There are already thirteen telescopes built around the summit of Mauna Kea that benefit from the very laminar, dry and smooth airflow and the lack of light pollution on the mountain. It is also a sacred Hawai'ian site.
There were plans to build a new and very large telescope - 30 meters in diameter (98 feet) but the Hawai'ian natives decided that the site was too close to their own native sites and there has been an active protest against further development. Mother board has an excellent article from November 30th, 2015 on the protests against the construction of this scope. A lot to be said on both sides - this is their sacred ground. But still, Hawaii is a poor state and this is a $1,400,000,000 project. A lot of the infrastructure will be manufactured elsewhere and shipped in but a wild-assed guess would put the local construction cost at about 30% or $420,000,000 as a direct injection of cash to the local working community. And then, there is the annual maintenance required - road work, custodial and hotel services, the increase in revenues from the visiting beakers.
The indigenous people may have been holding out for a little more baksheesh but if so, their plans just got stymied - from the Beeb:
Biggest telescope may swap continents
One of the world's biggest telescope projects might be forced to move its location to a different continent.
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) was due to be built in Hawaii, but ran into opposition with indigenous groups which consider its proposed site sacred.
Now the TMT's board says a site in the Canary Islands, Spain, could act as a potential alternative.
The $1.4bn project will enable experts to study the early Universe and peer into the atmospheres of exoplanets.
The initial ideas to build the scope started around fifteen years ago - they had a long time to present the idea and only recently was there any pushback. Mauna Kea is the better site - higher and dryer but when there is no negotiation, time to go with plan B.
The current political activists have no skin in the game - they show up, get locals agitated and vocal and when things do not work out well, they fade away and go to the next scene. The protesters at Mauna Kea were not local - too many haoles in the photographs.
We are suffering from the same activism in our own county from the people trying to demonize coal to the benefit of those who make lots of money from government subsidies of alt.energy. Commercial political activism is a very well-paying job - Soros has funded Black Lives Matter to the tune of over one million dollars overall through his various organizations - the major funding gift was $650,000. The puppetmasters want our system to collapse so they can step in and offer the soft jaws of tyranny.
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