
Hawaii Extends Thirty Meter Telescope Permit Amid Protests - everybodyknows
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/31/747056053/hawaii-extends-thirty-meter-telescope-permit-amid-protests
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reallydontask
I think a lot of people in La Palma would be quite happy to have it built in
the Roque de los Muchachos obvervatory [1] if Hawaii doesn't want it.

The local papers are positively salivating at the prospect.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_de_los_Muchachos_Observa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_de_los_Muchachos_Observatory)

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GlennS
I visited Mauna Kea as a tourist some years ago.

At the time, there were protesters present.

They appeared to believe that they had been promised there would be a limit on
how many telescopes were build, and that the astronomers had broken that
promised by starting to build a limit+1th telescope without removing an
existing one first.

Anyone know if there's any truth to this?

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privong
Part of the TMT agreement (from 2015) involved removing some of the
telescopes[0]. At least one telescope has been removed (the Caltech
Submillimter Observatory, CSO) but aside from the CSO I'm not sure what the
status is of other removals. The agreement was that:

> three or four of the mountain’s 13 existing telescopes must be dismantled
> over the next decade.

This implies the currently agreed upon limit is 10 or 11 telescopes (including
the TMT). Unless the agreement has changed, I don't think the promise has been
broken since the removal was over the 2015-2025 timescale. That being said,
I'm unaware if there was a previous deal.

There had been some controversy in the past regarding "outrigger" telescopes
for the 10m Keck telescopes. These would have been used in combination with
the 10m telescopes to do interferometry. It was argued that they were thus not
"new" telescopes, but rather additions to the existing Keck telescopes. This
was controversial and they were never built.

[0] [https://www.nature.com/news/hawaii-prunes-mauna-kea-
telescop...](https://www.nature.com/news/hawaii-prunes-mauna-kea-telescope-
hub-1.17688)

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goodcanadian
The outriggers did get approval. My understanding is that they were not built
primarily for financial reasons.

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privong
Okay, thanks for the clarification. I hadn't previously heard what the
ultimate reason was.

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basicplus2
It seems to me one of the best ways to protect a sacred site would be to put a
serious telescope upon it.

As it restricts access for a host of other activities for many miles around to
keep light polution amd vibration to a minimum.

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ilikehurdles
Limiting discourse to only your way or the highway is disrespectful and
precisely how these protections are ignored. This time it’s a telescope, next
time it won’t be.

Perhaps the community wants to protect their sacred site from building a
telescope as well. Ignoring that because you believe your cause to be more
valuable than their home isn’t justified. It’s as nonsensical as claiming that
the best way to protect against pregnancy is to get pregnant, it’s just
doublespeak.

We could level a bunch of suburbia all over the country and put telescopes
there, and that would both remove a blight on the American landscape while
protecting another untouched one. But this isn’t what we discuss because
“their” sacrifice is much easier for us to agree on than ours. Like it or not,
it’s the same colonialist logic that led to the genocide of the American
natives.

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Causality1
Every source I've found just says "it's sacred in the Hawaiian religion" or
"it's a sacred place" but always a vague answer. If you wanted to build on the
site of the Wailing Wall or the Kaaba, the opposition would have a very
specific list of ways those sites are sacred, with names and events.
Additionally, less than 0.5% of Hawaiians practice the Hawaiian religion in
question.

Frankly I think this is a bunch of contrarians opposing the construction just
to have something to feel self-righteous about.

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gomoboo
How do you know that the site being considered significant is tied solely to
belief in Hawaiian cosmology? I don’t know much about Hawaiian culture but
couldn’t it be the case that a wider proportion of the population considers
the site significant for varying reasons? This article looks to imply just
that: [https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/7/24/20706930/mauna-
kea-...](https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/7/24/20706930/mauna-kea-hawaii)

“Inseparable from Hawaiian culture is a love of the land, ’āina. For Hawaiians
— who thrived in the islands before foreigners arrived at the end of the 18th
century — care and attachment to the land is central to their identities. The
term “aloha ’āina,” literally meaning love of the land, has long been a
rallying cry for Hawaiians.”

I don’t have a horse in the race but feel there might be more to it than “...a
bunch of contrarians opposing the construction just to have something to feel
self-righteous about.”

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CamperBob2
_I don’t have a horse in the race but feel there might be more to it than
“...a bunch of contrarians opposing the construction just to have something to
feel self-righteous about._

I wouldn't agree there. If you're a thinking human being, you have a horse in
the race. Right now, a bunch of superstitious nitwits are swinging a hammer at
its knees.

~~~
moate
Let's just say you are a member of a group of people who have been in a
constant cultural conflict with another group of people. For hundreds of years
they've inserted themselves into your homelands, force changes to the culture
to fit their needs, and generally been entirely disinterested in actively
engaging with you as a coequal resident of their space.

Then, finally, you're able to find some ways to use their cultural system
against them to get your needs met and your voice heard in your homeland. Some
of this involves appeals to logic, but others involve appeals to emotion. To
you, the ends justify the means. The stakes feel very high.

Now imagine some dude on the internet refers to you as a nitwit without really
have looked at the larger picture of what your political action within your
homeland means within the larger context of your struggle to maintain your
culture and be represented as a coequal member of your homeland.

How do you think you'd respond to this dude on the internet?

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CamperBob2
What does any of that have to do with building a telescope? Sounds more like
an extortion scheme.

If your culture doesn't contribute to the advancement of humanity, but rather
actively stands in the way, then it needs to die.

~~~
moate
That's a take...

