All evidence to the contrary, apparently.
One report I found cited "50 km" as sufficient separation. Applying this as a radius you get 7854 square kilometers of land.
> Using the existing infrastructure probably makes it slightly cheaper though.
"it", here, could mean either the "green energy" operation or the observatory 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.
Has anyone proposed one?
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)