NIAC 2013 Phase I winners showcases futuristic aerospace concepts

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A nuclear-powered spacecraft is one winning concept of NASA's Innovative

A dozen inventors have received a chance to demonstrate the potential for their pet space projects as winners of NASA's 2013 Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program Phase I awards. The winners were chosen based on their potential to transform future aerospace missions by enabling either breakthroughs in aerospace capabilities or entirely new missions. Read on for a closer look at some of the most promising proposals with a view to how they would work, and where the tricky bits might be hiding.
Each NIAC Phase I winner receives about US$100,000 to spend a year pursuing their ideas, including an initial feasibility study of a novel aerospace concept. The proposals this year include; 3D printing of biomaterials; using galactic rays to map the insides of asteroids; and an "eternal flight" platform that could hover in the Earth's atmosphere.

The list of this year's awardees includes:
• Rob Adams of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center – Pulsed Fission-Fusion (PuFF) propulsion system
• John Bradford of SpaceWorks Engineering – Torpor inducing transfer habitat for human stasis to Mars
• Hamid Hemmati of NASA Jet Propulsion – Two-dimensional planetary surface landers
• Nathan Jerred of Universities Space Research Association - Dual-mode propulsion system enabling CubeSat exploration of the Solar System
• Anthony Longman – Growth adapted tensegrity structures
• Mark Moore of NASA Langley Research Center - Eternal flight as the solution for 'X'
• Thomas Prettyman of the Planetary Science Institute – Deep mapping of small solar system bodies with galactic cosmic ray secondary particle showers
• Lynn Rothschild of NASA Ames Research Center – Biomaterials out of thin air
• Joshua Rovey of the University of Missouri – Plasmonic force propulsion revolutionizes Nano/PicoSatellite capability
• Adrian Stoica of NASA Jet Propulsion Lab – Transformers for extreme environments
• Christopher Walker of the University of Arizona – 10 meter sub-orbital balloon refletor
• S.J. Ben Yoo of the University of California-Davis – Low-mass planar photonic imaging sensor

Let's take a look at three of the most promising concepts with a view to how they would work, and where the tricky bits might be hiding.