It's always going to be a semantics battle over details of how often those shipments occur. We aren't going to build a moon base or Mars base without some expectation of regular shipments either. We aren't going to string them along without at least some basic lifelines in place. "100%" "pure" self-reliance of a "colony" has never happened in the history of humanity and likely never will. We're too social of a species to do that.
McMurdo is about as self-reliant as we might reasonably expect any moon base or Mars base to be in the short term. The details of shipping schedules among the closest on this planet to those thrust upon us by the economics of orbital mechanics in space projects.
It's absolutely not perfect self-reliance. It's still more self-reliance as an example than we are likely to find elsewhere on the planet and "good enough" for complaints that we aren't "ready" for space colonies because we haven't done enough of the homework. We've collectively done at least some of the homework.
It looks like they get annual shipments. That requirement seems like it would be a show-stopper for Mars, right? I mean we can queue up shipments so that they get a constant yearly train, but there will be times where the trajectories to Mars aren't very favorable I think...
McMurdo is useful at least as a science mission, in the sense that it studies a part of the planet that humans live on. There is basically an infinite number of empty, dead rocks out there in space -- we shouldn't waste research focus on this particularly large one that happens to be nearby.
For McMurdo: is there a situation where neither the US nor New Zealand (partners, run the next nearest Antarctic base and technically "control" the land McMurdo is on through wild politics and loopholes in political treaties) can send supplies?
It's an interesting exercise, certainly, but the kinds of doomsday scenarios where that is likely to occur, humanity as a whole may have much larger concerns than if the people stranded at McMurdo might survive.
Planning a space base certainly has a much longer list of not even quite doomsday scenarios to consider where contact/supplies/cargo runs are all the more infeasible. You can't account for all possible scenarios, but what are the threat models worth concerning about when all of the nations with spaceflight capabilities and all of the private corporations now with spaceflight can't and/or won't help out if humans are stranded on a base in space without possible contact? What are the cases where problems on Earth dwarf any humanitarian missions to space? I'm sure there are such threat models. I certainly don't know enough about them to talk to them to any detail. It's a bunch of entangled, interesting questions. Preparing for those scenarios may not necessarily require, a priori, expecting a base to survive with absolutely zero contact from the rest of humanity for extended periods of time. We may be able to assume a baseline of contact and know that breaks from that baseline risks the lives of people. I don't know. What's the threat model?
> It's an interesting exercise, certainly, but the kinds of doomsday scenarios where that is likely to occur, humanity as a whole may have much larger concerns than if the people stranded at McMurdo might survive.
it's not a doomsday scenario, it's just what it means to be a colony. if it can't keep itself alive it's not a colony, it's an expedition.
obviously people are always moving around and moving stuff around, but a colony that can't produce any of the necessities of life just isn't a colony.
McMurdo is about as self-reliant as we might reasonably expect any moon base or Mars base to be in the short term. The details of shipping schedules among the closest on this planet to those thrust upon us by the economics of orbital mechanics in space projects.
It's absolutely not perfect self-reliance. It's still more self-reliance as an example than we are likely to find elsewhere on the planet and "good enough" for complaints that we aren't "ready" for space colonies because we haven't done enough of the homework. We've collectively done at least some of the homework.