By now, I’m sure many of you have heard the rumors that NASA is planning on cutting off funding for NIAC, NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts.  This is the agency that has funded, among other things, Dr. Brad Edwards groundbreaking research into designing a practical Space Elevator.

There’s still nothing official, but, as several stories about this proposed cut have appeared on NIAC’s website (without refutation), it sure doesn’t look good.

Several others have posted on this, among them NASA Watch and The Guardian.  In addition, the Space Elevator Journal’s Patrick Boake contacted Dr. Edwards for his comments – they are on the Space Elevator Journal posting covering this story…

Eating your “seed corn” is never a good idea.  I’m just glad it’s happened after Dr. Edwards had completed the studies that NIAC funded and not before…

You can find links to the Edwards-NIAC reports on this blog’s sidebar, under Reference Sites.