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by marcus_holmes 2398 days ago
They did the analysis for the Square Kilometer Array. WA came up as the perfect place for this kind of construction because of the lack of ecosystem to interfere with. Politics then moved half of it to Africa sigh.

If you had to pick somewhere in the world to build enough solar arrays to power the entire planet, WA is the perfect spot for it.
2 comments
SiempreViernes 2398 days ago
Actually, politics moved half of SKA to Australia, South Africa won the initial site selection (https://www.nature.com/news/south-africa-wins-science-panel-...).

The site evaluation itself states both sites are about the same, and I think I've read that the eventual political compromise means there will be less RFI overall, at the unspoken cost of some simultaneous coverage of the targets.

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marcus_holmes 2398 days ago
interesting. That's not the version of events I heard from some of the people involved ;) But I heard it in WA, so they may have been audience-pleasing
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SiempreViernes 2397 days ago
On just merit it seems to have been a rather close thing (though South Africa was the better site), which I think was known in advance. So the entire process was pretty highly politicised; you can find much more information here: https://www.skatelescope.org/site-documentation/ though there is quite a bit of reading between the lines.

Of note to the sort of sociological questions we are discussing here, I note not only is the Site selection report ~200 pages, but also fairly interesting is a 16 page "Report on Validation of the SKA Site Selection Process". This comes with a lot of other documents as appendices, but also lays allows one to make out the timeline a bit more.

The final site report is from February 2012, while an "evaluation plan" was set in November 2011, and a "Revised Plan for SKA Site Selection" approved in May 2011. The Siting Group was created in 2010, to help with the "final" site selection. All this paints a picture of a somewhat fluid process.

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close04 2398 days ago
> solar arrays to power the entire planet

Generation is probably less than half the problem. The infrastructure to transport it everywhere is. So even if there's a goldmine of free electricity there getting it to the places that need it is a challenge.

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marcus_holmes 2398 days ago
yeah, I wasn't proposing that we actually do it. I was just making the point that if we did, WA is the perfect place for it.
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