Hawaiian court throws out Thirty Meter Telescope building permit
>https://archive.is/P41N4
>Excerpts:
Hawaii's Supreme Court has ruled that the construction permit for the $1.4bn Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on top of Mauna Kea mountain is invalid. Construction of the telescope has been on hold since March, when hundreds of native Hawaiians and their supporters protested and prevented building crews from entering the site. The court ruling is a fresh blow to the project, with the telescope's backers now having to restart the permit process.
With a 30 m primary mirror made of 492 hexagonal segments, the TMT will be the largest and most powerful instrument on Mauna Kea, which is already home to 13 others. The TMT will sit on a plateau about 150 m below the summit – a location picked to reduce the telescope's visibility from the majority of the island.
>>7707566
In its ruling on 2 December, the court claimed that Hawaii's Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) should not have approved the permit in 2011 because it failed to follow due process when awarding it. "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," the ruling notes. "Accordingly, the permit cannot stand."
The court decision now requires the TMT to go through the process again that will first involve a "contested case hearing", which must be heard first before a permit can be issued. The decision by the court will result in delays beyond the targeted 2023 construction date, although how long is currently unknown.
>>7707567
Groups opposed to the TMT's construction have, however, welcomed the decision. Kamahana Kealoha, head facilitator of Sacred Mauna Kea Hui, says the group is "elated" at the move to annul the permit, which he says has been acquired "through an immorally and unethically manipulated process that has been negligently overseen by the BLNR". "Our goal has always been to systematically secure the Mauna," Kealoha told physicsworld.com. "The revoking of the construction permit is essential for us to succeed in protecting the mountain summit and the endangered-species environment from further development by this 18-storey monstrosity."
>Apparently, locals feelings trump scientific advancement...
Kealoha adds that they now hope that TMT's backers will "see red flags and pull out". "Quite frankly, the resistance is here to stay, and we plan to see to it that the TMT is not built," he says. "This could be more costly than the $1.4bn already appropriated and, speaking for myself and my group, we will continue to make sure the TMT being built on our sacred summit is not a profitable venture for investors, as we already have."
>...because getting in the way of the progress of human knowledge has worked in the past.
This makes me want to cry. This next generation of telescopes is going to incredible, and these fuckwits can only worry about "oh no muh island".
Besides, it's not like they stopped it, only delayed. It's obviously just going to be approved anyway in a year or so.
>still putting telescopes on the ground
You deserve what you get.
>trying to build a telescope facility on what is essentially a state assigned nature preserve that can allow/disallow construction at their own discretion
They have no one to blame but themselves op.
I think Hawaiians deserve their autonomy or whatever to preserve their culture and shit, but it's not like that fucking mountain actually has gods up there. They should be willing to have something built that they can be proud o. It's not ugly, it's not some horrible anti-ecology project, it's a fucking telescope.
>>7707691
>it's a fucking telescope.
Yes, but it's also a very large construction project.
From what I understand, then mountain is supposed to be an environmental preservation. It sounds like the people supporting the telescope got to skip over a lot of the questioning about how the construction and the site would affect the area, and if that's the case then it's not really okay.
>tfw people care more about their silly rock than scientific progression
I hope you like your IPhones and pickup trucks because at this rate we'll still be using them for the next 400 years
>muh nature
>>7707830
Nature is okay.
>>7707830
I've never understood why so many people who like science and tech seem to have such a problem with nature.
>>7707840
Once we reach singularity, nature will be obsolete.
>>7707566
>reduce the telescope's visibility from the majority of the island.
holy fuck are they for real ?.
one of the biggest fucking telescopes in the world and generally the most impressive instruments ever built and they wanna hide it ?
>>7707566
>when hundreds of native Hawaiians and their supporters
Typical fucking liberals, pretending to support ~science~,
but in reality, a buncha luddites.
>>7707691
>I think Hawaiians deserve their autonomy or whatever to preserve their culture and shit,
lol is this a joke?
We better end all fucking welfare to them if they have "autonomy".
>>7707702
Except this is literally what happens on EVERY large construction
It's why it's impossible to build anything in the USA
There is nothing more despicable than indians or people who pander to them.
> the TMT will be the largest and most powerful instrument on
Fucking luddite shitskins!
>Mauna Kea
>which is already home to 13 others
Oh nevermind, who gives a fuck.
>>7708117
>Except this is literally what happens on EVERY large construction
good.
>>7707856
I think you're missing the point on why Hawaii is popular, bruh.
>>7707599
They dont even actually care about their island. Hawaiians constantly litter on their own beaches
>>7707842
>believing in the reddit fedorian substitute for heaven
>not just either accepting you cant live without a promise of eternal life and becoming religious or accepting your mortality
>20xx
>shiggy shiggy ya shiggy yam shiggy yay
Don't worry, Amerifriends. Just like for particle physics and nuclear fusion, we're here to make it happen.
