For just less than a decade, NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts was the staid space agency's big-vision mashup of Willy Wonka's factory, DARPA and your crazy uncle's garage workshop. And now experts want to bring it back.

Instructed to pursue "revolutionary aeronautical and space concepts that could dramatically impact how NASA develops and conducts its missions," it funded research on space elevators, antimatter harvesters and other space fiction plot devices. "The genius is in the generalities, and not the details," explained the 'What is Revolutionary?' section of the Institute's website.

Despite this seeming impracticality, three of its projects — a plasma rocket, a measurement device for black holes and a giant shade that should make it easier to take pictures of exoplanets — will probably end up being used in NASA missions. But in 2007, with its $4 million budget tightly stretched and NASA more interested in immediate payoffs than long-term dreaming, the Institute was shuttered.

The decision seemed short-sighted at the time, and on Friday an expert panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences recommended that NASA re-open the Institute. Their recommendation isn't binding, but it's promising. The panel did, however, suggest the Institute scale back its ambitions and focus on projects that could be realistically developed in a decade, not a couple generations. The party wouldn't need to be over — but neither would it be so wild again.

In a salute to the Insitute's heritage, here are a few of their grander plans:

Development of a Single-Fluid Consumable Infrastructure for Life Support, Power, Propulsion, and Thermal Control. Wouldn't it be neat if everything in life ran on a single fuel? In a spacecraft, that could be hydrogen peroxide.

Wide Bandwidth Deep Space Quantum Communications. Getting a pair of electrons to affect each other's spin when separated by a few miles is possible but difficult. This project would do it at movie-downloading speeds, separated by a solar system.

Moon & Mars Orbiting Spinning Tether Transport and Tether Transport System for LEO-MEO-GEO-Lunar Traffic: Ever play tetherball and have the rope break? Imagine that happening, but with the end of the tether in orbit, and the ball replaced by industrial payloads being thrown between Earth and the moon.

Tailored Force Fields for Space-Based Construction: Just as sound waves can push solid objects, electromagnetic waves could be used to manipulate materials and build structures in space.

Antimatter Driven Sail for Deep Space Missions. A bit like a hot air balloon, only running on antimatter. That this was considered a feasibly short-term project speaks volumes about the Institute.

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Images: NIAC

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