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Radio Telescope Has Military Uses? 186

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the where-do-you-think-a-lot-of-scientific-research-comes-from dept.
schnippy writes "A joint Mexico-U.S. effort to build a monster radio telescope in Mexico is causing concerns because the project, the Large Millimeter Telescope, is part of a U.S. Defense Department effort to develop the target acquisition and directed-energy technology needed for anti-satellite warfare." From the article: " Supporters said links between science and the military are nothing new and emphasized the telescope being assembled on the 15,000-foot Sierra Negra in the state of Puebla wont be some kind of Star Wars defense outpost."
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Radio Telescope Has Military Uses? More

Radio Telescope Has Military Uses?

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  • The Force! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Surely the USA can just use The Force to disable enemy satellites? I mean this is the Star Wars project after all...

  • I know what you're all thinking... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @06:30AM (#14237379)
    "I am inVINcible!"

  • Darn (Score:5, Funny)

    by antikarma ( 804155 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @06:35AM (#14237390)
    ...the telescope being assembled on the 15,000-foot Sierra Negra in the state of Puebla wont be some kind of Star Wars defense outpost.
    That's a shame. Puebla does look remarkably similar to Tatooine...

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @06:40AM (#14237404)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Nice opening line... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chaffar ( 670874 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @06:43AM (#14237411)
    A joint Mexico-U.S. effort to build a monster telescope atop a dormant volcano...

    Why does this sound to me like a "bad idea"? This would be a great start for a thriller/action movie ...

    [Dramatic Voice]Atop dormant volcano in Mexico... containing an ancient Aztec burial ground... the construction of an American military complex awakens undead souls... Disturbed from their sleep, they thirst for revenge... Only one man... can hope to defeat them...

  • and what if it is? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OffTheLip ( 636691 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @06:50AM (#14237431)
    Since the link between science and the technology of war or peace, depending on your perspective, are entwined why can't it be used for alternative purpose? The fact my microwave oven had it's roots in defense does not stop me from using it.
    • Since the link between science and the technology of war or peace, depending on your perspective, are entwined why can't it be used for alternative purpose? The fact my microwave oven had it's roots in defense does not stop me from using it.

      Think of it as stealing someone elses work and ambition, and then using the result of that work for some evil purpose the original inventor never would have approved of. For example, say you wrote code for a program that helped cure cancer, and then some insurance com

  • Quote (Score:4, Funny)

    by jlebrech ( 810586 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @06:51AM (#14237432) Homepage
    This Battlestation is FULLY operational, mwuhuhahaha

  • Offensive weapon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @06:53AM (#14237436) Journal
    "The design could greatly improve capabilities for acquisition and recognition of targets in space, as well as demonstrate the feasibility of long-range energy directed devices," states a document from the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1997, the year construction began.


    Since the article doesn't explicitly state it, what the Mexicans are worried about is that the U.S. of A. will try and use that gigantic dish to fry satellites.

    Methinks they doth protest to much in the article.

    Anyways:
    I found two sites, one saying it's designed to pick up 'wavelengths of 1 to 3 millimeters' and the other saying "to operate between 100 and 300 gigahertz (GHz)"

    If they really have military uses in mind (even as a backup) then I'm guessing we won't find out how many watts it can transmit. I did a decent google search and came up empty.

    And to make a long post longer, I'm going to bring up an old post I read before (slightly modified)
    Whenever a controversial law/telescope is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law/telescope would never be applied in that way' - they're lying. They intend to use the law/telescope that way as early and as often as possible.

    • Re:Offensive weapon (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mr_Dyqik ( 156524 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @07:15AM (#14237476)
      1 mm = 300 GHz, 3 mm = 100 GHz

      The last thing you want within miles of a sensitive radio telescope is any kind of powerful transmitting equipment, as it would probably fry the detectors, and prevent any kind of astronomical observation. Since many other countries are involved in the telescope, at least at the advisory level, I can't imagine any kind of actual military testing at the site. In any case, there are very few powerful compact sources in the 100-300 GHz range (which is one of the reasons why astronomy in this band is difficult)

      The most likely military application is the optics control required to get a telescope of this size and surface accuracy to work efficiently. That wouldn't involve any transmissions from the site.
      • I can understand why you'd say it's only about tracking

        "It is a very high-powered, focused radar beam that could be used to find an enemy object out in space and, having found it, zero in on it," Coyle said."

        and read a certain way, this quote (from TFA) would support that viewpoint. Maybe I misread "long-range energy directed devices" to mean "directed [radar] energy."

