SCIENCE sciencemag.org 17 JANUARY 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6475 237IMAGE: TMT INTERNATIONAL OBSERVATORY
elders, or kupuna—which only hardened
the opposition on the mountainside and
attracted wider interest, including from ac-
tors and celebrities who joined the protests.
“Arresting elders really changed people’s
minds,” says TMT opponent Rosie Alegado,
an oceanographer at UH Manoa.
TMT officials have said they can’t condone
the use of force to get the telescope built.
Canada, one TMT partner, is particularly con-
cerned because of its own checkered history
with Indigenous people, Canadian astrono-
mers say. Construction will take most of a de-
cade and require more than 2000 truck trips
up the mountain. If protesters constantly
harry that effort, an accident is inevitable.
The 3500 astronomers who arrived last
week for the AAS meeting found themselves
in an awkward situation: wanting to pro-
mote the best in astronomy but sensitive
to the strong feelings in the islands about
building on its mountaintops. To quote one
AAS delegate, the TMT was the “30-meter el-
ephant in the room.”
AAS attendees did not see thousands of
TMT protesters, like the crowd that greeted
the International Astronomical Union when
it came to the same venue in 2015. Instead,kia’i were invited to join debates and speak
in sessions. “The impact on our Mauna is
an impact on our very soul,” kia’i leader
Noe Noe Wong-Wilson told an Astro
session on diversity at the meeting. “We ask
TMT not to build. It’s not about the science.
It is sacred. It belongs to the gods.”
Native Hawaiian and nonastronomer
supporters of the TMT also made their
voices heard. For them, it is about well-
paid technical jobs in a state with high liv-
ing costs and scant opportunities. Tourism,
a major source of jobs, has in recent years
been buffeted by rises in fuel costs, finan-
cial crises, and volcanic eruptions. “Science
will always be stable,” says Malia Martin,
founder of Imua TMT (imua means “for-
ward”). She sees telescopes on Mauna Kea
as “an opportunity for Indigenous people to
command a global industry.” The opponents
“protested and lost, and they need to accept
that,” says Imua TMT’s Amber Imai-Hong,
an aerospace engineer at UH’s Hawaii
Space Flight Laboratory.
Many astronomers still dearly want the
TMT built, and take issue with the mis-
information spread on social media by
some opponents, including claims that itwill pollute the island’s groundwater, that it
will be nuclear powered, and that it is a la-
ser weapon built by China. But many would
not comment publicly. TMT officials kept a
low profile at the meeting, only holding off-
the-record meetings with journalists.
Robert McLaren, director of UH’s Institute
for Astronomy, is concerned that the opposi-
tion to astronomy could threaten the dozen
other large observatories already on Mauna
Kea. The university manages the mountain-
top under a lease from the state that must be
renewed before the end of 2033. The insti-
tute has been working on its application for
5 years, carrying out an environmental im-
pact survey and revising its management
plans, McLaren says. He hasn’t yet sensed
that opponents are targeting the lease re-
newal, but says for some, at least, “their ul-
timate goal is to have nothing there.”
Another worry is financial. The observa-
tories pay just $1 a year for their subleases,
but they share day-to-day costs such as road
maintenance, snow removal, and operation
of the visitor center. Nevertheless, UH chips
in $2 million per year—an unsustainable
load, McLaren says. The observatories expect
to pay higher rent after 2033, but the arrival
of the TMT could strain their finances. To
appease opponents, Governor David Ige (D)
in 2015 called on UH to decommission older
and less productive telescopes. The univer-
sity is in the process of identifying up to
five for closure, which would mean fewer to
share the burden of operating the site. “How
many are going to be at the party to pay the
bills?” McLaren asks.
For the TMT itself, it is a waiting
game. The project funders—the Califor-
nia Institute of Technology, the Univer-
sity of California, Japan, China, India, and
Canada—have to decide how long they can
wait before considering the backup site of
La Palma in Spain’s Canary Islands. For as-
tronomy, the site is inferior, but it is less
politically fraught. Every passing month
adds costs. Glass blanks for more than 60%
of the telescope’s 574 1.4-meter-wide mir-
ror segments sits in warehouses. Polishing
has started in the United States and Japan
and will soon begin in India and China.
Designs for the telescope structure and its
enclosure are ready, but contractors have
been put on hold.
John Evans, a kia’i at the Mauna Kea
camp, is happy to keep waiting. The wiry
68-year-old with a long white beard is a
recent convert to Hawaiian dancing, and
wants to keep at it. “I wish them well,” he
says, of the TMT. “Just somewhere else.” jThe TMT (artist’s concept) would be the
biggest telescope on Mauna Kea, a peak many
Native Hawaiians hold sacred.Published by AAAS