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Giant Telescope Project Stalled By Hawaiian Natives (khon2.com)
Fudge Factor 3000 writes: The Hawaiian Supreme Court has pulled a construction permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope project. A vocal minority of Hawaiians has vehemently protested the construction of the telescope for religious reasons. Now, they have been successful in contesting the construction permit. The ruling reads in part: "The process followed by the Board here did not meet these standards. Quite simply, the Board put the cart before the horse when it issued the permit before the request for a contested case hearing was resolved and the hearing was held. Accordingly, the permit cannot stand."
It' not so much about altitude and weather as it is seeing conditions; Mauna Loa has among the best if not the best seeing conditions on Earth outside Antarctica. Good seeing depends in large part on how flat and uniform the terrain is for hundreds of kilometers upwind; high mountains on islands consequently tend to fare well (the Canary Islands are another good spot)
The best known seeing location on Earth is in deep Antarctica. Unfortunately the location would make the costs prohibative.
I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
Yes, UH can theoretically reapply for a permit. The environmental qualification required for this mountain, independent of any native claims, is so intricate that doing it over again would take another fifteen years. Meanwhile, TMT components are already being built. I would rather see China grab the project than see us go through such a long permitting process all over again.
To be fair, Hawaii is a particularly brazen example of a territory grab. I mean sure, most of the U.S. was settled that way, taking territory from native Americans (who didn't have the concept of owning land). But Hawaii was originally a country. White settlers from the U.S. who wanted to use it for agriculture overthrew the native government, and got the U.S. to annex it. Even then it wasn't over, as the U.S. allows territories to vote for either independence or statehood (the Philippines and Cuba for example voted for independence, Puerto Rico is in a perpetual state of delaying the vote). But by the time Hawaii voted, its native population had been overwhelmed by sugar and pineapple plantation workers and military personnel at Pearl Harbor.
From the perspective of the natives, a mere kickback is probably a tiny fraction of what they feel is owed to them for basically stealing their country.