How to Use AI to Write Your NIAC Proposal (The Right Way)

Here's the thing about using AI to write your NIAC 3-page: most people do it backwards.

They open ChatGPT, dump in some notes about their concept, and ask it to "write a NIAC proposal." What comes out is... fine. It has paragraphs. It mentions space. It sounds vaguely professional. And it will get circle-filed along with 60% of the other proposals, because it doesn't pass the tests that matter.

The problem isn't that AI wrote it. The problem is that nobody defined what "good" looks like before writing started.

There's a better way. It's called Test-Driven Documentation, and it flips the process: define what your proposal must accomplish first, then use AI to build something that accomplishes it.

The Two Types of Tests Your Proposal Must Pass

NIAC already gave you half the tests. The nine elimination criteria (the "Thou-Shall-Nots" from our Process Overview article) are explicit pass/fail requirements. Violate any one of them and you're dead in the water. The Compliance Table / Step B Evaluation Criteria can be used as additional tests right off the bat (they are only for Step B proposals, but we can use them for our Step A if we use our brains, and I’ve already done this for you by creating the NIAC Summary.txt file ahead of time).

But here's the trap: passing the explicit criteria doesn't mean you'll get selected.

You're competing against 250+ proposals for 12 spots. Remember the formula:

1/3 sci-fi, 1/3 technical, 1/3 gamesmanship.

Your proposal needs to be sexy. It needs sizzle. It needs to make a reviewer who's read 30 proposals today stop and think "I want to see where this goes." That's not in any NASA document, but it's the difference between INVITED and DECLINED.

So for this method you need two categories of tests:

Category 1: Elimination Criteria and Step B Evaluation Criteria:

These come directly from NASA. Turn each one into a test:

• Test: Proposal describes a specific representative mission (not just "this could help many missions")

• Test: Concept is clearly differentiated from prior efforts

• Test: Technical approach doesn't violate known physics

• Test: There's a plausible path to implementation

You should have about 25-30 of these. They're mostly pass/fail. If you fail any, nothing else matters.

Category 2: Sizzle Tests (What Gets You Selected)

These are harder to write but more important. They're the "sexy" and "sizzle" requirements that separate winners from the merely compliant:

The Sci-Fi Third:

• Does the opening paragraph make you want to keep reading?

• Could you explain this mission excitedly to a smart friend?

• Is there a "holy shit, that would be amazing" moment in the concept?

• Would this make a good opening scene in a movie?

The Technical Third:

• Do the physics check out without hand-waving?

• Would a skeptical engineer nod along or roll their eyes?

• Is there genuine innovation here, or just incremental improvement?

• Remember: NIAC is REVOlution, not EVOlution (opposite of traditional aerospace thinking)

The Gamesmanship Third:

• If a reviewer reads this as proposal number 47 today, will it stick in their memory?

• Are you excited to write the 8-page proposal? (If not, why would they be excited to read it?)

• What do you love about this concept? Can you answer immediately?

• Are you trying to be the best proposal out of all 250?

Gamesmanship is a tricky concept in engineering. Think about it before you go to bed.

The Process: Three Prompts

This method works with Claude. It was developed for Claude. It may work with other LLMs, but the advantage with Claude is that it was developed for software engineering, and saw a lot of early action developing mundane thing like test plans for Test-Driven Development (used in Agile). Well, this is Test-Driven Documentation. It works.

Prompt 1: Build Your Test Suite

Before you write a single sentence of your proposal, create a comprehensive list of tests it must pass. Start with the compliance tests (elimination criteria, evaluation criteria), then add your sizzle tests.

You're aiming for 80-100 tests total for a 3-page proposal. That sounds like a lot. It's not. Each test is one specific thing to verify:

• "Opening paragraph captures attention within first two sentences"

• "Representative mission is named specifically, not described generically"

• "At least one 'holy shit' moment in the concept description"

• "Technology differentiation from prior work is stated explicitly"

Organize them by where they'll be validated—whole-document tests vs. section-specific tests. When you're writing the mission description, you need the mission description tests in front of you, not buried in a list sorted by importance.

Files you'll need:

NIAC_Summary.txt

Download TXT • 7KB

CLOVER_Example_Proposal.txt

Download TXT • 16KB

ACTION_Example_Proposal.txt

Download TXT • 14KB

PROMPT:

I need to write a NIAC Phase I Step A proposal (3 pages maximum). Before writing any copy, I need a comprehensive test suite which defines what "winning" looks like. A winning proposal would pass all of the tests.

