telecon notes: August 3 2005
Present:
C. Wilson
Mundy
Turner
Carilli
Blain
Testi
Cernicharo
van Dishoeck
Schilke
Mardones
Wootten
T. Wilson
Emerson
Laing
Beasley
Kawabe
Rykaczewski
Vila-Vilaro
(I'm not sure which Japanese members were on the line?)
Fukui
Yamamoto
Momose
1. Project news/updates (Beasley)
Antenna Procurement:
- kickoff meeting with Vertex last week went very well; no major issues at the moment; some deliverables (documents, plans) due in one month
- in Europe, are preparing a series of committees to look at rebaselining information and come to a decision, hopefully by late September/early October; European bids expired June 30, extension requested.
- Other construction progress:
- OSF has been out to bid, expecting to wrap up call for tender in 10 days; then evaluate, hope to wrap up soon; is now on critical path;
- bid went out for transporter for AN, only one bid in the end; significant problem since ALMA will need a transporter Q1 2007 and takes 18 months to deliver; looking into other options for first 1-2 AN
- contracts signed for high site building foundation and shell; workers on site this week; ground-breaking probably in first few weeks of Sept
- rock anchor design for AN foundations is done but one of vendors came to different conclusion about length of rock anchors; put on hold for a little while to understand difference
- would like to build 20-25 pads this summer; cost at high site 70-100k apiece, including a multiplication factor for work at high site; by doing some, can figure out exactly what will cost
- configurations: central config analysis is good; crew is on site next two weeks staking the area out; a few concerns about Y+ array, current design will be very expensive i.e. great positions for AN pads but significant road work required, especially western part of site; should define some good roads to west and situate AN near them, while retaining scientific quality ; might be able to save quite a bit of money;
- FE group has made recommendation on FE integration plan; parallel plan i.e. centers in Europe and NA capable of integrating all 4-6 bands
- BE tidying up PMCS info; interaction with ALMA-J and ACA has been an issue; if want to cross-correlate ACA AN in our correlator, question is laster synthesizers are different even though are driven off same oscillator; thinks should be fine, but are looking into it
- first quadrant of correlator essentially completed; now have to worry about how to store it
- computing went through CDR3 recently; most recent integration cycle went much better than previous one
- system engineering had requirements meeting last week; excellent meeting
Rebaselining (Beasley)
- baseline change proposals (BCPs) have to be delivered to Board with good budget numbers in first week of September; Board has to make as many decisions as they can by last week of September, when documents for cost review need to be delivered
- proposed dates for cost review are Oct 13-16, Munich; in light of this has cancelled face-to-face IPT meeting in Santiago, will reschedule to first week December
- documents will be description of project status, budget, changes to budget; information on changes made as part of rebaselining
- as develop BCPs over next 4-6 weeks, will figure out a way to make science-relevent ones available to ASAC for discussion
- net gain from scrubbing process is maybe couple $M
- new items for rebaselining, new options to consider: from science viewpoint, nothing has been identified that ASAC is not already aware of, discussed in February 2005; those large items are what is still on the table; it is those items Board will be deciding amongst
- other things have turned up will save money i.e. residence will be expansion and upgrade of ALMA camp; savings in location of contractors area; savings in interaction with PPARC, ESO contracts with some external organizations
LT: things we said are not acceptable are back in the possibilities?
TB: the list of BCPs has 3 categories: recommended (obvious stuff),
identified (could be done i.e. sub-arrays), major (some marginally
acceptable, also ones ASAC said unacceptable); not his role to drop
them, it is the Board's
LT: Board will be taking decisions in Sept, before our f2f meeting, much
before our report
TB: ASAC needs to negotiate its role in this with Board
TB: cost review process is for funding agencies to develop confidence that
our revised costing is credible; most of major pieces will be resolved by
that time, but Euro AN situation probably won't be resolved by cost review;
info going to cost review will be the sum of the rebaselined 50 AN project
plus the recommended plan; discussion at cost review will probably include
fact that some of these BCPs will still be out there, decision not taken;
doesn't think Board will have taken ALL decisions in
September; thinks will have done the simple ones and the ones with no
science impact, but more difficult and controversial ones will still be
out there
LT: other question is what will be presented to ESO council; difficult for
them to take decision without having clear idea on final envelope of
project; doesn't sound like this will be available at end of September
TB: his take on ESO process in Sept is following; will move forward on
summarized but draft information presented to Board in early September;
EvD: are a series of meetings before ESO Council: ESAC, EAB, another
committee of council; only a few days before Sept 8 when info should be
available and when those meetings start; ESAC has same charges as ASAC
LM: will TB have "a package" that is the JAO recommended package
TB: thinks so; couple diff grades of BCPs; Massimo has final say on what
JAO rebaselining package will look like; deliverable is summary of budget;
summary of changes to budget implicit in rebaselining; BCPs (3 category);
2-3 scenarios (if took this option, this is what the budget would look like);
error bars on budget going down, but rebaselining numbers haven't moved
around dramatically; amount of additional $ required, info really out there
since feb/march; packages presented to Board, overrun numbers not a lot
different from what we've been talking about; only 10-20 science relevant
BCPs, total bundle of BCPs something like 30-40; few hours of work to
understand them
LM: ASAC tried to put things off the table, and they seem to be back on
TB: decision goes back to Board; i.e. ASAC has been
clear that 1 IF is unacceptable, TB agrees, has heard same comment from
the funding agencies; in terms of presenting a consistent package, have
to put it all in front of Board; in terms of JAO preferred option, there
will be an "A package" i.e. best option, requires extra $ to execute;
Board responsibilitiy to add/subtract to that package
TB: have asked guys to implement rebaselining as a 50 AN budget
EvD: compromise package JAO will put forward will not contain any of
the level 3 painful items? just to be clear
TB: not sure; similar to numbers discussed in Februqary based on all recommended, suggested, one or two of hard
ones ie something like decrease scope of computing by 15% (people may not be
happy, but saves you one AN). Recall that this is for items EXCEPT antennas, for which all contracts are not
yet in hand.
