One Telescope Per Child

An anonymous reader writes "It seems one-<object>-per-child goes beyond laptops. A project from the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has designed a high-quality, $20 telescope they're calling the Galileoscope, hoping to spark interest in astronomy among kids and make good scopes available to many who otherwise could not afford one. But as OLPC learned, it's not that easy; they are struggling to get enough volume to get production ramped up and costs down, resorting to tricks like auctioning off a few autographed ones, and trying Give-One-Get-One."

Comments

Better than they need to be?

[tylerni7]

An interesting benefit in living in poorer countries is that there is far less light pollution.
Maybe they could make these even cheaper by making some of the optics smaller (reducing the aperture), since something good enough to see Saturn's rings in rural America should be far more capable in an area with almost zero light pollution, like rural Africa.

Re:Better than they need to be?

[PopeRatzo]

I'm thinking One Pocketknife Per Child.

Telescope? How many bags of rice can you trade a telescope for?

Sometimes, I get the impression that these do-gooders have never left their own neighborhood.

Re:Kids will be bored

[LordVader717]

True. I would probably say though that Astronomy without a telescope is more interesting than with one. You can learn the constellations and see how the planets move across them. Or how meteor showers originate from the same patch of sky. Or viewing predicted transits or man-made satellites. With a telescope you try to concentrate too much on how good you see something rather than what you're seeing.