of programs such as the National Virtual Observatory (NVO) and the Laboratory Astrophysics Program, plus illustrative small facilities and missions. The NVO is the top priority among these initiatives. The remaining ones are not prioritized, since small projects often have a gestation time of less than a decade. In particular, the committee has not recommended any projects for NASA’s extremely successful Explorer program, since missions are selected through competitive peer review.

The size categories for new initiatives are based on the capital cost for ground-based projects and on the total cost, excluding technology development, for space-based projects. Only costs to be borne by the federal government are included. The committee’s cost estimates for these initiatives are based on discussions with agency personnel and on presentations to the panels; they are given in FY2000 dollars. For ground-based projects, small projects have capital costs of up to $5 million; moderate, from $5 million to $50 million; and major, above $50 million. In contrast to the practice in previous astronomy and astrophysics decadal surveys, the tabulated costs for ground-based capital projects include operations and new instrumentation for a period of 5 years at rates of 7 percent and 3 percent of the capital cost per year. In addition, grants for data analysis and associated theory are included at a rate of 3 percent of the capital cost per year for major projects, 5 percent for moderate projects, and 0 percent for small projects. The total costs for ground-based initiatives are thus typically 1.65, 1.75, and 1.50 times the capital costs for major, moderate, and small initiatives, respectively. Exceptions are SKA technology development, which includes only funds for a theory challenge, budgeted at $200,000 per year for the decade; the Telescope System Instrumentation Program, which as an instrumentation program does not require operations or instrumentation funds and is too fragmented to have a grants program; and NVO, the National Astrophysical Theory Postdoctoral Program, and the Laboratory Astrophysics Program, which are not capital projects and therefore have no added costs. The Large-area Synoptic Survey Telescope is expected to have significant expenses for data analysis, and so the estimate of the total operations cost by the Panel on Optical and Infrared Astronomy from the Ground (see Panel Reports; NRC, 2001) was used for this project.

The costs of space-based initiatives given in Table 1.1 do not include technology development. NASA has adopted a policy of deferring construction of new missions until all major technological problems have been solved, a policy the committee endorses. These costs amount to typically about 30 percent of the construction costs of a mission. In some