The TMT

[Lorizael]

https://earther.com/the-worlds-largest-telescope-will-be-built-in-hawaii-af-1818996458

A years-long battle over the placement of the Thirty Meter Telescope saw a major development this week, when Hawaii’s Board of Land and Natural Resources issued the telescope a permit to begin construction on the dormant volcano of Mauna Kea, Hawaii. But a coalition of opponents to the telescope, led by Native Hawaiian activists who consider the mountaintop sacred ground, have already vowed to keep fighting.

There are an increasingly limited number of places we can put telescopes that will advance astronomy. You need elevation, dryness, calm winds, clear weather, and no pollution (light or otherwise). Mauna Kea is one of the best locations in the world. It's also sacred ground for Native Hawaiians, who don't particularly like the argument "but what's the harm in one more telescope?" Unlike observatories, there are no backup sacred sites. How do we balance these competing interests?

[rah]

I lean towards sacred sites. If they can't be persuaded by other means, SOL.

[pchang]

Just apply a more Guns, Germs, and Steel until you get the desired result.

[Aeson]

To balance the competing interests, you need to make a religion which worships 30m telescopes on inactive volcanoes. Then you can have a holy war where both parties are equally right.

[Elok]

I take it just upgrading another telescope would be unacceptable, and there's some advantage to having multiple telescopes at roughly the same vantage point?

Also, the article is unclear: do the natives have anything like ownership of the volcano? If they don't, I don't see how it's relevant. I mean, we Orthodox protest the Turks trying to turn Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, but on the grounds that they're only doing it to be dicks, not because we owned it six hundred years ago. Nor do Spanish Muslims get to have all their converted mosques back. I see no reason why different logic would apply here.

[BeBMan]

We need moar Hubbles

[ricketyclik]

We need moar Hubbles

Words to live by.

[Lorizael]

I take it just upgrading another telescope would be unacceptable, and there's some advantage to having multiple telescopes at roughly the same vantage point?

Not particularly. Multiple telescopes can be complementary (different wavelengths of interest, different focal lengths, different scientific packages stuck on the ends of the optics) but the advantage of the TMT is that it's honking ginormous, making it better than anything else atop Mauna Kea right now. You can't really upgrade a telescope's size. And two scopes being complementary need only happen at the same latitude, not location. Mauna Kea is just a very good site because of the reasons I listed in the OP.

Also, the article is unclear: do the natives have anything like ownership of the volcano? If they don't, I don't see how it's relevant. I mean, we Orthodox protest the Turks trying to turn Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, but on the grounds that they're only doing it to be dicks, not because we owned it six hundred years ago. Nor do Spanish Muslims get to have all their converted mosques back. I see no reason why different logic would apply here.

Mauna Kea is public land controlled by the state of Hawaii. But Hawaii isn't building the telescope; the TMT Observatory Corporation is, which is just a group of universities and other astronomy-related people that all decided the TMT would be a cool thing to build. They have to get approval from Hawaii to do so, and the Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources is supposed to listen to the complaints of the citizens it serves when making these decisions.

We need moar Hubbles

Unfortunately, Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, was just delayed from a late 2018 launch to a mid-2019 launch. JWST will be the best telescope we've ever built (assuming launch and deployment go smoothly) but it will never be the biggest. TMT is years off, but when completed, it will have an aperture 4.6 times wider than JWST which, if it were also in space, would mean roughly that it could see objects 4.6 times farther away and have 4.6 times the angular resolution. The reality is that the atmosphere and sun get in the way, making smaller telescopes in space better (optically) than larger telescopes on Earth.

[Dinner]

I saw an article about the chief native Hawaiian "activist" and he is an extremely ****ty person and an out and out racist who advocates for violence. He has said he wants to either kill or drive out all people who are not pure native Hawaiian including mixed race people. Also he has admitted his own claims about sacrwdness are bull**** which he made up to try to block the project because he thought it would attract more non natives to the island. In short he is a total idiot and a welfare bum.

[Dinner]

You guys need a moon based telescope on the dark side of the moon.

Just watch out for the moon Nazis.

[Lorizael]

There is no dark side of the moon, but I'm sure that really basic error is not indicative of anything else you may be wrong about.

[The Mad Monk]

He may have meant the far side of the moon, for which I believe "the dark side of the moon" is an acceptable synonym, and a pretty good album.

[Dinner]

What he said.

[Lorizael]

Agreed, a very good album.