Let's completely ignore the ideas whose appeal is not so obvious. There are still lots of ideas here that could profoundly advance the state of the art, and are also inherently cool.

NIAC Funded Studies

Bae, Young A Contamination-Free Ultrahigh Precision Formation Flight Method Based on Intracavity Photon Thrusters and Tethers: Photon Tether Formation Flight

Bekey, Ivan Extremely Large Swarm Array of Picosats for Microwave/RF Earth Sensing, Radiometry, and Mapping

Bekey, Ivan Assessment of the Feasibility of Extremely Large, Structureless Optical Telescopes and Arrays

Boss, Wendy Redesigning Living Organisms to Survive on Mars

Boston, Penelope Scientific Exploration and Human Utilization of Subsurface Extraterrestrial Environments: A Feasibility Assessment of Strategies, Technologies and Test Beds

Boston, Penelope System Feasibility Demonstrations of Caves and Subsurface Constructs for Mars Habitation and Scientific Exploration

Cash, Webster New Worlds Imager

Chirikjian, Gregory An Architecture for Unmanned Self-Replicating Lunar Factories

England, Christopher Mars Atmosphere Resource Recovery System (MARRS)

Farritor, Shane A Modular Robotic System to Support the Surface Operations of Human Mars Exploration

Fork, Richard Efficient Direct Conversion of Sunlight to Coherent Light at High Average Power in Space.

Gold, Robert SHIELD: A Comprehensive Earth Protection System

Grant, John Hypersonic Airplane Space Tether Orbital Launch (HASTOL) Study - Phase II

Ignatiev, Alex New Architecture for Space Solar Power Systems: Fabrication of Silicon Solar Cells Using In-Situ Resources

Voronka, Nestor An Architecture of Modular Spacecraft with Integrated Structural Electrodynamic Propulsion (ISEP)

Winglee, Robert Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion, M2P2

Woolf, Neville Very Large Optics for the Study of Extrasolar Terrestrial Planets

Zubrin, Robert The Magnetic Sail