Start up the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). Invest in midscale telescopes and instrumentation. Join one of the extremely large telescopes. Increase funding for individual investigators. Those are some of the top recommendations for US ground-based astronomy from the 2010 decadal survey, New Worlds, New Horizons. They were made under assumptions of growing budgets. (See Physics Today, October 2010, page 25.)
Soon after the survey, though, funding fell behind the optimistic projections, which had the budget of the NSF astronomical sciences division—the main US funder of ground-based astronomy—doubling by 2021. In its 2012 portfolio review, the division sketched out belt-tightening measures that included divesting from a handful of optical–IR, solar, and radio telescopes. Those telescopes, in order of priority to keep open, are the Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope, the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), the National Solar Observatory (NSO) Integrated Synoptic Program, the Robert C. Byrd Green...