NARRATOR: They're watching you.
More than 5,000 satellites circle the earth.
Every day, they uncover
new, mysterious phenomena that defy explanation.
Booze and bombs in the New Jersey Murder Dome.
MORGAN: By the time it was all over,
$20 million dollars had gone up in smoke.
NARRATOR: The curse of King Solomon's Island.
The ultimate outcome was that there were no survivors.
NARRATOR: And the desert doomsday clock.
This is deeply concerning for the stability of the world.
NARRATOR: Baffling phenomena, mysteries from space.
What on Earth are they?
[theme music playing]
March 7th, 2021.
A satellite scanning a dense, marshy
forest in New Jersey captures this image.
I'm seeing, in the landscape,
a gigantic oval.
It's huge.
SILBEY: The oval's actually not entirely by itself.
There's also a very strange grid pattern
that's been carved out of the woods.
It's as if these are ghosts of structures
that have been swallowed up into the pines.
NARRATOR: This is the New Jersey Pine Barrens,
an ancient forest with an infamous history,
one that could help explain the weird shapes in the image.
For over 250 years,
its vast, inaccessible interior was a haven for murderers,
outlaws, and thieves.
The New Jersey Pine Barrens were
the perfect cover for illicit activity.
Here, they would be invisible to law enforcement.
The possibility that I'm considering is that what we're
looking at is some sort of a hideout settlement.
NARRATOR: The lure of clandestine activity has drawn
historian Martin Morgan into these remote woodlands.
My suspicions immediately go to the Prohibition era, where,
in the Pine Barrens,
it was known that rum runners were producing stills
and hiding out in a remote area.
NARRATOR: Beginning in 1920,
distilleries spring up throughout the forest,
part of an illegal nationwide industry,
which turns out nearly 35 million gallons of
home-brewed booze.
The distilleries were actually fairly substantial in size,
and so the grid pattern fits in terms of what
the bootleggers might have needed to produce
their own alcohol.
Maybe they built an entire village
out here to support this distillery operation.
NARRATOR: The 150-proof moonshine produced in
the Pine Barrens is known as Jersey Lightning.
Even though this concoction did not have a good taste,
it got the job done.
And if you were somebody who barely had two dimes to
rub together, it was going to be your salvation.
NARRATOR: To amplify the kick from their hooch,
moonshiners mix in bleach, embalming fluid, and manure.
HORTON: There was no regulation.
There was no control, additives were placed into the booze
and all sorts of horrendous things,
like paint stripper, for example.
We know that these structures have been around for at
least 90 years, because they show up in older photographs.
NARRATOR: Yet when Morgan closes in on the imprints spotted
from space...
What's this, then?
he discovers they don't appear to
be the remains of a moonshine factory.
This isn't just
some flimsy structure.
This thing is beefy. It's made of concrete.
Whoa.
NARRATOR: Morgan finds massive parallel walls,
two feet thick and reinforced with steel bars,
a sign, he believes, of military architecture.
The walls are angled backward away from one another.
In the event that there is an explosion, it would
direct the blast upward so that the structure could
conceivably survive.
And so now I have to think that
we might be dealing with an explosives plant.
NARRATOR: Declassified records confirm the structures
are the legacy of a pivotal
but often overlooked period in American
military history.
This is the site of the World War I
Amatol munitions factory -- during the war,
this place becomes the ultimate boomtown.
NARRATOR: The use of munitions during World War I
is on a scale without parallel in human conflict.
As opposing forces fire a billion artillery
shells across the killing fields of northern Europe,
the war descends into a bloody stalemate.
HYMEL: The amount of destruction and fire power is overwhelming.
Each side is trying to develop larger and larger munitions
to sort of break the back of the other side.
Who would win? Whoever had the most explosives.
NARRATOR: Even before it joins the conflict in 1917, the U.S.
offers help to its allies in the form of shipments of TNT,
but reserves soon run out,
forcing scientists to invent a new explosive --
Amatol, a highly potent mix of TNT and ammonium nitrate.
Amatol was a game-changer in World War I.
LEVINE: Amatol is the perfect substance to have discovered in
these circumstances, because
the supply of TNT was limited, but there was a plentiful
supply of ammonium nitrate.
NARRATOR: Following the discovery,
the U.S. government purchases 6,000 acres of
the Pine Barrens and builds the massive amatol factory in
just four months.
