Hawaiian court revokes permit for planned mega-telescope
Source: Nature
Hawaii's supreme court has ruled that the construction permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop the mountain of Mauna Kea is invalid. The 2 December decision is a major blow to the international consortium backing the US$1.5-billion telescope, and a win for the Native Hawaiians who have protested its construction on what they regard as a sacred summit.
Hawaii's Board of Land and Natural Resources should not have approved the permit in 2011, the court said, because it did so before protestors could air their side in a contested case hearing. “Quite simply, the Board put the cart before the horse when it issued the permit,” the court decision reads. “Accordingly, the permit cannot stand.”
It is unclear whether and how the TMT will move forward given the new ruling. Work on the telescope's components has continued at sites outside of Hawaii, but the court's decision to block the construction permit is a significant setback. To proceed, the project would have to acquire another permit from the board.
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Read more: http://www.nature.com/news/hawaiian-court-revokes-permit-for-planned-mega-telescope-1.18944?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews
Congratulations to everyone who fought this!
= new reply since forum marked as read
Lol jk 
was going to respond earlier but got called for jury duty!!! 
Somebody is alerting at 4:30 AM? Wth 
a jury notice pops up. 
It makes me wonder how long the alert was active before the jury was finally full. 
Sometimes I think some of those alerts are just people being really bored and having nothing else to do
How are you this morning?
just trying to make it to Friday. It's been a crazy week at work. And then turn on the radio yesterday and hear about the latest mass shooting... It's like the planet is in upheaval. 
Now the Primary "battles" don't seem so bad anymore. 
As an amateur astronomer, this kind of crap pisses the hell out of me. People always want the offshoot of science but will they "Get behind it?" Noooo.
Aww 
But not at further destruction of sacred land of aboriginal natives to the area.
And a big Welcome to the DU!
How about building the mirror there from raw materials?
Note, when you build a 30 meter optical telescope on earth it must be massive enough to deal with gravity and hold it's shape. In space the telescope only needs to be thick enough to maintain it's shape when you turn it to point
in another direction. I does not need the strength to survive launch. If we build them in space we could
make them a lot larger than 30 meters and they would get far more observing time in nearly perfect viewing conditions.
I have wondered for a long time why we not already done this?
Nobody would put such a structure into low Earth orbit. It is just too fucking big and there are other great places for space telescopes, like at the Lagrangian points. (That is where the James Webb Space Telescope is going to end up.)
Unfortunately, that's a million miles from Earth, and getting the telescope there is so fucking expensive that getting back there to repair it is out of the question. That is why the JWST is not serviceable. It will be abandoned in place when it fails, just like the Kepler telescope, although the latter is still limping along while it is barely able to point accurately.
The Hubble has only lasted as long as it has because it is in low earth orbit and has been serviced multiple times by the Space Shuttle, at huge costs each time I might add.
The TMT can be serviced easily because it is ground based. And get this right, nobody would put such an expensive instrument in space unless it could be serviced. It is just too fucking big! Too fucking expensive!
That puppy belongs on the ground where we can keep it working for decades. Like the Hooker telescope on Mount Wilson going for about a century. The Hale telescope on Mt. Palomar going on about 70 years old. And there are older ones, still taking measurements and doing the work astronomers do. And like the Hooker and the Hale, they have legacies of important discoveries.
Visiting these observatories is a wonderful experience. One gets a view of the history of science and where that has taken us. I actually looked through the telescope that discovered Pluto. It is in Flagstaff, AZ at the Lowell Observatory (on Mars Hill!), a good experience for any clear night.
Astronomy is one of the most incredible of sciences. It is experimental, but perfecting observing techniques must be theory based. And no astronomer ever looks through an eyepiece anymore. That is for the instrumentation to do. It is all remote controlled. There are no astronomers on the summit of Maunakea. They work via INet from places all over the planet. So the summit remains isolated, with a minimum staff, acclimated to the altitude to solve the purely operational and maintenance issues.
21st century astronomy.
Thank you all for indulging me in this thread.
I confess to having some passion for science and especially astronomy.
My best to you all.
And build the damned TMT!
On Maunakea where it belongs!
Profoundly, I think.
But interacting in this thread has been a rather challenging and enjoyable enterprise.
I am not too sure about robotic mission to service a thirty meter space telescope since even putting the thing in space would be cost prohibitive. Payload costs getting stuff out of Earth's gravity well is rather extreme. Then there is the fact that no such robotic technology exists.
Then again, we can build the thing at the existing observatory on the summit of Maunakea today with existing technology. And I believe that is what we should do.
My best to you, my friend.
There is apparently some life at above 14,000 feet on Maunakea. Not much. However, the observatory grounds not only hosts some of the largest astronomical instruments on the planet (or off of it, for that matter) but is also an environmental preserve.
When one is educated in science, such things come naturally. When one is a looney toon who believes in volcano gods, one possibly does damage to that environment because one just does not know.
What does this serve?
And as I wrote in another post here, the ancestors of the native Hawaiians first settled the islands by traveling across the damned Pacific Ocean. In canoes!! And they got there because they navigated by the fucking stars!
