 1: a fictional phase of ice. There is no actual phase

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Speaker 1: of ice that does this, but there's a fictional phase

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Speaker 1: of ice called ice nine, which acts as a seed crystal,

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Speaker 1: and it is a it's a doomsday weapon because if

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Speaker 1: you drop a piece of this ice into regular water.

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Speaker 1: It will rearrange the structure of the regular water so

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Speaker 1: that it freezes at room temperature, basically killing earth. Oh,

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Speaker 1: you know, I've I've never read Cat's Cradle, but I

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Speaker 1: I remember now that you mentioned. I remember like reading

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Speaker 1: that on a summary or the back of the paperback

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Speaker 1: or something. Yeah. But but to clarify again, that's a

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Speaker 1: fictional phase of ice. There is no actual phase of

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Speaker 1: ice that does that that we know about. Yeah. The

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Speaker 1: phase of ice we're most familiar with is ice one H,

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Speaker 1: also known as ice phase one, and this is the

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Speaker 1: hexagonal crystal form of ordinary ice. And this is pretty

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Speaker 1: much all the ice you ever come into contact with.

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Speaker 1: And therefore we can assume that this is the same

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Speaker 1: ice that we encounter in the world of West Ros.

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Speaker 1: I think that's a safe assumption. Yeah, of course, you

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Speaker 1: might say, well, what if it's not. What if somehow

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Speaker 1: this is an alternate universe or a different planet where

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Speaker 1: another form of ice is the predominant phase. I'm not

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Speaker 1: sure if that's even a reasonable question to raise though. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: Thompson does a great overview of ice and the physical

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Speaker 1: properties of ice, and I do want to throw in

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Speaker 1: that she has an excellent bit where she weighs in

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Speaker 1: on whiskey stones. Okay, so Robert explained the concept of

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Speaker 1: a whiskey stone. Well, I do not I do not

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Speaker 1: own these, but I assume you do not either. But

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Speaker 1: I've heard of them. I guess I don't. I don't

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Speaker 1: know if I know anyone. I think I might know

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Speaker 1: one person who has them. But the idea is that

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Speaker 1: you you're such an afficionado of bourbon or whiskey, and

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Speaker 1: you that you don't want anything to dilute it. You

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Speaker 1: want it cold, but you don't want to put some

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Speaker 1: ice in there which will kill the drink but also melt.

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Speaker 1: So apparently these have been marketed before. The whiskey stones

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Speaker 1: are like our rocks that somebody sells you, rocks that

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Speaker 1: you keep in your freezer, and then when you want

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Speaker 1: to have a cold glass of brown alcohol, you put

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Speaker 1: the cold rock in there, and the rock, of course

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Speaker 1: will not melt and dilute your beverage. Now, if you

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Speaker 1: actually enjoy whiskey stones, no judgment at all, more power

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Speaker 1: to you. But I would like to point out just

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Speaker 1: real quickly that this is you can get into how

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Speaker 1: it might be a little bit misguided from a physics standpoint,

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Speaker 1: but it's also a little bit misguided, I think from

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Speaker 1: a culinary standpoint, because I mean, I think most people

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Speaker 1: believe that like whiskeys tend to kind of improve with

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Speaker 1: the addition of a small amount of water. So like

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Speaker 1: melting ice cools but also adds water to the drink,

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Speaker 1: And this is an important part of many spirit and

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Speaker 1: cocktail preparations. And this might be why if you've ever

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Speaker 1: tried to mix a cocktail that is supposed to be

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Speaker 1: shaken with ice, but then you make it without shaking

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Speaker 1: it with ice, it kind of tastes wrong. And that's

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Speaker 1: because one of the ingredients in this cocktail is actually water,

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Speaker 1: and you have left that important ingredient out by not

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Speaker 1: shaking it with ice that dilutes into the drink. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I've definitely experienced this making cocktails before, where I'll end

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Speaker 1: up for whatever reason, you know, due to whatever kind

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Speaker 1: of ice I have on hand, I'll end up with

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Speaker 1: a drink that doesn't taste perfect. But once the ice

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Speaker 1: has melted a little bit, it's a different experience totally.

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Speaker 1: And even with like a straight whiskey on on the rocks,

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Speaker 1: I mean that that's always been my experience of of that,

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Speaker 1: It's like the drink will change as the waking drinking

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Speaker 1: experience will change as the ice melt, which I think

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Speaker 1: is part of the experience. But then again, i'm i'm, i'm,

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Speaker 1: I'm ultimately a novice when it comes to the appreciation

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Speaker 1: of fine whiskeys. But Thompson also makes a physics point

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Speaker 1: about the whiskey stones. Right right, she writes the following quote,

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Speaker 1: The heat from the soda is used to melt the ice,

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Speaker 1: so the surrounding soda cools off. This is also why

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Speaker 1: whiskey stones are a total sham. Seriously, I can't stress

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Speaker 1: this enough. Don't buy whiskey stones. If you want to

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Speaker 1: keep your drink cold without watering it down, get yourself

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Speaker 1: some water filled plastic ice cubes. They're less stylish but

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Speaker 1: a more useful. Now she continues from here and get

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Speaker 1: some more detail. What basically her point is that the

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Speaker 1: whiskey stone will only take away enough energy to raise

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Speaker 1: its temperature to the whiskey temperature. An ice cube will

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Speaker 1: take the same energy plus the energy needed to break

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Speaker 1: the molecular bonds which melts the ice. Right That phase

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Speaker 1: transition takes energy the same way that boiling water takes energy, Like,

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Speaker 1: why does your pot of water boiling on the stove

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Speaker 1: not just keep increasing in temperature and until it's the

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Speaker 1: same temperature as like the heating element below it. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's because it takes enormous energy to turn that water

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Speaker 1: into steam, and that energy gets boiled off. Yeah. So anyway,

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Speaker 1: that that does directly relate to the building of a

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Speaker 1: giant wall made out of ice, But it was just

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Speaker 1: too interesting in her writing on it was just too

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Speaker 1: humorous to pass over. Well, let's get back to why

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Speaker 1: exactly it is that ice is not a good building material.

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Speaker 1: All right, Well, she points out that quote ice on

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Speaker 1: a large scale is basically ketch up. So yeah, so, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I sent a large scale is a non Newtonian fluid.

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Speaker 1: In an ice wall or a glacier, the pressure of

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Speaker 1: the structure's own weight causes it to creep, and this

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Speaker 1: would occur even in low temperatures prevented the ice from

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Speaker 1: ever really melting. Dislocation small cracks that cause ice crystals

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Speaker 1: to move over each other would cause the creep even

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Speaker 1: in a you know, a pretty stable, chilly environment. So

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Speaker 1: this would be in play concerning the wall, along with

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Speaker 1: temperature changes. Yeah, that's right, and creep actually is the

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Speaker 1: technical term there. It comes up in a paper by

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Speaker 1: a chemist that we're gonna look at later in the episode. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: she says that ultimately the wall all she said, the

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Speaker 1: wall would have probably been okay for like a year,

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Speaker 1: but over the course of thousands of years, it would

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Speaker 1: end up being just more of an ice dome or

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Speaker 1: a plateau, depending on the temperature, So it would be

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Speaker 1: far less of an obstacle to certainly intelligent beings looking

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Speaker 1: to invade the South. Good thing. It's magic then, But

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Speaker 1: but there's more. There's another huge issue and one that's

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Speaker 1: key to the rest of the episode here. Ice tends

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Speaker 1: to have a lot of defects in it due to

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Speaker 1: the way the ice crystals are organized, and this leads

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Speaker 1: to cracks, And of course cracks mean that the ice

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Speaker 1: can ultimately fail, right, It can ultimately lose its structural integrity.

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Speaker 1: And it's not just that the ice fails. All materials

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Speaker 1: can fail, and we have to understand how they fail

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Speaker 1: and what conditions cause them to fail. But with ice, quote,

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Speaker 1: there's no specific set of conditions that cause ice to fail. Rather,

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Speaker 1: it fails under a wide range of conditions. Yes. Another

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Speaker 1: way of putting this is that ice is structurally unpre addictable. Uh.

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Speaker 1: You take two blocks of ice that are the same size,

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Speaker 1: made of the same water, and one might fail trying

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Speaker 1: to hold up five pounds, while another one can hold

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Speaker 1: up twenty pounds. And that that kind of difference, that

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Speaker 1: variability is not a good characteristic of a building material.

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Speaker 1: You could almost argue, I think that predictability is more

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Speaker 1: important than strength when you're selecting a building material. Yes. Now,

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Speaker 1: Thompson does point out that there are ways to strengthen

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Speaker 1: the ice, There are ways to make it more dependable,

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Speaker 1: more durable. And the interesting thing is the weird things

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Speaker 1: that you do to ice. Uh. To do this we

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Speaker 1: find fantastic examples of of this. Not in a fantasy

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Speaker 1: world like a Game of Thrones. Uh. Instead we find

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Speaker 1: these examples in the equally or perhaps even more bizarre

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Speaker 1: world of our own real history. Right. This brings us

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Speaker 1: to the subject of the rest of today's episode, which

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Speaker 1: is going to be this fantastic frozen material real known

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Speaker 1: as pike crete or ice that's about as strong as concrete. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and and again, let me just say that if you're

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Speaker 1: familiar with with this material and it's it's usage and

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Speaker 1: uh in the project we're going to talk about. Then

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Speaker 1: you know you're in for an exciting time. But if

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Speaker 1: you haven't, just let me assure you that everything is

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Speaker 1: about to get far stranger than a giant wall of

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Speaker 1: ice made to keep undead invaders out. Right, We're more

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Speaker 1: in the realm of a giant tub of ice used

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Speaker 1: to bomb Nazis. But first we're gonna have to take

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Speaker 1: a quick break, but we'll be right back with more ice.

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Speaker 1: Thank Alright, we're back. So we're gonna be dealing with

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Speaker 1: the Second World War here, a truly global war that

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Speaker 1: worked kind of like a black hole just pulling in

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Speaker 1: I mean, first and foremost human lives, but also human

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Speaker 1: ingenuity and of course funds and resources as well. So

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Speaker 1: there was more than enough room in all of this

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Speaker 1: for the occasional hairbrained scheme to pick up a lot

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Speaker 1: of steam. And this is one of them. I want

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Speaker 1: to say, I'm not sure exactly how hairbrained it is,

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Speaker 1: Like in some ways it's hair brained, and in other

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Speaker 1: ways it's quite ingenious. It's the strange mixture of of

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Speaker 1: genuine insight and good ideas with proposals so outlandish that

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Speaker 1: they're laughable in their face. Yes, yeah, I I should rephrase.

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Speaker 1: I guess that there are better examples of purely hairbrained

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Speaker 1: schemes that were brought up during War two. This one.

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Speaker 1: I guess it's just more of an idea that this is.

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Speaker 1: This is a real outside the box idea and one

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Speaker 1: that at least for a while, seemed like it might

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Speaker 1: be the best solution to the problem given the resources

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Speaker 1: at hand and the weight of the circumstances. Right, So,

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Speaker 1: what was the problem that we're going to start with here, Well,

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Speaker 1: the basic problem was the Allied forces needed better aerial

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Speaker 1: coverage of the North Atlantic. Yeah. So to expand on this,

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Speaker 1: I want to refer to a paper that we're going

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Speaker 1: to be consulting extensively for the rest of this episode.

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Speaker 1: It's called a Description of the Iceberg Aircraft Carrier and

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Speaker 1: the Bearing of the mechanical properties of frozen wood Pulp

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Speaker 1: upon some problems of glacier flow. And this is a

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Speaker 1: report that was presented to a scientific organization called the

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Speaker 1: International Glaciological Society in nineteen forty six, and it was

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Speaker 1: written by a guy named Max Peruts. Now Max Peruts

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Speaker 1: lived from nineteen fourteen until two thousand two. He was

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Speaker 1: an Austrian born chemist and molecular biologist, and generally just

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Speaker 1: an extremely accomplished scientist. He won the nineteen sixty two

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Speaker 1: Nobel Prize for Chemistry, and this was for his work

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Speaker 1: on the structure of hemoglobin. But Peruts was really just

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Speaker 1: one of the great pioneers of molecular biology. I was

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Speaker 1: listening to an interview between Brian Cox and the molecular

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Speaker 1: biologist Vincy Rama Krishnan who was talking about Perutss work

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Speaker 1: explaining the structure of proteins, and Rama Krishnan says that

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Speaker 1: in many ways modern biology would be unthinkable without Peruts's contributions.