It is part of a staggering countrywide mobilization,
which produces 160 million pounds of explosives
per month for the battlefields of Europe.
MORGAN: It was used in everything, because you could
liquefy it and pour it into a shell
or a body of a hand grenade or whatever you needed to
pour it into.
NARRATOR: The supplies of
vital explosives being sent from the U.S.
to its allies infuriates the German government.
The decision was made by the German high
command to adopt what was known
as Universal War, and this meant that anyone supplying
Britain with munitions were subject to German attack.
On July 30th, 1916, German saboteurs infiltrate
the Black Tom rail yard
in New York and detonate cars packed with 1,000 tons
of explosives.
[explosion blasts]
The cataclysmic blast blows out windows in
almost every high rise in Lower Manhattan
and pockmarks
the Statue of Liberty with shrapnel.
By the time it was all over, $20 million
in explosives had gone up in smoke.
So there was an increasing shortage
of explosives to supply to the allies.
NARRATOR: To ramp up production, the government builds
a town capable of housing
20,000 workers to the east of the amatol factory.
If there was a large explosion, you're not going to
kill your work force,
their children, where they're living.
NARRATOR: Following the end of World War I,
demand for amatol plummets,
The factory closes, and the workers leave the forest.
But one mystery remains.
SILBEY: There's an almost perfect oval,
just sort of sitting there, where there's no reason for it,
as far as I can tell.
So then, what is it?
NARRATOR: Coming up,
into the murder dome.
This was a blood sport.
There were many fatalities.
NARRATOR: And the fortress of skulls.
And it's absolutely beyond imagination.
NARRATOR: Hooked by lost structures revealed from space,
Martin Morgan is in the depths of the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
This is an explosives factory.
NARRATOR: A mysterious oval shape sits in its midst.
MORGAN: I'm now in the middle of the oval structure.
And you don't get an impression of this when you
look at it from satellite, but there are
berms on either side.
NARRATOR: The raised ridge of earth precisely
follows the outline of the giant structure.
Maybe this was some sort of a race track?
The presence of the inner tube
certainly suggests that could be the case.
Why would there be a race track
in the middle of the New Jersey Pine Barrens?
NARRATOR: Local land records reveal
Morgan has uncovered structures
with a history steeped in death and riches.
These things are known as murder domes.
It's really hard to imagine that this could be taking place
in the early 20th century.
NARRATOR: The tracks have their origin
in the dawn of the Motor Age.
As the nation transitions from horses
to horsepower, racing fever takes hold.
SZULGIT: Speed was king.
The whole idea that you could go 30,
40, 50 miles an hour was exciting enough.
But seeing these cars moving at
100 miles an hour was just exhilarating.
NARRATOR: As the public's thirst for speed intensifies,
raceways spring up across the country.
HORTON: People would congregate in their thousands
to these places to watch these incredible machines
and death-defying feats.
NARRATOR: In 1925, the riches
generated by these races attract
the attention of millionaire steel magnate Charles M. Schwab.
Charles M. Schwab could have been
a Scott Fitzgerald character.
Not only was he a very successful industrialist,
he was also well known for his excesses.
HUNT: When you think of these tycoons having
to flaunt their wealth,
what better way to do it than to build a speedway?
NARRATOR: Schwab constructs a track
from 4.5 million feet of lumber
on the site of the old Pine Barrens explosives factory.
He christens it the Atlantic City Speedway.
The Atlantic City Speedway was no ordinary track.
It was basically the Madison Square Garden of speed racing.
It was actually the largest race track
in the eastern United States.
NARRATOR: Speedways like Schwab's are designed to
host what's known as board track racing.
They are the most dangerous
circuits in the history of motor sports.
[tires squealing]
HYMEL: Imagine traveling at 160 miles an hour on a wooden track,
you know, hitting these 60-degree angles in the 1920s.
I mean, this is the definition of daredevil.
[tires squealing]
It was really common for cars to spin
or lose control, and they could end up off the track.
They could even end up in the crowd.
This was a blood sport. There were many fatalities.
NARRATOR: Racing with no seatbelts on surfaces made
slick by oil and shreds of rubber,
these so-called murder domes claimed
the lives of numerous racers and spectators.
Yet when it opens on May 1st, 1926,
60,000 members of the public
still flocked to Schwab's new racetrack.
Because of the speed for which it was designed,
top drivers from around the country
and even around the world came to race there.
