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

Going to the moon, with what money??

[SoftwarePearls]

The US federal debt is going to ensure that this never happens. Not this side of 2050. Not even if the Chinese start making concrete plans to do the same.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll use all the money we're saving with our socialized healthcare system. Then we can launch all the socialists to the moon where they can live in a perfect socialized society where they don't have to live with the evils of capitalism.

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

[Dexter Herbivore]

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.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

He's lying.

He's campaigning in Florida, so he promises space initiatives (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/25/gingrich-shoots-for-the-moon/).

When his in Nevada he'll promise casino initiative, when he's in Michigan he'll promise automotive initiatives.

He's lying. He's only interested in Gingrich Initiatives (https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/us/politics/newt-gingrich-faces-more-scrutiny-on-corporate-clients.html).

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

[Xyrus]

You know, it says a lot about this country when someone with a history like Newt's can be a serious candidate for president. Vote Cthulu for 2012! It will be the lesser evil!

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

[Ihmhi]

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.

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

[elrous0]

US to get to the moon using private industry incentives

If the moon were made of solid gold, it still wouldn't be anywhere close to economically feasible for private industry to bother. And, as it is, it's just made of cheese, which is a lot easier to get out of cows.

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

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I don't really have a stake in the US elections as I'm not American

Everybody in the world has a stake in the US election: if a nutjob was to be elected again, the entire world would suffer. It still suffers from the last one...

Not that the average American has any real say in who will take office, being that, as South Park eloquently put it, the choice of candidates will be between a douche or a turd.

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

[prefec2]

The beauty of the idea is, that you do not need any money, you just use all the US debt certificates and stack them. That should be enough to reach the moon and build there a station out of the remaining notes. And if it isn't sufficient. New debt can easily be produced. For example, wage another war. Let say against Pakistan. Er no they have the bomb. Well let see, how about Norway. They have oil and they do not have any nuclear weapons. True they are allies, but who cares? Who will stop us? The British will not, if BP can get some of the oil.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to the Free Market Space Cadets, who will live in a perfect market economy selling vacuum to each other? How dare "We the people" be concerned about fellow humans! Space rocks! That's what counts!

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

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Yet Lincoln probably still spent more time in congress.

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

[Bill_the_Engineer]

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").

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

[OakDragon]

Actually there is nothing wrong with a one term Senator.

Well, there's something wrong with this one! :)

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

[fnj]

And was just as big a tyrant.

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

[Tim4444]

Since it's Gingrich proposing this government funded government housing project on the moon, I suppose he'd be the first one we ship off to this socialist moon utopia you describe...

If perhaps Gingrich wants moon exploration to be handled by private enterprise, maybe he should put his money where is mouth is and go start an actual business, like what Romney did (sort of), instead of applying for a fat cat government job, er, running for President.

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

[Nadaka]

Socialists do not oppose capitalism.

This is what socialists believe in: "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" -- the God Damned Constitution.

The economic engine underlying that is a means to that end. And capitalism (restrained by appropriate regulation) is the best economic engine that promotes growth and works towards those goals that has been tested to date.

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

[Remus Shepherd]

Now, now, let's not conflate lying with not knowing what the fuck he's talking about.

He obviously has no idea what he's talking about because he promised to have that moon base up by the end of his first term as president. That's a pipe dream, a fantasy so unbelievable that he may as well have been promising to meet moon-unicorns once we got up there. It takes at least five years just to get a satellite into orbit; there's no way we could get back to the moon, let alone establish a base there, without ten years or more of work. Promising it in four is delusional.

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

[ArcherB]

This is what socialists believe in: "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" -- the God Damned Constitution.

Don't forget this little nugget of the Constitution:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

This means that it is not up to the federal government to force socialist policies. If the states want to, however, that is there right. In a world where the Constitution was followed, if you want socialism, you would look to your governor, not the president, or move to a socialist state.

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

[repapetilto]

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".

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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

[swalve]

The job of President is so huge that literally nothing, except actual experience as President, can adequately prepare someone for it. EVERY election of President is a leap of faith that depends on what the voters hope the candidate can accomplish. Not on what they have already accomplished. The path to the presidency is about three things:

1- Luck
2- Building an organization in all 50 states to deliver the message and win votes.
3- Having a message and a vision about what they want to accomplish.

Obama WAS hugely lucky. (Specifically in that the Illinois Naz- I mean Illinois GOP- chose a clown to run against him for Senate) But so was Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon and so on and so on. Presidents win as much on their own merits as they do on the failures of their opponents.

And yes, it does say a lot about this country: we don't really care for the idea that it is someone's "turn" to be president because they have punched all their experience cards. We elect the leaders that we hope will lead the country to a better place.

