SKA Telescope To Offer Neighbors Cheap Broadband 63
An anonymous reader writes The Square Kilometer Array is a giant telescope currently being built in the middle of the Karoo in South Africa, which when complete will be 50 times more sensitive than any existing Earth-based telescope. The problem is that it's so sensitive, the thousands of antennas need to be protected from terrestrial radio interference. Given that cell masts and technologies like TB white spaces are the only way people living in the remote areas near SKA are going to be able to get affordable net access, this is a bit of a problem. In order that its neighbors aren't completely cut-off, SKA is offering them subsidized satellite broadband instead. Which is nice.
How will they talk to satellites without radio? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, I understand that they're avoiding the much stronger radio signals from terrestrial cellular networks, but the article definitely explains it poorly.
Since the SKA requires staggering amounts of bandwidth between components of its antenna array, I expect that once it's been installed they'll switch to piggybacking off those fibres. But this is a stopgap to preserve radio quiet while the system is built.
It's not long-term cheaper to trench? (Score:2)
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Even damaged fiber can be fixed though. And as far a deep, I'm thinking 20'+ down. Make it cost more than copper prices to attempt to get at it.
So you're going to make it cheaper by digging a 20' trench into bumfuck nowhere?
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Actually, I'd dig the christie vaults first, and horizontal-bore between them.
If you can bring it in cheaper, I'm sure they'd be interested in what you've got to say. Nobody wants to use a satellite link for communications.
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Hey, stormtroopers'll dig trenches anywhere. Even on airless spacestations.
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Re:It's not long-term cheaper to trench? (Score:4, Informative)
I am aware that resources theft has been a problem in poor areas, where recyclables like copper are routinely stolen, but still, wouldn't it have been cheaper, in the long-term, to trench DEEP, build monitored deep equipment vaults with sensors back to the security office of the telescope for access monitoring, and do fiber backbone to the neighborhoods, handing off to either some radio frequency that's not a problem or using copper or fiber for the last mile? Once the infrastructure is in, assuming it's done right, it should be fairly low-maintenance and difficult to steal, and if the only copper is either the last-mile or within the residence like a FIOS or google-fiber solution then there's much less actually worth stealing.
Actual single-mode fiber cable isn't very expensive when new and really isn't worth much when used, so attempting to scrap it out wouldn't be worthwhile.
The array covers over 3000km. I doubt trenching fiber to every resident in that area would be cheap at all.
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The array covers over 3000km. I doubt trenching fiber to every resident in that area would be cheap at all.
Since it appears to be a line, can't be too expensive ... if it was 3000sqkm, it would be silly-expensive.
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It's not a line. It's roughly a spiral. See https://www.skatelescope.org/l... [skatelescope.org]. 3000 sqkm is probably the area of the radio-quiet park. But it's population, apart from the astronomers and engineers is tiny
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Maybe in the long term, but that's always a gamble. And even in the long term you're assuming satellite communications don't get cheaper which, with the accelerating pace of advances in satellite miniaturization and launch technology, seems like a risky bet.
And it's far from guaranteed to be cheaper anyway - take a look at the map:
https://www.google.com/maps/pl... [google.com]
There's a few small communities at the nexuses of the surrounding ring of roads within 20-80 miles of the telescope that might be wireable at (lo
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The population is VERY spread out -- that's why they put the telescopes here in first place. Think rural Nevada, then take 90% of the people away.
$15,000 per house (Score:2)
The telescope is way out in the boonies. Some of the area has one household per several square kilometers. Fiber installation costs vary greatly, but it costs somewhere around $15,000 to run fiber 2km to a farmhouse, then $15,000 to then next house ...
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"Actual single-mode fiber cable isn't very expensive when new and really isn't worth much when used, so attempting to scrap it out wouldn't be worthwhile."
Your average cable thief will steal it first and curse you for not having copper in the cable later.