        I dug a diff article out of google's cache [64.233.167.104] which basically says that yes, they could use something like the LMT as a weapon, but it's not li

        • I think "long-range energy directed devices" could be something like this http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/ [boeing.com] if it has enough energy to punch up through the atmosphere (afaik it doesn't but I wouldn't know - it might fly high enough and be strong enough).

          Then again "long-range energy directed devices" is sufficiently diffuse to reference just about anything from a golfball to a deathstar :)
      • How about a large group of transmitters, not unlike, say a bunch of mirrors (optical energy), or a radio telescope array that can transmit as well as recieve? 10000 2-watt transmitters with low diffusion might be about as effective as a 20 kilowatt transmitter with low diffusion, but the only way to be sure (and to know what its effective range and limitations are) is to test it...

        And yes, there is good evidence to suggest the mirror thing works.

      • The last thing you want within miles of a sensitive radio telescope is any kind of powerful transmitting equipment, as it would probably fry the detectors, and prevent any kind of astronomical observation

        I doubt this is true. A radiotelescope is essentially a radar set without the transmit side. It would seemingly be trivial to outfit the telescope with a blanker that would protect the sensitive receive side while transmitting. If what you are saying was true, radar would be impossible - the first time th

    • The weapon itself would obviously be located on U.S. territory or on a ship, depending on size. As the document you quoted states, "The design could greatly improve capabilities for acquisition and recognition of targets in space" i.e. the telescope would be used to find the targets, not to shoot them down.

      IMO this is a bad thing, as now a telescope that should only be used for peaceful research will also become a military target during times of war.
    • I think the military application of this telescope is as, well, a telescope. You can't shoot things unless you know where they are. I highly doubt this thing will be shooting out the Death Star(tm) ray itself, but rather telling another site where to send the missle, death ray, swarm of space ninjas.

      Almost anything which is useful for measuring and locating things is also good for helping blow them up. This doesn't mean we shouldn't do this kind of science. Sure, the military might be able to use it,

    • "The Mexicans" are not concerned, a Mexican congresswoman is concerned. Since Mexico is funding the majority of the project (60% so far, according to the article), I'd say that most Mexican politicians (including the president, Vicente Fox, as quoted in the article) are in favor of the project.

      Not only that, while I do think that the US government works secretly on nasty projects to do weapons research -- I don't think this is how they do it: with construction mostly financed by and carried out in another

  • Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Shihar ( 153932 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @06:54AM (#14237438)
    ...people are surprised that a project getting multi-million dollar funding is going to be also be occasionally used by the DoD because it has some military utility? Really people, there is an easy way out if you don't like the idea of the DoD getting a utility out of this dish in exchanger for millions of tax payer dollars: Raise the money yourself.

    What is happening is just common sense. There is an expensive project that will benefit scientists. At the same time, the DoD is undergoing a project that will need that exact same piece of equipment. We can either build two of these things and set tax payers back a small hunk of change, or we can build one. Take government money, and take the strings attached.

    Now while making government funded facilities duel use makes perfect sense, you can easily argue that this whole Star Wars thing is a big waste of time and money. I personally wouldn't mind a nice big cozy shield of lasers or what not to knock the unlikely ballistic nuke out of the sky. That said, there is a cost benefit analysis that goes along with this. If an impenetrable shield of d00m could be erected for the cost of one month worth of operations in Iraq, I would say go for it. If instead it is going to cost enough bankrupt the nation, obviously it isn't worth spending money on such a remote danger.

    Summary:
    Duel use facilities when getting government funding to save tax payers: Good.
    Star Wars in general: Maybe not so good.
    • "Summary:
      Duel use facilities when getting government funding to save tax payers: Good."

