[Windcatcher]

"The TMT is slated to begin scientific studies in 2021."

I'm highly skeptical about this date. The LBT took forever and a day to build and was far less ambitious.

[Psychotic Break]

I'm highly skeptical about this date. The LBT took forever and a day to build and was far less ambitious.

The technology required is well established.....the primary glitches are: 1. the mulitplicity of nations contributing to project...each of which will want to farm the work out on a political rather than good engineering basis....2. the logistics of operation.

For instance, each of the 492 mirror segements will need to be extracted and recoated on a regular basis....and replaced in time for night time operations for which the demand will be insatiable and worth 100's of thousands of dollars per evening....the slightest loss of time on sky will be intolerable.

Very tricky operational logistics...

[eddie willers]

I'm highly skeptical about this date. The LBT took forever and a day to build and was far less ambitious.

I went to the Wiki page about this.

It was the usual suspects. Indians saying the mountain was sacred and tree huggers worried about a species of squirrels.

I'm sure it took awhile before all the shakedown artists could be paid.

Science marches on.