ASAC 9 Nov 2004 Attendees: Wootten, Kawabe-san, Turner, Emerson, Carilli, Richer, van Dishoeck, Mundy, Schilke, Wilson, Mardones, Momose, Myers, Wilson, Cox Notes from last meeting should be massaged into minutes. Discussion of calendar. Next Board telecon 2 December. 1) Project Update ( Project Office) A discussion of the Board meeting and project news was given by A. Wootten. Reporting by IPTs now goes directly to the nearly fully staffed JAO with copies to the regional managers rather than through the regional managers and then to the JAO, streamlining the process. There are several bids for Antennas still outstanding, and the bid dates have been extended through 15 December. Approval by the ESO Finance Council and ESO Council and by NSF and AUI are expected by that date so that contracts from both bilateral partners may be placed by that date. Rebaselining of the project is commencing immediately. During the period since the project began, new scope has been added to it, some items originally assigned to one partner have been reassigned to another, and a better understanding of the tasks necessary to complete the project has been attained. In particular, the largest single element, the antenna contract, will become a reality within the next month or so. During rebaselining, three primary elements will be considered. First, an accurate cost for the current scope, including 64 antennas, must be attained. This cost is expected to exceed available funding, so the project must identify options for descope. A selection of options must be made, and the project redefined in terms of what can be achieved within the cost and schedule available to the project--this is the rebaselining. The schedule for this is that input based upon the project schedule to be available shortly from the PMCS group will be provided by IPTs to the JAO, along with options for descoping, by 1 January. The JAO will formulate a proposal for project rebaselining, to be presented to the Board for its 24 February telecon. The Board may ask the advice of the ASAC and will consider the rebaselined project along with advice at its April face-to-face meeting in Pasadena. During May, the NSF will undertake an invasive review of the project to determine the soundness of the rebaselined costing and scheduling. Kawabe reported that a contract for the Japanese 12m antennas needs to be let soon. A Change Request was submitted for the specifications of these antennas, which suggests 1) decreasing accelerations to 10 deg/s2 rather than 18 deg/s2 5 deg/s2 rather than 10 deg/s2 2) Using VXWorks ACU rather than realtime Linux 3) Extension of distance to calibrator source allowing ACA to find strong cal with sufficient sensitivity. The subject was opened to ASAC discussion. There ensued a discussion of minimum number of antennas. Carilli asked about descoping of receiver bands? Schilke reported that he had the sense from the Board that the number of bands would not be changed. This has political implications. 2) Report to the Board (Schilke)Discussion of Board meeting. Peter Schilke reported upon his presentation of the ASAC Report to the Board. In general, the report was well-received. Some Board members thought the tradeoff discussions too fuzzy. However, with no input from the managers not much more could be done. Tradeoffs likely to be revisited next charge set, with some parameters more firmly set. Possible new charges--For April we will probably just discuss rebaselining. In the future development strategies for legacy projects. The Board favored postponing Early Science. EvD: Did not NA object to postponing Early Science. Schilke: This was not discussed. Pierre: Who has the scientific judgment on the antenna bids? Wootten: The financial aspect only comes in after the technical selection has been made. The technical evaluation committee makes the recommendation on the technical selection. 3) Science IPT Items (Wootten/Wilson) Several reports were linked to the agenda; no separate Science IPT report was made. The DUSTY04 meeting was successful. Presentations are online and several very useful ALMA presentations were made, including ones on the history of ALMA by van den Bout and on the Level One science cases by de Breuck and Richer. 4) Regional SAC Reports van Dishoeck reported on ESAC activities. Not much has happened. EAB has had most of the action. Carilli reported on ANASAC activities. A telecon was held last week at which there was a discussion about NAASC and web page. Turner noted that Bachiller offered to have science symposium in Spring 2006 in Madrid. EvD suggests we discuss this now rather than wait until March. This should be a major agenda item next telecon. Wilson clarified that the Madrid offer replaces the Barcelona offer. Next ASAC face-to-face meeting place/time was discussed? Place could just be Europe. Wilson noted that to discuss rebaselining the Board will get the document by 10 Feb. If this could be released to the ASAC at the same time, we could discuss it with some dispatch. ASAC members should circulate to Wootten availability for late Feb and early March. Next meeting--do we want to wait for word on the ESO Council meeting? It was thought that there was no reason not to. Next meeting Tuesday 14 December.