Cultural memory is sadly short.
My best to you.
. . .Hawaiian/Polynesian. . .
. . .somehow I don't think the forefathers of the Kanaka Maoli are pleased either.
This:
/@@images/image/preview
and this:
or this:
and this (the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope):
While I think native cultures have a right to their beliefs, in this case it seems a little late to make the argument that Volcano God will be pissed off by adding another telescope to Mauna Kea's peak. It's also pretty presumptuous to assume to know what a god wants (a common problem with many religions). Maybe he's an amateur astronomer who gets off on all the science.
If V.G. gets really miffed he can always cause an eruption...
Just ask the dinosaurs...
That's right. You can't. Because they did not have a space program.*
* technically incorrect. All modern birds are classified in the dinosaur clade. They are technically avian dinosaurs. But you get my point. The rest of them were wiped out because they didn't have a space program.
And we missed it because we did not build telescopes to find it before it was too late to divert it.
I think your argument is now in shambles.
My best to you.
And remember, none of the plaintiffs' rights are being infringed by building the TMT.
is what this is about. You can denigrate their beliefs all you want but many here seem to by-pass indigenous rights, which is what this is really about regardless of how you choose to interpret it. In their argument, the indigenous people are trying to protect what is rightfully theirs and which is constantly encroached upon by non-indigenous entities. If the "religion argument" is the only argument that validates their voice in the eyes of tptb in this case, then so be it.
Most people who have little to no contact with indigenous peoples seem to have no concern for the plight of these social groups and seem to only be interested in promoting a particular interest which push these indigenous groups further and further into decline... it's the Murikin way after all.
I'm with the OP on this one.
I question the validity of the argument that the mountain top in question is the ONLY place it can be planted.
adamant desire for scientific inquiry but I also am very interested in protecting indigenous rights. If you can, perhaps, recognize that your zeal for this facility is much like that of gun humpers in the US... "Screw anyone who doesn't want what I want and I don't care bout your culture cuz mine rules." Reminds me of the bison wars up in my neck o' the woods... people build their trophy homes in prime habitat then bitch about bison crossing their yards when in reality, they could have built their trophy homes just about anywhere else on the planet and not had that problem.
Personally, I am not so concerned about all of the universe out there when we continue to trash the planet we inhabit, disrespecting those with whom we disagree and denigrate their rights for the sake of "what if" kinds of inquiry. What could we have spent all that money on besides a spy glass that pretty much tells us we don't know what we don't know?
I'm not anti-science but I think some respect for those whom we have oppressed for over a century should be offerd here. Go put your expensive toy someplace else.
I just don't agree with your sentiment on this issue, especially with your "fuck 'em" attitude.
swing and a miss.
Have said what I have to say here.
If there was opposition, they certainly were not very motivated. I suspect that statehood would have passed even if they had all voted.
93% is pretty damned high no matter how one looks at it and no matter what narrative one weaves.
So I will stand my ground on this point. It seems like a reasonable place to be.
Just like I will stand my ground on a world class observatory's right to exist on a small part of the summit of the largest mountain on the planet.
The native Hawaiians have no claim here. Plus, there is an awful lot more mountain where they can worship, make sacrifices, get altitude sickness, or whatever they do. The observatory's existence has absolutely no effect on those rights. None whatsoever.
They have no case.
And my best regards to you, too.
You do know that Hawaii was an independent nation until the 1890s, right? Which is when a group of armed white "investors" (ahem-"colonialist thugs" organized a coup that displaced its government. The new "government" then requested "protection" from the US, which annexed the territory, dissolved whatever remained of the local government, and allowed hundreds of thousands of white settlers to dispossess the native population. By the time "statehood" was even an issue the process of displacement, forced Christianization, land seizures, and native disenfranchisement was a half century old.
This is like justifying the seizure of the Black Hills--which had been promised by treaty to the original inhabitants--and then rushing in after gold was discovered. The land was promised to the indigenous population as a sacred site, but now that it has some actual value to the dominant community, well, fuck native rights, it's ours because we want it. Progress, and all that.
You do know too, that the vote on statehood happened before the passage of the Voting Rights Act, right? You think everybody who wanted to vote was actually able to do so? I'm sure the vote to make North and South Dakota into states was equally lopsided. I expect not a whole lot of indigenous people were able to vote on that one either.
All this judge did was to say the law had to be obeyed--that the ruling to grant the permit was illegal because the native cause wasn't even heard, let alone considered. It's called due process, and I'm surprised so many progressives are willing to see it circumvented because one of their pet projects is at stake. Imagine if the proponents of the Keystone Pipeline tried to pull the same stunt. I expect the same people deploring the court decision here would be cheering if a judge had stood up for native rights in that case, citing a lapse in due process.
I'd love to see a new telescope built. But I'd also love to see due process respected, even if--especially if--we're talking about indigenous rights. Let them at least have their say in court, before brushing them aside in the name of profit, progress, science, energy independence, or whatever the dominant culture's flavor of the month might be.
Response to bananas (Original post)
Response to bananas (Original post)
