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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.
From what I've been reading, he intends for the US to get to the moon using private industry incentives. So he'd most likely destroy NASA as an agency to free up that money.
Obviously US has no money for this, but that never stopped a politician from making promises. Besides, so much money can be stolen/printed and provided via contracts to various contributors.
Do you know what a popular government slogan was in the former USSR? "Apple trees will grow on Mars" - that was the 'next step of the revolution'. Obviously USSR didn't have a sound economy and couldn't feed its people, but it was a great 'vision' pushed by the government elite, to have people believe in some form of 'brighter future'.
Another slogan was: "To catch up to and overtake America".
I think in US now the slogan that Obama pushes is: "To catch up and overtake China".
You can't handle the truth.
Thats the problem with most manned space missions.
I think its important to keep a manned space program simply to keep the knowledge. People need an industry to work or most the knowledge gets lost.
NASA should concentrate more on science though. While I think the ISS is ubercool, I dont really see what the point of it is. Its cost over 100bn and doesnt do anything. Things like Hubble that cost a few billion have changed our view of the universe. WMAP, Kepler, Cassini, Voyager numerous Mars missions, they all have trumped the ISS but cost less than the ISS combined.
Future missions to Europa, sample return mission to Mars, James Webb.. just amazing science there. We have already had to can some great things like the terrestrial planet finder telescopes.
Radio telescopes on the far side of the moon also proposed liquid lense telescopes (ive read about spinning mercury to do this) are interesting but the cost would be absolutely insane. So many real things we could be doing.
USA can live with 10 aircraft carriers, or perhaps 9
The savings from not having to maintain 1 (or 2) navy armada (aka carrier group) can easily be channeled to build a permanent American moon base
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Yes, this is the main point. The argument will be that it is inconvenient for some people to have to change states. The counter argument is "that's better than having to change countries".
And building a moon base will be done by the Chinese.
I know you're trying to be funny, but I find it completely hypocritical that the only US citizens with true socialized healthcare are the military and the politicians. Ordinary citizens on the other hand are left to rot.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.