These woods were kind of like a Roman coliseum,
with people cheering and going wild over racing automobiles.
NARRATOR: On the first day alone, drivers smashed six
speed records,
netting the equivalent of half a million dollars
in prize money.
This speedway track
represents the Roaring Twenties of America,
the Hedonism,
the sheer energy that money would provide.
NARRATOR: Over the next two years, the oval spotted
from space rivals
the Indy 500 as the nation's top speedway.
These races were really pushing the whole idea
of what could be done with motor cars.
NARRATOR: But the glory days of
this automotive amphitheater are short-lived.
In 1929, the stock market crashes.
The paying crowds melt away,
and the Atlantic City Speedway closes.
HUNT: The flames of the Depression
quickly destroyed everything in its path.
There was nobody left standing to perform,
to finance, or to watch the races
NARRATOR: During the Great Depression,
much of the site is destroyed.
The rest, cannibalized, but its
ghostly imprint remains, visible from space.
This site narrates the history of the First World War,
the Roaring Twenties, and then also the history of the era of
the Great Depression.
It's just layer upon layer of history.
NARRATOR: Coming up, hell cruise.
Things went very, very badly wrong.
NARRATOR: And the sands of time.
We're looking at a barren landscape,
and there is this giant clock.
NARRATOR: November 2018,
eyes in the sky scan the Solomon islands,
1,000 miles northeast of Australia.
HORTON: I'm looking at a tropical paradise,
but there in the middle of the image is a ship,
lying on its side.
This is a giant cruise ship,
flipped against this tiny little island.
WALTERS: This is a pretty alarming image.
Clearly things went very, very badly wrong.
NARRATOR: Maritime records reveal
the ship is called the MS World Discoverer.
Tracking data provides a haunting possible clue to
her fate.
This ship was designed to be able to
navigate one of the most challenging routes on Earth,
the Northwest Passage between
the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.
NARRATOR: The Northwest Passage is 900 deadly miles
of frozen seas and 300-foot-high icebergs.
Even today, more people have
conquered Everest than have navigated
this perilous polar shortcut.
The Northwest Passage was actually
unpassable for hundreds of years.
The Northwest Passage was one of the Holy Grails of
exploration, and a series of expeditions were mounted,
most notably in the 19th century by the Royal Navy, using two
ships called the Terror and the Erebus.
NARRATOR: The Terror and the Erebus,
two steam ships carrying 133 officers and men,
set sail for the Northwest Passage in May 1845.
Two months later, they disappear.
For a long time, the fate of both vessels
was not known, but through recent
archaeological surveys that
encountered the remains of the crew,
we can piece together the truly horrific ordeal
that the crew went through.
NARRATOR: After being trapped for 18 months,
the crew abandon their ships and head south on foot.
One by one, the ice claims them,
with some resorting to cannibalism.
The ultimate outcome was that there were no survivors.
Both boats suffered a horrible fate in these frozen waters.
NARRATOR: 150 years after the two vessels disappear,
the MS World Discoverer becomes the first cruise ship
to successfully navigate the route from west to east,
but as she then moves southwards, past the equator,
she, too, appears to fall victim
to the curse of the Northwest Passage.
In April of 2000, the captain sent a distress signal,
saying that they had been
navigating a narrow channel off the Solomon Islands
and struck an uncharted coral reef.
The crew and passengers were rescued,
but the captain decided that the best thing to do was
to beach this vessel as close to shore as possible
to enable it to be salvaged.
So why, by now,
has nobody towed this thing back to a port to repair it?
NARRATOR: The Solomon Islands' complex
and bloody history could shed some light.
The Solomon Islands have actually had a lot of political
strife, going all the way back to when the Spanish
first arrived.
It was them who named the islands the Solomon Islands,
because they thought they were going to be the source
of the fabled King Solomon's gold.
NARRATOR: Instead of gold,
the Spanish discover a tropical archipelago of
900 islands ruled by dozens of different tribes.
JANULIS: In the 19th century,
the British take over and smashed all of these
different cultures and islands and turned it into one country.
And what it did was sow the seeds for violence
and warfare later on.
NARRATOR: During World War II, the Japanese sees several of
the islands, establishing naval bases to support their campaign
against the U.S.
When American forces retake the islands,
30,000 die, and the seabed around the wreck in the image
claims another 100 ships.
