Hello Sandy:

Since I have dealt with NASA intensively for the last 15 years, and with the NSF a fair bit over the last few years, including many conversations with AST personnel on Wilson Blvd, I'll give you my own three cents worth:

1) I agree with most issues listed on the COMRAA Web pages. In particular, that the NSF has not done a good job in doing PR for AST. The three Nature papers I had in the last few years were based on NASA and NSF funded research. NASA jumped right in with SSU's, etc., while the NSF person in charge was not very forceful (and I think did not understand the basic science). NSF needs a PR-machine for AST like NASA, with a PR-shark in charge.

2) The real cause of the dwindling AST funding is that AST is at the very bottom of the MPS list of priorities. The best thing COMRAA can do is recommend that AST becomes a SEPARATE DIVISION inside NSF, i.e. one just like MPS, and directly competing for funds with M&P, CHEM, GEO, BIO, etc. And they need a forceful division head (a Giacconi type, not like some of the ones they had in the past). Together with a revamped and well-oiled PR-machine, this is what AST needs in the long term. The golden age is in astronomy research is by no means over (which cannot be said of M&P, CHEM, btw), and this got to be converted to funds for AST. Part of our nation's capitalist way of operating is that the rich get richer -- this then should also be true for AST (and other successful divisions) inside NSF.

3) Moving AST to NASA will in the long run result in throwing away the AST funds. You and I know well enough that the bulk of NASA funds goes to beltway bandits, that OSS has always been at the bottom of the NASA food-chain, and that it always will be so, as long as beltway bandits will keep producing cost overruns (which they always will --- they call it corporate profit). There should be no doubt where HQ will try to find much of the expected 4 G$ overrun of the ISS. My advise to COMRAA is to argue against the move of AST to NASA in the strongest possible manner, but be polite and clever about wording it, which I am sure the cmtee will do.

Please ask the university faculty members on the Cmtee who has the TIAA/CREF retirement plan. Would they like to have only TIAA or CREF in the future, but not both? Moving AST to NASA will result in worse.

Good luck,