we did it, astronomy has reached carrying capacity
how wrong I was.
I had confidently predicted that with the bright new instruments and refurbishment of old favourites promised, the cycle 17 proposals would hit 2000
as we neared the deadline the excitement was palpable and the comments flew,
as Julianne discovered, the proposal number was increasing exponentially as we neared the deadline, with speculation that we might finally do it.
We were headed for infinite number of proposals by t=t0
but, then we hit carrying capacity and flipped into logistic behaviour with the rate of increase of proposals leveling off and converging, possibly at less than 1000!
Astonishing, that is as few as last cycle, with almost no instrument functioning.
Clearly the international astronomical community has finite capacity for data and we have reached it, as more resources potentially became available the demand saturated.
'course it is always possible that the finite number of proposals still requested an infinite number of hours.
It only takes one.
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Is the endpoint a matter of the balance between the money to feed astronomers and the money to build (and maintain) fancy kit?
well, generally kit is expensive enough that actually using it is marginal cost that is spent, and it is opportunity to use it that limits things
now, things can be squeezed on the margin, it is far from unheard that an instrument or facility gets temporarily underutilized because ops are raided to finish development
but, that is not the case here - Hubble has associated funding, it is just a competition for time. Last cycle Hubble lost its major instruments and to keep it in use auxillary proposals were called for - there should be large pent up demand for data from new and refurbished instruments, especially from spectroscopists - which is why we were speculating about very large numbers of proposals
but, they're not there - maybe everyone teamed up and the typical proposal is larger with more co-Is, but I think the explanation is simpler... we're out of people.
There just aren't enough people to write up any more proposals, or even use the data.
Writing proposals is time consuming, I'm a co-I on significantly fewer this year than in the past, and there are probably 6-8 concepts I could write up, but I won't because the odds are poor, the time cost to apply is high (I'm better off writing more papers and fewer proposals) and, even if I got the data I don't have the manpower to process it and it is not clear the funding is adequate to hire people specifically - the large groups solve this by floating people on several overlapping related proposals, or pulling people on and off fellowship funding.
It is an interesting game.
So do think think (given a fixed amount of funding) that the balance of funding between kit and people is about right? Would you be willing to have a bit less fancy "kit" and more researchers?
Well, I'm a theorist... so, given your premise, I am personnel limited.
The problem with cutting back on kit, is that there are so many interesting things we are capable of doing right now, and it'd be really annoying to not go ahead and do them.
And, ultimately, science is data driven.