Monster trucks to the stars

摘要

Alfredo Alvarez is an operator and mechanic for the transporters used to move and set up the antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array (ALMA), a telescope in the Atacama desert plateau in Chile How did you get to drive these behemoths? I started operating simple machines like front loaders and mining trucks 10 years ago. Then I got a degree in heavy-duty mechanics and went on to work as a mechanic on ALMA's two transporters, Otto and Lore. They are 20 metres long, 10 metres wide and weigh 130 tonnes. After two years I was promoted to operator. Four of us do all the repairs and maintenance of the machines.