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Speaker 1: He he did some of the most important pioneering work

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Speaker 1: for the kinds of molecular biology that are you know,

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Speaker 1: ubiquitous throughout the biology research and biotech world today. But

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Speaker 1: before all this, Peruts was involved in the British war

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Speaker 1: effort during World War Two, and specifically he was working

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Speaker 1: with the ice based technology that we are discussing today,

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Speaker 1: and in this paper he gives a firsthand account of

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Speaker 1: the project and some scientific discoveries that came out of it.

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Speaker 1: So to to establish the problem. Peruts writes that in

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Speaker 1: the autumn of nineteen forty two, Allied leadership recognized that

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Speaker 1: their war effort was really suffering from a lack of

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Speaker 1: air power range, especially in response to German U boat

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Speaker 1: attacks in the Atlantic, and this was affecting the transport

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Speaker 1: of cargo across the Ocean between Great Britain and their

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Speaker 1: allies in North America. So there's a U boat threat

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Speaker 1: throughout the ocean. You never know if your your cargo

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Speaker 1: resupply ships are going to be attacked, and you could

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Speaker 1: defend them if you had better air coverage, But how

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Speaker 1: are you going to get planes all the way out

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Speaker 1: there in the middle of the Atlantic where the U

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Speaker 1: boats can attack. That's right, you come down to the

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Speaker 1: limits of aviation technology at that time. Yeah, and Peruts writes,

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Speaker 1: quote it had been a common experience that the carrier

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Speaker 1: based aircraft of the Allies were inferior in armament and

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Speaker 1: speed to the land based planes of the enemy. And

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Speaker 1: so what he's talking about was that there were aircraft

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Speaker 1: carriers that the Allies had during World War Two, but

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Speaker 1: these aircraft carriers at the time were relatively small, with

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Speaker 1: short runways and limited parking, and storage space. So the

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Speaker 1: kinds of planes that could take off from them tended

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Speaker 1: to have light armor and wings that would like collapse

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Speaker 1: and fold up to make them easier to store. The

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Speaker 1: kinds of planes that were better armored, more powerful, and

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Speaker 1: could do more damage. For example, I was reading an

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Speaker 1: article by PAULK. Hollands from two thousand two in the

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Speaker 1: magazine Cabinet about this project, and Collins mentioned spitfires and

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Speaker 1: bomber planes as examples of these more powerful planes. Uh,

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Speaker 1: they couldn't fit on or take off from aircraft carriers.

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Speaker 1: They had to be launched from the ground. And this

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Speaker 1: didn't only affect cargo transport and other operations in the Atlantic,

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Speaker 1: it also had implications for future ground invasions of access

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Speaker 1: occupied areas in say, continental Europe and in Asia. So

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Speaker 1: you know, given the existing limitations on aircraft carriers, if

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Speaker 1: you were to try to land on a distant shore,

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Speaker 1: your airpower inland would be limited until you could capture

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Speaker 1: or establish air fields there from which you could launch

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Speaker 1: these more powerful land based planes like spitfires and bombers

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Speaker 1: and so peruts, writes quote. It was only natural, therefore,

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Speaker 1: that the proposal for the apparently cheap construction of gigantic

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Speaker 1: aircraft carriers capable of opera rating land based aircraft thousands

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Speaker 1: of miles from their base was seriously considered. So so

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Speaker 1: that's the dilemma there, and they're trying to get more powerful,

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Speaker 1: bigger planes farther out into the ocean, farther from home, right,

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Speaker 1: and that that's a pretty tall order right there. But

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Speaker 1: then on top of that, now not only does it

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Speaker 1: have to be enormous and also inexpensive, it also would

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Speaker 1: really help if it were essentially torpedo proof, if all

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Speaker 1: these prowling U boats would be incapable of sinking it, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you don't want to load a ship up with all

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Speaker 1: of your most important, most expensive aircraft and then launch

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Speaker 1: it out into the ocean to be sunk by a

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Speaker 1: U boat. Yeah. So you know, in defensive of everything

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Speaker 1: that comes after this, that is a that's a tall

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Speaker 1: order that really invites outside the box thinking, right, And

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Speaker 1: fortunately we had an outside the box thinker come onto

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Speaker 1: the scene. Yes, enter English journalist turned inventor Jeffrey Pike,

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Speaker 1: who of through nineteen Yeah, and so Paul Collins, writing

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Speaker 1: for that Cabinet magazine article I mentioned from two thousand two.

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Speaker 1: He quotes The Times of London calling Pike quote one

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Speaker 1: of the most original, if unrecognized figures of the present century.

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Speaker 1: And I just want to read collins brief summary of

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Speaker 1: Pike's early life quote. His career began in nineteen fourteen, when,

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Speaker 1: as a teenager at Cambridge University, he landed a foreign

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Speaker 1: correspondent job by using a false passport to sneak into

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Speaker 1: wartime Germany. After getting tossed into a concentration camp, he

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Speaker 1: fled the country in a daring daytime escape. In the

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, he virtually created progressive elementary education in Great Britain,

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Speaker 1: all for the sake of his own son's education. Pike

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Speaker 1: financed his own school by brilliantly writing futures markets and

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Speaker 1: controlling a quarter of the world's supply of ten employ

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Speaker 1: which brought him to financial ruin in nineteen twenty nine.

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Speaker 1: He lived on as an eccentric hermit, publishing prescient warnings

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Speaker 1: of Nazism and proposing one of the first media watchdogs.

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Speaker 1: After the war, his freelance genius helped propel the creation

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Speaker 1: of the National Health Service. That's quite a resume. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: foreign journalists escaped enemy capture. Uh we weird investment portfolio

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Speaker 1: huge Indo ten loses it all eccentric hermit, but then

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Speaker 1: pioneers uh progressive political causes, and Pike was known for

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Speaker 1: having some extremely weird, you could say, outside the box ideas.

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Speaker 1: One that I was just briefly reading about was that

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Speaker 1: in ninety three, as a proposal for for the war effort,

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Speaker 1: Jeffrey Pike got pipe fever and he started thinking, we

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Speaker 1: need more pipes. We can transport things and people through pipes,

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Speaker 1: and that's way more efficient than trying to transport them

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Speaker 1: just straightforwardly over land and vehicles and all that. So

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Speaker 1: he proposed the idea of transporting goods and soldiers like

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Speaker 1: from ship at shore too deep inside enemy territory through pipes.

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Speaker 1: And obviously this would have some drawbacks, especially when you're

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Speaker 1: trying to ship people through pipes. But in order to

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Speaker 1: combat claustrophobia and suffocation, the troops that were sent through

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Speaker 1: the pipe could be supplied with barbiturates and oxygen tanks. Wow.

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Speaker 1: Um yeah, that's quite a quite an alternate reality to

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Speaker 1: try and envision, one in which you would have basically

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Speaker 1: like hot and cold running um armed reinforcements. Right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So during World War Two, the British military established an

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Speaker 1: office known as Combined Operations, and this was to coordinate

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Speaker 1: actions that required the cooperation of multiple branches of the

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Speaker 1: armed forces, so if you needed to combine naval and

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Speaker 1: air forces or army, etcetera. And in ninety two the

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Speaker 1: chief of Combined Operations was this guy named Lord Lewis

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Speaker 1: mount Batton. Lord mountain Batton was a big figure in

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Speaker 1: in twentieth century British history. He's sort of all over

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Speaker 1: the place. But Collins writes that Pike resented himself to

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Speaker 1: mount Batton's Office of Combined Operations and he basically told him, hey,

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Speaker 1: you need to hire me quote, because I'm a man

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Speaker 1: who thinks. And so Pike was thinking, and he came

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Speaker 1: up with an idea a response to this problem of

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Speaker 1: limited air power range in the Atlantic and elsewhere. That's

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Speaker 1: right in October of Pike said, Hey, why don't we

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Speaker 1: get an iceberg, hollow it out and use that as

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Speaker 1: a floating base, because this would it would float, it

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Speaker 1: would it would be torpedo proof, and it would it

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Speaker 1: would certainly last long enough for us to then establish

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Speaker 1: better land bases, Right, So the idea was that a

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Speaker 1: platform capable of launching bigger, heavier planes like bombers and

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Speaker 1: spitfires could be made out of ice, and and there

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Speaker 1: were two approaches to this actually, So one is the

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Speaker 1: naturalistic approach, where you just take an existing iceberg and

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Speaker 1: you kind of plane it down and flatten the surface

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Speaker 1: and create a runway. The other would be to create

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Speaker 1: from scratch a giant barge made of ice. But in general,

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Speaker 1: Pike saw a lot of potential for ice based technology

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Speaker 1: since he claimed that manufacturing ice, even if you're gonna

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Speaker 1: make it yourself, needed only one percent of the energy

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Speaker 1: required to create the same amount of steel, right, which

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Speaker 1: which I mean that's playing into the energy demands. But

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Speaker 1: also just in general, you have a global war going on,

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Speaker 1: your resources like like steel and even would like those

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Speaker 1: are pretty much all already being contested, you know, like

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Speaker 1: those are needed by to to build airplanes, to to

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Speaker 1: build traditional ships, uh, munitions, et cetera. So if you

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Speaker 1: have a solution that requires less energy and none of

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Speaker 1: the steel that it needs to be used by all

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Speaker 1: these other parts of the war, uh, then you have

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Speaker 1: a potential, um potentially amazing solution on your hands. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it would be hugely advantageous if you could make something

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Speaker 1: like this work. And as you already mentioned, ice naturally floats,

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Speaker 1: just automatically floats in water, and this is because it's

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Speaker 1: less than liquid water I think about nine percent less dents. Also,

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Speaker 1: ice is fairly resistant to explosives. They had observed this

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Speaker 1: just through the fact that icebergs that already existed were

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Speaker 1: surprisingly resilient against shelling by ships. Yeah. I saw that

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Speaker 1: tid that brought up as well, and I didn't I

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Speaker 1: didn't have time to explore further. But of course that

429
00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:23,240
Speaker 1: just illustrates that warships are firing, or at least we're

430
00:24:23,280 --> 00:24:26,600
Speaker 1: firing at icebergs just for fun or for before the

431
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:29,359
Speaker 1: target target practice if I do well. Yeah, I wonder

432
00:24:29,440 --> 00:24:32,359
Speaker 1: what the reason was. Why were they just trying it out?

433
00:24:33,280 --> 00:24:35,320
Speaker 1: Maybe the iceberg was in the form of a lewd

434
00:24:35,440 --> 00:24:39,800
Speaker 1: gesture they got kind of offended. Maybe so. And by

435
00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:42,400
Speaker 1: the way, about the the idea of being resistant to explosives,

436
00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:44,119
Speaker 1: I believe we're going to come back around to some

437
00:24:44,280 --> 00:24:47,840
Speaker 1: more specific stats on this later. Ice was believed to

438
00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:50,679
Speaker 1: be relatively resistant to explosives at the time, but it

439
00:24:50,720 --> 00:24:53,520
Speaker 1: turns out I think that it's it's more variable than that.

440
00:24:54,160 --> 00:24:56,920
Speaker 1: Uh well, one quick thing about ice floating. I have

441
00:24:57,359 --> 00:25:00,639
Speaker 1: Thompson briefly mentions this like this being a a key

442
00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:05,680
Speaker 1: attribute of ice because imagine what the shape of life

443
00:25:05,680 --> 00:25:10,679
Speaker 1: on Earth if ice was heavier than liquid water, If

444
00:25:10,720 --> 00:25:13,720
Speaker 1: if ice formed at the bottom of the sea, that

445
00:25:13,760 --> 00:25:17,920
Speaker 1: would make that would just be a disastrous blow to

446
00:25:17,400 --> 00:25:20,680
Speaker 1: um to life as we know it. Like imagine how

447
00:25:20,800 --> 00:25:23,439
Speaker 1: organisms would would function or would fail to function in

448
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:26,600
Speaker 1: such an environment. Well, yeah, I've read about this before.