The thieves around here are known to take active railway feeders and to break into substations and throw chains over 100kV feeders to try and get at copper. This backfires spectacularly in most cases because the standard grid level response to a feeder shor
Quiet Zone (Score:3)
Sounds like a decent solution, we have a similar issue with our space telescopes in the US, so we have a radio quiet zone to deal with it. However, the residents are simply required to make do without WiFi, cellular broadband, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U... [wikipedia.org]
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There are two kinds of zones in that Quiet Zone. There is a 10 mile radius WV Radio Astronomy Zoning Act [nrao.edu] around the telescopes which is very strict. It involves all electrical equipment sources. The other, much larger zone, is much less restrictive. In the Quiet Zone only require coordination of new or modified, permanent, fixed, licensed transmitters. "Coordination" means that plans must be submitted to NRAO and possibly modified so that emissions are directed away from the telescope. There are cellular to
Ping (Score:2)
The delay is rather a bummer. For the amount of money being put into this they could do terrestrial fiber or some other low fast solution rather than satellite.
"SPACE" Telescope? (Score:1, Informative)
What exactly makes this a "space" telescope? Does the submitter (and the "editor" who accepted the article) believe that South Africa is in outer space? Or maybe they believe the word "space" simply indicates that the telescope is used to look at things in space? I'm not sure which would be more idiotic, but I can't think of any other explanations.
Re:"SPACE" Telescope? (Score:5, Funny)
What exactly makes this a "space" telescope?
Presumably the fact that it is peering into space and not your neighbour's bedroom window or ships on the horizon.
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Maybe the fact that it's designed to only look upwards, at space? As opposed to a general purpose telescope that can be pointed at other things on the planet's surface.
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That is stupid. Every astronomical telescope would be a "space" telescope. Space Telescope means a telescope that is in space. Such as Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. My little 8 inch SCT is not a space telescope. It is a telescope. Put it on a rocket and into space, and it becomes a space telescope.
It is more likely that Timothy is an idiot.
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What exactly makes a "astronomical" telescope?
A factory.
Fail (Score:2)
The latency of satellite is unacceptable for interactive communications. Internet-by-postcard.
It would probably be cheaper to just build a ring of point to point links using COTS wifi equipment.
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Wait. What?
What is the telescope going to use for bandwidth? I'm presuming they aren't storing the data on hard drives and jeeping them around the compound and out to where the data is analyzed (insert joke about bandwidth of a Land Rover full of hard drives here). Are they going to push the data up by satellite? Seems like they could piggyback on whatever the telescope is using.
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Seems like they could piggyback on whatever the telescope is using.
I presume that's what they're actually doing, but it's not a problem for the telescope like it is for the users. The multi-second latency isn't a problem when you're sending bulk data.
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It is when using standard data transfer protocols. Anything TCP based that doesn't multiplex.
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It is when using standard data transfer protocols. Anything TCP based that doesn't multiplex.
Most standard data transfer protocols can handle a few seconds' latency, including FTP. People who have satellite internet can still use FTP. Hell, they can still use HTTP, which you may note also uses TCP.
On the other hand, interactive traffic of all kinds goes straight into the toilet. Even using an AJAXy website will be painful. Gaming is right out. So's Skype, hangouts, voip in general. It might work, but it will be horrible.
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Bump up the windowing count. A lot of the internet was run through international satellite links just fine in the late 80s through to mid-90s
Non-interactive stuff (http, ftp, audio/video streaming) isn't an issue, but even telnet works over a geosynchronous satellite link (I used to do that a lot up to about 1997 or so).
The problems start if you're trying to do phone/video calling or play fragfest-style online games.
OTOH given the sparseness of the area and the lack of population, you don't really need to t
Re:Fail (Score:4, Informative)
The telescope when finished (2025) will need more total bandwidth between its antennae than the entire remainder of the internet is projected to need at that time.
It will be dedicated fibre, about 50 000 km of it.
What we're talking about here is connecting the (very few) isolated farms and villages within one or two hundred miles of an antenna. With a population that
distributed it isn't a last mile issue it's a last hundred miles issue.
