‘Crazy’ projects look decades into the future. When a presidential commission analyzed NASA’s goals for space exploration, it said the space agency should create an “incubator for cutting-edge technologies and concepts,” playing a role similar to that of the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Fortunately, space planners already have the nucleus for such an effort, known as the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, or NIAC. Lunar researcher Paul Spudis, a member of the presidential commission, made sure he got in a plug for the little-known organization.