Dear colleagues,

Both the FFAR report and the AASC report remark that NASA's funding of astrophysics is heavily tied to a few flagship missions. Furthermore, NASA funding is also tied to astrophysical "themes". While NSF research funding is extremely difficult to obtain, it has the overwhelming attraction that NSF places no restrictions on the area of research to be pursued. I am concerned that if all astronomy research funding were to be managed by NASA, there would be entire fields of astrophysical research left completely unfunded, and that innovation and exploration of novel astrophysical ideas would be suppressed by a rigid funding structure that focuses so narrowly on a few astrophysical "themes".

The FFAR and AASC reports note that the balance of research grant funding has shifted to NASA. This is not because NASA manages research grants better than NSF; Guenter Riegler recently sent a letter of apology to the NASA space science community for the delays in awards and the delays in informing proposers of the status of their proposals. The ground-based observational opportunities funded by NSF also are, for some (but not all) science, more attractive than the space-based observational opportunities funded by NASA. The balance of funding has shifted simply because NASA has more money than NSF. One simple way to address the imbalance of funding between NASA and NSF is to give NSF more funding for astronomy research grants and NASA less funding for astronomy research grants. In fact, in many ways it would make more sense to transfer all responsibility for astronomy research grants to NSF rather than to NASA, since NSF's primary mission is pure scientific research while NASA's primary mission is spaceflight, with scientific research quite low on the priority list.

I should clarify here that I personally have no particular grudge against either NSF or NASA. I have received research funding from both agencies, for which I am very grateful. I have had research proposals rejected by both agencies, which I accept philosophically as a consequence of the high over-subscription rate for astrophysical research funding. I have served on proposal review panels for both agencies, as service to the U.S. astronomy community, although it is always very painful because so many excellent proposals go unfunded. My personal research goals for the next five years include both ground-based observational research (traditionally funded by NSF) and space-based observational research (traditionally funded by NASA). If astrophysical research funding continues to be available at both NSF and NASA, I will be submitting funding proposals to both agencies.

If a decision is made to place all astronomy research funding under the authority of one funding agency, then it is essential that this funding agency (whether NASA, NSF, or someone else) adopt a policy of funding astrophysical research purely on merit, not based on whether the research fits into a particular research "theme" or uses data from a particular observational facility.