No place for vanity projects in our dark skies

I CONCUR with comments made by your astronomy columnist Ian Griffin regarding the pollution of our night sky by Elon Musk’s socalled skytrain of communication satellites (ODT, 13.5.20).

His intention to steal a lead on other ambitious richlisters and make huge profits by putting up a grid of thousands of these crisscrossing our skies at right angles to each other doesn’t bear thinking about.

Tonight there was a beautiful dark sky over Wanaka which was intruded upon by a line of 60 of these recently launched from a SpaceX rocket.

Does he have a resource consent to pollute the sky above our air space? If not, has the Otago Regional Council pollution response team advised him to desist from destroying our dark skies?

Will any stars still be visible when other richlisters with similar ambitions launch their companies’ satellites? Maybe our own Kiwi rocket man, Peter Beck, from Rocket Lab, could be contracted to shoot them down.

Gavin Dann

Alexandra

Dunedin Railways

WITH so much talk and letters to the Otago Daily Times about the Dunedin Railways shutting down its operation of the train for an undefined period, I would like to tell anyone who would like to hear how our train trust started many years ago.

It was formed in 1978 when a public meeting took place in the Municipal Chambers, arranged by members of the New Zealand Railway and Locomotive Society and interested members of the public.

The work with the train involved many hours of volunteer work by the executive committee and their families for the first few years. The first chairman was George Emerson, the first treasurer was Arthur Rockliffe, and the first secretary was Avis Forbes.

For Dunedin Railways to just give up on the train is very disappointing, so I wanted readers of the Otago Daily

Times to know how the Otago

Excursion Train Trust first started and how privileged I was to be involved. Avis Foote (formerly Forbes)

Maryhill