TMT Support!!!!

[David M]

Had the unexpected opportunity to tour the JCMT last week. The operator, Will just happens to be a young fellow that grew up here, went to UHH. On the trip back down the mountain unanimous support was expressed for TMT.

David

Ninole Resident
Please visit vacation.ninolehawaii.com

[TomK]

Glad you got to meet Will, David. He's one of the most intelligent, keen and enthusiastic telescope operators on the mountain, and an absolute pleasure to work with. He has a great future and shows that there are great opportunities for people who grow up here. But you have to work for it.

[snorkle]

It's good to see the dozens of supporters of TMT throughout the country showing their support!

[Guest]

What if someone built a starship and there was nowhere to go but frozen vacuum deserts, gas giants and baking lava worlds.

Why?

Because building a telescope capable of locating and cataloging habitable worlds upset a small group of uneducated fanatics with lawyers.

That would be kind of sad. Not for the fanatics, but for the rest of us.

That starship and a habitable destination might be the only thing that prevents human beings from becoming extinct forever.

There were once two whack jobs who believed you could create a machine that could fly. What fools. Even a horse knew that machines could not fly.

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You can't fix Samsara.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

There were once two whack jobs who believed you could create a machine that could fly.

Fortunately for those two brothers, they didn't try to take off from a sacred mountaintop when they were experimenting with the contraption. And fortunately for the rest of us we're not today counting our Frequent Floating Miles.

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
-Joseph Brodsky

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

it's as if one telescope would make a difference..

So are you saying one telescope would not make a difference?
Then why all the fuss?

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
-Joseph Brodsky

[PaulW]

"or if the TMT doesn't get built here it won't get built at all"

The same reasoning could be made anywhere - this mountain is sacred to us so pay us $$$ or we'll block it with boulders.
There's no point finding another site, this should be met head-on here and now.

If flight was being discovered now I'm sure there would be a huge facebook petition against it, signed by the usual kooks and hangers-on.

[pahoated]

TMT was looking at Atacama before Hawaii. They are now looking at India and the Canary islands, as well as looking back at Atacama.

The Giant Magellan telescope 25 meters has already started construction at Atacama. It will be 10 times more powerful than Hubble and Hubble is already resolving the Universe after it was only 400 million years old.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/a...-universe/

Construction has also started on the European Extremely Large Telescope 39 meters at Atacama. This has more than 30% more mirror area than TMT, will cost half as much and will see first light in 2024, probably 3 to 4 years before TMT if it got approved immediately. That isn't going to happen.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/e...telescope/

These largest optical telescopes are going to be able to see almost to the beginning of the universe. The irony is visible light didn't start until the universe was about 300 million years old, so looking at it when it was younger is going to be darkness until just after the beginning and that will be cosmic microwave background radiation.

It's all good, James Webb gets launched in 2018 and that will be about 7 times more powerful than Hubble. All the data is starting to be streamed, so it is available on the street a few hours after imaging has been processed. The data falling from the heavens abounds, TMT in Hawaii or TMT in Atacama. The astronomy jobs for locals thing never panned out, and it never will.

"Aloha also means goodbye. Aloha!"

[TomK]

I see the the crazy people are out tonight. Starships? "Leonardo da Vinci, Sir George Cayley, John Stringfellow, Alphonse Penaud, Francis Denham, Otto Lilienthal, Octave Chanute"? Data falling from the heavens abounds?

Oh boy, leaving civilization this weekend is going to be hard...

[Guest]

Hey Dakine,
Sorry I violated your safe space dude. Really.
No one needs to do anything, because someone else will do it anyway. Nothing needs to be done here, because it will be done somewhere else.
This wisdom escaped me. I stand corrected.
So I'll just stop posting because my ideas are so violent.
Or would you prefer that I just go swim out to sea?

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You can't fix Samsara.