Pituffik Space Base sits 1,500 kilometers from the North Pole on Greenland's northwest coast — the northernmost installation in the entire U.S. Department of Defense. It's also reportedly the most expensive overseas base the United States operates, at over $100 million a year, roughly ten times the cost of an average Air Force base. So what does it actually take to keep several hundred people, a 10,000-foot runway, and a missile warning radar running year-round at 76 degrees north? We dig into who really lives there (the population numbers everyone gets wrong), the contractor-heavy workforce, the air bridge and sealift that keep it alive, and the human cost of polar night, isolation, and a medical evacuation that once took three days.
Episode 5439 — myweirdprompts.com/n/5439 (permanent short link: myweirdprompts.com/623181)