If you behave we might let you use it a bit.
>>7707621
>>still putting telescopes on the ground
>You deserve what you get.
I feel pretty much the same. If we're going to be wasting money on telescopes (since watching the heavens is pointless when we obviously aren't going to go into space as a species) then space-based scopes are the only rational way to go. We should be taking ALL telescope funding worldwide and committing it all to a multiscoped system-distributed array (MSDA). We should be putting thousands of mass-produced free-flying 1-meter optical telescopes into space and whizz then around the solar system in arrays that can be devoted to whatever tasks are 'needed'. With thousands of 1-meter scopes distributed from the inner system to the Kuiper Belt, the baselines would be massive and you could select which of their number to orient to which task, carving up the system into dozens to 100s of tasks.
It's the only rational way of doing this for the long term. Sadly, there are too many astronomers defending their home 'scopes, so it will never happen. Economic sense in this sort of thing always loses.
>>7708243
Kek, space telescopes are a thing but what you propose it out of this century. Space formation flight is only beginning to be mastered, and even economy-wise, a thousand launch is more than what the biggest observatory in the world costs but orders of magnitude.
>b-b-but muh spacex
no
>>7707621
It's not technologically or economically possible to put a 30 meter telescope in space today. Ground based telescopes have the massive advantage that they are a hundred times cheaper so you can build a far bigger telescope. Going to space is the last option, not the first. You have to build smaller, less complicated instruments.
>>7708243
>We're not going there
>Hence there is no point in knowing how the universe began or how it evolved to produce us.
You don't belong on /sci/ please piss off.
Astronomy cannot be solved by interferometers at very high resolution. That high resolution brings nothing to 99% of the questions in astronomy. Inteferometers are very insensitive and not diverse in their range of tasks. It would piss away money on something that doesn't fulfill most of the science a telescope costing a thousandth as much. You literally know nothing about the topic, don't pretend that everyone else is biased because they don't take ip this retarded idea. Astronomers aren't interested in home scopes, hence why Europe built the world's leading observatory in South America.
Why does it NEED to be built right there though? There is not one single spot on the entire Earth that would be just as good?
>>7708341
>space
>no zoning or permits required
>no locals to piss off
>no atmospheric interference
>don't need shit tons of supports because it's just a damn array of mirrors, some sensors, some telecom gear and station keeping
>price to get it up there is dropping like a rock thanks to SpaceX and the like
Join the glorious space telescope master race and leave ground based telescopes to the dirty peasants.
>>7707599
Who gives a fucking shit, it's a telescope. If you wanted to see shit then build a satellite
Also, their land. They do whatever they want with it.
>>7708341
>It's not technologically or economically possible to put a 30 meter telescope in space today
I work for the NRO, it is.
>>7708350
>Nobody skipped over anything, don't make shit up.
The Hawaiian Supreme Court says otherwise:
http://www.courts.state.hi.us/docs/opin_ord/sct/2015/December/SCAP-14-0000873.pdf
>By voting on the permit before the contested case hearing was held, the Board denied the Appellants their due process right to be heard at “a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner.” Sandy Beach Def. Fund v. City & Cnty. of Honolulu, 70 Haw. 361, 378, 773 P.2d 250, 261 (1989). The Board was on record in support of the project, and the permit itself was issued before evidence was taken and subject to adversarial testing before a neutral hearing officer.
>While UHH and the Board argue that the February 2011 decision was “preliminary” and subject to revision, the fact remains that the Board issued the permit prior to holding the contested case hearing. This procedure was improper, and was inconsistent with the statutory definition of a contested case as “a proceeding in which the legal rights, duties, or privileges of specific parties are required by law to be determined after an opportunity for agency hearing.” HRS § 91-1(5) (emphasis added).
I'm all for building fucking massive telescopes, but just because you're doing a good thing doesn't mean you get to ignore the rules.
>>7709372
>blue state pandering to "natives"
you don't say
It's all bullshit, it always is.
>>7709389
>Rule of Law
>Pandering to natives
How's first grade treating you?
>>7709372
They didn't ignore the rules. The state agency did. The EIS was not skipped over.
>>7709349
What the NRO has actually isn't very secret. They're still using KH-11.
>>7709296
>Literally a hundred times the cost.
Please fuck off. Launch is a tiny proportion, beinging a space telescope is still hugely expensive.
>>7709263
It is the best site for the probject. Only one or two are comparable and they would all drive up the cost at this point and put the project years behind and at risk of failure. Changing site at this point is unthinkable, it would put the telescope 5 years behind it's competitors and risk funding being pulled.