449
00:25:26,720 --> 00:25:29,399
Speaker 1: Also that the fact that ice floats on water and

450
00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:32,159
Speaker 1: means that ice forms over the top of say bodies

451
00:25:32,160 --> 00:25:34,639
Speaker 1: of fresh water that freeze in the in the winter,

452
00:25:35,200 --> 00:25:36,920
Speaker 1: or even you know, I guess over at the polar

453
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:41,600
Speaker 1: ice caps. That protects the water below from continuous freezing

454
00:25:41,640 --> 00:25:44,400
Speaker 1: and exposure to the elements above. So the fact that

455
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:47,960
Speaker 1: that it floats allows life to continue in water in

456
00:25:48,080 --> 00:25:51,080
Speaker 1: very cold places. And also it means you might be

457
00:25:51,119 --> 00:25:55,320
Speaker 1: able to make a giant aircraft carrier out of it, exactly. So,

458
00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:59,000
Speaker 1: so this is something from Collins here. Uh, Pike's dream

459
00:25:59,119 --> 00:26:03,240
Speaker 1: became this hypothetical ice based ship that would be known

460
00:26:03,280 --> 00:26:06,000
Speaker 1: as the HMS Havoc Cook. So I just want to

461
00:26:06,040 --> 00:26:08,360
Speaker 1: read from Collins a little bit on the size. Here.

462
00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:12,600
Speaker 1: It would be constructed from quote forty foot blocks of ice.

463
00:26:13,119 --> 00:26:16,600
Speaker 1: His havocook would be two thousand feet long, three hundred

464
00:26:16,600 --> 00:26:20,960
Speaker 1: feet wide, with walls forty ft thick. Its interior would

465
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:25,680
Speaker 1: easily accommodate two hundred spitfires. The largest ship then afloat

466
00:26:25,760 --> 00:26:28,760
Speaker 1: was the HMS Queen Mary, which weighed in at eighty

467
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:32,920
Speaker 1: six thousand tons. The havocook would weigh two million tons.

468
00:26:34,119 --> 00:26:37,960
Speaker 1: That's a big boat. And uh and strangely enough, it

469
00:26:38,119 --> 00:26:41,520
Speaker 1: looks like leadership kind of went for it. Now, there

470
00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:44,640
Speaker 1: would be some obvious problems with a boat that size. Uh.

471
00:26:45,040 --> 00:26:46,560
Speaker 1: I mean, we can get into more of them as

472
00:26:46,600 --> 00:26:48,480
Speaker 1: we go on. One of them that was mentioned in

473
00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: Collins article was that, of course you'd have a problem

474
00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:55,400
Speaker 1: with a boat like this, uh, you know, getting advantage

475
00:26:55,440 --> 00:26:57,560
Speaker 1: sneaking up on anything. It would probably be kind of

476
00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:01,680
Speaker 1: slow moving, hard to steep year all of that stuff.

477
00:27:02,240 --> 00:27:05,640
Speaker 1: But in response to that idea, apparently Pike said, quote,

478
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:10,040
Speaker 1: surprise can be obtained from permanence as well as suddenness.

479
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:14,000
Speaker 1: I like that. I'm not sure I fully get that,

480
00:27:14,040 --> 00:27:16,879
Speaker 1: but okay, I'm like halfway there. So anyway, this idea

481
00:27:17,119 --> 00:27:20,200
Speaker 1: definitely made it up the chain. Winston Churchill I thought

482
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:24,119
Speaker 1: it sounded promising, and according to Peruts in that forty

483
00:27:24,160 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 1: six paper that we referenced earlier, Churchill thought that while

484
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:30,959
Speaker 1: it should be a high priority, he also thought that

485
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:34,040
Speaker 1: they should quote let nature do the work. Uh So

486
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:37,200
Speaker 1: in other words, uh, let's maybe not build something out

487
00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:39,720
Speaker 1: of ice. Let's see what we can do. Uh we

488
00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:42,560
Speaker 1: can do making taking advantage of what's already there. And

489
00:27:42,560 --> 00:27:46,280
Speaker 1: in this this sounds like a like classic boss thinking,

490
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:49,399
Speaker 1: this is a great idea, but let's let's go towards

491
00:27:49,400 --> 00:27:51,200
Speaker 1: the cheap version of the idea. I like that you

492
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:53,679
Speaker 1: brought me the expensive version too, but I really like

493
00:27:53,760 --> 00:27:57,040
Speaker 1: that cheap version. Yeah, exactly, Let nature do the work.

494
00:27:57,040 --> 00:27:59,040
Speaker 1: And I've got a great story about Churchill coming up

495
00:27:59,040 --> 00:28:02,479
Speaker 1: in a minute. But just to expand on on Pike's thinking,

496
00:28:02,600 --> 00:28:05,200
Speaker 1: this is a This is a great section from Collins

497
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:09,600
Speaker 1: quote in battle, the ice ships could put their onboard

498
00:28:09,680 --> 00:28:14,399
Speaker 1: refrigeration systems to good use by spraying super cooled water

499
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:18,800
Speaker 1: enemy ships icing their hatches shut, clogging their guns, and

500
00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:22,800
Speaker 1: freezing halfless sailors to death. Oh Man, in this Pike

501
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:26,639
Speaker 1: essentially sounds like Mr. Freeze from the sixties Batman TV show.

502
00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:29,199
Speaker 1: Is it more from the sixties Batman or from Batman

503
00:28:29,240 --> 00:28:33,400
Speaker 1: the animated series. I would say it sounds it's either

504
00:28:33,440 --> 00:28:36,680
Speaker 1: the Arnold Schwartzenegger Mr. Freeze or the the TV show

505
00:28:36,880 --> 00:28:41,240
Speaker 1: Mr Freeze. I feel like animated. Um. Mr Freeze was like,

506
00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:45,720
Speaker 1: uh was the ideal balance like that that's my Mr Freeze,

507
00:28:45,760 --> 00:28:49,600
Speaker 1: that's Freez. Yeah, that that was solid. Whereas if you're

508
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:51,920
Speaker 1: doing if you're talking about something ridiculous, you gotta go

509
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:54,800
Speaker 1: sixties or you gotta go Arnold. So Pike presents his

510
00:28:54,880 --> 00:28:58,880
Speaker 1: idea for a two million ton aircraft carrier made out

511
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:04,760
Speaker 1: of ice, and in Churchill is like ice try, you know,

512
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:08,280
Speaker 1: the one of the just crazy things about this. First

513
00:29:08,280 --> 00:29:10,000
Speaker 1: of all, this is not something that just came out,

514
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:12,840
Speaker 1: like clearly this is this idea has been public knowledge

515
00:29:12,880 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 1: since uh uh you know at least since since the

516
00:29:15,440 --> 00:29:18,240
Speaker 1: you know, the nineteen forties, right since forty six when

517
00:29:18,240 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 1: that paper came out. And yet I feel like any

518
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:26,240
Speaker 1: like weird alternate history book or you know that say

519
00:29:26,240 --> 00:29:29,640
Speaker 1: if it's like, um, you know, the Golden Compass or

520
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:34,000
Speaker 1: uh something by Alan Moore. For instance, if someone had said, Oh,

521
00:29:34,160 --> 00:29:36,960
Speaker 1: I really like this alternate version of reality you've got

522
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:38,920
Speaker 1: go in here, but why don't you throw in a

523
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:42,640
Speaker 1: giant aircraft carrier made out of ice that also shoots

524
00:29:42,640 --> 00:29:45,520
Speaker 1: freezing water at other ships. Put that in there, they

525
00:29:45,560 --> 00:29:48,080
Speaker 1: would say, Now, that's just too far, that's just too silly.

526
00:29:48,080 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not trying to create a farce here.

527
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:53,600
Speaker 1: That's gonna be in some Kevin Costner movie of the future.

528
00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:58,480
Speaker 1: It's like in the water World and the Postman tradition. Yeah,

529
00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:01,040
Speaker 1: or I guess I feel like there there has First

530
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:02,840
Speaker 1: of all, there has to be some sci fire fantasy

531
00:30:02,880 --> 00:30:05,920
Speaker 1: out there that has really latched onto this idea. But

532
00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:09,120
Speaker 1: I almost feel like it's such a weird idea. It's

533
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:11,200
Speaker 1: got to be the idea you lead with, you know,

534
00:30:11,360 --> 00:30:14,000
Speaker 1: like everything has to be built around the ice ships

535
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:18,320
Speaker 1: of you know, TheBus or whatever the uh your world

536
00:30:18,360 --> 00:30:23,200
Speaker 1: happens to be. Yeah, And so unfortunately, uh, this idea,

537
00:30:23,360 --> 00:30:26,360
Speaker 1: as as amazing as it is, ran into some problems

538
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:29,760
Speaker 1: in the real world. Yeah. Yeah. Ultimately, the bird Ship

539
00:30:30,040 --> 00:30:33,280
Speaker 1: never came to be because for for a few different reasons.

540
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:35,920
Speaker 1: One of the big ones though, was that icebergs didn't

541
00:30:36,040 --> 00:30:40,360
Speaker 1: rise high enough above the waterline and ice flows were

542
00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:42,160
Speaker 1: too thin. Because that was another idea, Right, you go

543
00:30:42,160 --> 00:30:44,920
Speaker 1: get some ice flows, cut yourself out, as you know,

544
00:30:45,040 --> 00:30:47,360
Speaker 1: the the amount that you needed, and use that as

545
00:30:47,360 --> 00:30:50,880
Speaker 1: the basis for your ship tow them down from the Arctic. Yeah.

546
00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:54,920
Speaker 1: And then also further research into you know, the matters

547
00:30:54,920 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 1: concerning the feasibility of constructing an ice based carrier turned

548
00:30:58,520 --> 00:31:00,760
Speaker 1: up some of the challenges the material, your challenges we've

549
00:31:00,800 --> 00:31:03,440
Speaker 1: discussed already, Yeah, to go into a little more detail

550
00:31:03,480 --> 00:31:05,800
Speaker 1: and that. So you mentioned the fact that natural ice

551
00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:08,600
Speaker 1: just tends to not come out of the water high

552
00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:11,880
Speaker 1: enough when it's floating in the water. Peruts talks about

553
00:31:11,880 --> 00:31:14,200
Speaker 1: how the Fleet Air arm had figured out that in

554
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 1: order to have a working aircraft carrier that planes could

555
00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:20,480
Speaker 1: actually land on and take off from, you gotta you

556
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:22,840
Speaker 1: gotta have a freeboard, what's called a freeboard of at

557
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:26,000
Speaker 1: least fifteen meters or about fifty feet above the water.