      Perhaps, "duel" would be the wrong choice of word here ;-)

      Jokes apart, the parent poster does have a valid point. While the use of military funding to finance a fundamental research project may initially sound like a good idea, it is also something that should be very carefully considered. While defence funded projects have benefited basic science in direct or indirect ways, it is not guaranteed to do so. Even if this fun
    • The radio telescope in the Stanford foothills, now generally regarded as a benign feature of the landscape, pretty at sunset, and occasionally used for research, was originally commissioned to study nuclear explosions in space. I don't know very much about the history of the project, except that its true purpose was almost certainly kept secret. That was military S.O.P. for weapons research, and there had been massive protests against Stanford Research Institute, the owner of the dish, for its involvement

  • Tinfoil hat (Score:2, Informative)

    by tenfoot ( 727924 )
    memo to self - must make a thicker tinfoil hat. I can feel the waves penetrating my brain

  • Silly. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by killjoe ( 766577 )
    I was thinking about the revolutionary war. The brits came here hoping to quell the revolution but ultimately were not successfull because they were fighting old wars and old enemies. The brits were used to fighting in ranks, they marched in ranks, set up in ranks, fired in ranks. These tactics were very successfull in europe but ended up being futile against the americans who had learned to fight a new way from the indians. The americans jettisoned both the tactics of fighting in ranks and any "honor" from
    • Not necessarily.

      Recall that for some time after 9/11 America was so bloodthirsty for revenge that the little offenses (that we'd normally get our collective panties in a twist over) didn't matter. Collateral damage was a non-issue; the US military had free reign to drop whatever the hell they wanted to whenever the hell they wanted to, and nobody was going to stop them. In fact, we were encouraging them.

      Our revolution wasn't as great an offense to the British as the terrorist attacks on 9/11 were to us, so

    • Re:Silly. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MichaelSmith ( 789609 )
      People with no honor exploding bombs in cities, beheading, hostage taking etc. I often wonder if the US military will meet the same fate as the brits

      The US will hold out for a technical win in Iraq, but when they leave Iraq will still be the same as it was under Saddam.

      So yes, they will effectively lose to an enemy who fights dirty because they have less to lose.

      • Re:Silly. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Mr. Competence ( 18431 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @10:37AM (#14238283)
        From the BBC [bbc.co.uk]
        ...poll by Oxford Research International was commissioned by the BBC, ABC News and other international media organisations.
        Interviewers found that 71% of those questioned said things were currently very or quite good in their personal lives, while 29% found their lives very or quite bad.
        The BBC News website's World Affairs correspondent, Paul Reynolds, says the survey shows a degree of optimism at variance with the usual depiction of the country as one in total chaos.
        The findings are more in line with the kind of arguments currently being deployed by US President George W Bush, he says.
        • Yeah, but we're not fighting the 70% who are happy, we're fighting the (not insignificant) 30% who aren't. If they were an insignificant threat, they'd have been suppressed by now.
    • I think that's a simplification, but generally true. Military tactics alone didn't win the America its independence (in fact I think in purely military terms, the British had greater success than the American forces during the WoI), but they played a part in a whole bunch of factors, most of them political, and most that the US would do well to pay attention to now.

      One I can think of off the top of my head is that if a large proportion of the population does not want you ruling them, you will eventually f

      • Re:Silly. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by George Tirebuyer ( 825426 )
        When the Revolution broke out about 25% favored war for independence, 50 % were indifferent and 25% were pro British. The rebels wanted it more. They won over the 50 percent because of the way the British treated them. In the end Washington won by carefully choosing fights he could win and costing the British too much money. When the French entered the war The Brits had enough. They lost because of a 3000 mile supply line. The War of Between the States is another exception. The vast majority in the Confede
        • Yeah, the Civil War might be an exception, although that wasn't a foreign army occupation, that was a civil war. What you say about the revolution echoes what I just said; they managed to win over 75% of the population because of the British treatment of the population at large.

          You only need to look at any news channel/website to see that the war in Iraq is *not* over. As another poster says, the US is going for a technical win, then will get out ASAP. The country will then most likely descend into anarch

      • "One I can think of off the top of my head is that if a large proportion of the population does not want you ruling them, you will eventually fail. You can try to suppress them with guns and bombs but that only makes more of them oppose you, and harder."

        Not always true. This tactic worked for the Americans in the WoI, it is how the Americans neutralized the support of Tories in the south, especially in the second half of the war.

        Most North Americans, outside of Massachusetts and neighboring areas, act

    • Re:Silly. (Score:5, Informative)

      by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @11:11AM (#14238546) Journal
      Please don't take this as a flame - it's not meant as such at all.

      1) The Continental Army fought much the same way as the British army. The idea that the Americans 'hid behind rocks and trees' while the British fought in lines is a tired old chestnut with no basis in fact. Both sides used skirmishers, light troops who fought from cover, to great effect. The Brits were unhappily surprised by the lethality and range of the American rifles, but in general the US Army was beaten in almost every engagement except for the critical battles of Saratoga and Cowpens.

      http://theamericanrevolution.org/battles.asp [theamerica...lution.org]

      2) to suggest that the Americans have somehow routinely relied on deception and ambush thereafter is simply misreading the facts. Until recently, American militaries were NOT known for their subtlety - the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, WW1, WW2, Korea, and even the failed efforts in Vietnam were almost entirely about a standup, face-to-face battle where the US won more by its overwhelming resources than by its surprise attacks or deception.

      Again, this isn't meant as a flame, I simply think your interpretation is entirely wrong. Your parallel of "the US abandoned honor in war = Iraqi terrorists abandoning honor" thereby implies very dangerously some sort of 'moral equivalency' between the American revolutionaries and the Iraqi jihadis. While I recognize that no doubt SOME Iraqis are fighting for purely nationalist reasons, it's not their main motivation.

      I would argue that the Shiite uprisings against Saddam that we failed to support (to our shame) were a far closer parallel to the American revolution.

      • Re:Silly. (Score:3, Informative)

        by Liam Slider ( 908600 )

        1) The Continental Army fought much the same way as the British army. The idea that the Americans 'hid behind rocks and trees' while the British fought in lines is a tired old chestnut with no basis in fact. Both sides used skirmishers, light troops who fought from cover, to great effect. The Brits were unhappily surprised by the lethality and range of the American rifles, but in general the US Army was beaten in almost every engagement except for the critical battles of Saratoga and Cowpens.

        You're looki

      • implies very dangerously some sort of 'moral equivalency' between the American revolutionaries and the Iraqi jihadis. While I recognize that no doubt SOME Iraqis are fighting for purely nationalist reasons, it's not their main motivation.

        They are morally equivalent for the vast majority of the fighting, despite your leaders consistent efforts to label anyone fighting in Iraq as a 'terrorist'. Sure, some jihad folks have gone there, but they are in the minority. Most of the fighting is being by groups who e

        • They are morally equivalent for the vast majority of the fighting

          Only if you don't include the moral aims of the revolution in your overall moral calculus.

          • Only if you don't include the moral aims of the revolution in your overall moral calculus.

            Depends who you put on each side ;-) But, I admit I know little about the two events, other than they were both pretty important in shaping America.

    • They are still fighting the russians and the chinese

      Aliens [yahoo.com], not Russians and Chinese.

  • "Large Millimetre Telescope"? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What is a "Large Millimetre Telescope"? A Centimetre Telescope, perhaps?

  • construction progress (Score:5, Informative)

    by mxpengin ( 516866 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @07:24AM (#14237490) Homepage
    here is a site with pictures [lmtgtm.org] of the constructio progress and a link to a coral cache [nyud.net] of the page.
  • Yes! Disguised as a radio telescope, Dr Evil's secret base deep inside an extinct volcano is almost complete. Just a few finishing touches including delivery of the tank full of frikkin sharks with frikkin laser beams on their heads and the world will tremble at the foot of Dr Evil! Muhahahahahaha!

  • the article (Score:5, Insightful)

    by siddesu ( 698447 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @07:28AM (#14237499)
    seems to focus on the worries of a Mexican senator about the source of funding of the project - mostly DARPA (according to the senator). The question is not what prompts this interest at this particular moment -- because I am sure funding data was available for years to the interested parties. Could the reason for this stunt be the general election in Mexico next year?
  • "primary mission is to use radio waves to probe the origins of the universe"

    and...

    "It is a very high-powered, focused radar beam that could be used to find an enemy object out in space and, having found it, zero in on it,"

    So the secondary mission is to kill stuff, in outer space, with a focused radar beam. Basically this is like putting a night vision 100x scope on a .50 cal Barret and saying it's just for home protection.

    -Brought to you by Capitalism. We care, because we know you have money.
    • Technically, it's just buying the night vision 100x scope for bird watching. You could probably go out and buy a rifle and stick the scope on it, and your mate Ted there seems rather keen to do just that, but then again you might not.
    • Er, I can "zero in" on something in the distance with a pair of field glasses. I don't need a scoped rifle. IE, the telescope has range-finding capability. BFD, grow up.

  • Is it even a weapon? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by krunk4ever ( 856261 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @07:45AM (#14237549) Homepage
    "It is a very high-powered, focused radar beam that could be used to find an enemy object out in space and, having found it, zero in on it," Coyle said.


