Data Center Booties

McMurdo Station is on Ross Island. We're seperated from the mainland my one short frozen channel. In fact the channel is where the Ice Runway is where we're landing the C-17 and Airbus right now. The advantage is that the Ice Runway is right next to base. where as Pegasus Field, the normal runway is 45 minutes away.

Ross Island happens to also be a volcanic rock so there is a fine black highly abrasive volcanic dust on the gound. Because of the dust we can't wear out outside shoes inside the buiding that houses our servers. So the office is asian style, shoes outside, or wear these booties if you take your outside shoes in. The dust that we would have brought in with our shoes would eventually find their way inside the servers and grind all the fans, hard drives and anything else that spins or has air flow to a halt. In the early days they would clean out some servers that died prematurely and find the dust all over the insides.