...the NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts (NIAC) will be re-established as a project within the Early Stage Innovation Program. The project is formulated as a two-phase, low TRL activity, focused upon conceptual studies of visionary approaches addressing long-term NASA strategic goals. The first phase of NIAC will fund a competed set of conceptual studies and systems analyses that investigate how technology innovations will enable NASA's future missions and extend its goals. Second Phase NIAC proposals will further develop successful Phase I proposals and work to transition the key technical advances into projects within the Game Changing Technology Program.
Outfits like DARPA actually fund real work into advanced concepts. Other people purporting to do advanced concepts work just sit around and talk about it, maybe write a few papers about what might be possible. SIGMA will give you that for free ... we do that sort of thing for fun. So does this forum, or NASASpaceFlight.com. Dr. Bussard published a slew of 'em, and he would tell you to your face they were "just for fun," and that he wrote them in part because he was embargoed from actually writing about what we were doing.
Most DARPA phase one projects are little more than proposals. If approved for Phase 2 they are expected to build hardware. The ones that hit Phase 3 are expected to make something useful. You need a lot of Phase 1 bull-bleep to produce a few good Phase 3 results. If that is what NASA intends, fine. If it will be a bunch of Phase 1 bull with nothing beyond, it is no better than what we do here routinely.
Not saying what goes on here is worthless, just really cost-effective, and probably at least as good as most Phase 1 proposals.
Asteroid Deflection is a case in point ... it is all but a volunteer effort. NASA and the Air Force have a hand in it, but it is virtually unfunded, almost entirely papers and PowerPoint. Setting up a branch to do it may mean a few full-time employees wind up using most of their budget on their salaries, travel, and rent. At the end of every year they publish a report stating all the great things they did. In the end, the only significant result is if hardware flys and does a good job.
Initially funded by NIAC
at the level of 5.9 million dollars, these efforts garnered at least 21.2 million dollars
additional support from NASA, from other agencies, and through the private sector.
Three to four times return on your high risk capital over about 10 years. That's pretty mundane in my opinion. Of course it is an education program so maybe there will be a huge payoff down stream. But down stream, attributing any payoff back to the NIAC program will be a stretch. Maybe its better than I'm thinking because I'm thinking that we need the research funds in some programs that are ready for hardware. Of course the total budget of $5.9 M won't buy much hardware.