Hawaiian court revokes permit for planned mega-telescope

[bananas]

109. The same way you get it up a mountain: as 492 small mirrors

You asked, "How in the Sam Hell can anybody get a thirty meter aperture telescope into space?"

The same way you get it up a mountain: as 492 mirrors, each only 1.44m diameter.

The Thirty Meter Telescope doesn't have a 30 meter mirror, it has 492 mirrors, each only 1.44 meters in diameter.

The technology to build a mirror larger than 8.4 meters does not exist ... the TMT, consisting of 492 segmented mirrors ... featuring adaptive optics to assist in correcting image blur.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Meter_Telescope

The primary mirror is segmented, following the lead of the highly successful Keck 10-meter telescopes. By dividing the aperture into segments of manageable size, many of the difficulties involved in the construction of large telescopes are reduced, including fabrication, testing and transportation of large mirrors and mirror cells. The need for large handling equipment, high-capacity handling cranes and large vacuum coating chambers is also greatly reduced.

Some risk issues are also mitigated. For example, breakage of a single segment would not be nearly as catastrophic as breakage of a traditional telescope primary mirror.

Moderate-sized segments can be fabricated at moderate cost and can be mounted on support systems of moderate complexity. It is also possible to keep the glass in the segment thin, which reduces the overall mass and thermal inertia and allows the glass temperature to follow the changing ambient temperature to minimize mirror seeing effects.

The TMT primary mirror includes 492 hexagonal segments, each about 1.44 meters (56.6 inches) across corners. The segments are closely spaced, with gaps between the segments only 2.5 mm (0.1 inch) wide.

http://www.tmt.org/observatory/telescope/optics