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by oefrha 526 days ago
Well, local people probably care about economic development and don’t give a rat’s ass about astronomy. So the question becomes, who’s going to compensate for the loss of economic development? (By local I don’t mean strictly local, in case of counter arguments along the line that there are no/very few local people to begin with.)

Disclosure: I’m a former physicist and I have personally operated an optical telescope with a 15’ dome, as well as a 60’ radio telescope, which probably puts me among 0.01% of world’s population. So I do know a thing or two and care about astronomy.
4 comments
kahirsch 526 days ago
This is in the middle of the desert at high altitude. There are basically no local people who aren't associated with the telescopes.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/cWgWx1RKjEUjavPn8

Whether the facility is built there or 50 km away, it's going to have to draw people from more than a few km away. The entire Taltal district only has about 11,000 people.

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Enk1du 526 days ago
At Las Campanas, most of the staff from the cooks to the techs and a number of the researchers were all local. I found quite a bit of interest in the country as a whole as it's a source of national pride being the best location for astronomy.

Allowing this to proceed will affect _all_ future astronomy projects in Chile. No one is going to splash out on a shiny, new 100m optical telescope (OWL) if anyone can come along and park a city's worth of light just down the road.

https://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/eelt/owl/

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aragilar 526 days ago
My understanding is ESO uses local labour where possible (e.g on building the ELT, maintenance, catering, transport), so it's not like it's one guy in a shed, there are jobs and economic benefits. That's why this seems so confusing to me, I can't see why you can't have both?
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throw5959 526 days ago
Do you mean that the economical output of astronomy and this industrial project is comparable?
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est31 526 days ago
If most of the local people are going to move to that location, they could also move to a different location which is a bit further away from where it's planned now.
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