08-29-2017, 10:28 PM
A quick calculation has 200 tour vans driving up and down Mauna Kea every day if everyone used them instead of cars given one million visitors a year (where the hell would they all stay?). The fifteen or so that currently visit each day creates enough chaos up there at sunset.
But it doesn't matter. Although it's a fun mathematical exercise, the number of extra tourists the TMT might bring is being pulled out of a hat, and they do not have plans to build helicopter landing pads, as Gypsy knows very well. Unless he's forgotten once again.
When the largest optical telescopes on the planet were built on MK in the 1990s (Keck, Gemini and Subaru), how many more tourists did they attract to the summit? Having worked up there during that time, I can tell you. Hardly any.
But it doesn't matter. Although it's a fun mathematical exercise, the number of extra tourists the TMT might bring is being pulled out of a hat, and they do not have plans to build helicopter landing pads, as Gypsy knows very well. Unless he's forgotten once again.
When the largest optical telescopes on the planet were built on MK in the 1990s (Keck, Gemini and Subaru), how many more tourists did they attract to the summit? Having worked up there during that time, I can tell you. Hardly any.