Dick Fisher and Steve Saar were absent. Seth Tuttle and Kenneth Schatten represented the NSF at the meetings. It is a real cut, and it means that three NSO people will be shifted to project funding, and another position that will be opening will not be refilled. Because of the GONG project, an even higher percentage is project specific at Kitt Peak.
Projects do bring in new resources and therefore generally strengthen the observatory.
But, the paradigm wherein the national center develops and operates flagship facilities for research driven by the user community seems to be eroding. Jeff Kuhn will lead NSO's RISE program. RISE is part of NSF's effort to answer national needs for better understanding of global change. Modest funding for RISE is in the NSF budget for 1994. The scale of this program seemed short of what is needed to produce a user-friendly system in the Vacuum Tower Telescope.