Ascension Island, where nothing makes sense | Hacker News Reader

Ascension Island, where nothing makes sense

bbc.co.uk

103 pointsdarrhiggs27 comments

I have been at the airport briefly, twice. Once on the way into the Falklands, once on the way out. Both in the early 2000s, both times on an RAF Tristar. I was a contractor going down there for a months worth of work, surrounded by civilians and military on my flights.

I remember being there on the way down middle of the day and all the army guys were grabbing beers. It was 35C and I was necking water. I thought they were crazy. I am told there are parts of the island that get hotter.

On the way back, middle of the night, 4am I think we landed. I remember thinking the plane was too warm, and I couldn't wait to get some fresh air. I stood by the door as it opened waiting for the cool breeze to come in. Nope: wall of hot air. It was in the 30s.

There's nothing there, really. It's obvious who runs the comms stuff, and it's obvious why it's kept the way it is, but nobody will talk about it.

A few people I spoke to have ventured further afield.

The lady I stayed with in the Falklands who ran a B&B told me she had holidayed there. It was beautiful, apparently.

A friend of mine was stationed there during the Falklands War helping refuel planes. It was hell, apparently.

Well... Who ran the comms stuff?

It's an island in the middle of the ocean, placed between two continents, with limited, military-controlled access by the US and UK.

I don't think I'd need a spoiler tag to say government intelligence agencies.

GCHQ Have a station there, I dont think its any big secret

Well, ærospace agencies actually, since there are few signals to intercept in central nowhere. Contacting satellites and guiding æroplanes over open ocean is a great use for an island in the middle of an ocean.

> It's obvious who runs the comms stuff, and it's obvious why it's kept the way it is, but nobody will talk about it.

Including you, it seems :)

Who runs the comms stuff? Why is it that way?

This BBC article references Ascension Island: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island

A bit disappointed--was expecting something more along the lines of physics abnormalities, I guess. After reading the article, everything seems to make sense, in terms of human activities: the official UK denial over residents' right of abode; the secrecy over hilltop-stationed communications equipment; the lack of Leendert Hasenbosch's remains; Joseph Hooker's re-engineering of the islands environment, as well as subsequent efforts, over the ensuing decades.

I'm heading there in a month or so, then onwards to St Helena - I have a penchant for wanting to visit weird and remote places. Taking a drone, I might post footage here.

Getting permission to visit is a laugh, I had to write to the governor and explain why I want to come (last sailing of last mail ship).

Are you going to post updates to the web anywhere? If so, where? I have the same penchant and am extremely curious.

Not likely - connectivity in both places is pretty dire (although the saints are to get a cable landing in a few yrars, to go with their shiny new airport this year), and part of my purpose to going to the middle of nowhere is to unplug.

I probably will never visit St Helena, but it makes me kind of sad that such remote places end up getting an international airport and an influx of tourists.

Yup. That's why I'm going now - last sailing, first flight out, it's going to change pretty fast over the next few years.

I want to go to Tristan (and Inaccessible!) too, but it's going to have to wait for another trip, as I only have so much time off, and the sailings don't work for me. There's one place that'll almost certainly never get an airport.

I used to work with someone from St Helena (a "Saint").

She'd never left the island before she was 18, when Britain paid for her to attend university in the UK. Once in Britain, she had more money than her parents could ever get, but visiting her parents still took the best part of a month for the trip to be worthwhile.

Without an airport, the island would probably depopulate.

I'd be interested to hear if you're allowed to fly your drone anywhere.

Same rules as British airspace - as it is British airspace. 1000ft ceiling in fpv, spotter with line of sight, observe no-fly-zones around airports/structures.

Even without a drone I've had (occasionally gunpoint) dealings with all sorts of bemused security forces around the world, so not too worried.

That's terraforming. Before humans got there, it was bare volcanic rock.

As for the radio stations, there's a LORAN station, to provide a navigational marker in the South Atlantic. NASA had a tracking station there for Apollo, but it was closed and abandoned in the 1990s. The USAF has a tracking station there now, for communicating with various space assets.[1] As an intercept station, it would be marginal; there's nobody to listen to.

[1] http://www.patrick.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet_print...

Asencion island must be very important to NASA... It's almost exactly in the spot where satellite cargo launching to GEOS orbits must make a second burn to correct their orbital inclination when launching from Kennedy.

If you want to see more about Ascension island, check out the Departures episode about it. Here's a short clip from youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYJHxN4lXCc

The full version can be found by searching, kat, etc. BTW the whole Departures series is great, for those who love traveling (or wish they were traveling).

From the Wikipedia article, Ascension boasts what's sometimes called the world's worst golf course. I'm on my way ^_^

i may be the world's worst golfer so that sounds like a match made in ... ascension

Of course it's sad they lost the native species, but otherwise Darwin's plan is really interesting. They increased the biomass of the island and got forests to grow.

Of course, they might just save themselves a bit of time by introducing all the invasive species at once. Let them duke it out in a battle royale, rather than bringing them in one at a time, to control and/or compete with the previously introduced invasive species.

I don't shed many tears for the species that had a protected niche and never managed to do much with it. In the long run, Earth needs species that can quickly colonize hostile environments and make them more biologically productive.

You -- unless you are a Pygmy or Sen or the like -- are a species that lived in a protected niche for 100,000 or more years without making much of it. Then you -- we -- figured out writing and agriculture and pottery. The next logical step was semiconductor laser photolithographic doping and here we are on the internet sharing photos of cats.

So let's hear a cheer for protection from hostile environments.

If your species left Ascension Island and went on to become the dominant species on the entire planet, please raise your... appendage.

It wasn't until humanity left its protected niche that it really did anything interesting. And now we are the only ones capable of intentionally spreading life to other planets. So if your species took a gamble and made an alliance with humanity early, congratulations, you get to survive the planet-death extinction event someday. Good job, dogs and apple trees! Poor show, guinea worm and smallpox.

Mods, can we make the title less click-baiting? Perhaps by appending “(Ascension Island)” to the end?

This is a trickier case than it might seem. Titles that don't explain everything are often a good thing on HN; it's good for readers to have to slow down and work a little. But in this case "The island where nothing makes sense" fits the linkbait pattern too closely for that argument to win. So yes, we've changed the title.

Very _Dune_.

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