Quote:
Originally Posted by gary
In fact five of the seven Technical and Scientific Factors considered favoured
South Africa. For example, the higher elevations of the Karoo gave less
tropospheric turbulence.
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Thank you very much, Gary, for providing the information from the report about the SKA decision.
The abovequoted conclusion made in the report sounds to me like the sort of off-balance and "pre-prejudiced" conclusion that you would arrive at if you had
already made up your mind to give the project to the underdog
before you did the so called "evaluation"
Things like tropospheric turbulence and the exact array configuration are
not really major issues in the evaluation,
but they are being given great weight.
It is obviously much less risky to give the SKA project to a first world country which has capabilities in radio astronomy that are the equal of the very best in the world (= Australia).
(Australia has remarkable numbers of electronic & electrical Engineering Physicists/Astronomers with extensive experience in radio telescopes. In fact, someone once said, a little unkindly, that Australian radio astronomers are - in reality - electrical engineers! )
There are some damn good professional astronomers in S.A, as I freely admit. But technically, organizationally, and politically, I fear that the SKA project may turn out to be too much of a stretch for South Africa.
Whatever happens with the SKA, Australia got ASKAP out of the project, and ASKAP is absolutely a state-of-the-art radio telescope. If I ever get round to it, I might post in IIS about ASKAP's scientific capabilities.
cheers,
Robert