I don't know.
When I first started this site, a couple of questions per week seemed a very reasonable pace. But like the saying goes, "No good deed goes unpunished". Since September, I have had about 5 - 10 questions PER DAY thrown at this site and it has been an exciting adventure keeping up with your requests. This is not, after all, my day job! Still, in my enthusiasm for educating, I imagined continuing this site almost indefinitely, or at least until the Internet Community decided that this little backwater site is no longer useful.
Recent events in my career as a professional astronomer have now overtaken this optimistic forecast. Out of courtesy to my many supporters on the Internet, who have visited this site regularly and contributed their always-interesting questions, I feel I must explain what could happen to this web site in the near future.
My company, and a partner company, recently competed for a renewal of an astrophysics support contract over at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. This contract would have allowed 15 astronomers in the age bracket between 35 - 45 years to continue working on the COBE project analyzing its rich treasure trove of astronomical data for 2-3 more years. It would also have allowed us to work on other astronomy-related projects at Goddard. Unfortunately in January, 1996 we lost the competiton and I was forced to leave one company and move to the 'winner' in order to continue my research with the COBE Project data.
For myself, I have a NASA research grant which will support me for 1 day a week for the next 4 years, and hopefully though it is by no means guaranteed, I will receive additional grant money through NASA's Astrophysics Data Program which I apply for every year; usually not getting any money at all.
But the bottom line is this. I do not receive a shred of professional financial support for my efforts at the Astronomy Cafe. Some colleagues with secure careers have noted to me that it is an 'important service' I am providing the Internet community on behalf of astronomers, and they are glad I am doing this 'as a hobby'. It never occurred to me that setting up the Astronomy Cafe and the much popular Ask the Astronomer service was 'a hobby'. I always thought that educating the public was something that was a good thing for professional astronomers to commit to.
Unless I can devise a way to make this site financially self-supporting, I will not be able to continue investing money in the daily upkeep of this site during a time when my career is undergoing considerable instability. As a 'contract astronomer' I work from assigned task to task and there are no allowed charges for educational work.