558
00:31:26,120 --> 00:31:28,080
Speaker 1: And the free board is just the height of a

559
00:31:28,080 --> 00:31:30,800
Speaker 1: ship stick above the water line. Yeah, if you've ever

560
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:33,560
Speaker 1: seen a real aircraft carrier, you'll notice it it rides

561
00:31:33,560 --> 00:31:35,640
Speaker 1: pretty high. And this is what you're talking about with

562
00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:38,719
Speaker 1: ice flows being too thin, like the natural ice flows

563
00:31:38,840 --> 00:31:40,760
Speaker 1: are just not tall enough, they're not going to do

564
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:44,120
Speaker 1: the job. So engineers were given the job of well, okay,

565
00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:47,160
Speaker 1: we got to construct a man made aircraft carrier platform

566
00:31:47,200 --> 00:31:50,080
Speaker 1: of ice. But there was a sort of dearth of

567
00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:52,680
Speaker 1: knowledge about exactly what you could do with ice as

568
00:31:52,720 --> 00:31:56,600
Speaker 1: a building material. Pre Existing research on the structural properties

569
00:31:56,600 --> 00:31:58,600
Speaker 1: of ice was sort of all over the place with

570
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:02,280
Speaker 1: its findings. So experiments were carried out in Britain and

571
00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:04,719
Speaker 1: in Canada to try to sort these claims out. They

572
00:32:04,720 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 1: did a bunch of mechanical strength test results and actually

573
00:32:08,160 --> 00:32:10,440
Speaker 1: we learned a lot about ice. But part of what

574
00:32:10,480 --> 00:32:14,360
Speaker 1: they learned is that the way ice responds is in

575
00:32:14,440 --> 00:32:18,080
Speaker 1: fact highly variable and unpredictable, like the way it responds

576
00:32:18,080 --> 00:32:21,680
Speaker 1: to explosives is kind of unpredictable. Sometimes it's kind of resilient,

577
00:32:21,800 --> 00:32:24,880
Speaker 1: sometimes it gets obliterated, right, and you just you can't

578
00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:28,000
Speaker 1: just latch onto the results that you like now when

579
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 1: you're especially now when you're gonna try and carry out

580
00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:33,160
Speaker 1: a project like this, right, And so there was another

581
00:32:33,200 --> 00:32:36,000
Speaker 1: thing they were testing for, which was the modulus of

582
00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:39,719
Speaker 1: rupture for ice. Uh. This is also known as flexual

583
00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:44,080
Speaker 1: strength or bend strength. Imagine a very simple test. Do

584
00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 1: you have like two supports, and you put a slab

585
00:32:46,880 --> 00:32:49,040
Speaker 1: of a material on those two supports, and then you

586
00:32:49,040 --> 00:32:51,520
Speaker 1: put a weight pressing down in the middle between the

587
00:32:51,520 --> 00:32:55,120
Speaker 1: two supports, and for any given material, you see how

588
00:32:55,160 --> 00:32:57,840
Speaker 1: much weight a slab of it can sustain of pressure

589
00:32:58,200 --> 00:33:01,200
Speaker 1: and Peruts writes that quote. The rich modulus of rupture

590
00:33:01,240 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 1: of ice beams in bending, for instance, was found to

591
00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 1: be about twenty two point five kilograms per square centimeter,

592
00:33:07,320 --> 00:33:11,000
Speaker 1: but individual beams sometimes failed at stresses as low as

593
00:33:11,080 --> 00:33:14,800
Speaker 1: four point nine kilograms per square centimeter, and this is

594
00:33:14,840 --> 00:33:18,120
Speaker 1: not good. Peruts points out that just regular old pine

595
00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:23,080
Speaker 1: lumber has a modulus of rupture somewhere around eight hundred kilograms,

596
00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:26,560
Speaker 1: so way better in general. And again the ice is

597
00:33:26,600 --> 00:33:29,280
Speaker 1: somewhat variable. You might get a weak beam of ice

598
00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:31,200
Speaker 1: here there, and you wouldn't even know it until you

599
00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:33,200
Speaker 1: press on it. Right, If you if you're gonna do

600
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:34,880
Speaker 1: if you're gonna build something out of this, if you're

601
00:33:34,880 --> 00:33:38,040
Speaker 1: gonna design something built out of this this material, you

602
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:40,680
Speaker 1: need to know how far you can push it, and

603
00:33:40,720 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 1: it needs to be at least you know a dependable

604
00:33:44,240 --> 00:33:46,760
Speaker 1: range and not just a roll of the dice exactly.

605
00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:50,800
Speaker 1: So ice is just really not sound as a large

606
00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:54,520
Speaker 1: load bearing building material. And so this leaves us around

607
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 1: February of ninette with ice looking like a bad candidate

608
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:01,360
Speaker 1: to build an aircraft carry y're out of That's right.

609
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:05,120
Speaker 1: Things look pretty bleak, at least until they read the

610
00:34:05,160 --> 00:34:09,600
Speaker 1: work of Herman Mark and Walter P. Hollenstein. Yeah. These

611
00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:12,919
Speaker 1: guys were working out of Brooklyn Polytechnic. Yeah, and they've

612
00:34:12,920 --> 00:34:17,000
Speaker 1: been experimenting with frozen water with wood pulp inside it,

613
00:34:17,400 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 1: and they found that this the resulting material like this,

614
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:23,640
Speaker 1: essentially a mixture of frozen water and wood pulp, was

615
00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:29,600
Speaker 1: stronger than ice, significantly stronger. Apparently Herman Mark had formerly

616
00:34:29,719 --> 00:34:32,440
Speaker 1: been Peruts's teacher at some point, and I found an

617
00:34:32,440 --> 00:34:36,160
Speaker 1: account of the discovery written by Peruts and quoted in

618
00:34:36,200 --> 00:34:39,799
Speaker 1: a piece for Chemistry World by Kit Chapman. Uh so

619
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:43,240
Speaker 1: these are Peruits's words. Quote. Pike handed me a report

620
00:34:43,320 --> 00:34:45,920
Speaker 1: that he said he had found hard to understand. It

621
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:49,600
Speaker 1: was by Herman Mark, my former professor of physical chemistry.

622
00:34:49,719 --> 00:34:52,600
Speaker 1: As an expert on plastics, he knew that many of

623
00:34:52,640 --> 00:34:55,640
Speaker 1: them were brittle when pure, but could be toughened by

624
00:34:55,680 --> 00:34:59,879
Speaker 1: embedding fibers such as cellulose in them, just as concrete

625
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 1: can be reinforced with steel wires. Mark and his assistant

626
00:35:04,520 --> 00:35:07,879
Speaker 1: stirred a little cotton wool or would pulp the raw

627
00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:11,839
Speaker 1: material of newsprint into water before they froze it, and

628
00:35:11,880 --> 00:35:15,400
Speaker 1: found that these editions strengthened the ice dramatically. And I

629
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:19,759
Speaker 1: love this comparison to actual building practices such as embedding

630
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:23,040
Speaker 1: rebars steal wires within concrete. When you're making a building,

631
00:35:23,320 --> 00:35:26,879
Speaker 1: the fibers or wires running longitudinally through the material help

632
00:35:26,920 --> 00:35:30,760
Speaker 1: prevent rupture. But so this stuff, this mixture of frozen

633
00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:33,919
Speaker 1: water and would pulp, would come to be known as

634
00:35:34,120 --> 00:35:37,080
Speaker 1: pike wrete in honor of Jeffrey Pike, a k a.

635
00:35:37,360 --> 00:35:40,880
Speaker 1: Pike's Concrete. And there's an anecdote about the discovery of

636
00:35:40,880 --> 00:35:43,040
Speaker 1: this material and trying to sell it up the chain

637
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:46,440
Speaker 1: that Collins reports, and he gets it from the book

638
00:35:46,560 --> 00:35:50,840
Speaker 1: Pike the Unknown Genius, published by Evans Brothers in London

639
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:53,839
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty nine, biography of Jeffrey Pike written by

640
00:35:53,880 --> 00:35:56,719
Speaker 1: David Lampey, and the story goes like this, So one

641
00:35:56,760 --> 00:36:00,400
Speaker 1: day Prime Minister Winston Churchill gets a visit from Lord

642
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:04,600
Speaker 1: mount Batton while while Churchill is at the Prime Minister's

643
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:08,520
Speaker 1: country house known as Checkers, and reportedly when mount Batton

644
00:36:08,640 --> 00:36:11,239
Speaker 1: arrived at the house, the staff informed him that the

645
00:36:11,280 --> 00:36:13,600
Speaker 1: Prime Minister was in the bath. You know, he can't

646
00:36:13,640 --> 00:36:16,279
Speaker 1: talk right now. He's he's having a good scrub. And

647
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:19,160
Speaker 1: Mount Batton was like, good, perfect, take me to him.

648
00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:25,239
Speaker 1: So Mount Baton charged into the bathroom. And then from here,

649
00:36:25,239 --> 00:36:28,080
Speaker 1: I'm going to read from Collins version of the account quote,

650
00:36:28,640 --> 00:36:31,920
Speaker 1: I have Mount Batton explained a block of new material

651
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:34,879
Speaker 1: that I would like to put in your bath. Mount

652
00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:38,040
Speaker 1: Batton opened his parcel and dropped its contents between the

653
00:36:38,080 --> 00:36:41,120
Speaker 1: Prime Minister's bare legs in the water. It was a

654
00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:44,400
Speaker 1: chunk of ice. Rather than bellow at his Chief of

655
00:36:44,400 --> 00:36:48,440
Speaker 1: Combined Operations, Churchill stared at the ice intently, and so

656
00:36:48,680 --> 00:36:52,880
Speaker 1: standing by the bathtub did Mount Batton himself. Minutes passed

657
00:36:53,000 --> 00:36:55,640
Speaker 1: and they still looked into the steaming depths of bathwater

658
00:36:55,719 --> 00:36:59,879
Speaker 1: before them. The ice was not melting. This is such

659
00:36:59,880 --> 00:37:04,280
Speaker 1: a great moment in in in global history right here. Um,

660
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:06,359
Speaker 1: I mean it all and almost and certainly it has

661
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:09,200
Speaker 1: to be up there for like great, great nude moments

662
00:37:09,760 --> 00:37:12,160
Speaker 1: in world history. You know, I'm just dealing with, say

663
00:37:12,239 --> 00:37:16,120
Speaker 1: like that the non saucy moments in world history that

664
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 1: mattered that also combined involved nudity, Like this has to

665
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:24,000
Speaker 1: be a naked Churchill in his bath beholding this, uh this,

666
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:27,040
Speaker 1: this floating block of wonder ice. Well, I'm not sure

667
00:37:27,040 --> 00:37:29,480
Speaker 1: he was naked. Maybe Churchill bathed in a tuxedo with

668
00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:32,160
Speaker 1: tales on the top hat you Well, maybe, but then

669
00:37:32,200 --> 00:37:36,439
Speaker 1: we're just in a weirder territory. But so yeah, here

670
00:37:36,480 --> 00:37:38,360
Speaker 1: here we have pike crete. And I should say that

671
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:40,880
Speaker 1: I'm a little confused about the timeline here because some

672
00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:43,480
Speaker 1: sources I was looking at report that the pike crete

673
00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:46,480
Speaker 1: thing came in like early nineteen forty three, but Collins

674
00:37:46,520 --> 00:37:49,560
Speaker 1: puts this story in late nineteen forty two. So there

675
00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:52,239
Speaker 1: might be some questions about the timeline here, and and

676
00:37:52,239 --> 00:37:55,439
Speaker 1: and so I do wonder about the veracity of the story,

677
00:37:55,480 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 1: but I have no reason to believe that it's fabricated,

678
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:01,000
Speaker 1: and I want to believe it's true. Well, and I

679
00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:04,080
Speaker 1: don't want to dispel this mental image. So we're gonna

680
00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:06,440
Speaker 1: take a quick break. Keep this in your head, and

681
00:38:06,480 --> 00:38:09,920
Speaker 1: then after a word from our sponsors, we will return

682
00:38:10,360 --> 00:38:16,560
Speaker 1: and bust open the pike cretan. Alright, we're back. So

683
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:19,000
Speaker 1: here we are at the birth of pike create the

684
00:38:19,040 --> 00:38:24,359
Speaker 1: potential solution to the iceberg aircraft carrier problem. That's right.

685
00:38:24,360 --> 00:38:27,480
Speaker 1: They realized that this was an avenue forward. This was

686
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:29,520
Speaker 1: a way we might be able to strengthen the ice

687
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:32,400
Speaker 1: so that we could do all the amazing things that

688
00:38:32,480 --> 00:38:35,880
Speaker 1: we want to do with it. So they experimented. Different

689
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:39,640
Speaker 1: pulp ice combinations were tried. You know, they are different pulps,

690
00:38:39,680 --> 00:38:43,319
Speaker 1: would pulp, rocks, other materials put in there, but they

691
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:46,399
Speaker 1: ultimately found that all you needed was as little as

692
00:38:46,440 --> 00:38:50,520
Speaker 1: four percent pulp and you would experience a huge upgrade

693
00:38:50,880 --> 00:38:55,920
Speaker 1: endurability compared to regular ice. Basically, these embedded materials prevented

694
00:38:55,960 --> 00:38:59,360
Speaker 1: cracks in the ice from advancing. So I mean basically

695
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:02,239
Speaker 1: you could think of it as um um. You know,

696
00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:05,160
Speaker 1: a crack starts and instead of being able to eventually

697
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:08,040
Speaker 1: vein its way through an entire block and bring it

698
00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:11,320
Speaker 1: to pieces, it could only go so far um before

699
00:39:11,320 --> 00:39:13,680
Speaker 1: it encountered something to stop it. So if you were

700
00:39:13,680 --> 00:39:16,240
Speaker 1: going to make a wall out of ice, pike crete

701
00:39:16,239 --> 00:39:19,319
Speaker 1: would be a better candidate than regular ice. Yes, yes,

702
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:22,560
Speaker 1: s Thompson points out, it's not that it would make it.

