http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/!brian/press/
 for a general statement.

The ANU has engaged a lanscape design firm to prepare an overall site plan
incorporating public tourism/outreach facilities, academic/workshop facilities
and housing areas. These precincts are distinct but adjoining. 
The picture on the web page is one of their concepts showing some workshop
buildings near the rebuilt main administrative offices and several small 
outreach telescopes and the Phoenix telescope neaer the Vistor's Centre. 
This drawing represent one concept only and is not necessarily the one that we 
favour. However, we are agreed on the separate precinct concept.

The RSAA have prepared rebuiding budgets for the ANU based on 4 different 
levels of possible funding.

The highest priority is to rebuild the admin/library and workshop and
this is done in all 4 funding models. 

The ANU has engaged architects to design the admin and library building
(the main heritage listed buiding with the two small domes)
taking into account the heritage aspects. Costings is uncertain at the moment
but given the area involved could be about $6m. The library will be
a modern library concentrating on electronic journals and exploitation of
data bases. It will be used by the ANU as a test bed for libraries of 
the future.    

The workshop will be the nucleus of a proto-typing and design centre to design
and oversee the construction, assembly and testing of modern telescope 
instrumentation. We have already purchased new CNC mills and lathes to equip it.
These will arrive over the next 4 months and be installed in the temporary barn 
contructed on the site by the insurers. When the new workshop is completed the 
machines will be moved into it along with everything else, workbenches etc 
that are in the barn. The cost of the workshop (and test laboratories) is
anticipated to be between 8 and 15 Million dollars depending on the level of
funding.

The second priority is to replace the two major telescopes, the 74 inch and the
50 inch MACHO telescope that were destroyed. Depending on the funding scenarios
we could have no telescopes, or 1 telescope on Mt Stromlo, or 1 telescope on 
Mt Stromlo and 1 at Siding Spring with the highest funding model. 

The proposed MSO telescope would be an EOS 1.8m telescope to be used for public 
viewing in the early evening and for planet searching and other high resolution
bright sky observations for the rest of the night. The estimated cost is
about 10 million dollars including one echelle spectrograph. The kind of science
to be done is unaffected by the lights of Canberra. This replacses the 74 inch.
It has been tentatively called the Phoenix telescope.
     
The proposed SSO telescope is the 50 inch replacement. Brian Schmidt, Paul
Francis, Stefan Keller and I were going to do the Southern Sky Survey with 
this telescope starting this June. We have ARC funding to carry it out.
The new telescope for SSO will be a specially built wide-angle ESO 1.8 m 
telescope and optics that will cost about 14-15 million dollars. It will be
an extremely powerful survey telescope and is best suited for SSO where the 
skies are dark. To place this telescope at MSO would degrade the science 
too much. Brian gave a presentation to the Academy of Science and his 
PowerPoint presentation is on my website for you to download.   
He will prepare a briefing paper in the next few days as well. 

The third priority is to rebuild some of the houses at Mt Stromlo 
and provide accommodation for students, post-docs and short-term visitors.