NASA researchers investigate way-out ideas

SEATTLE - When a presidential commission analyzed NASA's goals for space exploration, it said the space agency should create an "incubator for cutting-edge technologies and concepts," playing a role similar to that of the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Fortunately, space planners already have the nucleus for such an effort, known as the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, or NIAC. Lunar researcher Paul Spudis, a member of the presidential commission, made sure he got in a plug for the little-known organization.

�There was a discussion about DARPA as a way to get crazy ideas into technical currency, and people said we need to have a �NARPA,� a NASA Advanced Research Projects Agency,� Spudis recalled. �I said, �Well, NASA already has one, something called NIAC, which basically funds crazy ideas, and hopefully some of those crazy ideas will eventually emerge in some future technical implementation.� ... It was thought that that was an important activity.�

You don't hear about the 6-year-old Atlanta-based institute as much as you do about space shuttles or Mars probes. But across the country, NIAC's research fellows are churning away on crazy ideas that could become positively ho-hum in decades to come.

This week, NIAC's leaders and research fellows met in Seattle to review some of those crazy ideas: skin-tight spray-on spacesuits for a trip to Mars ... static-electricity fields that would protect future lunar bases from space radiation ... even a lunar lab that could develop microbes for terraforming Mars.

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How cool is this! And think of the everyday uses that will trickle down into our lives because of this. The spray on suit is such a neat idea!!!

Spray on latex? Thats pretty cool I could think of some uses for that Aside from being perverted, there are a lot of areas that this application could be out to good use.

2020?

Skintight spacesuits?

Allow me to laugh.

Haha.

At the rate its going we will hardly have any working spaceships by 2020.

Sounds like a good idea if all the Nauts will be well fit females.

Oh wait that goes against Kidfinger's post. Sorry KF

the problem with scientific design is that we arn't creative enough, we think how something can be changed rather than re-designed

The Spray on suit looks a little skin tight to me you won't catch me wearing one

Originally posted by Kidfinger
Spray on latex? Thats pretty cool

I could think of some uses for that

Aside from being perverted, there are a lot of areas that this application could be out to good use.

That's what I was thinking...The spray on tech could be used for many applications on the general publics lives. It would have to be some amazing stuff to keep our nauts insulated and protected from the rigors of space.

Have they forgot MARS IS FRIGGIN COLD?! Advantage: imagine peeling it off your hair. Guess you spray it over your Long Johns and INHALE. Advantage: imagine solvent vapor cloud in zero-gee in an enclosed atmosphere. Try solvent on your cojones, too. Where's the water-vapor management system? We don't need to re-invent the pressure suit! This kind of BS is why we should FIRE every single NASA employee and rehire on ABILITY TO GET THE JOB DONE. We are paying billions for think-tank speculation while the Moon and Mars are suffering from a lack of new footprints. Dust off the Von Braun blueprints and LET'S GO!

By the way, don't try plastidip on a frog. Frog dies. Any questions?

Ok everybody, its Math Class Time.
skin tight suit + the cold of space =

I honestly dont think we will have a suit that thin for along time, I would guess at least 100 years.

I dont see how you would be insulated?

This is what are spacesuits will look like when were back on the moon, They will have more electronics then current ones, They will probably incorporate a flexible LCD screen on the rist, which will show then real time info on how the suits doing and mission objectives.

static-electricity fields that would protect future lunar bases from space radiation.

This one I think holds quit abit a promise, a radiation deterant is difiniatly something needed.