No Future

This is sad: NASA is to close its Institute for Advanced Concepts because of lack of money to keep it going. Apparently, every cent is needed for more immediate projects, including developing the new Orion exploration vehicle, a bigger version of the Apollo capsule, and meeting its goal of returning to the moon, and landing astronauts on Mars. But if even NASA can’t fund blue skies thinking and research into the feasibility of space elevators, novel robot explorers and antimatter space sails, and much more, the future of the future is just a little bit bleaker.

On a happier note, there’s a serious proposal that the new Orion vehicle could be used to land astronauts on a near Earth asteroid.