TMT not obsolete
Unfortunately, Kelly Greenwell’s letter in WHT on Nov. 14 claims that the very large, earth-based telescopes, like TMT, are obsolete. This is simply not true. The advantages of space is to avoid passing light through the earth’s atmosphere which absorbs some wavelengths of light and causes image motion that blurs the image. The disadvantages of space telescopes are the tremendous cost and difficulty in building and operating telescopes in space.
Technology developed on the Keck telescopes and others in the past 20 years has nearly eliminated image motion so that existing ground telescopes can exceed the image resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. Ground telescopes designed to work in the infrared along with small space telescopes have made substantial progress in covering the infrared light absorbed by the atmosphere.
The future James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) planned for launch in 2021, which has a 7 meter mirror, demonstrates the costs of going into space with even a relatively small mirror. The estimated cost of JWST is approaching $10 billion (it is still going up) with over 25 years in development. In space there is always a high risk and you cannot fix a screw up in space as was done on the Hubble. While a working 30 meter telescope in space would be wonderful, it is simply not going to happen in the foreseeable future.
The TMT on Maunakea along with similar telescopes under construction in Chile, with 40-plus meter mirrors, will be a giant step forward in tools to study the universe.
Jerry Smith
North Kohala
Campaigns shouldn’t be bought
As someone who tries to stay connected politically I get a lot of emails and messages from political figures pointing out perceived issues and a request that if only they had more money they could solve this problem or swing this election.
It seems to me that this is the very definition of corruption, “if you send us money we will work for you.” I suspect that most of us who vote feel that sending them to elected office should be all that’s required of us, but the competition to raise money outweighs our needs.
In many cases those we elected to office spend almost an equal amount of time fundraising and actually governing.
We could easily solve this if we had the collective will, all elections could be publicly funded and running for office could be limited to no more than 90 days before the election.
Roughly $2 billion was spent on the last presidential election. We could put that money to some good use and quit buying our politicians. Having the best political system that money can buy is certainly not helping us any and we are turning elected officials into nothing more than professional robber barons,
We probably won’t do this, though, as folks with lots of money don’t want to lose their influence.
Capitalism in its purist form is just like the game of monopoly, eventually someone ends up with all the money, and that’s what’s happening now.
Duane Sherman
Ocean View
