Johnson Atoll is an unincorporated US territory and Pacific island wildlife refuge located about 860 miles southwest of Hawaii, which has been used for many military projects of different types over the last 90 years.
[T]he island hosted an airfield during World War II before operating as a launch site for atmospheric nuclear tests during the 1950s and 1960s, some of which resulted in plutonium contamination at the atoll. The US government then requisitioned the area for chemical weapons experiments with similar consequences before ultimately cordoning it as a remote storage depot for the same deadly biological agents.
This year, the Atoll was announced as being under consideration for testing the elements of a new military cargo system based around the idea of shipping tons of cargo anywhere quickly.
Those decades of progress appeared in jeopardy earlier this year. In March, the Air Force first announced intentions to once again requisition the unincorporated US territory, this time for its Research Laboratory’s Rocket Cargo Vanguard Program. The US Space Force-affiliated endeavor aims to establish a system to deliver as much as 100 tons of cargo to anywhere on Earth in less than 90 minutes.
“In the event of conflict or humanitarian crisis, the Space Force will be able to provide our national leadership with an independent option to achieve strategic objectives from space,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay ” Raymond said during the program’s announcement.
SpaceX is the only launch provider mentioned, presumably for Starship and SuperHeavy which SpaceX has talked about as launching suborbital flights like this: that is, trips between any two points on Earth in 90 minutes. Another possibility is that linked story is published in Popular Science and it must be considered that SpaceX is mentioned because they don't expect their readers to know Blue Origin's New Glenn, or ULA's Vulcan by name and they're using SpaceX to get more clicks.
The Department of the Air Force’s confirmation, first provided to Stars and Stripes, came ahead of a planned environment assessment and amid mounting pressure from conservationists.
“The Department of the Air Force has elected to hold the preparation of the Johnston Atoll Environmental Assessment for a proposed rocket cargo landing demonstration on Johnston Atoll in abeyance while the service explores alternative options for implementation,” Air Force spokesperson Laurel Falls said in the email.
The article explains the situation in language you see regularly when conservation groups don't want a particular place to become environmentally spoiled - that is, made less pretty to them. The big story is the place being ruined by the new controllers of the now-spoiled island, and a "noble savage" hurt by the new users.
Johnson Atoll is home to 14 different species of tropical birds. Image credit: Credit: USFWS / Tor Johnson
Johnston Atoll. Woooo. Was there for about 2 hours in 1970, wasn't allowed to see anything other than a covered plane, covered stairway, covered bus, covered bunker...
ReplyDeleteI pity the fool who gets assigned to do anything at that island.
The more I see about the place, the harder it is to care about. The area where people live looks to be at least 90% man made. Wikipedia has an image where the original (1942) island and several waypoints in size between then and now are overlaid. It has got to be 10 times the area it was when they first started using the atoll for the military.
DeleteBasically, it's just big enough to interfere with big waves crossing it.
It is perfectly situated to be a leg of the Hawaii-to-Australia aerial transit. Which it was, built just for that, for military planes and a safe spot for civilian flying boats. Same same during and after WWII.
DeleteLike most atoll islands, once you see about 100 sqft, you've seen it all. Boring. But that boring becomes ever-so-much-better when your airplane is malfunctioning or your boat is having issues.
The only things that make life far-less boring on islands like that are things that the people actively do, the random horrible weather event (like a high tidal surge or some tropical cyclone) or things made-by-man (like, oh, say, enemy attack or accidentally nuking yourself (which they did, twice or three times depending on how you count it.))
I thought it was pretty much already a nature preserve, like several other mid ocean atolls?
ReplyDeleteI'd be surprised if it only has 14 species of birds and not dozens
Jonathan
Well, it's only one square mile, so maybe other species never stumbled across it or the fights over territory got to be too much for them.
DeleteSounds like a great source for guano, if that ever reappears in the economy!
ReplyDeleteCome to think of it, I don't think I've ever heard of the greenies shutting down a guano business. This could be a first.
DeleteIt was a great source of guano, back when we first started utilizing it as a coaling station. But being smallish in nature, the guano harvesters went through said guano rather quickly.
DeleteGetting fertilizers from petroleum is far safer, cheaper and better.
I looked at the Wikipedia page. I knew about the nuclear bomb tests, but I didn't know about the plutonium issue. And the Agent Orange. And biological weapons.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Ants of Unusual Size.
To be honest it's not a place I would want to be. Or send anyone else to.
if I was a business owner I'm pretty sure my lawyers would advise me that anyone sent there, who gets cancer of *any* kind later, is going to sue my butt.
In the 1970s, Holmes&Narver had contracts to dispose of nerve gas and other agents. Much was simply dumped into the ocean. The barrels are very likely still there.
DeleteEh, it's literally in the middle of nowhere. And the nuclear fallout issue isn't nearly as bad as lefties, enviro-weenies and scaredy-cats make it out to be. Kind of like the environs around Chernobyl, it's mostly safe.
DeleteWhat are far more dangerous at the island is the Pacific stonefish, which looks like a stone and has dorsal spines strong enough to puncture through a boot. And has toxins bad enough that if you know you just got stabbed and envenomed, you have 20-30 seconds to realize you're dead before you're dead.
The stuff dumped into the ocean is all dumped off the ocean side of the reef. Which is a very very long drop to anything that will stop the fall. Really neat is to go out on the reef during an extremely low tide where you can just walk out literally to the edge of the reef and look down and down and you can see 3-5 strata of sharks, reef sharks up closer to the surface with hammerheads and the other big deep ocean sharks farther down.
In the 90s, I knew some folks from SWRI who had the monitoring contract for the JACADS plant. IIRC, the team had two or three analytic chemists that traveled there every month or two for sample collection and analysis and to ensure compliance to the disposal requirements. At one point, I was potentially going on a trip with them, but that ended up not happening. By their accounts, it was not a glamour spot. I’ve seen a few web sites with memorabilia from service personnel who were stationed there at some time or other. Seems like it was not considered a “good duty” assignment.
ReplyDeleteIt was a good duty assignment. Nobody actively (usually) potentially attacking you (except for your own military...,) no relatives, no stresses of normal life, you're on an island where you can scuba dive or fish or watch movies and hang around in air conditioning.
DeleteAs to being on the monitoring teams, very safe as long as there's no active release of poison gas or fresh radiation. And people who get the monitoring job generally get a good per diem and 'hazard' bonuses.