The islands are actually pretty notable, because they're
the first land mass recaptured by the Americans from
the Japanese.
HORTON: The arrival of the Americans also affected
the culture of the Solomon Islands,
suddenly gave them the seeds of their own independence,
um, and their own ability to look after their own destiny.
NARRATOR: It's not until 1978 that
the Solomon Islands gain independence.
In 1998, centuries of brewing ethnic divisions boil over.
A man is kidnapped and beheaded in
the central square of one of the towns.
From there, everything erupted.
WALTERS: Different ethnic groups are fighting each other.
So it's a really messy, really nasty situation.
NARRATOR: The ensuing civil war leaves hundreds
dead and thousands in dire poverty.
And then the islanders discover a multimillion
dollar ship laden with valuable goods
has crashed into the reefs.
This cruise ship arrives off
the islands, and it's completely stripped bare.
Even the windows have been removed.
It's absolutely worthless.
SZULGIT: At that point, it was decided that it would be far
more expensive to try and salvage
this ship than it would be just to leave it.
NARRATOR: Two decades later, the ransacked wreck is
a disturbing reminder
of the violence that plagued these islands
for centuries.
And it represents, in a sense, a tombstone to
the colonial era that can be seen from space.
NARRATOR: Coming up, countdown to Armageddon.
I can't look at this and see anything but a troubling future.
NARRATOR: And lair of the blood-sucking billionaire.
He was literally bleeding his countrymen for profits.
NARRATOR: January 5, 2017.
An orbiting camera scouring a mountainous region
in central Saudi Arabia captures this image.
We're looking at a barren landscape, and then all
of a sudden, right there is this giant clock.
You can see one arm pointing to
12, and then one morning to three o'clock.
I've never seen anything like it.
NARRATOR: The Arabian peninsula has a long
history of pioneering discoveries in timekeeping.
Medieval astronomers here developed the first time zones
as a way of determining accurate calls to prayer.
But Adam Ruben thinks the clock-like feature
is a more recent innovation.
This doesn't look like it's ancient.
It looks like a center pivot irrigation system.
Is what we're seeing here
the first attempt to turn this area into workable farmland?
NARRATOR: Center pivot irrigation systems have
transformed deserts across the world.
All of them trace their origin back to the 1930s,
when over-farming turns the Great Plains
into a 300,000-square-mile dust bowl.
RUBEN: Farmers tried a number of different methods to water
the American plain,
but everything was just too expensive to make it worthwhile
to grow crops there.
NARRATOR: In 1948,
a Nebraska farmer invents a way of spreading well water
over his land,
breathing life back into the Midwest,
transforming it into America's breadbasket.
It was cheap. It was simple.
It was portable.
It could cover the entire field.
It's what enabled the United States
to grow enough food for its citizens
Today, around 40 percent of crops around the world
are grown this way,
creating clock-like patterns visible from space.
This is in Saudi Arabia.
So it makes sense that they'd be using this kind
of irrigation.
NARRATOR: But intelligence experts reveal
the mystery structure is evidence of something
much more sinister.
We see these kinds of setups in missile launch sites.
The angles of the clock hands here could actually be
guide rails that are used
to set up the guidance system for the missile.
NARRATOR: Analysis of the wider area reveals
this is no ordinary missile site.
MORGAN: Looking at all of the other structures
that are near this launch platform,
this facility has all of
the hallmarks of a rocket engine production factory.
NARRATOR: The compound in the image appears to be
Saudi Arabia's first attempt to manufacture
weapons of mass death.
Now, what's really disturbing is that just outside
the perimeter, we see a -- an engine test stand.
Is this the foundation of
ballistic missile capabilities for Saudi Arabia?
Is it the foundation of nuclear ballistic
missile capabilities?
NARRATOR: What worries intelligence experts
isn't just the site's potentially devastating
arsenal but who's in charge of it --
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Mohammed bin Salman has
demonstrated some rather erratic behaviors.
He is unpredictable.
Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, is heir
to the Saudi throne.
U.S. agents have implicated him in the disappearance of
numerous dissidents, including the murder and dismemberment of
journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
MBS is willing to take action against those
he sees as contrary to his interests in the world,
no matter where they are.
NARRATOR: The satellite image provides clues to
the Crown Prince's next potential target.
When the angles of these rails are analyzed,
they point directly at Iran.
That arm pointing at Iran is not good.
