09-08-2008, 10:06 AM
Last week, I expressed my desire to hear a question on the Thirty Meter Telescope asked at the Council Forum on Saturday. Dr. James Weatherford appropriately suggested that I do some research on the economic impact of the TMT. So I did, and here is the first round:
The thing that first struck me was the lack of such data on, of all places, the TMT website. http://www.tmt.org/ There is a ton of interesting stuff there, but with the anticipated cultural and environmental opposition that they clearly recognize, one would think they would have some nice juicy money stuff there to tempt the prospective host. I sent them an email suggesting that they fix this. (Or if the info is there somewhere, and I just missed it, to make it more visible.)
So not finding anything there, I turned to the academics at the University of Hawaii. Sure enough, they had some stuff, albeit somewhat dated. As Dr. Weatherford suspected (and I should have known) the $1.1 billion will indeed not all be spent here. According to this 2000 report http://www.hawaii.edu/maunakea/appendix_m.pdf , about 20% of the actual project capital cost would be spent on the Big Island. That would still amount to about $220 million, a tidy sum. (Note that this report refers to the TMT as the "next generation large optical/IR telescope.") The same report states that there will be approximately 120 new jobs created, but they do not give a breakdown on salaries. I looked up astronomer salaries on monster.com and the median is $93,000 per annum, but I imagine only about a dozen or so of the new jobs will be at this level. The rest however, will tend to be more technical/computer types, although they will still need custodial help, etc. Overall, I think we can safely say that the new jobs will average at least at the current Big Island median and probably higher.
The promised scholarship money is via Senator Inouye's office. Of course politicians promises are always suspect, but at least this one has history of delivering pork. Here is the link for the Senator's promise: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/p.../808100379
I also found a UH report from 2003: http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/publications/s...-Oct03.pdf This report states that the annual operating expense of the TMT on the Big Island will be on the order of $50 million. The actual impact of that sum would increase with circulation in the economy.
So that is the first round of research. I'm still looking for more recent and detailed data, but I remain convinced that the economic value would be outstanding. The TMT people need to work much harder on cultural sensitivity and start seriously dealing with the concerns of Native Hawaiians and environmentalists. Our local candidates and politicians need to facilitate such a discourse post haste before this opportunity is lost.
The prestige and ripple effect value of having or not having the TMT is hard to quantify. I do know, however, that an isolated place in the middle of the ocean with few natural resources other than scenic beauty needs more than tourism and real estate development as its economic base. Scientific research is something that is already being done here with success. Rejecting the TMT out of hand sends the wrong message to the scientific world.
Cheers,
Jerry
The thing that first struck me was the lack of such data on, of all places, the TMT website. http://www.tmt.org/ There is a ton of interesting stuff there, but with the anticipated cultural and environmental opposition that they clearly recognize, one would think they would have some nice juicy money stuff there to tempt the prospective host. I sent them an email suggesting that they fix this. (Or if the info is there somewhere, and I just missed it, to make it more visible.)
So not finding anything there, I turned to the academics at the University of Hawaii. Sure enough, they had some stuff, albeit somewhat dated. As Dr. Weatherford suspected (and I should have known) the $1.1 billion will indeed not all be spent here. According to this 2000 report http://www.hawaii.edu/maunakea/appendix_m.pdf , about 20% of the actual project capital cost would be spent on the Big Island. That would still amount to about $220 million, a tidy sum. (Note that this report refers to the TMT as the "next generation large optical/IR telescope.") The same report states that there will be approximately 120 new jobs created, but they do not give a breakdown on salaries. I looked up astronomer salaries on monster.com and the median is $93,000 per annum, but I imagine only about a dozen or so of the new jobs will be at this level. The rest however, will tend to be more technical/computer types, although they will still need custodial help, etc. Overall, I think we can safely say that the new jobs will average at least at the current Big Island median and probably higher.
The promised scholarship money is via Senator Inouye's office. Of course politicians promises are always suspect, but at least this one has history of delivering pork. Here is the link for the Senator's promise: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/p.../808100379
I also found a UH report from 2003: http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/publications/s...-Oct03.pdf This report states that the annual operating expense of the TMT on the Big Island will be on the order of $50 million. The actual impact of that sum would increase with circulation in the economy.
So that is the first round of research. I'm still looking for more recent and detailed data, but I remain convinced that the economic value would be outstanding. The TMT people need to work much harder on cultural sensitivity and start seriously dealing with the concerns of Native Hawaiians and environmentalists. Our local candidates and politicians need to facilitate such a discourse post haste before this opportunity is lost.
The prestige and ripple effect value of having or not having the TMT is hard to quantify. I do know, however, that an isolated place in the middle of the ocean with few natural resources other than scenic beauty needs more than tourism and real estate development as its economic base. Scientific research is something that is already being done here with success. Rejecting the TMT out of hand sends the wrong message to the scientific world.
Cheers,
Jerry