This project is of very great interest to me. My calculation is that my best chance of survival is to live in a radio-quiet zone (RQZ), as is declared around a radio observatory or military 'listening post'. I have seriously been looking into the possibility of setting up a radio observatory linked to a nature conservancy -- I am on the board of one observatory (Nkwe Ridge Observatory Institute near Pretoria), and am looking hard into the options of setting up something of my own, perhaps in a neighbouring country. It would not be impossible to link this with SKA -- Bernie Fanaroff, the SKA team leader, is an old acquaintance from my days at Wits.
So I am very bitter that Telkom is probably the factor which is going to sink SA's SKA bid. Because it's Telkom and their inability to provide fixed lines which is threatening my existence in the first place.
Australia (as I pointed out elsewhere on this forum) is setting up a massive
National Broadband Network of fibre optics across the country, with the aim of connecting every single home in the country to superfast internet. I said that if Australia, with its vast open spaces, can do this, so can Africa -- it would be the single most important infrastructure project of the 21st century. You can get solar energy wherever you are in Africa, but you can't get telecoms without infrastructure.
But we have -- for our many, many sins -- Telkom....
And therefore we are stuffed. As far as I can see, all the Aussies need to do is point at their telecoms investments and future plans, and this deal is sealed. I may well be wrong, these things are all decided at a much higher level than obvious logic. But I am painfully aware of how the South African bid has concentrated on building prototype telescopes, and concentrating on the astronomy side, as if this was going to be the deciding factor, when this is whistling in the wind if you don't have connectivity.
SKA is supposed to have branch telescopes in Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique and Madagascar. All of these will have to be connected with fabulous high-speed fibre optic links if it is to work, never mind connecting with other radio telescopes around the world to do real-time coordinated astronomy. It's the telecoms that really count.
So Australia is basically one vast continent, with a geographical spread equivalent to what southern Africa can offer -- and all wired up with the best fibre optic money can buy. No wonder the Aussies are not falling over themselves building telescopes to show they can do it -- that's the easy part.
And never mind that the SA government has meddled with this already. Thanks to an
intervention from Naledi Pandor, minister of science and technology, it's already clear that scientists on this project are going to be messed around by the ANC:
The disciplinary hearing of top South African astronomer Phil Charles has opened a rift between Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor and the National Research Foundation (NRF), which suspended Charles and has subjected him to a lengthy disciplinary hearing.
Pandor called last week for Charles's hearing to be concluded speedily -- it started on February 11 in Cape Town, was postponed until Tuesday this week and then again to next Wednesday.
Her department has officially denied any rift with the NRF, which it funds. [joke -- an 'official denial']
The Mail & Guardian reported at the beginning of the month that the NRF had suspended Charles, director of the South African Astronomical Observatory, allegedly because he discussed optimal sites for the headquarters of the world's biggest proposed radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), with other scientists.
Scientists told the M&G this week that they were outraged that the matter had dragged on for so long. Top international scientists were shocked to hear of his suspension, voicing fears that it might endanger South Africa's bid to host the R20-billion international SKA radio telescope project.
Scientists do
not appreciate governmental meddling with research projects at this kind of level. This does not bode well for SKA. I really, really hate to be negative, I am so sick of what's going on, but one has to look at the realities. And the reality is right here, on this forum: one way or another, we have failed to kick Telkom's ass into the 21st century, and it is going to cost us very dear.
In the meantime, we've allowed the wireless operators to proliferate with their puny bandwidth, frying us to hell to the bargain. All the macho posturing we see around here doesn't cover the fact that SA has worse broadband than Ghana. Something is really rotten around here, folks. We're not even shooting ourselves in the foot; literally, as we jam our handsets against our skulls, we are shooting ourselves in the head. Not clever.
