I doubt that "land use" is a big issue in one of the least densely populated countries on earth. Surely one could find a place for an industrial site that is not within 5 km of the world's prime telescope site. Using the existing infrastructure probably makes it slightly cheaper though.
The omission of this information is partly why I'm suspicious of the article. A well written article would have included things such as the above information about what the project was and additionally why it was being proposed for the given site. Omitting any information on the other side of the equation, and talking only about the impacts it will have on the observatory sure sounds like activist propaganda to me.
Are you saying that the article does include both A) what the proposed industrial project is, and B) why it is being proposed at this site?
Or did you misunderstand me and think I was suggesting it should say those things about the observatory? In which, yes, it very clearly makes the case for the value of the observatory and what will be lost with the construction of the Industrial Park. And that's the only information it provides. That's the point I was maknig. It's a nakedly one sided article, with a clear activist agenda. Every story has two sides.
It is entirely possible that the other side could be "it's a facotry that digs holes and fills them back in and it was chosen by throwing a dart at a map" in which case every single person would rightfully agree that it shouldnt go there.
Or, it could be a factory that is going to store the entirety of South America's CO2 output underground safely and cheaply and it can literally only go there because of a completely unique geological formation.
In which case, a reasonable person might think it's worth it.
Or, more likely, something well in between those two things.
But the reader doesn't know because the article says nothing. That's a bad article. I would hope that no matter what ones views on the importance of dark skies and earth-based astronomy, one should still hope for better articles than this.
But I could always tell if a space picture is from Hubble, or some lowly earth based one. In other words, with the fallen costs on rocket launchs, I do hope for a ton of new space telescopes.
Till then we have to balance things out. Space research is important. But so is investment in green technlogy as climate change is speeding up. It is not specially mentioned - but I believe the project is basically about transforming sunlight into liquid fuels on scale. Not the worst industry project by itself. (even though it might mainly exist, to greenwash conventional cars)
