Slashdot Mirror
How the Thirty Meter Telescope Ruling Will Impact Future Astronomy Projects (forbes.com)
StartsWithABang writes: If you want to explore the Universe, you need a telescope with good light gathering power, a high-quality camera to make the most out of each photon, and a superior observing location, complete with dark skies, clear nights, and still, high-altitude air. There are only a few places on Earth that have all of these qualities consistently, and perhaps the best one is atop Mauna Kea on Hawaii. Yet generations of wrongs have occurred to create the great telescope complex that's up there today, and astronomers continue to lease the land for far less than it's worth despite violating the original contract. That's astronomy as we know it so far, and perhaps the Mauna Kea protests signal a long awaited end to that.
Once again it boils down to how much money they're giving the natives. Not historical propriety, not ethics, nope. Just how much money the natives are getting.
Even worse, consider the situation of the Hawaiian natives, pushed off of almost every island except a corner of the big one with the active volcano, pushed around regarding the original telescope placement, etc. etc. Granted, they only got there a few hundred years before Cook, but still, life took a serious turn for the worse for them ever since he landed. Now, the Haole want to just stick another telescope up on the mountain top - continuing to disregard the natives as they do for almost every issue - except, the natives actually have gotten some legal say in this matter - not surprising that they're getting up in the face of the astronomers, or anyone else who is doing something they don't particularly like.
Hopefully, the telescope is important enough to the scientific community for them to wrangle a good deal for the natives and still get the telescope they want built. Anything you do with land in Hawaii gets expensive quick, but you might be able to extend preservation zones around the peak on Maui, in exchange for continued development at the top of Mauna Kea? I don't really know what's in the elder's heads on this one, but surely something of greater value to them can be found to exchange - the question is: do we really want the telescope bad enough to pay the price?
> Yet generations of wrongs have occurred
FFS. Give me a break. Sorry, I have no white guilt. Yes, I am privileged, and so are the people complaining about it.
> astronomers continue to lease the land for far less than it's worth
A difference of opinion (on "worth") makes a market. If the land was worth so much, then they should have charged more. But, now that the astronomers are there and have committed significant resources to the project, the lessor is trying to extort them for more. That's pretty scummy.
> despite violating the original contract.
Really? The terms of the lease have been breached by the lessee? That's a slam dunk then. Go to a court to get an order of repossession.
Oh? You haven't or it hasnt worked? I guess it's not so cut-and-dried then.
Funny thing about the Libertarian right. They loudly espouse the views that the only true rights are property rights, that contracts (backed by government power) are sacred, and that everything can be reduced to financial considerations.
But if anyone not of a member of their socioeconomic cohort shows a trace of being concerned about their property rights, about the violation of contractual terms, if seeking compensation in the only available way; then venom and mockery gush forth. How dare they!
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Sorry, but we didn't realize that there was anything "colonialist" about science.
If Hawaii had always been independent like Fiji, the kanaka*, or commoners, would still be under control of the ali'i, the hereditary nobility, who enforced their rule with an intricate series of prohibitions on the commoners. All of Maunakea above the treeline was under exclusive control of the ali'i. No kanaka could go there, ever. Overall, the kanaka had fewer rights than Russian peasants in the time of the tsars.
So foreign astronomers come to the Big Island, and make a deal with the ali'i to build their telescopes. Some of the Kamehameha family were astronomical hobbyists, after all. I'm assuming that just as in our own history, the researchers would have to carefully avoid the altars and other sacred objects on the mountaintop, which is vast and gently sloped - Maunakea is more massive than the entire Rocky Mountains - and would be granted a concession on a small area near the summit.
Astronomy on this independent Hawaii would be just like astronomy there today, except that the common people, and whatever foreign supporters they could muster, would have no input into the process whatever.
* Please excuse my omission of the A-macron. The character set used here just swallows it.