It's a very cold place right...? And a place where energy is insanely expensive because all fuel has to be shipped thousands of miles?
So energy efficiency is paramount.
So why are these doors, even the modern ones, just a few inches thick? I'd expect to see the doors being 6 inch thick foam, and every outdoor door to be a double door (ie. into an entrance room, and another door into the rest of the building, such that only one door is ever open at once, to prevent heat loss).
I'd expect all the walls to be 12 inches thick (with 10 inches of foam) too - and again, this doesn't seem to be the case.
McMurdo during the summer routinely gets above freezing and isn't all too different from Alaska or northern Canada in the early spring. During the winter of course it gets cold.
As for power, McMurdo has a mix of power sources including a number of renewables. For about a decade ('62-'72), McMurdo also had a small nuclear power plant on site as well. This was also only a few years after McMurdo was established ('56). So there was definitely a time where energy was not particularly expensive and the greater issue was the cost per kilo for shipping supplies.
Of course now that shipping logistics are mostly ironed out and nuclear was deemed too problematic, various fossil fuels are used for power and heating a good chunk of the site (whatever the scattering of renewables can't handle).
McMurdo has a deepwater port, and a lot of fuel storage tanks as a part of its facilities. Tankers and can just drive up in summer and offload large quantities of fuel. It's not like the South Pole station where everything must be flown in. And the "waste heat" from the generators making electricity is routed throughout the base and used for heating.
Not to mention almost a megawatt of wind turbines in the near constant wind.
A study on the feasibility of electric vehicles had the expected cost of electricity per kWh at the base lower than California residential rates.
So energy efficiency is paramount.
So why are these doors, even the modern ones, just a few inches thick? I'd expect to see the doors being 6 inch thick foam, and every outdoor door to be a double door (ie. into an entrance room, and another door into the rest of the building, such that only one door is ever open at once, to prevent heat loss).
I'd expect all the walls to be 12 inches thick (with 10 inches of foam) too - and again, this doesn't seem to be the case.