Bring Back NASA’s Crazy Idea Factory | Wired Science | Wired.com: "In a salute to the Insitute’s heritage, here are a few of their grander plans:
Development of a Single-Fluid Consumable Infrastructure for Life Support, Power, Propulsion, and Thermal Control. Wouldn’t it be neat if everything in life ran on a single fuel? In a spacecraft, that could be hydrogen peroxide.
Wide Bandwidth Deep Space Quantum Communications. Getting a pair of electrons to affect each other’s spin when separated by a few miles is possible but difficult. This project would do it at movie-downloading speeds, separated by a solar system.
Moon & Mars Orbiting Spinning Tether Transport and Tether Transport System for LEO-MEO-GEO-Lunar Traffic: Ever play tetherball and have the rope break? Imagine that happening, but with the end of the tether in orbit, and the ball replaced by industrial payloads being thrown between Earth and the moon.
Tailored Force Fields for Space-Based Construction: Just as sound waves can push solid objects, electromagnetic waves could be used to manipulate materials and build structures in space.
Antimatter Driven Sail for Deep Space Missions. A bit like a hot air balloon, only running on antimatter. That this was considered a feasibly short-term project speaks volumes about the Institute."
