Dammit Jim; Get off my lawn!
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Interesting thing about the South Pole - it’s a classist society. The Beakers (PhDs) and the Carhartts (tradespeople) are the two main factions. I didn’t quite fit into either, as I’m a non-degreed staff engineer working for a professor.
Also, there’s a ritzy upwind side and a slum downwind side of the Pole. You can guess which class inhabits each.
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If you want a self-contained living place not quite so remote, there’s always:
An online apology, and I almost missed it. Now I feel bad for coming on so strongly.
I think the goal of a self-sustaining settlement on Antarctica is a long way off, largely because nobody is investing serious effort towards it.
I’m not sure of the parallels with Mars though, the biggest issue with an Antarctic settlement is energy. Solar doesn’t work for much of the year, wind works but has issues with intermittentcy and the wind levels (often too high rather than too low), and storage is difficult because batteries don’t like the cold. Diesel just solves these problems so easily but I’m not sure an oil rig and small scale refinery would make anyone happy.
Mars on the other hand has proven to be very friendly to solar and batteries in the explored regions. However managing water is an obvious initial concern, something that is trivial in Antarctica with sufficient energy.
The desert like environments that they do existing studies in such as https://hi-seas.org/ seem a much better fit.
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