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Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

Why not by ship? Was the area completely inaccessible due to the ice? Too far from shore?

I'm sure they thought of it, I just wonder why it was ruled out.

These stations are all along the Northwest Passage which was extremely inaccessible back then, especially for the large commercial shipping that would be needed. It's become much more accessible recently with warming waters but still mostly just by small craft in the summer.

> With no suitable runways or ports and heavy lift helicopters still in their infancy, it would all have to be hauled in over land.

The implication then is that without a port, transferring that much material from ships to shore would be prohibitively difficult.

Ah, thanks. I searched the article for ship, boat, sea, water, thinking I must have missed something, but not 'port'.

They could build a port, which would provide permanent infrastructure for the logistics, but again I'm sure someone thought of that.

But you'd either need ports at all the locations you need to send supplies, or you'd need something like this "land train"[*]. And if you have that, why bother with the complexity, difficulty, and time needed to build ports?

[*] I'm sure that name makes sense to someone, but not to me...

You have to get the materials there to build the port....

And get from the port inland, if you need to be particular about location.

most of the year it's frozen over, the barge transport season to take things to nunavut is very short.

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