[asac] Letter from ANASAC to Fred Lo, Director of NRAO

[Alwyn Wootten]

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Dear Fred,

You have charged the ALMA North American Science Advisory Committee
(ANASAC) with providing a conduit from the ALMA project to the North
American science community and with providing you with input from that
community. We are writing as members of the ANASAC in order to help 
carry out the latter charge.

The ANASAC has been discussing the science impacts of the ALMA 
rebaselining that is now under consideration. The North American members 
of the ASAC have been fully engaged in the ANASAC discussion and have 
provided essential information and insight. The rebaselining plan under 
discussion appears to be to reduce the number of antennas from 64 to 50; 
that reduction will still leave a significant cost overrun in the 
project. If that overrun is to be eliminated by additional rebaselining, 
we understand that a number of measures directly affecting science might 
need to be taken: reduction or postponement in the number of receiver 
bands, reduction in the number of IFs from 2 to 1, deferring baselines 
longer than about 5 km, reducing the number of subarrays from 4 to 2, 
deferring solar observing capability, downgrading the LO system, 
reducing the software development effort, and other infrastructure cuts 
that would not directly affect science that could be done with ALMA.

As you know, ALMA will be the premier instrument of its type for many
decades and will allow numerous scientific problems to be addressed that
cannot be addressed by any other means. All of the rebaselining
possibilities listed above will have serious impacts on ALMA's ability 
to address the important scientific questions for which ALMA has been 
designed.

The reduction in the number of antennas to 50 is highly regrettable and
will affect the science that ALMA will be able to do. We strongly agree
with our ASAC colleagues that that reduction, and especially any further
reduction in the number of antennas, and all of the other rebaselining
options listed above will have very adverse effects on the science
capabilities of ALMA. Because of the large impact of rebaselining, as
representatives of the North American science community we urge that 
every effort be made to secure new monies for ALMA rather than accept 
reductions that will compromise ALMA's promise for solving many 
important scientific questions. We fully recognize the difficulties 
inherent in this recommendation, but we firmly believe that the payoff 
of an ALMA that will be able to accomplish its scientific goals makes 
this the only possible choice for the North American and the world 
scientific community.

If you wish, we would of course be happy to discuss this recommendation
with you and to consider how the ANASAC may help to make ALMA fulfill 
its full scientific potential.

All the best,

John Bally (U. Col.)
Andrew Baker (U. Md.)
Andrew Blain (Caltech)
Crystal Brogan (U. Hawaii)
Chris Carilli (NRAO)
Dick Crutcher (U. Ill.) (Chair)
Xiaohui Fan (U. Az.)
Jason Glenn (U. Col.)
Mark Gurwell (CfA, Harvard)
Paul Ho (CfA, Harvard)
Doug Johnstone (HIA/DAO, Victoria)
Lee Mundy (U. Md)
Joan Najita (NOAO)
Jean Turner (UCLA)
Jonathan Williams (U. Hawaii)
Christine Wilson (McMaster U.)
Mel Wright (UC Berkeley)
Min Yun (U. Mass)

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Richard M. Crutcher
Professor of Astronomy
University of Illinois
1002 W. Green St.
Urbana, IL  61801
Phone: (217)333-9581