In a May 17 letter in West Hawaii Today, Rick Bennett compared the loss in of the SSC (Superconducting Super Collider) many years ago in California to the potential loss of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project to Hawaii. His point was to show life goes on and there were no serious consequences. This analogy is inaccurate and needs to be refuted with the facts.
First of all, California, with almost 40 million people and an economy more than $2 trillion, has a population and economy more than 30 times the state of Hawaii. While Hawaii has one major university and a number of small private schools, California has more than 30 state universities as well as dozens of private universities such as Cal Tech, Stanford, etc. So, of course, when California lost the SSC project to Texas, it was not a big deal. This will not be the case for Hawaii, especially for the Big Island where astronomy has made a major contribution to the economy while doing important scientific research. While Bennett implies a similarity between the two projects he neglects to mention that the SSC estimated at more than $12 billion in 1993 dollars was at least 20 times the $1.4 billion cost in 2015 dollars of the TMT. (The SSC project was eventually canceled by Congress because of tremendous cost escalations and poor management)
Bennett also implies an analogy with family farms in California that, “have roots going back well over a hundred years” and “some of the farmers who were spiritually connected with the land” with Mauna Kea protesters who have recently emerged but have no historical presence on the mountain. To put this into context, the SSC had a 50-mile circumference in populated California farmland while the TMT will occupy the area of a very small farm (5 acres) consisting of barren, wind swept cinders at 13,000 feet on Mauna Kea. This site is totally unusable for any other purpose and the facility will be unseen from sea level except from the northwest area of the Big Island, where most of the observatories are visible.
Mr. Bennett goes on to make another analogy with the SSC that the TMT is being oversold and really isn’t that important scientifically. While the project’s supporting institutions are anticipating that the TMT will be a major advance in instrumentation they are not exaggerating the potential scientific achievement as was the SSC which was being sold to Congress. The TMT is being supported privately by several, completely nonprofit, international science institutions that have already made the scientific and financial commitment to build the facility.
It is indisputable that astronomy has been good economically for the Big Island and that observatories on Mauna Kea have been world leaders in producing new scientific data. To diminish this activity, after TMT was approved by all the state agencies, would clearly signal a lack of support for scientific research in Hawaii and start its decline. Somehow Mr. Bennett implies that this loss will go unnoticed and that science will thrive in Hawaii as it does in California after the SSC went to Texas. Mr. Bennett seems to have missed the significant and obvious differences between the two projects as well as the economic and cultural differences between Hawaii and California.
Jerry Smith is a resident of North Kohala.
Viewpoint articles are the opinion of the writer and not necessarily the opinion of West Hawaii Today.