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Construction of World's Largest Optical Telescope Approved
The University of Hawaii at Hilo has been granted a permit by the Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources to begin construction of the $1.3 billion Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). From the article: "The TMT has been in development for over a decade, but the large amount of land needed for its construction raised concerns over the environmental and cultural impact of such a project. Now, however, the land board has rendered a final decision, saying that the university had satisfied the eight criteria necessary under Hawaiian state law to allow the venture to go forward. The giant TMT will be an optical and infrared telescope with enough coverage area and sharpness to observe light from 13 billion years ago, track extrasolar planets, and observe planets and stars in their early formative years."
I know it's in the summary, but why use an abbreviation if it's not immediately clear what the abbreviation stands for?
TMT = Twenty Meter Telescope, Thirty Meter Telescope, Two Mile Telescope (etc.)?
Because "30mT" is not as sezzy?
(Cue flamebait about lazy USians needing TLA's for everything).
(TLA = Three Letter Acronym. Of course)
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
I would be very interested to know how the mirror is constructed because it must be an engineering marvel.
Acording to Wikipedia:
This mirror will be segmented and consist of 492 smaller (1.4 m), individual hexagonal mirrors. The shape of each segment, as well as its position relative to neighboring segments, will be controlled actively.
Actually, strictly speaking you could almost buy two. The average cost per unit of $2.1 billion is mostly born by one time, already sunk development costs, the flyaway cost is a "mere" $0.7 billion.
The reason they're so damn expensive is that the Cold War ended when they were almost finished and most of the money had been spent, meaning instead of building hundreds of the things, they only built 21. A weapon like the B2 is only needed against a well armed and geographically huge opponent, such as the Russia, China or the United States itself, none of which America has the pressing need to bomb in the near future. So they just built a few, made them public as some sort of national prestige stunt for scaring "rogue states" with the threat that a heavy bomber could be flying over their territory without anyone knowing, rather than building en masse to become a credible attack force towards large powers as they were intended.
In contrast fhe F-22 project cost 66 Billion compared to the B-2's 44 Billion, the difference is, they built hundreds of those, so the cost looks lower.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Maybe AC's referring to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Flawed_mirror
Only if you volunteer to get it up.
Even for /. that's an odd way to phrase it.
Careful what you ask for. Lots of people will volunteer, but will the OP pick up the tab?
NASA has that covered: the James Web Space Telescope will be at the Earth-Sun L2 point. It is much smaller than 30 meters though: its mirror is 6.5 meters.
You'll also notice that the Webb telescope costs a lot more than the 30-meter telescope, which is another part of the answer to your question. There is enough going on in astronomy today that we need more than one really good telescope. It makes sense to build the multiple telescopes with different properties so they're specialized for different science.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Maybe there is another, larger one that got approved a few months ago?
Because it will have a lot more optical clarity than Hubble. There's a distinct limit to the aperature acheivable with space launch. Hubble's beyond it; the shuttle is retired. While space is great for optical bands that are absorbed by the atmosphere, it's worse for *EVERYTHING* else. It costs more, it's slower to design, it's harder to fix, it has hard aperature and focal length limitations, it has bandwidth caps, it has vibration problems, it has thermal stability problems, it has power limitations, it has pointing challenges, it has shit flying into it at speeds that would be hypersonic in the atmosphere, it has radiation problems, and it has "science fair project" political problems.
Note the E-ELT is in the southern hemisphere, where Hawaii is in the northern hemisphere. Consequently each will be able to see things the other cannot. Hence we need both.
Adaptive optics. They work. Google it. It is expected to have 10x the resolution of Hubble.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Building even a 10 meter one in space costs WAY more than this one will.
For a given amount of money you'll always get a much larger mirror if you put it on the top of a mountain vs putting it up in space. Either solution is a compromise. There is really room for having both, as I imagine particular problems can be solved by one vs the other. If you're going to build a telescope on Earth it is probably best to either build it really big, or really cheap (both are things which you can't do in space).
I wouldn't count out the really cheap aspect either. I've read in astronomy forums that there is a lot of real science that can be done with fairly cheap telescopes (tens of thousands of dollars, not millions), but there aren't really enough of them. They would need first-class services around them (good siting, automation, calibration, etc), but would be great for things that require more eyes on the sky but don't require that those eyes be the fanciest ones available. Many things like asteroids/comets/etc are still spotted by amateur astronomers with binoculars and even cheaper telescopes simply because the big ones are are busy staring at some vanishingly small region of the sky 75% of the way across the universe. I'd think that if you wanted to study asteroids and such that you'd do far better with hundreds of cheap automated small telescopes that can monitor much larger regions of the sky (the bigger telescopes have VERY narrow fields of view).
All large construction sites have things like:
* site offices (both project offices and contruction offices)
* laydown areas (these are not for people laying down to have a rest, they are for parts and machinery)
* staff facilities (toilets, changing rooms, catering)
* on site manufacturing (such as making concrete on site)
On the last construction project I worked on, the lay down areas were twice as large as the actual construction.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
to a thirty meter telescope these days, is not the size, but getting the necessary environmental and cultural licensing. For a freaking telescope. We're done doing great things, i think.
IMHO, it should be a condition that the public are given access to the scope site etc.
The last time I was on Big Island, the road that would take you to the base of the volcano where this is to be situated was prohibited to rental vehicles (4WD included). It was full of pot holes but passable with care. I've driven rentals over worse roads of of Hwy 50 in NV.
Get the state to fix this and there would be a source of income to the observatory from Tourists.
Hardly rocket science now is it?
It is a public road, and it's a bad road on purpose. In fact, once you reach a certain elevation, the road is a wonderfully smooth ribbon of concrete - they don't want dust to interfere with the telescopes. They also don't want ridiculous traffic jams beyond what they already have. So the first few miles beyond the visitor center is a terrible gravel road. Most people turn around.
The rental vehicle prohibition is between you and your rental car company. It has nothing to do with the State of Hawaii. If you feel like taking your rental car to the top, go right ahead. You will find that you are probably only one of a dozen FWD sedans on the top of the mountain. But... earlier this year some idiot tourists took their rental sedan up the mountain and forgot to put it in park when they got out. It slowly drove itself off the road and flipped over. It took the state more than a month to be able to get machinery in place to retrieve the wrecked car and take it down the mountain. Guess what - those tourists had to pay for the car AND the removal. You want to take that risk? Go ahead. Just remember that there aren't very many parking spaces up at the top of a mountain.
I highly recommend finding a way to get up there though - perhaps one of the many tour companies that do it? In fact, I think you'll find it to be a better experience. Most of those tours will get you up there so you can walk around a bit and watch the sun set. Then they take you down the mountain a bit to a secluded enough spot and give you an hour or more for stargazing - along with a very knowledgeable guide and a $10,000 telescope. The temperature will be well below freezing, so they also bring warm weather clothes for you - something you probably didn't bring on your trip to Hawaii.
Living in Hilo, and working on Mauna Kea, I think the administration of UH-Hilo would have heart attacks if they were ever approved to do anything involving the word "billion." They're constantly struggling to get funding for things like a permanent building for their pharmacy Ph.D program (which would help quite a bit with continuing accreditation). No, the TMT isn't a UH-Hilo project, at all.
It's actually University of California and CalTech (the main partners in Keck), plus ACURA (the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy, not Honda's sporty brand, sorry), Japan, China, India, the NSF, and maybe whoever else wants to jump in at this point now that things are approved. A mere $3.57 million might be enough to get yourself a 1-night-a-year slice of the pie. ;)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
they're called midwesterners