Northwest Passage becomes more useful to humanity

[james_davis_nicoll]

Inconvenient ice disappears from from potentially useful Northwest Passage.

Comments

[anzhalyumitethe.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, the Russian side of the Arctic, the NorthEast Passage, remains closed. You Canucks have a temporal advantage.

EXPLOIT IT!

Ahem.

[aries-jordan.livejournal.com]

Is it typically Ugly American of me that my first thought was "Wow, Canada will have something to fight over"?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

We already do. US use of waters claimed by Canada have been a sore point for as long as I can recall.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but if Canada says the Northwest Passage is theirs, they'll have to keep it clear of ice, provide support, and ready medical evacuation. I wonder if that's worth it.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Keeping it clear of ice shouldn't be too difficult. There are tons and tons of methane clathrates up there for us to melt and methane is a powerful greenhouse gas.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

That's one of the arguments. We already do. If we have control over access, then we know who's in there and can put ships in "holding patterns" if the resources needed to escort them through are busy somewhere else, or can restrict passage to the number of ships we can handle.

[yud.livejournal.com]

The Northwest Passage is a big headache for the ship navigation software that my company is working on. In previous verions, we could just hand-wave and say "no one ever needs to sail above 85 degrees," but we can't do that for much longer. Having a coordinate system that breaks down at certain points isn't the most fun. And then there's the darn Mercator projection.

[yud.livejournal.com]

(While the northwest passage isn't that close to the North Pole, the distortions are still enough that it's better to use transverse coordinates instead of normal coordinates.)

[genomekelly.livejournal.com]

Something akin to this was implemented by the U.S. Strategic Air Command in the late 1950s/early 1960s for over-the-pole nuclear bombing missions. As I recall, the B-58 navigation system had dual-coordinate capability with the flip of a switch.

Ah, the law of unintended consequences

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

But think of the commercial advantage if you solve it first!

(I'm partial to the icosahedral projection, myself...might just be the d20 connection.)

Re: Ah, the law of unintended consequences

[yud.livejournal.com]

I'm partial to the quincuncial projection myself, because it tesselates.

Re: Ah, the law of unintended consequences

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Wow!

Re: Ah, the law of unintended consequences

[(Anonymous)]

Reminds me of Charlie`s Missle Gap.

[janetmk.livejournal.com]

An AP story gives a few more details.