Ascension Island

Exploring Science in the Sea.

The recent saga of life on Ascension Island is a series of miscalculations.

When the island was first settled in 1815, it was a haven for millions of birds.

But colonists also brought rats, which overran the island.

British territory in the South Atlantic.

So there's St. Helena and Ascension Island.

And then further aflung is Tristan da Cunha.

Okay, and so that course, the most remote golf course in the world, how was it? Was it well-kept?

Well, I mean, there was some violence for sure.

I mean, Margaret Thatcher kind of put an end to that.

And actually, we mentioned Ascension Island earlier, which is near St. Helena, and that's basically a massive U.K. military base, and that's where they launched the offensives onto the Falkland Islands.

So now there's a big U.K. base on the Falkland Islands, which is where you fly into if you fly there from Punta Arenas like I did.

Let's really look at the mechanics of what the victor accomplished there.

The RAF needed to project power over 8,000 miles from Ascension Island to the South Atlantic to bomb the runway at Port Stanley.

To get a single combat aircraft, a Vulcan bomber, to the target and back, it required a staggeringly complex chain of aerial support.

It was logistically insane.

And so I'm looking forward to having the ability to do that.

One place that I haven't been, which we will go to after the build is completed, is Ascension Island, which is in the middle of the Atlantic between South America and Africa.

So I'm really looking forward to visiting that.

And I've understood that you're very involved in the design, even down to the little details like the door handles.

Distance remains a problem for Great Britain in maintaining its position on the islands.

From Ascension Island, where they have the military base in the Atlantic, to the Malvinas, they have 12 calculated days.

They have 12-culated days.

And from Plymouth to Ascension, it must be about a week.

If you're tuned into the podcast at all, you know, I've got a couple episodes up, kind of having to do with ascension, spirituality, kind of progress in this game of life, right? And, you know, on that note, I decided to see if I could find one of these maps, right? These maps that show the different dimensions pertaining to different chakra and things like this.

So I go and I type in... ascension map after i tried map of dimensions and didn't really get too far got like the basic you know tree of life stuff but that was about it but um anyway so i type in map of ascension right and what do i get i get ascension island right And it's pretty interesting.

This place, there's like so little information about it other than it was a top secret facility in World War II and on and on.

And we'll go through some of that stuff here in just a minute.

But let's go down south here.

Let's head to the south.

Further down along this mid-Atlantic trench, we come to a place known as Ascension Island.

Tiny little place out in the middle of literally the middle of the atlantic ocean right adjacent to you know a deep ocean trench all right so we're going to zoom in here and we'll see if it gives me the option to do the street view again of course now that i've got you guys on it's it's not showing me the street view But it did just a minute ago.

So 2,500 miles from any other civilization.

And that civilization is a tiny island as well called Ascension Island.

Have you seen the footage of this stuff? No.

I mean, you're literally talking like it's like a rock in the middle of the ocean.

So there's a twice weekly flight pretty direct from the UK.

You stop off on Ascension Island just to refuel.

You're there for a couple of hours.

So it's a MOD flight, but anyone can go on it.

And one of the reactions by the Chilean government at the time was to suspend the air link between Chile and the islands.

And for six months, the islands felt really isolated because they were dependent on that route, the British, the Royal Air Force maintained by Ascension Island.

And there was even doubts at some stage whether the emergency diversion landing rights that exist in Brazil and Uruguay, for example, would be retained.

And then Argentina showed solidarity with Chile.