703
00:39:22,560 --> 00:39:25,440
Speaker 1: It makes it more durable, and it doesn't mean that

704
00:39:25,480 --> 00:39:29,000
Speaker 1: it would be invincible. It would still fail, but it

705
00:39:29,040 --> 00:39:32,759
Speaker 1: would fail in a much more predictable fashion. And and

706
00:39:32,800 --> 00:39:36,439
Speaker 1: that's also why Thompson ultimately points out that if your brand,

707
00:39:36,480 --> 00:39:40,319
Speaker 1: the builder brand, in the Builder the legendary brand, if

708
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:42,600
Speaker 1: you're looking to build a giant wall of ice, even

709
00:39:42,600 --> 00:39:45,960
Speaker 1: with the help of some magical beings, uh, doing something

710
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:49,360
Speaker 1: like pike crete would be your best option for building

711
00:39:49,400 --> 00:39:53,760
Speaker 1: that wall. Yeah. So I was reading Perutz's reports about

712
00:39:53,880 --> 00:39:56,800
Speaker 1: these experiments with pike crete about like the optimal type

713
00:39:56,800 --> 00:39:59,600
Speaker 1: of wood pulp to use, the optimal amount of wood

714
00:39:59,640 --> 00:40:02,640
Speaker 1: pulp suspension of water to use. So it looks like

715
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:05,600
Speaker 1: they usually ended up using spruce or pine wood pulp

716
00:40:05,719 --> 00:40:07,719
Speaker 1: that's ground up by machines. And this is the pulp

717
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:10,440
Speaker 1: that ultimately would become the pages of a newspaper in

718
00:40:10,440 --> 00:40:14,520
Speaker 1: another context. Uh. And then when in liquid form, this

719
00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:18,400
Speaker 1: this mixture has interesting properties, like a five percent suspension

720
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:22,200
Speaker 1: is sort of porridge like, it's kind of like oatmeal.

721
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:25,600
Speaker 1: But I tend to fifteen percent suspension is more like

722
00:40:25,640 --> 00:40:28,400
Speaker 1: a sponge, and when you freeze it, you yeah, you

723
00:40:28,440 --> 00:40:31,520
Speaker 1: get this resulting matrix of water, ice and saturated wood

724
00:40:31,560 --> 00:40:35,560
Speaker 1: fiber that becomes extremely tough. You can bash it, shoot it.

725
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:38,680
Speaker 1: It tends to hold together very well. There's a famous

726
00:40:38,719 --> 00:40:42,879
Speaker 1: story of Lord mount Batton taking out his pistol at

727
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:46,600
Speaker 1: a meeting of Allied commanders to shoot a block of ice.

728
00:40:46,680 --> 00:40:48,279
Speaker 1: Of course, when he shoots the block of ice, it

729
00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:50,880
Speaker 1: shatters all over the place, and then shoot a block

730
00:40:50,880 --> 00:40:53,879
Speaker 1: of pi crete to demonstrate the difference. And apparently when

731
00:40:53,880 --> 00:40:57,360
Speaker 1: he shot the pike crete, the bullet ricochet and graze

732
00:40:57,400 --> 00:40:59,879
Speaker 1: the pant leg of an American admiral in the room.

733
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:02,479
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. There are also reports that the people

734
00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:05,200
Speaker 1: outside heard the shooting. They had not been warned, and

735
00:41:05,239 --> 00:41:07,160
Speaker 1: they were like, who's shooting in there? Is there an

736
00:41:07,160 --> 00:41:10,439
Speaker 1: assassination going on? But no, it's just just dashing Lord

737
00:41:10,480 --> 00:41:13,759
Speaker 1: Mountbatton with his pistol shooting it materials to to make

738
00:41:13,800 --> 00:41:16,560
Speaker 1: a point. Wow, this just said, this is so weird,

739
00:41:16,680 --> 00:41:18,839
Speaker 1: and it's again, I don't think it has ever been

740
00:41:19,239 --> 00:41:21,560
Speaker 1: in a in a film. I had a I had

741
00:41:21,600 --> 00:41:25,600
Speaker 1: a Russian history professor wants who who was fond of

742
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:29,120
Speaker 1: pointing out that you know, you'll see some movies about um,

743
00:41:29,239 --> 00:41:32,319
Speaker 1: for instance, the Eastern Front during World War Two, but

744
00:41:32,560 --> 00:41:34,560
Speaker 1: you're always going to see the same stories, the same

745
00:41:34,600 --> 00:41:38,000
Speaker 1: particular stories told time and time again. When when there's

746
00:41:38,040 --> 00:41:41,840
Speaker 1: so many additional uh, you know, it's equally interesting and

747
00:41:41,840 --> 00:41:45,400
Speaker 1: in many times strange stories that are spread out across

748
00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:48,840
Speaker 1: that entire theater of the war. UM And and likewise,

749
00:41:48,880 --> 00:41:50,399
Speaker 1: when you look at like all the things that are

750
00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:53,000
Speaker 1: going on during this period, you have you have stuff

751
00:41:53,040 --> 00:41:55,680
Speaker 1: like this that just for some reason has a way

752
00:41:55,719 --> 00:41:58,360
Speaker 1: of falling through the cracks. Yeah, totally, and and it

753
00:41:58,440 --> 00:42:01,400
Speaker 1: still keeps getting weirder. Is another thing about this project

754
00:42:01,719 --> 00:42:03,799
Speaker 1: is that it had to be very secretive. I mean,

755
00:42:03,840 --> 00:42:07,320
Speaker 1: this is this is top secret military research at the time.

756
00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:11,400
Speaker 1: So you had people making just big troughs and buckets

757
00:42:11,440 --> 00:42:14,120
Speaker 1: of wood pulp mixed with water. And this is like

758
00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:17,040
Speaker 1: the same level of secrecy where the as where people

759
00:42:17,040 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 1: are trying to create a death ray or something. Uh.

760
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:24,240
Speaker 1: They apparently they took out refrigerated rooms under a London

761
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:27,920
Speaker 1: meat market, I think it was Smithfield's market. They converted

762
00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:31,640
Speaker 1: this into this top secret experimentation in manufacturing space for

763
00:42:31,680 --> 00:42:34,800
Speaker 1: PI crete, and Perut says that a lot of people

764
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 1: working on PI crete research had no idea what this

765
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:39,839
Speaker 1: was going to be used for, Like they were kept

766
00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:43,239
Speaker 1: in the dark in order to maintain you know, ops seck.

767
00:42:43,760 --> 00:42:46,080
Speaker 1: But a few of the things they determined in their research.

768
00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:49,000
Speaker 1: One was that an ideal amount of wood pulp to

769
00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:51,400
Speaker 1: make PI crete it's about fourteen percent, so you know,

770
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:54,799
Speaker 1: like eighty six percent water fourteen percent wood pulp. Uh.

771
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:58,760
Speaker 1: They also found that temperature can matter a lot this material.

772
00:42:59,080 --> 00:43:01,920
Speaker 1: A lot of the good things about it become less

773
00:43:01,960 --> 00:43:05,120
Speaker 1: reliable as it warms up, and so in order for

774
00:43:05,200 --> 00:43:07,560
Speaker 1: it to have its optimal features, it really needs to

775
00:43:07,560 --> 00:43:11,399
Speaker 1: be kept at about negative fifteen degrees celsius. But if

776
00:43:11,400 --> 00:43:15,120
Speaker 1: you keep it cold, it is much stronger than regular ice.

777
00:43:15,239 --> 00:43:19,240
Speaker 1: It behaves much more predictably than regular water ice. Karu

778
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:22,480
Speaker 1: says that it gave results which were reproducible to within

779
00:43:22,520 --> 00:43:28,480
Speaker 1: about plus or minus, and the wood pulp actually decreased

780
00:43:28,600 --> 00:43:31,439
Speaker 1: the brittle nous of ice so much that Peruit says

781
00:43:31,440 --> 00:43:35,520
Speaker 1: that PI crete was ductal and could even be machined

782
00:43:35,680 --> 00:43:38,160
Speaker 1: on a lathe. So ductle means that it can be

783
00:43:38,239 --> 00:43:42,800
Speaker 1: stretched out into a wire, so that that's definitely showing

784
00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:45,440
Speaker 1: you a material that is tough and not brittle. So

785
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:48,319
Speaker 1: he said, we come back around to just how torpedo

786
00:43:48,440 --> 00:43:52,920
Speaker 1: proof pie crete would be. Uh. In researching this, they

787
00:43:52,960 --> 00:43:57,040
Speaker 1: found that a torpedo would upon impact dig in about

788
00:43:57,080 --> 00:44:00,319
Speaker 1: sixty centimeters and then he would, um, he would radar

789
00:44:00,400 --> 00:44:03,919
Speaker 1: out a four point five meter area in the pike creet.

790
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:06,400
Speaker 1: So they figured, okay, we would need to have a

791
00:44:06,600 --> 00:44:10,759
Speaker 1: nine meter thick hole that would do the work. Um

792
00:44:10,800 --> 00:44:12,960
Speaker 1: and then of course also to accommodate the aircraft, as

793
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:14,560
Speaker 1: I think we already mentioned, it would need to be

794
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:19,800
Speaker 1: like six long and sixty wide, so huge again, yeah, enormous.

795
00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:22,319
Speaker 1: So basically this is this is the sort of durability

796
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:24,640
Speaker 1: that would prevent a U boat from being able to

797
00:44:24,680 --> 00:44:28,120
Speaker 1: like sneak in, pop off a torpedo and just bring

798
00:44:28,160 --> 00:44:30,480
Speaker 1: the whole thing down, right, it was it was supposed

799
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:32,960
Speaker 1: to be sort of like a floating fortress or a

800
00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:38,200
Speaker 1: floating island. It would just be for practical purposes invulnerable, yes,

801
00:44:38,600 --> 00:44:40,880
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean it was without problems. So like,

802
00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:43,160
Speaker 1: one of the things that they observed while they were

803
00:44:43,200 --> 00:44:45,920
Speaker 1: testing the material properties of PI crete was that PI

804
00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:50,640
Speaker 1: crete is like other ice, subject to something we mentioned earlier. Creep. Yes,

805
00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:54,680
Speaker 1: creep is again the slow deformation of materials under pressure

806
00:44:54,800 --> 00:44:57,840
Speaker 1: over time, the slow flow. So if you put a

807
00:44:57,880 --> 00:45:00,160
Speaker 1: heavy load on a slab of pike crete, it's not

808
00:45:00,320 --> 00:45:04,040
Speaker 1: nearly as susceptible to cracking and rupture as regular ices.