NARRATOR: The Iranians and Saudis have been locked
in a battle for regional dominance for decades,
waging proxy wars in Syria and Yemen,
which have killed over half a million civilians.
The site discovered from space suggests things
are about to get a lot worse.
When Mohammed bin Salman came to power,
he made no secret about the fact that he was going to
use the Saudi military more
aggressively than his predecessor.
CAVELL: This is deeply concerning for the stability of
the region and for the stability of the world.
NARRATOR: Despite international sanctions,
some intelligence experts fear Iran could be just months away
from developing a nuclear weapon.
Mohammed bin Salman openly has threatened that, if Iran becomes
a nuclear power, then Saudi will respond in kind.
NARRATOR: Satellites continue to monitor
the situation as it unfolds.
But the clock is ticking.
This really is a wake-up call to the west to
keep a closer eye on what is going on in this region.
I can't look at this
and see anything but a troubling future.
NARRATOR: Coming up, Dracula's pyramid.
Once you recognize exactly what happened inside,
it's something you just can never forget.
NARRATOR: And the terror factory.
This facility was one of the most secret
places during the whole of the Cold War.
NARRATOR: January 21st, 2021.
A satellite passing above Western Nicaragua
scans an arid hillside below.
It's desolate, and right in the center,
you see this kind of strange, geometrical shape.
KOUROUNIS: This is very mysterious.
It looks like an aerial view
straight down on top of a pyramid.
NARRATOR: Across Central America are found hundreds of pyramids,
temples to pagan deities and places of
ritual bloodshed in their honor.
But further analysis reveals
the giant triangle has a different origin.
It actually looks very similar to artillery fortifications
we see in the late 19th century,
but this doesn't show the signs of decay we'd expect
if this was a 100-plus-year-old fort.
NARRATOR: Historical records confirm that this is
an old fortification,
one whose blood-soaked walls chart some
of the darkest events in Central American history.
The hillside becomes known as the cabbage patch
for the bleached skulls
that are constantly turning up in the dirt.
It's absolutely beyond imagination.
The fort's horror story begins in 1967,
when Anastasio Somoza Debayle becomes president of Nicaragua.
Samoza is not a nice man.
This is someone who rules with an iron fist.
JANULIS: Somoza followed the dictator handbook.
He stages a coup, takes over the military, and basically
uses the entire country as his own personal piggy bank.
NARRATOR: During his rule, Samoza seizes control
of a quarter of Nicaragua's land
and amasses a billion-dollar fortune.
Political opponents are jailed and tortured, descent crushed.
Nicaragua becomes Samoza's private fiefdom.
He is truly one of the most horrendous
dictators probably ever to appear in Latin America.
NARRATOR: Such is the dictator's greed
that he harvests blood plasma from the poor,
selling it for vast profit in the U.S.
He was literally bleeding his countrymen for profit.
Samoza is a fervent anti-communist.
This means the U.S. chooses to support his vicious rule.
The way the U.S. government views the Samoza regime is,
they are some bad sons of bitches,
but they're our sons of bitches.
NARRATOR: Soon after taking power,
Samoza turns his murderous attention to Leon,
the town to the northeast of the fort in the image.
Samoza Debayle is obsessed with
the assassination of his father by an artist from
the area of Leon.
President Somoza was gravely wounded,
taken to hospital in the canal zone.
He was attended by doctors rushed from the United States.
JANULIS: He wants to get revenge on the people
and the town that he feels contributed
to his father's death.
NARRATOR: To avenge his father's killing,
the dictator converts the 19th-century fort
into a torture center.
He then uses it for
a campaign of bloody retribution on
Leon's inhabitants.
It doesn't really take long for the disappearances
to start.
People are literally snatched from their beds, with friends
and family never seeing them again.
JANULIS: Eventually, they find the answer to
where the disappearing people are going.
They find out that the strange white objects littering
the hillside around the fort are actually human skulls.
The secret police are kidnapping people,
killing them, and then just putting the bodies
out to rot in the fields.
NARRATOR: By 1978, the U.S. can no longer turn
a blind eye to the horrors being committed in Nicaragua...
[chanting indistinctly]
and President Jimmy Carter halts financial
and military aid.
Now, this is a big deal.
The Somoza regime had basically lost the support of
the United States government, leaving the leadership
completely exposed.
NARRATOR: Left wing rebels called the Sandinistas
soon rise up against the dictator.
