Get those of you who thought we'd live in a much more sci-fi-like future by now. Yeah, me too. NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program (NIAC) has announced 6 concept studies that will receive additional funding and development, bringing them one step closer to reality, so Arthur C. C.It seems that there may be some futuristic ideas in the work that can be cut straight from the pages of Clarke's novel.

The most interesting is ScienceCraft, or scope, for exoplanet exploration projects. It is a spacecraft designed to explore exoplanets like Neptune and Uranus using a solar sail with an ultralight quantum dot-based spectrometer printed directly on the surface, combining the basic architecture of science instruments and the craft itself.

The project hopes to become a low-resource platform that can piggyback to an existing launch as a secondary payload, and a first mission to Triton, Neptune's largest moon, has already been proposed to study the atmosphere before the launch window closes in 2045. It has been a long time since I was a child.

Deep space exploration is a noble goal, but there are 2 words that cause my inner child to gasp in wonder: the universe. Train's well, the Moon train, more precisely. This is the goal of the Flexible Levitation Project (FLOAT) in Orbit, which aims to be the first lunar rail system to provide reliable autonomous payload transportation on the Moon.

The Space Train Project (I'm going to keep calling it, just try and stop me) plans to incorporate a non-powered magnetic robot that will levitate on a flexible track on the moon. It has been proposed that 1 layer of orbit is made of graphene to facilitate diamagnetic levitation, while another layer provides power for the lunar base in sunlight.

This orbit is designed to deploy on the surface of the Moon to avoid construction problems, and a large version of the system can load up to 1 kg of cargo in 100,000 days. It can travel several kilometers and is said to have a maximum speed of about 0.5 m/s.

Other potential projects set up to receive additional funding include a pulsed plasma rocket, a "fluid telescope" designed as a space-based optical observatory, and a radioisotope thermal radiation cell generator. I only know what some of those words mean, but the boy is excited by all the whizz-bang images it creates in my head.

While I hate to end this article on Downer, I would be negligent if I did not point out that additional funding and development would not ultimately make a successful project. Still, my progress to yet-to-be-realized sci-fi dreams is fine for me, and while these projects may still be a long way from reality, I hope you'll find me by continuing to cross your fingers that at least 1 of these futuristic visions will make it to the finish line. We hope that you will join us.

Space Train. yes, please. I'll take two, I don't even care if it's late.