809
00:45:04,480 --> 00:45:07,040
Speaker 1: But if you just leave that load there, the slab

810
00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:10,520
Speaker 1: will probably sag over time, which is not something you

811
00:45:10,560 --> 00:45:12,719
Speaker 1: want to happen if you're going to be parking aircraft

812
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:15,680
Speaker 1: on it and stuff like that. So research revealed times

813
00:45:15,680 --> 00:45:19,480
Speaker 1: and periods of creep were different for different substances, depending

814
00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:21,680
Speaker 1: on you know, the kind of wood pulp, different percent

815
00:45:21,800 --> 00:45:25,320
Speaker 1: suspensions and all that. But the temperature constraint was again

816
00:45:25,400 --> 00:45:29,000
Speaker 1: very important they need. They determined that negative fifteen degrees

817
00:45:29,040 --> 00:45:32,840
Speaker 1: celsius was like the highest permissible working temperature. If it

818
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:35,160
Speaker 1: gets warmer than that, this boat is going to be

819
00:45:35,239 --> 00:45:38,840
Speaker 1: in trouble. Okay. So eventually in ninety three the naval

820
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:42,000
Speaker 1: engineers decided, yes, pike rete is strong enough, we can

821
00:45:42,040 --> 00:45:44,360
Speaker 1: make this. We can do it, so get to work

822
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:48,920
Speaker 1: constructing our berg ship. Uh Peruts reports that they wanted

823
00:45:48,960 --> 00:45:51,919
Speaker 1: to have a working prototype that would be ready within

824
00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:55,000
Speaker 1: the next winter season, and then soon after that a

825
00:45:55,120 --> 00:45:57,640
Speaker 1: fleet of them which would be ready for a possible

826
00:45:57,680 --> 00:46:01,719
Speaker 1: invasion of Japan and uh Peruts notes that too many

827
00:46:02,000 --> 00:46:06,280
Speaker 1: engineers this seemed impossible, but then he puts it within

828
00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:10,760
Speaker 1: the context of the whole sort of like war orientation,

829
00:46:11,280 --> 00:46:14,480
Speaker 1: and Peruts writes, quote in retrospect, this may seem the

830
00:46:14,520 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 1: obvious verdicts, but it must be remembered that the Berkship

831
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:21,799
Speaker 1: plan was only one of several apparently impossible engineering feats

832
00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:25,520
Speaker 1: conceived during during the war e g. The atomic bomb,

833
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:27,920
Speaker 1: and that the question was not so much one of

834
00:46:27,960 --> 00:46:32,160
Speaker 1: absolute feasibility, but rather of whether the ultimate strategic advantages

835
00:46:32,239 --> 00:46:34,960
Speaker 1: to be gained by the burg ships were in proportion

836
00:46:35,040 --> 00:46:39,319
Speaker 1: to the expenditure of manpower and materials involved in their construction.

837
00:46:39,760 --> 00:46:42,360
Speaker 1: In fact, I think that had not the course of

838
00:46:42,400 --> 00:46:45,120
Speaker 1: the war and the state of our armaments changed, the

839
00:46:45,160 --> 00:46:49,400
Speaker 1: birdship could have been constructed. So that's Peruts's opinion. He thinks,

840
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:52,680
Speaker 1: you know, if if things hadn't changed made it not

841
00:46:52,800 --> 00:46:56,879
Speaker 1: so rewarding, we could have done it. Just a couple

842
00:46:56,960 --> 00:46:59,359
Speaker 1: more physical details about the proposal that I thought were

843
00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:02,400
Speaker 1: very interesting. One is that this hypothetical giant bird ship

844
00:47:02,719 --> 00:47:05,840
Speaker 1: would have had a waterproof skin on the outside to

845
00:47:05,880 --> 00:47:09,560
Speaker 1: help insulate the pike crete. But then also the material

846
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:12,439
Speaker 1: would have to be cooled with artificial refrigeration, right, because

847
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:14,880
Speaker 1: they've got to keep it at negative fifteen degrees celsius

848
00:47:14,960 --> 00:47:18,399
Speaker 1: or colder. So they would have an air conditioning system

849
00:47:18,520 --> 00:47:22,000
Speaker 1: on the aircraft carrier made of pike create to refrigerate

850
00:47:22,080 --> 00:47:24,960
Speaker 1: the pike create, and it would be blowing compressed air

851
00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:27,560
Speaker 1: on it to keep it cold. But the downside is

852
00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:29,319
Speaker 1: if you think about that, oh man, if the air

853
00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:32,360
Speaker 1: conditioning system breaks, then your ship could start melting and

854
00:47:32,440 --> 00:47:35,799
Speaker 1: lose structural integrity. Though another good thing about pike Create,

855
00:47:35,880 --> 00:47:38,520
Speaker 1: as we mentioned earlier, is that it melts more slowly

856
00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:41,120
Speaker 1: than regular ice, so you'd still have a bigger window

857
00:47:41,160 --> 00:47:43,520
Speaker 1: of time than you would on a regular iceberg. I

858
00:47:43,560 --> 00:47:45,239
Speaker 1: can't help but be reminded of the old There was

859
00:47:45,239 --> 00:47:48,600
Speaker 1: an old Disney cartoon with like Donald Duck and the

860
00:47:48,640 --> 00:47:51,600
Speaker 1: nephews battling each other, you know, like an epic snowball fight.

861
00:47:51,640 --> 00:47:53,800
Speaker 1: Do you remember this one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, And Donald

862
00:47:53,880 --> 00:47:56,600
Speaker 1: Duck I believe builds like a warship out of ice,

863
00:47:57,120 --> 00:48:00,440
Speaker 1: and it is He's you know, devastating his nephews until

864
00:48:00,520 --> 00:48:03,399
Speaker 1: they they like they have like a flaming bow and arrow,

865
00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:06,360
Speaker 1: which seems a little violent in retrospect, but they fired

866
00:48:06,400 --> 00:48:09,160
Speaker 1: that into his ice ship and then melt it and

867
00:48:09,160 --> 00:48:13,200
Speaker 1: it like melts into the shape of like a duck skull. Brutal. Yeah,

868
00:48:13,360 --> 00:48:17,120
Speaker 1: it's it's weird stuff, okay, But a couple more questions

869
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:19,399
Speaker 1: about this aircraft carrier, Like if you're going to take

870
00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:22,279
Speaker 1: this idea seriously and try to actually build it, first

871
00:48:22,280 --> 00:48:25,920
Speaker 1: of all, where do you freeze it? Uh? You know,

872
00:48:26,280 --> 00:48:29,960
Speaker 1: remember that Winston Churchill wanted to let nature do the job.

873
00:48:30,080 --> 00:48:32,440
Speaker 1: That was his quote, That was the cheap boss idea.

874
00:48:32,880 --> 00:48:35,399
Speaker 1: But it quickly became apparent that this was just not

875
00:48:35,520 --> 00:48:38,680
Speaker 1: really feasible. There was just nowhere they could find on

876
00:48:38,719 --> 00:48:42,600
Speaker 1: Earth where you could you could feasibly let natural cold

877
00:48:42,840 --> 00:48:45,120
Speaker 1: freeze this thing in place. It just wasn't gonna work.

878
00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:49,880
Speaker 1: So instead they turned to some artificial construction ideas that

879
00:48:49,920 --> 00:48:53,239
Speaker 1: would be based in Canada perots rights quote. The locality

880
00:48:53,280 --> 00:48:56,320
Speaker 1: eventually selected for building the prototype was corner Brook in

881
00:48:56,400 --> 00:49:00,480
Speaker 1: Newfoundland where I said it right this time? Did yeah?

882
00:49:00,560 --> 00:49:02,360
Speaker 1: And uh? And I but I was more reacting to

883
00:49:02,360 --> 00:49:04,680
Speaker 1: the fact that I've been to Corner Brook. I barely

884
00:49:04,680 --> 00:49:06,279
Speaker 1: remember it that I was a child at the time,

885
00:49:06,280 --> 00:49:10,000
Speaker 1: but yeah, I've been to Corner Brook. Oh what's it like? Okay,

886
00:49:10,080 --> 00:49:11,960
Speaker 1: I think I think I got to get a toy

887
00:49:12,200 --> 00:49:15,279
Speaker 1: at a gas station or something there like. That's of

888
00:49:15,320 --> 00:49:17,960
Speaker 1: course the only thing I remember because I was a child.

889
00:49:18,719 --> 00:49:20,960
Speaker 1: But I remember the name. Well. It sounds lovely and

890
00:49:21,040 --> 00:49:24,400
Speaker 1: it sounds cold, because Perutz said the the average daily

891
00:49:24,400 --> 00:49:27,279
Speaker 1: temperature was negative five degrees celsius. I guess this would

892
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: be in the winter time, but it could be expected

893
00:49:30,239 --> 00:49:32,759
Speaker 1: for a hundred days straight and there you would have

894
00:49:32,800 --> 00:49:36,239
Speaker 1: protected waters of sufficient depth in order to try to

895
00:49:36,239 --> 00:49:40,000
Speaker 1: build one of these things now. Paruts also says, you know,

896
00:49:40,080 --> 00:49:42,760
Speaker 1: even though it wasn't made of steel and didn't require

897
00:49:42,840 --> 00:49:46,439
Speaker 1: steel like like a regular warship would, it is still

898
00:49:46,480 --> 00:49:50,960
Speaker 1: a huge material and investment. One ship alone would require

899
00:49:51,120 --> 00:49:56,000
Speaker 1: one point seven million tons of pi crete material. Where

900
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:59,440
Speaker 1: can you make that much? Peruts argues that this alone

901
00:49:59,440 --> 00:50:02,560
Speaker 1: would have worked whired a refrigerated plant of something like

902
00:50:02,600 --> 00:50:06,480
Speaker 1: a hundred acres or forty hectares, and this would take

903
00:50:06,520 --> 00:50:10,120
Speaker 1: away from other industrial needs of the Allied war effort. Yeah,

904
00:50:10,200 --> 00:50:12,520
Speaker 1: you can't build that out of ice. You're right to

905
00:50:12,560 --> 00:50:15,520
Speaker 1: build that out of out of metal and wood, right, Yes.

906
00:50:15,560 --> 00:50:18,719
Speaker 1: And so these difficulties we've been talking about, along with

907
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:22,520
Speaker 1: other changing circumstances, ultimately caused the Allies to abandon the

908
00:50:22,560 --> 00:50:25,799
Speaker 1: plan for berd ships in nineteen forty four. Uh. And

909
00:50:25,880 --> 00:50:28,799
Speaker 1: the other circumstances were a range of things. One was

910
00:50:28,920 --> 00:50:34,319
Speaker 1: that there was that airplanes themselves started to get increasing

911
00:50:34,680 --> 00:50:39,399
Speaker 1: flight range. Yeah. I just our aviation technology increased enough

912
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:45,600
Speaker 1: to where suddenly those um, uh, those distances weren't insurmountle anymore. Yeah.

913
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 1: And Paruts actually says that, Uh, it's I guess a

914
00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:51,680
Speaker 1: lot of these changes started around nineteen forty two, at

915
00:50:51,719 --> 00:50:54,560
Speaker 1: the same time this project started. But eventually you could

916
00:50:54,600 --> 00:50:57,840
Speaker 1: get land based airplanes out far enough over the ocean

917
00:50:57,880 --> 00:51:00,719
Speaker 1: to provide sufficient air cover even even if they had

918
00:51:00,760 --> 00:51:04,240
Speaker 1: to launch from from bases on land. And other things

919
00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:09,000
Speaker 1: were the acquiring of additional bases on land. So like

920
00:51:09,480 --> 00:51:13,240
Speaker 1: a couple of sources mentioned the fact that Portugal granted

921
00:51:13,280 --> 00:51:16,319
Speaker 1: the Allies use of the Azores in the Atlantic, and

922
00:51:16,400 --> 00:51:19,280
Speaker 1: this helped helped them reach farther out into the ocean.

923
00:51:19,719 --> 00:51:21,560
Speaker 1: So there's that on the one hand, and then on

924
00:51:21,600 --> 00:51:26,080
Speaker 1: the other hand, some changes in airplanes also meant that

925
00:51:26,239 --> 00:51:29,760
Speaker 1: you needed even more runway space than you had before.

926
00:51:30,080 --> 00:51:32,160
Speaker 1: So it would mean that you could build this six

927
00:51:32,239 --> 00:51:35,719
Speaker 1: hundred meter long floating runway, make this huge investment to

928
00:51:35,760 --> 00:51:37,960
Speaker 1: build this thing, and then a lot of the new

929
00:51:38,000 --> 00:51:40,359
Speaker 1: planes that you want to launch can't even get off

930
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:42,680
Speaker 1: of it because now that's not long enough for them.

