80 days north pole airship choices7/23/2023 Instead, it demonstrates that strategic military, economic, geopolitical, and national security concerns influenced and shaped science undertakings in this region, including those of the International Polar Year of 1932-1933 and the following polar year, the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958.Passepartout and Fogg must make it to northern Scandanavia to trigger the scenario, riding the Pomor Hunting Balloon from Tromsø to Smeerenburg. The production of knowledge about Arctic's physical environment-including its changing climate-had little resemblance either to ideas of science-based 'progress,' or responses to perceived environmental concerns. This article provides the first internationally comparative study of the multiple economic, military, political, and strategic factors that motivated scientific activities and programs in the far north, from the interwar period through World War II and the Cold War, when carefully coordinated, station-based research programs were introduced. With strong claims to Arctic heritage but limited resources, leaders of these states sought to create independent research strategies while, especially in the case of Norway, protecting their geopolitical interests in relation to the Soviet Union and the U.S. Norway and Sweden, as smaller states, faced distinct challenges. Canadian leaders-while appreciating the national security concerns of its powerful southern neighbor-were even more concerned with maintaining sovereignty over its northern territories and gaining knowledge to assist its northern economic ambitions. ![]() Anxious that the Arctic might become a literal battleground between East and West by 1947, as the Cold War began, Pentagon leaders funded vast northern research programs, including in strategically located Greenland. In contrast, United States officials largely ignored the Arctic until the outbreak of World War II, when military commanders quickly grasped the strategic importance of this region. For Soviet leaders, the Arctic was an untamed land containing vast economic resources, all within reach if its long-sought Northern Sea Route became reality Soviet officials sought environmental knowledge of this region with a range of motivations from economic and strategic concerns to enhancing the prestige of socialism. Factors that made this change possible were distinct for each of the five circumpolar nation-states considered here. The heroic, expedition-based style of Arctic science, dominant in the first decades of the twentieth century, gave way to a systematic, long-term, strategic and largely state-funded model of research which increased both Arctic presence and the volume of research output. Why had the usually friendly and calm Norwegians suddenly become so hostile and unkind?įrom the 1930s through the 1950s-the decades bracketing the second and third international polar years-research in the physical and biological environmental sciences of the Arctic increased dramatically. ![]() When the Italian shipwrecked men came to the coastal town of Narvik in Norway to dock for the waiting train to Italy, the locals met them with hostility. Now Nobile was in safety, while Amundsen was gone forever. One Norwegian paper called Nobile “a goldgallooned fascist fool”, whose “insane venture had caused the whole tragedy” (Friheten 8 June 1928). This unkind attitude was also strengthened when Nobile came out of the ice safe and sound after 1 month. With his disappearance the Norwegian attitude towards Nobile and his fellow Italians turned from bad to worse. Amundsen was flying north to help to find his old companion. ![]() The accident triggered not only the then most extensive rescue operation ever, it also resulted in a national grievance in Norway, when the national hero Roald Amundsen vanished in the sea on his way from Norway to Spitzbergen. In the summer of 1928, the dirigible “Italia” with the Italian navigator and constructor Umberto Nobile and his crew crashed in the polar ice north of Spitzbergen.
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