An elevator to space? NASA urged to explore advanced technology

— -- Space elevators? Alienworlds? Deep-space plasma rockets?

No, it's not science-fiction — it's history —NASA's late, lamented Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). Exotic telescopes, tethered slingshots to shuttle cargo from the moon to Mars and skin-tight space suits were just some of the technologies the institute ponied up seed money to explore.

The institute succumbed to new priorities when President Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration involving manned flights to the moon. Essentially, NASA chief Mike Griffin decided two years ago that his agency's mission was going for the moon today, rather than the stars tomorrow, ending its $4 million yearly funding of the institute. "NASA, faced with the constraints of achieving the Vision for Space Exploration, has made the difficult decision to terminate NIAC," the space agency announced in 2007.

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But a National Research Council (NRC) report out Friday calls for the return of the institute, "formed for the explicit purpose of being an independent source of revolutionary aeronautical and space concepts," according to its charter.

"The committee recommends that NASA should re-establish a NIAC-like entity," says the Fostering Visions for the Future: A Review of the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts report headed by Robert Braun of Georgia Tech.