Astronaut and Billionaire will Ride Hydrogen Hummer to South Pole

Former American astronaut Buzz Aldrin and Apple Macintosh billionaire Steve Wozniak will drive a monster 4WD to the South Pole next Christmas.

They are claiming the trip will be environmentally friendly because Hummer H1 Alphas - a civilian version of the US military's high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle (HMMWV or Hum-Vee) - will be powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.

The plan was outlined by documentary film-maker and electric car enthusiast Chris Paine at the 2007 Detroit auto show, after Mr. Wozniak released some details in July last year.

Paine said he will film the Zero South expedition and that it will be a "race" between vehicles variously running on bio-fuel, the hydrogen fuel-cell, and on electric batteries.

Paine, who recently promoted electric vehicles with a documentary called Who Killed The Electric Car?, said the vehicles will run to the South Pole and back in an effort to prove that alternative fuel vehicles can tackle the harshest of conditions.

Three of the vehicles to be used in the expedition will later be used as exhibits in the United States to educate youth on global climate change, alternative fuels and the importance of the earth's Polar Regions.

The Hummer expedition will travel 1600km up the trans-Antarctic highway built by Americans for "road-trains" of crawler tractors to haul fuel and other supplies to their bases at the South Pole. The trip is expected to take 10 days, and Zero South has applied to the US National Science Foundation for permission to use the ice highway.

The engineers preparing Mr Wozniak's Hummer are reported to have received advice from California's Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, which has experience running hydrogen-powered buses.

                        

Some environmentalists have already raised concerns over the plan amid increasing commercialization of the continent.

They says that the group's planned drive to the pole is part of a much wider problem in regulating tourism to Antarctica, where visitor numbers are expected to jump to reach 50,000 tourists and support crew next summer. Fifteen years ago the number was only about 2500.

Antarctic tourism was almost out of control and was already "by far the largest" human activity on the frozen southern continent.

Tourism has grown at an extraordinary rate. We are at the break point for mass tourism to Antarctica.

Mr Wozniak claims that trip will not be tourism and that it opposed tourism in Antarctica "or exploitation of this precious area".

"This exhibition does not promote tourism," he said. "Its purpose is to create enlightenment opportunities that will inspire a new generation of scientists, engineers and explorers."