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The board of governors for the Thirty-Meter Telescope has chosen an alternate site for construction that could allow it to cut its losses in Mauna Kea:
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) could move to La Palma, in Spain's Canary Islands, if opposition from Native Hawaiians prevents the next-generation observatory from being built atop the Hawaiian mountain of Mauna Kea as planned.
The decision, announced on 31 October by the TMT International Observatory's board of governors, creates an alternative path forward for the troubled mega-telescope. Its opponents blocked access to the Mauna Kea site in April 2015, halting construction, although work on the telescope's components continues at sites around the world. Native Hawaiians regard the decision to build the TMT on Mauna Kea as the continued desecration of a sacred mountaintop that hosts 13 other telescopes, some of which are being decommissioned.
In December, Hawaii's state supreme court nullified the permit that would have allowed the TMT to proceed. A fresh round of hearings began this month, with TMT officials seeking a new permit from the state's Bureau of Land and Natural Resources.
Previously:
Thirty Meter Telescope Considering Move as Hawaii Officials Open Hearing
Hawaiian Court Revokes Permit for Construction of Thirty-Meter-Telescope
Protests Temporarily Halt Thirty-Meter Telescope's Construction in Hawaii
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 01 2016, @07:33PM
> . But if I were a native person, I'd be really proud
Did it ever occur to you that if you were a native person your values might not be the same as your current values?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 01 2016, @09:37PM
It's not 200 years ago any more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 02 2016, @01:01AM
Yeah, 200 years and people gris are still unwilling to acknowledge the inherited power inequities of our modern state.
And that's why these conflicts are happening. They are part of a long-overdue reckoning, a truthful facing of our history and ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 02 2016, @03:17PM
Did it ever occur to you that if you were a native person your values might not be the same as your current values?
Did it ever occur to you that I could have totally different values while still remaining a white American? There's no shortage of white Americans who think that science is bunk, that religion is more important than science, that vaccines cause autism, that homeopathy works, that you can "pray away the gay", that money spent on space exploration or any other scientific research is wasted, that poor people in need of medical care should be left to die in the streets, that smoking is harmless, that it's OK to rape drunk women, I could go on and on.
Astronomy and pure science isn't something that benefits one group, it's something that benefits all of humanity. If your value system doesn't value pure science, then your value system is, quite frankly, shit. I don't care what ethnicity or culture you come from. There's nothing more universal than the search for knowledge. And there's plenty of shitty cultures that don't value this, including many subcultures I live very close to here in the US.