    It sounds exactly like what it is, a telescope using radio waves to detect objects with higher precision and farther range. The submitter made it sound like it was some sort of weaponry able to use the radio waves to distort, defend, or even attack (read the star wars defense post comment). This is like calling a binoculars, radars, or sonars weapons. They are tools used for detection and has no real defense or offense capability, besides aiding in defense efforts.
    • This is like calling a binoculars, radars, or sonars weapons. They are tools used for detection and has no real defense or offense capability, besides aiding in defense efforts.

      If you think simple common 60 years old tech radar has no offense ability, you should try to stick your head directly before some. I bet you will be thinking such a nonsense no more.

      • It's certainly not a weapon (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Pius II. ( 525191 ) <PiusII@nospAM.gmx.de> on Monday December 12, 2005 @08:59AM (#14237727)
        Yes, sticking your head directly in front of an active (sending) radar antenna will be quite unpleasant. Being hit over the head with one would be, too. That doesn't mean it's sensible to use a radar antenna as a weapon, much less passive antennas like in this here telescope.
        Is anybody seriously thinking these things work anything like a simple ship's radar? Yes, you could make them into weapons. By scrapping them, then building new, emitting antennas in their place. These things are receivers. They don't send. If we would try deep space astronomy by sending stuff at stuff billions of lightyears away, we would take 2*billions of years to get any results. The pace of space science may seem slow, but it's certainly faster than that.
        • While you are right that most radio telescopes do not transmit, there are some that most certainly do. The world's largest radio telescope, Arecibo, houses 2 very powerful radar transmitters -- one of which is capable of a megawatt of transmission power! It uses these (either by itself or with other huge telescopes like the GBT receiving) for making radar measurements of planets, moons, asteroids, comets etc.

          You can read more about it here:
          http://www.naic.edu/~pradar/pradar.htm [naic.edu]

          And yes, IAARA.
    • Yes it is can be a weapon. A stick can be a weapon. Trust me if you are flying a plane in combat and you are illuminated by tracking radar you will have no doubt that it is a weapon. Is this dish going to be a weapon? I don't know. I would bet for sure that it will used to track small orbital objects. The wavelength is very interesting. It should have very good resolution so it could provide very precise guidance to an interceptor.
  • How large would a large millimeter be?

  • Contact (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The locals call it EL RADAR; they think it has some dark military purpose.
    • The local Puerto Ricans were worried that the Arecibo radiotelescope had a military purpose, and they did indeed call it "el radar". That part of the movie "Contact" was based on real events.

      Some thought that it was designed to steer Soviet bombers away from the U.S. and fool them into dropping their bombs on "less valuable" real estate, i.e. Puerto Rico. The observatory had to put up a big security gate to discourage possible vandalism.
  • Wasn't this already a Bond movie?
  • We hear that NASA wants to wind down space science funding at the same time that the DoD is ramping up the weaponization of space. What kind of bullshit mythology are they going to try to sell this one with? It'll shoot down meteors?

    More likely it will shoot down everyone else's spy and comm sats. Expect to see a bunch of mysterious 'failures' from competing countries.

  • Note the use of the term "laser metrology" (Score:3, Informative)

    by Doug Jensen ( 691112 ) <jensen@real-time.org> on Monday December 12, 2005 @08:59AM (#14237730) Homepage
    From http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/bud get/fy2003/dod-peds/0603762E.pdf [globalsecurity.org]:

    "The Large Millimeter Wave Telescope (LMT) program is the U.S.-complement to a coordinated U.S.-Mexico project. The DARPA program is providing technology assessments for design, systems integration and technology-leading metrology for a 50-meter aperture, fully steerable millimeter wave radio telescope. The fully developed telescope features a sophisticated laser metrology system to maintain precise alignment of the optics, and real-time closed loop adaptive control to maintain a near-perfect parabolic surface at all pointing angles and under most environmental conditions."

    Metrology: the science that deals with measurement.

    • I am not sure what you are getting at. A laser metrology system is used to measure, very precisely, the positions and orientations of all the optical components inside the imaging system. This way you can focus it up somehow (there are a variety of ways to do this), then your laser metrology system measures the positions of all the relevant components in the system. Then when you move your telescope around and things shake, or gravity sag, or whatever, you know where all the optics are supposed to be and

  • Calm Down (Or get more paranoide) Crazy Hippies. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Monday December 12, 2005 @09:03AM (#14237745)
    You know the military has interests in almost every sector, and they view every sector as something they may possibly use. If you could jam, or hack a satellite from your opponent vs. dropping bombs or sending in forces then how many lives did you save? Defense is not always about killing defense is protection. And people in charge of National Defense need to think of different ways we could defend out nation, It it doesn't require violence all the better.
  • US College students have been working on that for years. :-)
  • They may want to fry satellites with this, but they'd have an easier time selling it to the public as a defense system against virus infected birds. Wake me up when the household version that kills flies and termites is ready.

