NIAC awards are so fun. We write about them frequently in Orbital Index because they're crazy and weird and speculative. Here are some recent favorites:

- https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2024-05-15-Issue-269/#nasa-...

- https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2024-01-24-Issue-253/#anoth...

"A proposal for a beam of microscopic hypervelocity (>120 km/s) particles propelled by laser ablation to push spacecraft on fast transit interstellar precursor missions" is fairly representative of these types of awards. :)