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.

Comments

Re:What could a moonbase do?

[arse maker]

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.

Re:Going to the moon, with what money??

[pnewhook]

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.