    Instead of cooking a perfectly good satellites, there either should be a remote way of hacking satellites to make them friendly, or teams that go up and modify them. If these guys had been watching Mission Impossible (1966-1973 tv show) instead of playing violent video games as kids

  • Usable telescope for scientists... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @09:28AM (#14237844)
    This project is pretty obviously targeted at simply constructing a usable radio telescope for scientists, but the reason the military is funding it is because the research and development done in designing various facets of the telescope have military applications. The military then takes the results of that research and applies it to their own terrestrial or satellite-based devices for actual weaponization.

    The military does this all the time. They fund a huge array of projects, many of which don't directly have a production-level deliverable, but which extend science and engineering so that the next funded project can come up with a military-use prototype.

  • imaginary lines are meant to be crossed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Monday December 12, 2005 @09:44AM (#14237920)
    "There is a line, an imaginary line, and we have to be careful not to cross that line," she said of the proximity of science to military purposes.

    Because, we all know that scientists would NEVER cross that line, right?

  • Ironic (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sir Holo ( 531007 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @10:22AM (#14238188)

    The link between science and military goes back to the dawn of science.

    Galileo based his design for a telescope on that of a military field glass (used for seeing enemies from afar). He used it to study the motion of the stars, the first one to do so, and helped to usher in the age of enlightenment.

  • A little concerned (Score:4, Informative)

    by mexfogel ( 876763 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @11:12AM (#14238552)
    I was born in Mexico City and lived in Puebla for 23 years, now I've been in the US for 6. Since I just found out about this I had to read a few more articles on the web. I'm going to say that I'm somewhat concerned. The media in Mexico have concentrated mostly on the scientific aspects of the telescope and also talked about the benefits it will bring to the community. Examples of these are:

    1) In the search of the ideal place to build the telescope it was required to do meteorological studies which can be used to know with detail the water distribution underground of regions such as the state of Puebla. These can have positive repercussions in the use of water in the future.

    2)It will be necessary to build a rode or highway that will reach the peak of Sierra Negra, one that will be useful for the population of communities like Texmalaquilla.

    3)The construction of the telescope will provide of new jobs, many of them to people who live in close communities to Sierra Negra.

    4)The need of high tech communications for the LMT (Large Millimeter Telescope) may lead to the result that close by communities will benefit of a modern phone system, maybe based on fiber optics with access to the Internet.

    5)Besides local impact, the LMT has already began the development of microwave laboratories and other type of technologies such as the measurement and production of high precision surfaces.

    The high altitude is strong point of Sierra Negra for astronomical purposes but at the same time is a weak point since human work is affected because of the lack of oxygen. It is a sure thing that dorms will be installed at lower altitudes such as it occurs in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. It is probable that the telescope can be remotely operated without the astronomers need to climb higher than 3,000 -3,500 meters.

    The media talks about this project as the most important achievement in the scientific history of Latin America and internationally as the biggest instrument of its kind. Last time I've hear a sales pitch like this one I was in high school and they were talking how great NAFTA was going to be. Sold as the first step into becoming a first world country. Now 13 years later we've got a disappearing middle class.

    The main source I'm quoting is originally in Spanish http://www.inaoep.mx/~rincon/sierra_negra.html [inaoep.mx] written in 1997. I did a fast translation of it. As of now 90% of the construction has been completed and should be operational by the first quarter of 2006. I will now try to research what has actually happened and if this telescope has helped Puebla or not. I have relatives still living there and I will ask them what they have heard. I will post any significant findings for those that are interested in any type of followup.

  • Geophysics? Largely funded by DoD. They want a basic understanding of earthquakes and an ability to distinguish them from underground nuclear tests.

    Solar physics? Largely funded by the Air Force. They want to predict solar flares that may interfere with communication.

    Astrophysics? Not by a majority percentage, but at least some funding will piggy back on laboratory duplication of the high temperatures and pressures that occur in nuclear weapons.

    Internet? No further remarks necessary.

    I will agree that

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