It seems that there is nowhere near enough time to go around and as a result a small fraction of the astronomy community is burdened with deciding which proposals get the go ahead.

While most astronomers serve their time on such panels — Merrifield and Saari point out that others manage to avoid service. The pair also argue that one person cannot give a pile of one hundred or more applications the attention they deserve.

Their solution goes like this…if you want your apochromatic telescope application to be considered, then you must chip-in and assess a few proposals yourself. The results would then be pooled to create a global priority list for a telescope.

The most controversial part of the Merrifield-Saari proposal is that the rankings submitted by individual astronomers will be compared to the global ranking — and those whose individual lists are in approximately the same order as the global list would be bumped up a place or two in the ranking.

Why? To “reward good refereeing” — the idea being that it would encourage astronomers to score proposals in line with “how the community would rank them, not her personal preferences”.

But is there a danger that this would make it even more difficult for more radical proposals to get apochromatic telescope time?