EvD: on European side, since many meetings happening before ASAC meets,
would be helpful to know if any awful things in package;
bad to go to European ALMA Board and Council with package not supported by Euro scientists
TB: recent result of NA proceeding on AN contract is a very good thing;
but has economic impact to proceed with 25, rather than 25+25; if European
contract headed to same contract with same vendor, basically a lot of costs
recovered/reduced; if Europe decides to go in a different direction, has
substantial impact to project budget; increase to rebaselining numbers is
substantial; seems unlikely we would be able to avoid all the hard options.
Board Communications
New Charges (Testi)
Old Charge 4 (New Charge 2) Science Requirements (Testi)
LT: did anything relevant to this charge happen at system reqs review?
DE: no major surprises; more taking stock of where we are
- Charge 1 Rebaselining (Testi)
LT: charge on rebaselining discussed enough already?
LM: ASAC schedule is again out of synch with what is going on in other
committees; would like ASAC to consider
writing an unsolicited letter to Board reminding them what we said
in past; re-inforcement that we still agree with what we said before;
when we see in September what's proposed, ESAC will have chance to write
a letter at that point, maybe ASAC and ANASAC could do that too at that
point; but thinks we should write a letter now
LT: good idea to do something before
F2F; question is whether we want
to do it NOW (reinforcing what we said in past) or wait for package
and write essentially support/no support/support up to certain point
after we receive package
TB: he could send email by Monday with clear listing of all science-relevant
BCPs they anticipate working on over the next few weeks
CW,
EvD: like idea of writing letter; timing is the issue; TB list would be
useful
LM: would like to send letter in August
CC: worried about writing a letter based on new informal list from TB;
if has new things on it, would have to reconsider
LT: will there be anything dramatically new?
TB: hasn't racked down some of solar stuff; none of major painful ones
have changed; good exercise for him to make list anyway, will send it
to LT; can decide whether chose to respond to it or to previous info
LT: important to have a telecon after rebaselining material received
but before ESAC meets
ACTION: TB to send list to LT by Monday, August 8
ACTION: LT to draft letter and circulate to ASAC with TB list next week
- Old Charge 2 (New Charge 3) Time Allocation Issues (AB)
AB: he hasn't had more information than had last month; hope to receive some
comments soon; then will recirculate something drafted up to match charge
LT: in ESAC discussions, Waalkens (spelling?) expressed interest in
contributing to this charge; he was involved in board discussions of
this a few years ago; will send AB his email
ACTION: LT to send AB email for Waalkens (spelling?)
ACTION: ASAC members to comment on AB material on time allocation
ACTION: AB to draft some text to match Board charge after receives comments;
aim for draft report section by next telecon
- Old Charge 3 (new Charge 4) Demonstration Science (C. Wilson)
CW: described process followed to arrive at writeup that was sent
around yeseterday; see writeup for details of what is suggested
LM: impression was demonstration science being downplayed; he thinks of
verification science as being smaller than it seems to be here?
does SV data become public? yes, would have to in this scheme
EvD: could say something about scope of projects we consider; i.e. can
we have multiple configs? RL: do have to test these modes, including
testing patching configs together
CW: propose continue discussion by email, with subcommittee and ASAC;
collect enough thoughts, maybe even draft text before September
ACTION: CW to send summary of information from background documents to
whole ASAC
ACTION: ASAC members to read and comment on charge 3 writeup
ACTION: CW to revise writeup based on comments and actual text of charge
from Board; aim for draft report section by next telecon
Organization of Meeting- * Date: 1-2 October 2005
LT: not many people have replied to tell Alejandra we will attend; need to know
even if don't have exact travel dates, because need to know size of room needed
(JAO room is not huge)
ACTION: ASAC members to reply to Alejandra to say if will attend or not
ACTION: LT/AW to draft agenda for meeting before next telecon
* Visit to site 29-30 September? (Wootten, T. Wilson)
- has had queries from some of ASAC members; don't know if can arrange it
- need to make plans to go to San Pedro early, as planes fill up
ACTION: ASAC members interested in visiting site should email AW
Science IPT Report (Wilson, Wootten, Kawabe)
AW: have discussed new config; various links to that document, also
links to nutator specs etc, Sci 05Q2 Report
TW: review of Cal devices in Grenoble Aug 25; mainly tech review
Kawabe: in light of cancelled IPT meeting, have cancelled ACA system PDR in
Santiago; rescheduled to Nov 10-11 in Japan; will send info to ASAC by
email later on
Outreach
ESAC Report (van Dishoeck)
- telecon yesterday, discussed many of these same issues; prepping for
Sept 14 meeting, especially additional charge on 1vs2 types of AN in
array; still support old ASAC report; PC working on polarization issues,
trying to summarize in small document; useful to circulate to ASAC;
hard to find any show stoppers or quantify problems for two AN, all
agree one AN would be better
ANASAC Report (Wootten)
- next scheduled meeting is end of August; ANASAC should be made aware
of package from TB when available, might meet earlier
Madrid meeting (Cernicharo)
- have sent all funding requests; will contact SOC members after mid-August; idea to send first announcement middle Sept; full scientific program by mid-Dec; from LOC point of view, everything is practically done
AOB
Next Meeting 2005-September-7 15:00 UT
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Wilson, Vice Chair
--
AlWootten - 04 Aug 2005