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Re:Fail (Score:4, Interesting)
The area is extremely empty in the first place. That's why they chose it for (part of) the SKA.
The antennae will have dedicated fibre connections (the bandwidth needed for the aperture synthesis is, um, scary, but I suspect
running fibre or copper from there to every village and isolated farm would be stupidly expensive. Carefully chose satellite equipment will broadcast very
little outside it's beam, and on quite specific wavebands.
The article admits that it's not perfect (latency, download caps) but it's better than nothing and imposing radio quiet was an absolute condition of South Africa getting part of this very high prestige project.
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The article admits that it's not perfect (latency, download caps) but it's better than nothing and imposing radio quiet was an absolute condition of South Africa getting part of this very high prestige project.
When are we going to admit that building telescopes on earth is a stupid idea, when we know how to get to the moon? Granted, we're a bit rusty... But we really want them on the far side of the moon anyway, and we're still building them here.
These people's right to participate in the global internet as full citizens has been sold out in exchange the prestige of hosting a radio telescope that shouldn't be on this planet anyway. And what did they get for it? A discount on shitty internet access.
With every new
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With every new piece of news I am further dismayed with our failure as a species. I can't shake the nagging sensation that we deserve to become extinct.
By finding a ridiculously complex and expensive answer to a relatively simple problem? If you settled yourself way, way out in the wilderness you probably didn't expect Internet over fiber, my guess is that satellite TV and Internet is probably better than what they had. But hey, if you have the trillions of dollars to put it on the Moon, go right ahead. I kind of see why that wouldn't be the case though...
Re:Fail (Score:4, Insightful)
Why stop at the moon? You could put half the array at Neptune's leading Trojan and the other half the the trailing one and synthesise a REALLY big aperture.
Seriously, the answer is cost. It's expensive enough building this many super-high-quality dishes and associated support structures and installing and operating them in empty (almost) deserts in Australia and South Africa, plus the 50 thousand kilometers of optical fibre to link them up and the multi million core supercomputer to do the aperture synthesis.
Putting all of that on the moon would cost trillions and take decades. The signal would be cleaner (except that you are outside the Van Allen belts so you have to worry about solar radiation) but the signal on Earth is good enough to do the science. Also the moon is actually too small. Even if you spread the dishes over the whole far side you couldn't get as big an aperture as they get with part of the array in Australia and part in Africa.
What they're going to get is years of work associated with the building and more years, but of less work associated with the operation, plus probably things like roads.
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Also the moon is actually too small. Even if you spread the dishes over the whole far side you couldn't get as big an aperture as they get with part of the array in Australia and part in Africa.
Not that I'm defending the "The SKA is stupid, we should build it on the moon" point-of-view, but for the record, the SKA isn't going to do aperture synthesis between the Australian and African arrays. The bi-continental location of the telescope(s) is largely a politically-driven decision.
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Putting all of that on the moon would cost trillions and take decades.
We have trillions to bomb people with, but not for science. Unless it leads to better bombs.
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"The nearest known, reasonable, candidates for being an Earth-like planet (as of April 2013) are about 20 light years away (HD 20794 d, Gliese 581 c, and Gliese 667C c). Spotting dudes and ladies on one of these worlds requires, at minimum, a telescope array that’s at least 100 million km across. That’s an array more than half the size of Earth’s orbit. The good news is that an array like that (under absolutely ideal circumstances) isn’t that dif
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When are we going to admit that building telescopes on earth is a stupid idea, when we know how to get to the moon?
We don't know how to get to the moon while carrying huge telescopes. And even if we could, it would be orders of magnitude more expensive, while not offering orders of magnitude better performance.
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"With every new piece of news I am further dismayed with our failure as a species. I can't shake the nagging sensation that we deserve to become extinct."
Says the guy who runs an online drinking games database. Maybe if you actually chipped in and helped with something constructive?