I, as well as many of my more conservative friends, voted for Obama because he was a hometown boy, because his story is a great story of rags to riches, pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, because he is of the same generation as me (grandpa fought in WWII) and mostly because I liked his vision of how to improve the country. I could have voted for McCain except for two things: instead of holding to his "maverick" principals, he sold his soul and veered right to win an election, and because his choice of VP was irresponsible. (And that isn't a dig on Palin- he made the decision without knowing anything about her except that she would get him votes. The choice of VP should be about, as macabre as it might be, who will be able to take the reins should the candidate become incapacitated, and I didn't feel that McCain took that decision seriously.)

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

[geekoid]

Socialists and capitalists are not opposites. Stop it, stop being stupid.

Socialist works BEST in a reasonable capitalistic environment.

Just because Lawful evil alignment exists mean you can't have a Lawful good alignments. Lawful still applies.
DO you see who you can have two separate things the come together to create a unique thing.

A DnD analogy? DAMN STRAIGHT.

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

[timeOday]

We'll use all the money we're saving with our socialized healthcare system.

It's funny you can say that without any irony, given that 100% of space exploration, ever, has been socialist (unless you have some narrower definition of "socialism" than "government funded," which judging by your healthcare comment, I don't think you do). Every moon landing, every probe to reach another planet or escape the solar system, every space telescope. All socialist.

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

[Curunir_wolf]

When on earth has the US actually cared how large the debt gets.

Before the US quit paying it back regularly or keeping it in check, essentially after the New Deal policies were put in place in the 1930s.

Actually it was later than that. The New Deal created the first set of "entitlements", the big one being Social Security. But they still paid attention to debts. The US ran up a pretty big debt (historically) during WW2, and made some major efforts to get that paid down, and it was.

The worst things happened during Johnson and Nixon. Johnson decided that since SS was bringing in so much money, they could spend it on anything they wanted to, and pay it back "later" (still hasn't happened, BTW). Nixon dropped the last of the gold backing for the US dollar, turning it into pure fiat money. Other countries expressed outrage over it, but they were so invested in dollars there wasn't much they could do.

And now that I think about it, it seems it was during the Reagan era that people started saying that "debt doesn't matter" at the Federal level. But back then it was quite a low percentage of GDP. I don't think they ever imagined it would grow so large that it would take 12% of revenues just to make the interest payments. And that's with interest rates at the lowest point ever.

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

[mcgrew]

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.

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

[tbannist]

California's problems have to do with a provision (a state constitutional amendment?) that any tax increase must be passed by referendum, but if the referendum fails, the program(s) the tax increase was supposed to pay for remain in effect. In theory, this should lead to a minimalist government, in practice it leads to unfunded programs. Because, as a group, the voters vote for the programs and against paying for them.

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

[Nadaka]

I do understand free markets and buying power. You do not.

The idea of the free market makes several assumptions that are not true in the real world and cause it to rapidly break down.

0: All trades are fair, and increase value for both participants. This is clearly not true.

1: There are no external costs. The cost of untreated pollution may be billions of dollars, the cost to clean it up may be hundreds of millions of dollars and the cost to not pollute in the first place may be 10s of millions of dollars. The problem is that taking the last option, the cheapest one internalizes the cost and puts the supplier at a disadvantage to those who ignore pollution completely. Then the second option can be avoided by arguing that someone else did it or that your contribution to it was miniscule. There are external and unaccounted for costs and regulation can minimize their impact and dramatically reduce risk.

2: All suppliers are completely honest. People are not honest, particularly when money is on the line. And corporations by definition are psychopathic.

3: All consumers are well informed. People often ignorant, poorly educated or believe in magical thinking.

4: Suppliers always compete, and do so fairly. Collusion exists, as does practices intended to destroy competitors.

5: There are no monopolies. Again, without regulation, monopolies tend to form due to a number of factors and monopolies are capable of making it impossible to purchase a necessity in a way that benefits you.

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

[Nadaka]

There is also, of course, the problem if your state slides more and more free market in the economy, destroys the environment, impoverishes millions of people, runs huge deficits from tax cuts, leaves people so uneducated they wouldn't recognize liberty or so unhealthy that they can't take advantage of liberty in the few cases someone doesn't manipulate the market to remove that liberty for profit.

It cuts both ways. Socialism done wrong is no worse than free market fanaticism done wrong.

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

[swalve]

From 1950 to 1980, we were paying it down quite nicely (as a percentage of GDP) because we had sane tax rates. Same thing again in the 90's. The debt is growing simply because of the Bush tax cuts. This chart here shows it. Here is another one. Notice how the only component of the deficits that is expanding is the Bush tax cuts.

I'm all for paying less in taxes. Who isn't? But you can't lower revenue before you lower spending (*). Even if "starve the beast" worked, you'd still be left with the old debt still on the books. To use the simplistic home budget analogy, if you are in debt and want to get out, you have to keep working overtime until the debt is paid off, not just until you can afford the minimum payments. You can't spend what you don't have, sure, but you also can't pretend that your past debts don't exist. You have to keep earning more than you need until the debt is paid off.

