First assembly of the masterpiece

It was decided to first assemble the station here in Brussels in order to catch all the problems on time and find a solution before we leave. Antarctica has no « do it your-self » shop and it would be a rather unpleasant surprise to end up with not enough screws for example…

The site of Tour et Taxis was chosen for the space available, strategic location etc. At a certain point, it was almost decided to build the station outside. Luckily, some people triggered the alarm on time and said that this would delay us and be disastrous for the bare elements when raining. A fitting hanger was chosen in T&T (Tour and Taxis), also, special cranes were rented and it all started.

The station was designed like a big puzzle. The cladding elements are the biggest and can go up to 500Kg. All of this was made to fit in containers, for a much easier shipping.

I didn’t really assist to the assembly of the station so I won’t be able tell the details, but I’ve heard many things and here are some of them:

Six weeks, that’s how little time they had to build this gigantic Lego. There were many fitting problems, as NO margin was calculated on the elements, everything had to fit perfectly. That off course didn’t happen… So they had to start cutting (rather crudely I must say) in the elements to make them fit, hit them with big hammers, modify them… The crews have had very long days from what I’ve heard.

But six weeks latter it was all ready to be shown to the public. Of course I spare you with some details of things that happened; there were some problems in the organisation, communication but as everyone was very motivated... it worked!