NASA has chosen to inject new investments in eight space-exploration technologies with transformational potential. The projects include a habitat enabling long-term sleep for astronauts and directed energy for interstellar missions.
The space agency announced that eight studies, previously researched as part of Phase I of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, have now been chosen to move to Phase II.
Individual projects may receive as much as $500,000 for two years of further study, NASA said, to "allow proposers to further develop concepts funded by NASA for Phase I studies that successfully demonstrated initial feasibility and benefit."
Selected through a peer-reviewed process, the early-stage projects explore a variety of new technologies that aim to improve aerospace systems and space exploration overall.
Deep sleep will not get us to the stars. Interstellar travel has to be RAPID. That means travel times in hours, days, and months at the most. Humans are not biologically suited for long duration space travel. That's just the facts. The academic establishment's arrogance and hubris is what is preventing the kind of physics breakthroughs required to become interstellar, not to mention the military-national security state's obsession with secrecy. But it all may be for naught, the way things are going here on planet Earth. To read more and view the video, click here.