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Candidate Gingrich Pushes a Moon Base, Other Space Initiatives

New submitter thomas.kane writes "Newt Gingrich announced yesterday, while visiting Florida's Space Coast, a visionary plan for the future of space travel. He suggested a combination of the current private incentives and a government funded section, developing a moon base, commercial near earth orbit, and continuous propulsion systems to better reach Mars." "Visionary" seems an awfully positive spin on it; Gingrich is not the first President or presidential candidate to propose revisiting the moon — and the moon seems like small potatoes, by some measures.

5 of 602 comments (clear)

  1. Back to the future by PhaseChange · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Tonight, I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade." -President Ronald Reagan, 25 January 1984.

  2. Re:Going to the moon, with what money?? by Ihmhi · · Score: 5, Informative

    Exactly. Had he said this anywhere else it may have been credible. Instead, he's in Florida and while the message the rest of the country may be hearing is "a bold new plan for space and the moon", the locals are hearing "I'll pay out loads of government contracts around Cape Canaveral and pump money into the local economy". It's pork and nothing more.

  3. Re:Going to the moon, with what money?? by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually there is nothing wrong with a one term Senator.

    I don't see how only serving one term as senator equates to losing "speaker of the house" due to ethics violations ( book deal that he himself accused his predecessor Jim Wright of doing), cheating on two different wives while pretending to defend the sanctity of marriage, and pretending to be a Washington outsider when he lobbied for Freddie Mac with possible legal ramifications due to not registering as a lobbyist (BTW Newt Gingrich abstained from voting on the HR 2564 "Lobbying Disclosure act of 1995").

    --
    These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
  4. Re:Going to the moon, with what money?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Or a no term anything like Eisenhower, or Grant, or Jackson, or Pierce, or Taylor, or Harrison, or Garfield, or H.W. Bush... The Founding Fathers weren't exactly brimming over with executive experience either. You don't need to have been a governor or long-serving Senator to be an effective leader. In fact there are all too many examples of presidents with that experience who were terrible leaders (Nixon, Carter, Wilson, W. Bush, Johnson? John Quincy Adams was, by most accounts, a bumbling, egotistical buffoon).

    If you don't like Obama then fine, but it's a stretch to say that the election of a first term Senator spells doom for the Republic.

  5. Re:Going to the moon, with what money?? by mcgrew · · Score: 5, Informative

    Gingrich is probably as seious about establishing a moon base as he was when he swore "til death do us part" to the woman he later served divorce papers to while she was hospitalized with cancer, or "Clinton needs to be impeached!!!" while Gingrich himself was screwing around on his second wife. The man is a liar and hypocrite with no obvious sign of morals or ethics whatever.

    Nothing that blowhard says shoud EVER be believed. I can't figure out why anyone would vote for that guy.