THE TELESCOPE ECONOMY || SOLUTION

The other two, the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii, and the European Extremely Large Telescope in Chile, are even bigger than the Giant Magellan, with a staggering 39 meter diameter each.

These scopes will give astronomers an unprecedented look into our universe. They could reveal when the first stars and galaxies were formed, as well as unlock the nature of dark matter and dark energy, which scientists are still puzzled by.

UCLA professor of Astronomy, Dave Jewitt, knows the importance of using a larger, more powerful telescope. Even though he was sneaking funds and time to look for the Kuiper belt, his move from a small scope to a larger one allowed him to actually discover the first Kuiper Belt object.

He had been working at Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona, a 4-meter ground telescope. Once he moved to the Keck telescope in Hawaii, which had just opened, he began making progress unimaginable at the smaller scope.

“Now, I know why we failed [at Kitt Peak],” Jewitt says. “The telescope was too small, the detector was too small, everything was not good enough. And then when I moved to Hawaii it was like I could see things not even possible with the Kitt Peak scope.”

In late 2015, workers broke ground on the Giant Magellan Telescope on a mountaintop in Chile. Several U.S. universities, as well as institutions in Australia, Korea, and Brazil, are in a partnership to fund the $1.05 billion cost of the scope.

However, it could take more than just a decade for this scope to be ready for operation because only $500 million of the funds have been raised.

“[Funding] is super messy and slow,” Jewitt says. “And it's going to take a significant fraction of a human lifetime just to build this one thing that we had the technology to do certainly 15 years ago.”

Do you think we should fund the James Webb Telescope?

The James Webb Telescope will be the most expensive space telescope ever made. It is the successor to the aging Hubble Telescope and will allow astronomers to see the universe in an unprecedented manner. It will be seven times more powerful than Hubble, be able to see a penny from 24 miles away, and see the first light of the universe. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that Americans would rather spend money on programs closer to home such as education, public health and developing alternative energy sources rather than on NASA. With an intial price tag of $1.8 billion and overall lifecycle cost of $8.7 billion, I asked citizens, "Do you think we should be funding the new James Webb Telescope?"