Potential restrictions to Mauna Kea access

[shockwave rider]

Newgirl:
"So it's worth about a $1 Million a year. Sounds awfully cheap to me, but I don't know much about the economics of the big island."

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding running through the whole discussion on what the TMT "owes" to use that site.

People see the big numbers building the telescope is going to COST and somehow translate that in their minds that the TMT project has that big sum of money coming in and everyone has their hands out for a share. This is not a big profit making corporation building a factory that will generate income, this is an international non profit research effort to see deep into the heavens and understand the galaxy we live in and the galaxies beyond us. It will generate KNOWLEDGE not income.

The right of the University to lease sites and control use of Mauna Kea for astronomy was established in 1968, that was almost 50 years ago. If any people wanted to change that process to something different they had plenty of time to work to that end, but there is something fundamentally wrong with letting an entity negotiate and move forward in good faith for 7 years on a very expensive project and then hold the project hostage by blocking roads.