The video discusses the Antarctic Snow Cruiser, a 37-ton mobile base designed to explore Antarctica in the 1939 US Antarctic Service Expedition. The cruiser was expected to sustain a team of explorers for a year, but it ended up being a failed experiment due to its underpowered engine, poorly designed tires, and unequal weight distribution. After struggling to move in the Antarctic snow, the cruiser was eventually parked and used as a stationary laboratory. The expedition was later abandoned due to the onset of World War II, and the cruiser's current whereabouts are unknown.
Here are the key facts extracted from the text:
1. In 1940, a team of American explorers set out to chart one of the last unexplored corners of the planet, traveling to the South Pole through parts of Antarctica.
2. The team used a 37-ton mobile base called the Antarctic Snow Cruiser to sustain them while they lived, worked, and slept in isolation for an entire year.
3. The Antarctic Snow Cruiser was designed to push through the harshest conditions on the planet.
4. Before 1939, only two expedition teams had ever set foot on the South Pole, and only one of them made it back out alive.
5. Temperatures in Antarctica can fall below minus 80 degrees Celsius, and winds of up to 300 kilometers per hour are not unheard of.
6. The Antarctic Snow Cruiser was designed by Chicago's Armor Institute of Technology and looked like something out of a Jules Verne novel.
7. The cruiser had enormous 10-foot-tall rubber wheels to absorb the shock of the unforgiving terrain.
8. The cruiser could hydraulically retract its wheels and use its large front and rear overhangs to slide over gaps, allowing it to cross ice crevices up to four and a half meters wide.
9. The cruiser had an innovative diesel-electric hybrid drivetrain, which used diesel engines to supply power to electric motors inside each wheel hub.
10. The cruiser was designed to be self-sufficient, carrying enough food, fuel, and supplies to last an entire year, as well as spaces for its five explorers to live, sleep, and work.
11. The cruiser even carried its own biplane to conduct aerial surveys and photograph hundreds of kilometers of Antarctic territory.
12. The Antarctic Snow Cruiser was built in just 11 weeks over a single Midwestern summer in 1939.
13. The cruiser was designed to travel at speeds of up to 48 kilometers per hour, but it struggled to reach even a fraction of that speed.
14. The cruiser had just 8 horsepower per ton to motivate it forward, which was insufficient for the task.
15. The cruiser's tires were designed to absorb impacts and be virtually indestructible, but they were also perfectly smooth and spun hopelessly in the Antarctic snow.
16. The decision to use smooth tires is perplexing in hindsight, but with such a tight development timeline, engineers had to make do with an already existing tire design.
17. Crews attached chains to the tires and even doubled up the front wheels with spares, but it made little difference.
18. The cruiser's unequal weight distribution was also a problem, and driving the cruiser backwards actually turned out to be the most effective way of getting it moving.
19. The cruiser managed to travel backwards for 148 kilometers in a loop around the landing base, but driving in reverse severely limited its speed.
20. The Expedition team eventually admitted defeat and permanently parked the cruiser for use as a stationary laboratory.
21. The Expedition would continue without the cruiser, but it would also have to end early due to the Second World War.
22. The abandoned Snow Cruiser was last spotted in 1958, after it was dug out from under several meters of snow.
23. Today, the machine's whereabouts are unknown, and it's either still buried under sheets of ice or has since broken off on a nice flow and sunk to the bottom of the ocean.