931
00:51:42,719 --> 00:51:44,680
Speaker 1: They've just got to be launched from the ground still,

932
00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:47,160
Speaker 1: So as you're accommodating what kind of platform you can

933
00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:50,040
Speaker 1: get out into the middle of the ocean, the planes

934
00:51:50,080 --> 00:51:53,880
Speaker 1: are requiring more and more platform all the time. Finally,

935
00:51:54,000 --> 00:51:57,680
Speaker 1: Peruts also notes that quote the island hopping campaign of

936
00:51:57,680 --> 00:52:00,440
Speaker 1: the American forces in the Pacific had been six tessful

937
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:04,680
Speaker 1: beyond expectation and had made an eventual invasion of Japan

938
00:52:05,080 --> 00:52:09,840
Speaker 1: appear feasible without large floating air bases. So just in general,

939
00:52:09,920 --> 00:52:12,120
Speaker 1: in this short amount of time, the world had moved

940
00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:16,399
Speaker 1: on and was leaving the idea of the birdship behind it. Right,

941
00:52:16,440 --> 00:52:19,000
Speaker 1: So we never got to find out if this idea

942
00:52:19,080 --> 00:52:22,480
Speaker 1: could really be achieved because it just it just sort

943
00:52:22,480 --> 00:52:26,799
Speaker 1: of became obsolete as the war progressed. But there's an

944
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:30,600
Speaker 1: interesting note that that Peruts makes about this project as

945
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:34,360
Speaker 1: a contribution to ice science in general. He writes, quote, Nevertheless,

946
00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:37,320
Speaker 1: the volume of first rate data produced within a period

947
00:52:37,360 --> 00:52:40,200
Speaker 1: of six months in this country and in Canada under

948
00:52:40,239 --> 00:52:43,279
Speaker 1: the pressure of war far exceeded the total volume of

949
00:52:43,360 --> 00:52:46,600
Speaker 1: reliable work that had been done before on the mechanical

950
00:52:46,640 --> 00:52:50,839
Speaker 1: properties of ice itself. So war, what is it good for? Um? Well,

951
00:52:50,960 --> 00:52:53,359
Speaker 1: I still think the song is correct. Absolutely nothing. But

952
00:52:53,680 --> 00:52:57,200
Speaker 1: I guess you could make an argument for the advancement

953
00:52:57,280 --> 00:53:00,120
Speaker 1: of of our understanding of ice. Well, it may makes

954
00:53:00,160 --> 00:53:02,640
Speaker 1: you wonder, like, what if we just put the amount

955
00:53:02,680 --> 00:53:06,560
Speaker 1: of priorities on regular scientific research that we put that

956
00:53:06,600 --> 00:53:09,040
Speaker 1: we put on that research when it's necessary to win

957
00:53:09,080 --> 00:53:12,719
Speaker 1: a war. Yeah? Absolutely, Um. I remember Neil de grasse

958
00:53:12,760 --> 00:53:17,640
Speaker 1: Tyson making this point about about space exploration. He was

959
00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:20,920
Speaker 1: fore which book this was, But he's basically saying, hey,

960
00:53:20,960 --> 00:53:22,359
Speaker 1: you know, if we really want to get serious about

961
00:53:22,360 --> 00:53:25,760
Speaker 1: about space exploration, we need to fake the existence of

962
00:53:25,800 --> 00:53:28,680
Speaker 1: an extraterrestrial enemy, because that if we can get the

963
00:53:28,680 --> 00:53:30,920
Speaker 1: war machine behind it. If that well, if we can

964
00:53:30,960 --> 00:53:35,200
Speaker 1: get that kind of political and public capital, uh supporting it,

965
00:53:35,320 --> 00:53:38,959
Speaker 1: you know, then we could do all sorts of things. Um. Unfortunately,

966
00:53:39,560 --> 00:53:41,200
Speaker 1: in a way, I kind of agree. I guess this

967
00:53:41,280 --> 00:53:45,160
Speaker 1: is the assymandias theory from Watchman, right, But um, but

968
00:53:45,560 --> 00:53:47,319
Speaker 1: I think part of the problem is a lot of

969
00:53:47,320 --> 00:53:50,040
Speaker 1: what you would end up researching was the creation of newer,

970
00:53:50,160 --> 00:53:55,239
Speaker 1: more powerful weapons, which are maybe not exactly what we need. Right.

971
00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:59,480
Speaker 1: I think we've discussed this before in terms of of

972
00:53:59,480 --> 00:54:02,560
Speaker 1: of rocket science under the Third Reich. You know, there's

973
00:54:02,600 --> 00:54:06,839
Speaker 1: there's often this uh, sort of fantastic misconception that there

974
00:54:06,960 --> 00:54:09,960
Speaker 1: is you know, there's these great advancements in space technology,

975
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:13,400
Speaker 1: and there's oh there was a secret moon base that

976
00:54:13,480 --> 00:54:15,680
Speaker 1: the Nazis had, that sort of thing that the Nazi

977
00:54:15,719 --> 00:54:17,759
Speaker 1: space program. But and really you do, and of course

978
00:54:17,800 --> 00:54:20,360
Speaker 1: you did have a lot of of of brilliant minds

979
00:54:20,920 --> 00:54:23,280
Speaker 1: working at the time. But like so many other brilliant

980
00:54:23,320 --> 00:54:26,799
Speaker 1: minds during this global war, they were sucked into that

981
00:54:26,920 --> 00:54:32,520
Speaker 1: black hole of global conflict. So their value to these

982
00:54:32,640 --> 00:54:35,560
Speaker 1: nations that they were, um, they were serving. We're we're

983
00:54:35,640 --> 00:54:38,799
Speaker 1: just boiled down to warfare interests like oh, you're good

984
00:54:38,800 --> 00:54:41,880
Speaker 1: at rocketry, Well, can you make a rocket bring death

985
00:54:42,000 --> 00:54:44,560
Speaker 1: to this country? Oh? You you you know about how

986
00:54:44,560 --> 00:54:46,840
Speaker 1: ice works? Well, that's great because we're trying to build

987
00:54:47,120 --> 00:54:49,960
Speaker 1: a massive weapon out of it that sort of thing. Yeah, totally.

988
00:54:49,960 --> 00:54:51,880
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we don't want to downplay that.

989
00:54:51,960 --> 00:54:55,160
Speaker 1: Like in in Germany there were actually advances made in

990
00:54:55,239 --> 00:54:58,560
Speaker 1: rocketry that were later put to peaceful uses, but the

991
00:54:58,680 --> 00:55:01,120
Speaker 1: uses they were put to, primarily during the war, were

992
00:55:01,200 --> 00:55:04,880
Speaker 1: to rain held down on England and other allies. But

993
00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:08,640
Speaker 1: so anyway, that's the end of the historical pike crete story.

994
00:55:08,719 --> 00:55:11,200
Speaker 1: You know that that the project came to an end,

995
00:55:11,239 --> 00:55:15,280
Speaker 1: and there has not been a lot of serious investigation

996
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:18,480
Speaker 1: of pi crete at certainly not at that scale. Since then,

997
00:55:18,520 --> 00:55:22,080
Speaker 1: people have done little projects where people have built structures

998
00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:24,400
Speaker 1: out of pike crete and stuff, and and that's interesting.

999
00:55:24,440 --> 00:55:27,920
Speaker 1: And in fact there have even been like like MythBusters

1000
00:55:27,920 --> 00:55:29,719
Speaker 1: and some other TV shows kind of like this. I

1001
00:55:29,719 --> 00:55:32,719
Speaker 1: think there's one in in Britain called Bang Goes the

1002
00:55:32,719 --> 00:55:36,600
Speaker 1: Theory that have tested out small boats made of pike crete.

1003
00:55:36,960 --> 00:55:40,759
Speaker 1: I know in the MythBusters episode they tested the mechanical

1004
00:55:40,760 --> 00:55:42,920
Speaker 1: properties of pi crete, like trying to drop it from

1005
00:55:43,000 --> 00:55:46,640
Speaker 1: certain heights and smash it, and they confirmed the kind

1006
00:55:46,640 --> 00:55:48,719
Speaker 1: of stuff that pruits had already been saying that like

1007
00:55:48,760 --> 00:55:52,480
Speaker 1: a frozen block of water saturated wood pulp did indeed

1008
00:55:52,560 --> 00:55:55,239
Speaker 1: melt a lot more slowly than an equivalent sized block

1009
00:55:55,280 --> 00:55:58,239
Speaker 1: of water ice. It was also a lot more structurally

1010
00:55:58,320 --> 00:56:01,000
Speaker 1: sound when when dropped from a height of about six ft,

1011
00:56:01,280 --> 00:56:03,719
Speaker 1: a frozen block of water would, you know, shatter into

1012
00:56:03,719 --> 00:56:06,319
Speaker 1: a million pieces, just like you would expect. But a

1013
00:56:06,320 --> 00:56:09,280
Speaker 1: block of frozen pie crete would break, maybe in half,

1014
00:56:09,400 --> 00:56:11,239
Speaker 1: maybe lose a piece here and there, but it was

1015
00:56:11,280 --> 00:56:14,480
Speaker 1: not nearly as brittle as the water ice alone. And

1016
00:56:14,520 --> 00:56:18,520
Speaker 1: then in the MythBusters investigation, they actually make something they

1017
00:56:18,600 --> 00:56:21,360
Speaker 1: end up calling super pi crete, which is, instead of

1018
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:25,160
Speaker 1: using wood pulp in its you know, very small shaved

1019
00:56:25,239 --> 00:56:29,680
Speaker 1: up form, they use whole sheets of newspaper frozen within

1020
00:56:29,760 --> 00:56:33,640
Speaker 1: the ice. And the sheet newspaper pike create was super strong.

1021
00:56:33,719 --> 00:56:36,719
Speaker 1: It was extremely resistant to shattering. Oh man, I have

1022
00:56:36,840 --> 00:56:41,600
Speaker 1: you used a newspaper that has really strong journalistic integrity.

1023
00:56:41,640 --> 00:56:43,719
Speaker 1: It's going to hold up even more. One other just

1024
00:56:43,800 --> 00:56:46,839
Speaker 1: sort of popular media thing I came across was that

1025
00:56:46,960 --> 00:56:50,440
Speaker 1: there is a YouTube channel called the Hydraulic Press Channel.

1026
00:56:50,480 --> 00:56:53,160
Speaker 1: Have you ever watched this? No? But I'm assuming it's

1027
00:56:53,239 --> 00:56:55,440
Speaker 1: it's like the old David Letterman bit, right, where the

1028
00:56:56,040 --> 00:56:57,880
Speaker 1: where he would take different things and put it in

1029
00:56:57,920 --> 00:57:02,040
Speaker 1: a hydraulic press. Okay, it's exactly that. It's just something, Okay, excellent.

1030
00:57:02,400 --> 00:57:04,520
Speaker 1: I did not know that was a David Letterman thing. Yes,

1031
00:57:04,760 --> 00:57:07,040
Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's like the old David Letterman show. They

1032
00:57:07,080 --> 00:57:10,400
Speaker 1: would do that. Yeah, that's great television. And I gotta admit,

1033
00:57:10,640 --> 00:57:12,359
Speaker 1: you know, I start one of these videos up, I'm

1034
00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:14,239
Speaker 1: probably gonna watch it to the end. I just I

1035
00:57:14,280 --> 00:57:16,680
Speaker 1: want to see what it looks like. So yeah, then

1036
00:57:16,720 --> 00:57:19,200
Speaker 1: you know why again it's James Cameron's fall because of

1037
00:57:19,320 --> 00:57:23,320
Speaker 1: Terminator one. Yes, as children, we watched that scene where

1038
00:57:23,400 --> 00:57:27,040
Speaker 1: the eight hundred is crushed in the hydraulic press, and

1039
00:57:27,080 --> 00:57:30,000
Speaker 1: it made an impact on it. It burned into our psyche,

1040
00:57:30,080 --> 00:57:32,520
Speaker 1: and there's just something about a hydraulic press we can't

1041
00:57:32,520 --> 00:57:36,240
Speaker 1: look away. Yeah, So the hydraulic press channel they tested

1042
00:57:36,240 --> 00:57:40,000
Speaker 1: out some PI crete, regular sawdust PI crete, and they found,

1043
00:57:40,000 --> 00:57:42,040
Speaker 1: of course, it does not shatter the way you would

1044
00:57:42,040 --> 00:57:44,320
Speaker 1: expect ice to shatter. Instead, I would say that it

1045
00:57:44,360 --> 00:57:48,280
Speaker 1: seems to under extreme pressure, it seems to first kind

1046
00:57:48,280 --> 00:57:53,280
Speaker 1: of melt around the edges and then crumble ultimately, I mean,

1047
00:57:53,360 --> 00:57:55,640
Speaker 1: under much more pressure than it takes to crush a

1048
00:57:55,680 --> 00:57:58,760
Speaker 1: similar amount of ice. It ultimately kind of crumbles in

1049
00:57:58,800 --> 00:58:03,040
Speaker 1: a sticky looking way, kind of like a crumbly block

1050
00:58:03,120 --> 00:58:07,040
Speaker 1: of feta cheese. Can you picture this? Yes, they can

1051
00:58:07,320 --> 00:58:10,200
Speaker 1: picture something that looks like a cross between crumbly feta

1052
00:58:10,320 --> 00:58:14,600
Speaker 1: cheese and maybe like orange juice concentrate, And so it's

1053
00:58:14,640 --> 00:58:17,880
Speaker 1: just kind of peeling off in pieces like that. They

1054
00:58:17,920 --> 00:58:22,880
Speaker 1: also they also try some newspaper mush pike crete. This

1055
00:58:22,880 --> 00:58:25,400
Speaker 1: this does also kind of a melt and a sticky crumble.