MY CONCEPT:

[ INSERT 1-2 PARAGRAPHS DESCRIBING YOUR TECHNOLOGY AND MISSION CONCEPT HERE ]

ATTACHMENTS:

- NIAC Summary.txt  [ ATTACH ]

- CLOVER Example Proposal.txt  [ ATTACH ]

- ACTION Example Proposal.txt  [ ATTACH ]

CREATE A TEST SUITE with approximately 80-100 tests organized as follows:

## WHOLE-DOCUMENT TESTS

Tests that apply to the complete proposal. Include:

- Format compliance (3 pages, etc.)

- Voice and tone (confident, compelling, accessible)

- The "sizzle" tests: Does it capture attention? Is there a "holy shit" moment? Would a reviewer want to read the 8-pager (invite proposer to submit a "full proposal")?

- Consistency (terminology, claims)

## SECTION-LEVEL TESTS

Tests specific to each part of the proposal:

- Opening/hook

- Problem statement

- Technology description

- Mission context (CRITICAL for NIAC—this is where most proposals fail)

- Innovation/differentiation from prior work

- Feasibility and path forward

FOR EACH TEST, SPECIFY:

- Test ID and name

- Pass/fail criteria (be specific)

- Priority: CRITICAL (must pass all) / MAJOR (must pass 90%+) / MINOR

IMPORTANT FRAMING:

NIAC proposals must be 1/3 sci-fi (visionary, exciting), 1/3 technical (credible, physics check out), and 1/3 gamesmanship (stands out from 250+ competitors). The test suite must include tests for ALL THREE categories, not just compliance.

The proposal must pass all 9 elimination criteria (Thou-Shall-Nots) but that's table stakes. The sizzle tests—"would I want to keep reading?" and "does this stick in my memory after 30 proposals?"—are what separate INVITED from DECLINED.

Review the example proposals to understand what passing looks like in practice.

Output the TDD test suite as an md file.

Prompt 2: Generate Your Outline

Write your outline as topic sentences: the specific claim each paragraph will make:

1. [Opening hook]: "Imagine a spacecraft that could reach Alpha Centauri in a human lifetime. this mission architecture makes that possible using technology we could begin developing today."

2. [Problem statement]: "Current propulsion systems limit interstellar missions to multi-generational timescales, making them effectively impossible to plan, fund, or execute."

3. [Solution introduction]: "Directed energy propulsion using ground-based laser arrays could accelerate lightweight probes to 20% the speed of light, reducing transit time to decades rather than millennia."

Each topic sentence is testable. You can look at "Imagine a spacecraft that could reach Alpha Centauri in a human lifetime" and ask: does this pass the "opening paragraph captures attention" test? Does it pass the "holy shit moment" test? Does it pass the "would I want to keep reading" test?

PROMPT:

Generate a paragraph-level outline which, if followed correctly, will result in a document that passes all of the tests in the TDD test plan.

Each paragraph in the outline should be represented by its topic sentence, the claim that the paragraph will make. It's often easier to just write the sentence than to expend effort crafting a terse bullet point that you'll later have to re-expand anyway.

If your topic sentences pass all your tests, your proposal will pass when you expand them into paragraphs. If they don't pass, fix them now. Add more sources in at this step if you have them. Make sure any AI sources are real and the DOIs are correct. A red flag here is if all AI sources are from PubMed (huge sign of laziness).

Prompt 3: Expand to Full Proposal

PROMPT:

Write the three-page proposal and output it as an md file. Include a references page and use (author name, date) in-text citations, if applicable. When you are done, review your docx skill and present it to me as a .docx file. Figure caption style must be set to 10 pt font and the body text must be 12 pt font. Spacing should be "single" with before/after paragraph spacing both set to 2 pt for all styles, including the title and heading styles. All title and heading styles should use 12 point font.

This is your junk draft. Of course, you should read it yourself and put your favorite sources in. But this is what you send to the NIAC office for feedback before the blackout period (which starts when the solicitation opens). They can tell you if your concept is compelling, if it's been done before, if it's out of scope.

Don’t forget to do your overview chart. It’ll take hours! It’s also the only place you can put in work plan / team / budget data since none of that is requested in the proposal body at this juncture (although I always try to put at least a sentence about work to be done in the proposal).

An example I use when talking to educators is the "Jupiter Life Explorer."

Below is the entire chat transcript from developing an example proposal as a docx file, and the finished text-only proposal draft.

Jupiter_Life_Explorer_Proposal.docx

Download DOCX • 14KB

Conversation_Transcript.txt

Download TXT • 13KB

I'd start by taking the em-dashes out. Actually this is a handy page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing

You could use content from that page on a proofing pass.

To blog home.