When I saw how many people were objecting to the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope atop Mauna Kea, I realized that there needed to be an open and honest discussion about the toxicity of the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit and the health and safety issues of astronomical observatories.

The velocities and forces involved in anything at orbital altitudes were enough to kill a human with just the rounding error. At their speeds, the friction from air too thin to breathe would set them on fire.

We are the sum total of our choices.

High altitude astronomy is a strange world of oxygen starvation, sleep deprivation and radiation sickness.

Industrial liquid gas containers were left open and venting gas into the indoor environment in high altitude astronomy. On reflection, I realized that I routinely observed mental and physical effects that match those of a low oxygen environment in staff that I supervised.

When discharging industrial gas into the indoor environment in high altitude astronomy, we never wore breathing respirators that fed us oxygenated air at above the legally required 19.5% oxygen levels.

At the age of 46 I was starting to see the appearance of rainbow halos and starbursts around bright nighttime lights, problems reading small print, focusing issues with my eyes, and image recognition issues. I had been exposed to bright high powered 20 watt scattered sodium LASER light a decade earlier in very high altitude astronomy.

When I worked at the W. M. Keck Observatory on the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea, we would routinely be engulfed in cold clouds of helium and nitrogen gas as we discharged it into the video camera systems daily. The management team never warned us that we were in a hazardous oxygen deprived environment during this activity that was known for its ability to adversely affect physical and mental health, and possibly bring on death by asphyxiation.

My memories of my time in high altitude astronomy indicate that there were no oxygen concentration monitors or alarms in the areas that liquid nitrogen was in use at the high altitude astronomical facilities where I had worked.

Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.