1056
00:58:25,800 --> 00:58:28,800
Speaker 1: The pieces are softer, less frozen, and then they end

1057
00:58:28,920 --> 00:58:31,400
Speaker 1: up using what looks to me like toilet paper. I'm

1058
00:58:31,440 --> 00:58:35,600
Speaker 1: not sure they call it sheet paper, but this one's

1059
00:58:35,880 --> 00:58:38,320
Speaker 1: got a really interesting texture. It's worth looking up. It

1060
00:58:38,400 --> 00:58:42,120
Speaker 1: kind of flakes when crushed, and the flakes are still

1061
00:58:42,360 --> 00:58:45,880
Speaker 1: they demonstrate very large and strong, so it it looks

1062
00:58:45,960 --> 00:58:48,400
Speaker 1: like something that would be soft and melt in your hand,

1063
00:58:48,520 --> 00:58:50,720
Speaker 1: like a piece of butter or cheese. But then when

1064
00:58:50,760 --> 00:58:52,760
Speaker 1: you pick it up it's like solid. You can bang

1065
00:58:52,840 --> 00:58:56,520
Speaker 1: it against stuff anyway. Very interesting material and something that

1066
00:58:56,560 --> 00:58:58,840
Speaker 1: I think you can quite easily make or make a

1067
00:58:58,960 --> 00:59:01,760
Speaker 1: version of at home. That's right, I mean, ultimately people

1068
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:04,320
Speaker 1: can make their own pie create at home after listening

1069
00:59:04,360 --> 00:59:07,040
Speaker 1: to this show and then tell us about how it went.

1070
00:59:07,280 --> 00:59:10,240
Speaker 1: And there was a thing in that Cabinet magazine article

1071
00:59:10,280 --> 00:59:14,480
Speaker 1: by Paul Collins where he quotes a professor, a professor

1072
00:59:14,560 --> 00:59:18,080
Speaker 1: named Erlin Schulson, director of the Ice Research Laboratory at

1073
00:59:18,120 --> 00:59:22,320
Speaker 1: Dartmouth College, and Schulson uh is trying to answer the

1074
00:59:22,400 --> 00:59:24,720
Speaker 1: question of why modern people don't make better use of

1075
00:59:24,720 --> 00:59:27,080
Speaker 1: pie crete in the light of its benefits, and he

1076
00:59:27,200 --> 00:59:29,920
Speaker 1: just says, I don't really know why it has languished

1077
00:59:29,920 --> 00:59:33,200
Speaker 1: in obscurity. It seems like something that could actually be

1078
00:59:33,360 --> 00:59:35,440
Speaker 1: useful for a lot of things, but for some reason,

1079
00:59:35,480 --> 00:59:38,440
Speaker 1: nobody's not nobody. I mean, people have done things here

1080
00:59:38,440 --> 00:59:40,160
Speaker 1: and there, but it does not seem like it has

1081
00:59:40,160 --> 00:59:43,160
Speaker 1: been taken up in a in a large way. So

1082
00:59:43,240 --> 00:59:46,800
Speaker 1: that's the past and the present. We might well wonder

1083
00:59:46,840 --> 00:59:51,440
Speaker 1: about the future of ice based building. And Uh I

1084
00:59:51,520 --> 00:59:53,960
Speaker 1: was looking around a little on this and I ran

1085
00:59:54,040 --> 00:59:59,240
Speaker 1: across um the Uses of Martian ice papered by Charles

1086
00:59:59,480 --> 01:00:03,720
Speaker 1: su Cockle, published in the Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. This was

1087
01:00:03,760 --> 01:00:08,000
Speaker 1: back in two thousand four. Uh Cockle rights quote Martian

1088
01:00:08,040 --> 01:00:11,520
Speaker 1: polar ices could be used as a shield by human explorers.

1089
01:00:11,560 --> 01:00:14,880
Speaker 1: By covering a research station with ice, high energy solar

1090
01:00:14,880 --> 01:00:20,960
Speaker 1: particles could be absorbed, protecting explorers from potentially damaging radiation exposure. Finally,

1091
01:00:21,040 --> 01:00:25,959
Speaker 1: martian ices provide a substratum over which scientific and exploratory

1092
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:29,320
Speaker 1: expeditions could traverse on their way to deep field sites

1093
01:00:29,640 --> 01:00:33,920
Speaker 1: and the geographic poles themselves. Martian polar ices have the

1094
01:00:33,960 --> 01:00:36,600
Speaker 1: potential to open a new and unique chapter in the

1095
01:00:36,680 --> 01:00:41,400
Speaker 1: long relationship between humans and ice. So that's a neat idea,

1096
01:00:41,520 --> 01:00:44,280
Speaker 1: like the idea of building structures out of ice, and

1097
01:00:44,640 --> 01:00:48,320
Speaker 1: it sounds like like highways of ice on the Red planet. Sure,

1098
01:00:48,720 --> 01:00:51,000
Speaker 1: and I think this has been proposed by other people

1099
01:00:51,040 --> 01:00:53,440
Speaker 1: in the past. Uh I can't remember where, but I

1100
01:00:53,480 --> 01:00:56,959
Speaker 1: know I've encountered the idea of using ice or even

1101
01:00:57,000 --> 01:01:00,520
Speaker 1: a mixed up matrix of of ice and and other

1102
01:01:00,640 --> 01:01:04,440
Speaker 1: fibers kind of like PI crete to build structures potentially

1103
01:01:04,760 --> 01:01:08,080
Speaker 1: on on like asteroid surfaces. Yeah, so there may be

1104
01:01:08,120 --> 01:01:11,960
Speaker 1: some potential for for PI create there. Um. I was

1105
01:01:11,960 --> 01:01:14,200
Speaker 1: looking around for some more takes on this, and uh

1106
01:01:14,240 --> 01:01:18,680
Speaker 1: I came across an interesting concept, the Mars ice House project,

1107
01:01:18,800 --> 01:01:21,560
Speaker 1: which is a concept at one at the two fifteen,

1108
01:01:21,600 --> 01:01:24,680
Speaker 1: New York makers fair. They have a really sleek website

1109
01:01:24,760 --> 01:01:28,560
Speaker 1: at Mars ice house dot com. But this is a

1110
01:01:28,640 --> 01:01:33,600
Speaker 1: concept from from Search that's uh, the Space Exploration, Space

1111
01:01:33,600 --> 01:01:38,840
Speaker 1: Exploration Architecture and clouds AO that's Clouds Architecture Office, and

1112
01:01:38,880 --> 01:01:42,440
Speaker 1: it basically the ideas too is to have robotic machines

1113
01:01:43,120 --> 01:01:46,400
Speaker 1: three D printing buildings and structures out of ice on

1114
01:01:46,480 --> 01:01:50,000
Speaker 1: the Martian surface. And they claim that quote in consultation

1115
01:01:50,120 --> 01:01:54,760
Speaker 1: with our team's expert scientific advisors, astrophysicist, geologists, structural engineers,

1116
01:01:54,760 --> 01:01:58,000
Speaker 1: and renowned three D printing experts, we have achieved positive

1117
01:01:58,000 --> 01:02:01,640
Speaker 1: experimentation with one to one and ice printing and successfully

1118
01:02:01,680 --> 01:02:05,560
Speaker 1: analyzed structural models. Now, obviously there are a lot of

1119
01:02:05,600 --> 01:02:08,960
Speaker 1: caveats here related both to the properties of ice and

1120
01:02:08,960 --> 01:02:11,720
Speaker 1: the particular challenges of the Martian environment. But I think

1121
01:02:11,720 --> 01:02:15,600
Speaker 1: it's really really a thought provoking concept. You know, imagine

1122
01:02:15,960 --> 01:02:19,080
Speaker 1: ghost cities made out of ice built on Mars by

1123
01:02:19,640 --> 01:02:24,160
Speaker 1: autonomous laborers yea, or robots build structures that nobody's in yet.

1124
01:02:24,440 --> 01:02:28,440
Speaker 1: I like it, yeah, yeah, just like weird like geometric

1125
01:02:29,320 --> 01:02:33,520
Speaker 1: egglue cities on Mars. And I had and I don't

1126
01:02:33,520 --> 01:02:35,440
Speaker 1: know that they really get into the pie creek concept

1127
01:02:35,440 --> 01:02:37,840
Speaker 1: as much, but it makes sense that that could be

1128
01:02:37,880 --> 01:02:39,680
Speaker 1: a part of it as well. I think part of

1129
01:02:39,720 --> 01:02:42,360
Speaker 1: the secret to this is don't let Kohagen buy up

1130
01:02:42,400 --> 01:02:45,320
Speaker 1: that city. He can't get in early because he's not

1131
01:02:45,360 --> 01:02:49,320
Speaker 1: going to give the people to air. That's true, He's

1132
01:02:50,000 --> 01:02:53,480
Speaker 1: he is stingy with the air. But the ice up

1133
01:02:53,520 --> 01:02:56,080
Speaker 1: for grabs, I guess all right. So there you have it,

1134
01:02:56,880 --> 01:03:01,320
Speaker 1: pie crete, ice, walls of ice. I hope you enjoyed

1135
01:03:01,520 --> 01:03:03,760
Speaker 1: this journey. It was a fun one to go on

1136
01:03:03,960 --> 01:03:06,640
Speaker 1: with you, and as always, we'd love to hear from you.

1137
01:03:06,680 --> 01:03:10,520
Speaker 1: Do you have thoughts on on ice itself? On pie crete?

1138
01:03:10,560 --> 01:03:13,000
Speaker 1: Have you ever made pie crete? Uh? Do you just

1139
01:03:13,080 --> 01:03:17,960
Speaker 1: have any feedback on the various um contemplations regarding like

1140
01:03:18,040 --> 01:03:21,160
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties cinema that we have touched on. Uh?

1141
01:03:21,240 --> 01:03:22,520
Speaker 1: You know how to get in touch with this? Joe

1142
01:03:22,520 --> 01:03:26,520
Speaker 1: will provide the details here in a second um. As always,

1143
01:03:26,560 --> 01:03:28,120
Speaker 1: if you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff

1144
01:03:28,160 --> 01:03:30,320
Speaker 1: to blow your mind, you know where to find us.

1145
01:03:30,520 --> 01:03:32,800
Speaker 1: Wherever you get your podcast. There a million places to

1146
01:03:32,800 --> 01:03:35,640
Speaker 1: get us out there. All we ask in return is

1147
01:03:35,720 --> 01:03:38,560
Speaker 1: that if you have the ability to rate, review, and subscribe.

1148
01:03:39,120 --> 01:03:42,160
Speaker 1: Do that because that helps us out huge Thanks as

1149
01:03:42,200 --> 01:03:46,320
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson. If

1150
01:03:46,360 --> 01:03:47,800
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with

1151
01:03:47,920 --> 01:03:50,280
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a

1152
01:03:50,360 --> 01:03:52,720
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hi, you

1153
01:03:52,760 --> 01:03:55,720
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

1154
01:03:55,720 --> 01:04:06,000
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production

1155
01:04:06,040 --> 01:04:08,800
Speaker 1: of I heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart Radio.

1156
01:04:09,000 --> 01:04:11,360
Speaker 1: This is the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

1157
01:04:11,360 --> 01:04:22,200
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.