I would like to share my personal thoughts on the management of Federal support of astronomy. I'm a university-based X-ray astronomer funded by NASA for the past 20 years, but also have had a foot in the NSF camp with an early Presidential Young Investigator award and a smattering of cross-directorate grants with mathematics. I sit on evaluation panels for both agencies.

First, I think NASA does a pretty good job of what is chooses to do. The flagship missions like HST and Chandra really propel forward nearly all fields of observational astronomy with breakthrough accomplishments. And the Explorer-class missions do a fine job of more narrowly focused studies; some like COBE and IRAS are truly revolutionary in their own right.

But most of NASA's money is spent in support of missions. The exceptions to this rule --- the relatively small LTSA and theory programs -- are exceptionally valuable to the community. (See for example the glowing report on LTSA's scientific accomplishments that David Helfand prepared a few years ago.) But even here, the scientist must twist their round creative ideas to fit into NASA's square holes. NSF historically provides the essential role, in all fields of basic science, of having no mission or bias as to what is important. Any scientist can propose any idea, which is evaluated by a panel of top-level peers. (The typical NSF panel has Dept/group heads, while the typical NASA panel has post-docs.) There have been some politicization of this grounds-up approach with mandates to support specific groups (e.g. young scientists, female and minority scientists, scientists from rural states) and themes (e.g. cross-disciplinary research, materials/information/genomic science). But the core NSF philosophy endures and is essential for the most profound and thoughtful research.

So I think the basic structure of two agencies with different stated goals and philosophies is good and balanced. I see no reason to change this structure, and indeed fear the loss of the NSF-type, small-scale (professor + student), open-ended and creative research could deeply harm the long-term fecundity of the American astronomical enterprise. NSF is also essential for the funding and management of the ground-based telescope enterprise. The radio telescopes (NRAO, NAIC and a few smaller ones) are very successful, in my opinion. NOAO has suffered an obvious decline over the decades and needs an overhaul in light of the growth of non-Federal telescope glass. But I suspect that the new management (e.g. Weedman & Mould) are proceeding with the needed changes. We should know in a few years whether NOAO's renovation is working and it seems unwise to undercut their efforts with a sudden change of management.

But this does not mean there are no problems to fix. Here are some examples and easily stated (though not necessarily easily achieved) solutions:

a) The NSF astronomy budget is severely ablated. I suspect this would be immediately evidenced in a plot of the decline of individual research grant funds in constant dollars for the past 30 years, both in absolute terms and per astronomer (e.g. per AAS member). This has caused a serious demoralization in the non-NASA research community -- only a fraction of the excellent proposed research can be funded, and I suspect the true fraction is lower than statistics indicate because many researchers have simply given up trying. This decline for individual non-mission-oriented grants must be reversed quickly with significant fractional increased funding over many years. I am not convinced that the average per-grant award needs to grow. Indeed, I would suggest opening up a track of $50Kx2yr grants (as with nearly all grants in mathematics) in addition of the standard $100Kx3yr grants to energize the teaching professoriate at small colleges/universities, the NASA or Navy researcher with a bold non-programmatic idea, and so forth.

b) The NSF's ability to manage itself, for some reason, is continually disappointing. Why does it take a Herculean effort to submit a FastLane proposal on deadline, only to watch it languish for months unevaluated? Why are visiting managers frustrated and harassed by the ineffective bureaucracy, despite a gleaming new building? I suggest a Tiger Team of science managers (including some from NASA!) sweep out the cobwebs, recommend outsourcing of non-scientific functions, and get the place back to the business of efficiently bringing great ideas to fruition.

c) NASA should do more to help alleviate the low funding levels of ground-based and theoretical research until NSF is back to strength. It should remove artificial strictures against ground-based research that furthers the scientific goals of its space missions. This has already happened with Goldin's favorite enterprises like astrobiology and Keck II searches for extrasolar planets, and should be broadened to the classical fields of stellar, interstellar, galactic, extragalactic and cosmological research. Bureaucratically, I could imagine that OSS's MO&DA would be renamed MO&SA (S=scientific) with anincreased budget and broadened goals.