NASA announced on Friday the new proposals selected to receive funding under their NIAC program. These new unbelievable projects involve terrifying cryogenic chambers and artificial growable habitats, but also more technical issues like an innovative propulsion system or the plasma shell.
Although the aim of the researchers is to find new and better ways to set up the long-desired trip to Mars, all these selected unbelievable projects will impact space travel to all conceivable destinations. Scientists will try to prove that ideas only written in the Sci-Fi books are both valuable and feasible.
Deep Sleep Transportation
As travelling to Mars will take up to 9 months, scientists came up with an idea on how to minimize the material troubles on such a long travel. Therefore, they will try to keep astronauts deeply asleep and fed with intravenous substances while lying still in low-temperature chambers.
Plasma Shells
Landing the surface of a planet can be risky because of the friction between the surface of the ship and the atmosphere. The famous nuclear engineer David Kirtley proposed to use plasma layer to protect the ship.
Growable Habitats in Space
Based on the study of a spider’s web, the new habitats will consist of series of strings, rotating outposts, sticks, and platforms. Robert Skelton named his new concept “Tensegrity”, and it should adapt according to pressure and thus shift the diameters according to weight and force.
New Propulsion System
A billionaire is funding a scientist to find new ways of speeding space travelling. The physicist decided to use a laser to enhance the speed. All experiments will involve small sized starships, and hopefully, the results will prove to be useful to other long-distance space travels as well.
NASA’s annual research funding project – NIAC
As NASA’s plans are more and more ambitious, help from great minds is highly welcomed. Thus, this year unbelievable projects have been awarded up to $500,000 grants each. The phase one of the projects gathered 13 project ideas out of which only eight were decided to be followed through and tested.
The projects are all in early development phase. It is estimated they would need another ten years work time to mature and be included in a real space mission.
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