Over the next 12 months,
they gain control of most of the country
and close in on Samoza and his family.
The Samozas eventually retreat back into Leon as a final
hideout, because it's already filled with national guard
and secret police.
He actually finds himself holed up in the fort
that he's been using to oppress his own people.
NARRATOR: Faced with certain defeat,
Samoza and his cronies escape the fort by helicopter,
eventually fleeing to Paraguay.
In 1980, a Sandinista commando team tracks
the dictator down and assassinates him.
Today, it remains a crumbling monument to those who perished
under his hated rule, visible from space.
Once you recognize exactly what happened inside this fort,
it's something you just can never forget.
NARRATOR: Coming up, a code rises from the earth.
I can't really for the life of me work out what it is.
NARRATOR: In recent years, increasing numbers
of heat waves have hit Europe.
Under the scorching sun,
long-hidden relics from the past emerge
from the ground.
Drought has been
the opportunity of a lifetime for archaeologists.
And that's because it brings to light features that have
been in plain sight essentially,
but just not visible.
NARRATOR: As a satellite scans arid moorlands in the county of
Cumbria, England, it captures this image.
WALTERS: What that dryness has revealed is this rectangle.
But I can't really, for the life of me, work out what it is.
You can see this very specific and deliberately made
path that sort of ends in a circular pattern.
This suggests there's some sort of a platform, almost
like an altar, in the middle of this rectangular area.
NARRATOR: What puzzles analysts isn't just
the structure's shape, but where it's located.
It sits within the boundaries of
RAF Spadeadam,
a highly clandestine military base with
a history stretching back 60 years.
This facility was one of the most secret places
in Britain during the whole of the Cold War.
Why? Because it was absolutely crucial to
any potential fight against the Soviet Bloc.
NARRATOR: Declassified records confirm
that the mystery shape is indeed a ghost from the past,
one that played a key role in a project that threatened
millions of lives.
And that is why this area is so vital
and so secret to both Britain's defense
and potential offense.
NARRATOR: The clandestine program has its origins
in the late 1940s.
Britain is in ruins,
its industries reduced to rubble by the Nazis,
its empire crumbling after 350 years of global dominance.
And when, in 1949, the Soviet Union becomes a nuclear power,
terror takes hold in the beleaguered nation.
The British had spent centuries as one of
the greatest, if not the greatest, power in the world.
And now, they were threatened with irrelevance next to
the superpowers of the Soviet Union and the United States.
This provokes a great deal of anxiety in the U.K.,
because unlike America,
Great Britain does not possess the technology to be able to
counter the Soviet Union.
In October 1952,
Britain joins the global nuclear club.
But their new weapons need to be dropped from planes,
putting them in the firing line of Soviet air defenses.
The British now become concerned that their bombers
can get shot down very easily
on their way in to Soviet airspace.
So what you need to develop are ballistic missiles that can
outwit any form of air defense
and do the damage you really want to do.
NARRATOR: In April 1954, London draws up plans to
develop a new nuclear missile, code-named Blue Streak.
The government requisitions 9,500 acres of remote moorland
for secret tests and constructs
the Spadeadam Rocket Establishment at its center.
Missile testing is dangerous -- Missiles have a tendency to
explode, and it would be a very good
idea not to do that in a place where anybody was around.
Spadeadam fit that perfectly.
NARRATOR: Engineers use the test stand in the image
to test the rocket's Rolls-Royce engines,
engines that can fire a one megaton warhead
into the heart of Russia.
WALTERS: You've got to remember that missiles like
the Blue Streak are designed to kill millions of people.
But you've got this concept of mutually assured destruction.
You're not gonna fight if the other
guy can hit back just as hard.
NARRATOR: By 1956, Britain finally has a working
nuclear missile ready to counter a Soviet attack.
But when costs spiral,
the government cancels the program.
The British realize that this is
not worth the return on investment.
And so they close this facility.
MORGAN: Developing a ballistic missile
is one of the most expensive things
there is, almost as expensive as space travel.
NARRATOR: In a twist of fate,
scientists repurpose the nuke's engines as
part of the pioneering Europa Satellite Project.
Six decades later, the site that helped put some of
Europe's first hardware into orbit is revealed
once more from space.
MORGAN: It's a little bit of an example of swords into
plowshares, because it was first meant to
be a nuclear weapon, and then it ultimately helps broaden
our scientific understanding of the world around us.