NASA is funding a deep sleep chamber and other crazy concepts

One project wants to explore the use of robots to expand habitats when they're already in space, while another plans to use a planet's atmosphere to slow down descending spacecraft to make missions more affordable. There's also one that wants to use a coating that can reflect 99.9% of the sun's energy for long-term cryogenic storage, say to transport liquid oxygen and other chemicals to Mars and other planets. While these concepts sound like they came right out of a sci-fi movie, their creators were able to demonstrate that they're quite feasible. NASA is awarding each one up to 500,000 to develop their concepts further for two more years. Who knows -- someday, our descendants might use one of NIAC's concepts to roam the universe