Astronomers in the United States may feel that they have won a round after a National Academy of Sciences panel gave the thumbs down to a White House suggestion — tentative though it was — that federally funded astronomy programmes be consolidated within NASA (see page 99). There are many good reasons to keep the planning and management of ground-based telescopes within the National Science Foundation (NSF), not the least of which are its close ties to the academic research community.

And the panel's call for a new interagency coordinating body for astronomy could lead to something the White House may not have anticipated when it commissioned the academy study — an ongoing, high-profile forum for astronomers to plead for more money. That, after all, is big astronomy's biggest problem, rather than a lack of coordination between NASA and the NSF. True, communication between the two agencies could be better. But even though they work in separate arenas (ground-based and space-based), the academy panel concluded that the NSF and NASA have done a good job of implementing the priority projects outlined in the astronomy community's 'decadal surveys', which are themselves models of consensus-building.

Certainly, it would be good for astronomers, through standing advisory groups, to help oversee how NSF implements the even larger telescope projects on the drawing-board. And NSF and NASA should develop a joint plan for explaining astronomy to the public.

But it still all comes down to money. If they want world-class results, the Office of Management and Budget and Congress will have to allocate the dollars for more of those expensive instruments that have led, in the words of the academy panel, to the current “extraordinary period of scientific progress” in astronomy and astrophysics.