Cash Space elevator – Bradley C. Edwards Closing of the Original NIAC On July 2, 2007, NIAC announced that "NASA, faced with the constraints of achieving the Vision for Space Exploration, has made the difficult decision to terminate NIAC, which has been funded by NASA since inception. Effective August 31, 2007, the original NIAC organization ceased operations. Revised NIAC Following the termination of the original NIAC program, Congress requested a review of the NIAC program by the United States National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences. The review was done in 2009, and concluded that in order to achieve its mission, NASA needs "a mechanism to investigate visionary, far-reaching advanced concepts," and recommended that NIAC, or a NIAC-like program, should be reestablished. Consistent with this recommendation, it was announced on March 1, 2011 that the NIAC was to be revived with similar goals leading to the establishment in 2011 of a project within the NASA Office of Chief Technologist, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, maintaining the acronym NIAC. It is now part of the NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD). According to Michael Gazarik, director of NASA's Space Technology Program, "Through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, NASA is taking the long-term view of technological investment and the advancement that is essential for accomplishing our missions. We are inventing the ways in which next-generation aircraft and spacecraft will change the world and inspiring Americans to take bold steps." 2011 NIAC Project Selections The revived NIAC, with the slightly-changed name "NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts," funded thirty phase-I studies in 2011 to investigate advanced concepts. Duda, Kevin: Variable Vector Countermeasure Suit (V2Suit) for Space Habitation and Exploration Ferguson, Scott: Enabling All-Access Mobility for Planetary Exploration Vehicles via Transformative Reconfiguration Gilland, James: The Potential for Ambient Plasma Wave Propulsion Gregory, Daniel: Space Debris Elimination (SpaDE) Hogue, Michael: Regolith Derived Heat Shield for a Planetary Body Entry and Descent System with In-Situ Fabrication Hohman, Kurt: Atmospheric Breathing Electric Thruster for Planetary Exploration Howe, Steven: Economical Radioisotope Power Khoshnevis, Behrokh: Contour Crafting Simulation Plan for Lunar Settlement Infrastructure Build-Up Kwiat, Paul: Entanglement-assisted Communication System for NASA's Deep-Space Missions: Feasibility Test and Conceptual Design Mankins, John: SPS-ALPHA: The First Practical Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large PHased Array Miller, David: High-temperature Superconductors as Electromagnetic Deployment and Support Structures in Spacecraft Paul, Michael: Non-Radioisotope Power Systems For Sunless Solar System Exploration Missions Pavone, Marco: