[ExI] towing an iceberg

spike at rainier66.com spike at rainier66.com
Tue May 25 03:22:44 UTC 2021



-----Original Message-----
From: spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com> 
...

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>...What I had in mind is a scheme which takes advantage of the Von Karman
vortex street:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_vortex_street

>...If the iceberg is stationary, anchored to the ocean floor at a thousand
points and the natural current forms a vortex street, the flow is
alternately more laminar on one side and ...spike


Oy vey, I made a total mess of that previous egregiously amateurish attempt
at expressing an idea.  Do allow me to try again.

Imagine a long iceberg like the recently-formed shelf.  Imagine the
prevailing current west to east (it isn't hard to do (because that is the
direction of the prevailing current down there.)  Once we get it in close to
a land mass, the job becomes easier because we can use the current to our
advantage then.  But getting across the sea between Antarctica and South
America is tough.

So... west to east current.  Imagine anchoring the ice with the long
direction oriented east-west, anchored to the bottom of the sea with the
attachments to the ice near the front (if we define front is upstream in the
current.)

The idea is that the Von Karman vortex street would cause the "stern" to
move north and south, pivoting about the bow.  

If we were to get clever, perhaps we could re-anchor when the stern shifts
northward, then use the same effect to cause the bow to shift northward.
Repeat, rocking the whole snowball north a few km with each cycle.

Note that it might not be fast enough to get us across that gulf before the
ice melts.

spike



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