1- This telescope doesn't need to be built here, right now. The world will not
end if it isn't built, and all the "benefits" you might claim we gain from
this are essentially marginal improvements over the existing half dozen
telescopes in that area already. There is no reason that the previous expected
agreement of "if you want to build new telescopes you need to decommission an
existing one and replace it" can't be honored.

2- Do you know what "extortion" actually is? Do you know what the term
"tyranny of the majority" means? Are you familiar with any actual sociological
concepts in play in this scenario? Do you actually understand the hypothetical
example I tried to walk you through previously, or would you like me to
further break down a broad view of what this conflict is about rather than
trying to go to snappy talking points and witty one liners? Are you actually
just trollin son? These are all earnest questions.

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bawana
The interesting twist about building telescopes in Chile is that it gives the
military industrial complex an excuse to build up to ‘protect’ them. Just like
the Panama Canal, the Suez Canal the Hormuz strait and other internationally
critical pieces of infrastructure. Sure people wont starve if a Chilean
revolution takes over the telescopes and demands ‘taxes’, but the massive
investment will protect itself.

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zxcb1
Why is this better than launching a telescope into orbit?

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madaxe_again
Mass - cost-benefit still means ground based telescopes are the best option
for most scenarios. The protests may change that equation.

As much as I’m automatically inclined to side with science over mysticism,
there _are_ other telescopes being built right now (ELT, GMT) in the same
class, both in Chile, where the mountains aren’t sacred, but just mountains.

So - while they’re pushing on for now, it seems there’s as much dogma (we must
have _this_ telescope _here_ ) amongst scientists as their is amongst the
spiritualists - yes, the top of Hawaii is a uniquely good spot for a telescope
- _within US borders_ \- there are other spots just as good, however, but
those would require international negotiation and cooperation rather than just
domestic negotiation and cooperation.

It all comes down to cost/benefit, and I think it’s getting marginal for the
TMT. They’re going to need round the clock security, as the protests won’t
stop once it’s built.

It’s not too late to build it elsewhere - even in space. Launch costs have
dropped dramatically since the TMT was conceived, and are continuing to do so.
Assembly will then be the tricky part, as with JWST.

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zxcb1
Thanks. So what kind of improvements do they expect with this one?

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pas
It's planned as a general purpose observatory. Bigger mirror than any ever
used would allow sharper, better images.

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zxcb1
Ok. So a space telescope would be prefered and this is the second best option,
limited by budget?

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madaxe_again
Absolutely. The cost, even with current cheapening launch costs, would still
be astounding. As long as we’re using chemical rockets fuelled from earth we
are going to be really limited in terms of what we can put in space - and
again, assembly - we couldn’t even get Hubble right first time, and it has
taken thousands of hours of spacewalks to keep operating.

It’s totally been worth it though.

Stepping stones - if the new class of earth based telescopes finds something
worth looking at, there _will_ be space telescopes that make the JWST look
like a toy - but not for a while yet. This is basically the “cheap” trial
experiment.

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dogsgobork
> it has taken thousands of hours of spacewalks to keep operating.

The total eva time for all five servicing missions for Hubble is under 200
hours.

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kingkawn
And if the construction location were the western wall? St Peters basilica?
The Vietnam war memorial? Arlington National cemetery? A site of equivalent
meaning to your worldview? What then?

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PopePompus
Well, I don't think the Native Hawaiians actually built Mauna Kea. I also
suspect that the majority of Jews would not approve of building something atop
the Western Wall, the majority of Catholics would not approve of building on
St Peter's Basillica, but a 2018 poll conducted by the main Honolulu newspaper
found 72% approval for building the TMT among Native Hawaiians (
[https://tinyurl.com/y2qboalr](https://tinyurl.com/y2qboalr) )

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kingkawn
I looked up the estimated Native Hawaiian population in Hawaii; 298,000
people.

28% of that is 83,440.

A minority of 83,440 native people with shared history and spiritual beliefs
are asking to have what is held dear to them treated in a way that does not
feel like a violation.

How small a group must they be to make ignoring their plea acceptable?

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PopePompus
Well, if the other 72% of Native Hawaiians want to see it built on Mauna Kea,
why do you dismiss their preferences? If just one person claimed to be
offended, does that mean the project has to be stopped? The line has to be
drawn somewhere, and 50% seems like a good choice.

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Killes
Maybe its the sacred lands sacred destiny to offer us a view into the cosmos,
who has any better clue than any one else to guess divine intents of any kind
?

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faissaloo
I presume they have some sort of source of truth for this stuff like a
religious scripture or oral tradition, but this should be obvious and I fail
to see how you could have missed it.

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manicdee
If you keep asking they might cave in and say yes?

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hwlinsted
The main problem here is one of incentive. Of course the researchers,
university departments, contractors, etc want to build it. But who benefits? A
very small number of people. All the locals get is: more traffic, more
pollution, more waste, all of which are a direct result of the construction
itself plus the increase in visitors. Plus, the locals feel this is imposing
on their scared grounds. Again, without ANY benefit to them.

I talked to one person at the protests, who said "The researchers don't want
light pollution. We don't want telescope pollution."

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goodcanadian
_Again, without ANY benefit to them._

There is a large benefit to the locals in terms of jobs both during
construction and after. Yes, the researchers are not local, but the engineers,
technicians, maintenance staff, and so on usually are. Astronomy is the second
largest contributor to the economy on the Big Island (after tourism).

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PopePompus
It also significantly diversifies the economy. Tourism is cyclical. Astronomy
research may have booms and busts too, but they are apt to be uncorrelated
with the ups and downs of tourism.

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mcgoooo
This is quite literally the best place to study stars in the whole world.
Economically sure, not a lot of people may benefit, but scientific knowledge
the whole world benefits

