There's enough hyperbole and good wishes to go around, when it comes to sound reasons to reach out to all the places that people have settled around the world. How about sound humanitarian or --- dare we say it without sounding heartless -- economic reasons to connect ALL the scattered dots all over the world.
Why not make it easier to reach all the disconnected places in the world that could bring new, critical natural resources to the marketplace, at the same time that we bring the many benefits of healthy food, clean water, and decent sanitation to isolated settlements worldwide ?
Dr. Barry Prentice, of the University of Manitoba, launched (what began as) a one-man crusade called "Airships to the Arctic" some years back to improve supply-chain logistics to the very isolated Inuit and First Peoples settlements that lie far north of the "End of Track" signs and the Ice Roads that depend for their very limited access on the ice forming atop the lakes and tundras of Canada's Far North.
This hardening of the road surface took place only during those times that temperatures drop low enough to cause ice to form on the water's surface along carefully designated routes from the logistical End of Transportation to supply permanent settlements in two critical ways : providing food and newly available benefits of modern civilization and technology to the settlements and --- at the same time --- provide emergency medical and transport services to those indigenous people.
This is not to be taken lightly ! It's true that these First Peoples have survived for thousands of generations without outside help. However, once the benefits of decent health care were recognized, and the advantages of fishing from fast, modern small craft equipped with outboard motors, using machine-sharpened hooks, and requiring precious fuel oil to power the boats quickly and effortlessly out to the hunting and fishing grounds they had been exploiting for thousands of years, and the services of modern, highly educated medical personnel were demonstrated, the settlers cheered loudly AND the Canadian government felt -- and took over --- the humane obligations of continuing service.
Well, as pointed out very nicely in the TV reality series "Ice Road Truckers" , for years truckers drove their tractor-trailer rigs on the treacherous icy surfaces that froze enough to support their huge weight, bringing supplies up to the settlers, supplies that included, once the possibilities came into being, drilling and mining supplies to the hardy work force that made it possible to develop the rich supply of oil shale, rare earth minerals, and other resources available in rich supply up there.
... And then the problems occasioned by global warming arose. The warmer climate no longer froze the water surface hard enough to support the trucks. How to continue the services northward, and the transportation southward with no roads, ice or otherwise?
Dr. Prentice, whose academic field is Supply Chain Logistics (it all makes sense now, doesn't it?) founded and directed a series of "Airships to the Arctic" conferences to focus the world's attention on this nexus of problems. They succeeded on every level, and continue with the support of a non-profit organization called "ISO Polar". We trust that they will continue to flourish and produce results for many years to come. Interest and support for these programs grew year by year, by both academics, by the Canadian government, and by interested military and commercial businesses.
BUT, Canada's northlands, while unique in its supplies and demands, is not unique in its isolated condition. A visit to any of the TV channels that have programs on the wild and isolated places in the world will change anyone's mind rapidly .
Couple that with an understanding of the benefits and possibilities of bringing vast areas of the world the benefits (and, make no mistake, the liabilities) of contact with the "outside" world, and the concomitant availability of very desirable natural resources, and --- suddenly --- there are millions of hectares of resources to exploit (not always an evil word) and human beings deprived of the many benefits that we take for granted.
AND YOUR POINT IS ...
Dr. Prentice quickly saw that a powerful transportation advantage existed in the use of Airships --- yes, those same aircraft that had been reviled and exiled ever since the (admittedly terrible) disaster of the Hindenburg Zeppelin, inflated to its fullest with hydrogen as a lifting gas, thanks to hydrogen's extreme lightness (very low molecular weight) and unwillingness of the U.S. to sell the rare and inert gas helium to the then recently Nazified German government. Helium doesn't burn, but on the other hand, doesn't provide as much lift as hydrogen. However, the Germans had racked up such a successful history of safe, comfortable --- even luxurious -- air travel over the preceding several decades using hydrogen, that they felt the game was worth the risk.
For whatever reason, and whatever the chain of circumstances, chemical reactions, and even weather, the Hindenburg Zeppelin burned just before landing at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey, causing the death of a total of some 34 passengers and crew, and the subject matter for an ultimate viral video ---who can forget tghe infamous "Oh, the humanity" comment by a distraught news commentator who witnessed and broadcast the disaster and reported live from Lakehurst on that paradigm-changing day in 1937 ?
From that day forward, it would have been easier to purchase a textbook on tropical diseases in Nunavut, in Northern Canada. than to find regular commercial transportation by Zeppelins, which had become the generic word (like Aspirin and Kleenex in those early decades of the 20th Century) for airships.
THROWING OUT THE BABY WITH THE BATHWATER
BUT the many advantages of airship transportation also were lost, with the exception of some far-seeing personnel in the U.S. Navy, and --- perhaps --- some nations that used blimps in various highly specialized circumstances.
Then Dr. Prentice revived hope for the Airship again with his Conferences ... and did a remarkably fine job of stirring up interest again. Probably through the focus of this interest on the Canadian Arctic, he succeeded --- probably better than even he might have dreamed.
BUT, at a price. In many political circles today, Airships means Arctic. ... and yet there are arguably many other countries and specific locations that suffer from the same isolation and contain the same concentrations of (different) valuable resources, with no decent (or indecent) or traversable roads or navigable inland waterways as Northern Canada. Let me just very briefly outline some possibilities and allow you to add others in the Comments section of this Blog from your personal knowledge.
Think Brazil and its wealth of minerals and arable land.
Consider Central sub-Saharan Africa with its seemingly endless supply of terribly undernourished people, without even potable (drinkable) water, and certainly no dependable supply of electricity.
Think of the many times we have seen images of isolated areas of Borneo or other locations in the Pacific or Indian Ocean with --- even in this day and age, NO WAY TO GET THERE aside from primitive canoe and foot pathways hacked machete-stroke-by-machete stroke through otherwise impenetrable vegetation and unimaginable hazards.
Consider the vast stretches of the Siberian dual barriers of desert and frozen tundra.
... and a brief final commentary video segment broadcast on The Animal Channel that focused on the new threat by exploding populations of several seriously dangerous species of jellyfish that routinely kill people (and critters) that venture into their territory; that brought the latest giant American aircraft carrier to a halt by swarming by the tens of millions into the water intake tubes, that provided cooling water to the carrer's power plant; that have actually adapted to fresh water from their native coral seas to a lake in Florida, to the utter astonishment of marine biologists.
... and then think of Dr. Prentice and his tireless band of advocates trying to link all these wastelands --- and many others --- together and bring to them the benefits of modern comfort and technology .
We wish you well, Professor Prentice ! .. and maybe ISO Polar is indeed a much more descriptive, more inclusive name than "Airships to the Arctic". We suggest to all our readers that this is an effort totally worth supporting.
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