Hawaii Court Rescinds Permit to Build Thirty Meter Telescope
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I honestly don't see how telescopes are disrespectful to begin with. Stonehenge, the Pyramids, countless other ancient monoliths were astronomical temples... These are literally the temples of the one 'religion' all humanity shares-- the love of space and the stars.
Whatever. Good job random celebrities on twitter who have never even been to Mauna Kea; you've successfully done whatever this is. We will in fact “take [our] toys and play in another sandbox,” because some of us actually care about the past and future of humanity as a race and our place in the stars.
It's a bit of a sucker punch because, for eight years, survey planning, software programming, building design, etc. have been underway with this specific site in mind. There are hundreds of people working on this. Tens to hundreds of thousands of man hours are wasted if this decision stands. PhD work on "site predictions for TMT" "Error estimations for TMT" "Optic Performance for TMT" etc. etc. are worthless.
This isn't a back-yard telescope you just prop up anywhere. This is a precision instrument that was designed for this exact spot. The optics designed Mauna Kea atmospheric seeing; the dome designed for Mauna Kea atmospheric temperature, air pressure and turbulence; the survey strategy planned for Mauna Kea weather patterns and sky visibility.
The problem is not that the telescope wouldn't work anywhere else but that it's really too late in the day to be making such changes. A change in site will set the telescope back about 5 or more years, they will have to start site selection again because their other location choice is now taken by another telescope. All the other sites surveyed were in Hawaii. There is nowhere else in the US of this quality. A new site will also likely cost much more as few are developed. So the telescope will lose at least 5 years on it's competitors and all the cost of starting again and keeping everyone employed 5 more years. It may well miss out on key work in that time, it will probably loose the ability to do joint observations with the James Webb Space Telescope.
So even if it moved it will come much later than the larger European telescope and may have to be scaled back in performance after all the cash it will waste in the site swap. It may loose out on some early science or some science cases altogether if downsized. The real problem is it may not survive the change. Some countries currently signed up will decide to withdraw and back other projects which can be delivered on time. It may be that the cost of the change is large and too many people leave to continue the project. That is not some hypothetical, projects like this which lose momentum often fail. More money could be found but that's unlikely.
If it cannot be built here the whole project is seriously at risk and it will sacrifice science considerably even if it does survive.
Preliminary work on pipelines relating to the optics, PSFs, band throughputs, etc are simulated with Mauna Kea in mind.
Then that affects the possible science cases. And "survey strategy" at this point would mean allocation of time to contributors which is based on how much money they want to give for their projects by taking those prior simulations into account.
Perhaps the instrument isn't that specialized, but the project kind of is. TMT on Mauna Kea is essentially a completely different telescope from TMT at Apache Point.
TMT at APO would never be built because it's not that good a site. TMT at Armazones would be no different other than the enclosure would be modified for the conditions. Yes it effects the performance and science case slightly but you don't redesign a telescope because of that.
Money is committed on the basis of guaranteed time not on the basis of performance. The money was even committed before the design was finalised. There is no agreement for example over which bodies will receiver dark time and good seeing, those scheduling decisions are far more important in performance.
The telescope is not that specialised.
Money is committed on the basis of time -- with the expectation that the telescope will be able to deliver the type of science that your institute wants to do -- so an institute doing astroseismology is probably not going to put in money to a spectroscopy project like 4most or weave.
Money is absolutely committed on the basis of expected performance. And part of TMT performance is its location.
I agree physically the telescope is not that specialized. But TMT the project _is_ that specialized.
This a national level project, institutions aren't making funding decisions. They do not consult the funding countries every time WFOS is redesigned with different performance. They did not consult them when the AO IFS MOS was replaced with MOSfire. With a big project like this the performance isn't well known at the point when you commit funding.
Take it to La Palma, please. It needs the investment and construction jobs. Probably a few retired German hippies will complain, but no Palmeros.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_de_los_Muchachos_Observa...
Wow, really ? It's like reading some document from the Middle-Ages or something.
All the (great!) scientific rationale in the world doesn't change the fact that this fits really well into the age-old pattern of Western societies barging in and imposing their will on other cultures. Pretty much every step of the displacement and marginalization of native peoples in history was seen as perfectly justified by the Western societies carrying it out. Now, personally, I'm much happier with the argument "we must seize this unique scientific opportunity" than with "we must seize these natural resources for a profit". But I expect that from the point of view of the native community, the result feels pretty much the same either way. I'm not happy with the pattern in Western history of condoning this sort of imperialism, and I'd very much like us as a society to quit it.
(And for the record, I can't shake the feeling that if it turned out that the Temple Mount in Jerusalem had turned out to be the ideal site for this telescope, most people would not be so immediately dismissive of the voices raised in opposition to building it there. Heck, I even expect there would be more sympathy if the best place for the telescope were a "secular sacred site" like Mount Rushmore: "Don't make Honest Abe wear a flying saucer for a hat!" the nation would cry, and nobody would accuse them of "tribalism".)
(Shrug) I don't see those "other cultures" making investments in time, money, and education to try to understand the secrets of the Universe. In this case, their representatives appear to be doing the opposite.
In my book, that makes the native Hawaiian culture inferior to my own. Sue me.
I'm sure if you took honest stock of your culture there would be no shortage of episodes many times more egregious than this forced permit reevaluation and by your own shoddy reasoning that would make native Hawaiian culture superior to your own.
The argument is clearly ridiculous on it's face and as I said above trivially disproved by any number of direct and inverse examples.
It would probably have wooden beads on wires.
It's pretty ironic of you to cite Muslim and Egyptian cultures in defense of your own point. What have they done for us in the last 500 years? How long are they going to "free ride," as you put it?
>...justified by the Western societies
>...the pattern in Western history
You should try living in the East. A similar scenario in China would not go down the same way. The telescope would go up and there would be very little hand wringing involved in the decision.
It's probably worth considering how these attitudes evolve over time, too. I'd guess that a hundred years ago, the U.S. wouldn't have done much hand wringing in this case, either.
Since when does a research and education institution qualify as "industrial"? All over the US we have schools and universities smack in the middle of residential zones.
Technically they were both very close but in the end the decision went to Mauna Kea mainly for proximity to other facilities.
Also, The tmt is the next big US telescope, and they don't know of Any other site that is as good inside the country.