Also, not all federal debt is a bad thing. The Treasury needs to be able to issue temporary debt to keep the money flowing. You know who is the biggest holder of US debt? US citizens. A couple trillion of it is in Social Security holdings, and then there are the bonds held by citizens and businesses as savings. Further, if you look at it from a very macro level, the debt is a way for us to get our money back. Think about it: we buy foreign goods. They give us stuff, we give them dollars. They use those dollars to buy our stuff, and when they have bought all the stuff they can handle, they still have some dollars left over. They can't use dollars, so they give them back to us in exchange for pieces of paper (bonds). So the US has their stuff, AND we get our dollars back. They will only start reversing the flow when they need dollars for something, and that can really only be to buy more of our stuff. So we would STILL get our dollars back. It's not as bad as people make it out to be.

(*) And government spending doesn't just disappear. Every dollar they spend goes into someone's pocket. Some of it is "wasteful" in that it lines the pockets of the owners of the big contractors, but much of it goes into people's paychecks. Less spending means fewer jobs. Eventually, hopefully, that would work out as those laid off workers retrain and get other jobs. But the friction in that process means that in the meantime, there will be more people in the unemployment lines, and more people competing for a relatively fixed number of private sector jobs. Being more experienced means that they will probably get more of those jobs, meaning that the more entrenched jobless remain jobless, putting further pressure on social services, further dampening the "savings" of the lower spending. I don't know if it would even be break-even, budget-wise. Even if it was, they would be saving a little money to the detriment of many citizens. The time to reduce spending is not when unemployment is high.

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

[Vancorps]

That's pretty disingenuous given that he ultimately won the case and was acquitted by the senate. Be careful about revisionist history indeed. When you say someone needs to be brought up on charges and they are found not-guilty you don't typically view your actions as correct, in this way Gingrinch was wrong in saying that Clinton should be impeached for doing the same exact things as Gingrich himself at the time was doing.

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

[Nadaka]

Most of the free market fanaticism damage is nationwide and even global. For instance our recent recession caused by deregulation in the housing and banking industries and our current extremely meager recovery. Though I can certainly point to regional issues like the abandonment of Detroit and New Orleans.

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

[c 0xFF]

Technically, you're right. The actual charge of impeachment was for perjury and obstruction of justice. But there's more to the story than that.

What got the public up in arms to begin with was the affair. Gingrich took that fact and ran with it, leading the charge against Clinton. When Clinton was caught lying, that's when the charges were brought against him.

Mostly, the whole thing was a political maneuver of Republicans (lead by Gingrich) against Clinton. The action was so unpopular that Gingrich eventually resigned. But underlying it all was the affair, which makes Gingrich a hypocrite by any measure.

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

[RingDev]

ooh! Ohh! I'll play!!

Applied Socialism:
Public Schools
Public Roads
Public Police Force
Public Fire Departments

Applied unregulated freemarket Capitalism:
Ethiopia.

True Capitalism is just like true communism. Great in theory, horrible in practice. There is a healthy balance of taking elements from both theories. Taking the socialist approach to ensuring a safety net over which a capitalist driven system can opperate. Take out the safety net, and one mistake can have catostrophic results. Build too big of safety net, and the tightrope of capitalism will get tangled up in it.

And I think we can surmize, given the US's current level of social-capitalist involvement, as compared to the rest of the modern world (G7 and BRIC), that we are not anywhere remotely close to the excessively socialist side.

-Rick

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.

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

[jmac_the_man]

Gingrinch [sic] was wrong in saying that Clinton should be impeached for doing the same exact things as Gingrich himself at the time was doing. Gingrich was lying under oath? Or obstructing justice? Because THAT is what Clinton was impeached for.

By the way, Clinton WAS impeached. (Impeached roughly means "indicted by the House of Representatives, so that there will be a trial.") The Constitution says that the President can be removed from office by the Senate if he commits "high crimes or misdemeanors" and is impeached for them by the House. Gingrich said that Clinton should be brought up on charges because he felt that lying under oath is an example of a "high crime or a misdemeanor."

Also, Clinton was cited for contempt of court in connection with the original case. He was fined $90,000 and had his license to practice law suspended.

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

[asylumx]

Anywhere you want!

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

[RingDev]

Right! And all state/locally funded. Once the feds get involved, things tend to go downhill

So you're OK with Socialism, just not the US Federal governments involvement in socialism? If so, you should really make that more clear.

OK, but I could use N. Korea or the former Soviet Union as counter examples

Neither of which were ever true socialist states. They took a lot more socialist ideals, but the whole concept of socialism, or to the farthest reaches of true-communism, is that there is NO central authority. In reality, that never occurs. Someone will always take power, and typically the person most willing to do so is the person you least likely want to have it.

Power corrupts. When you make the government all powerful, which is necessary for true Socialism, corruption happens.

And the exact same thing can be said for the free markets. With out the stablising force of a strong government, a free market will eat itself and collapse. See the 1920's, 1980's, 2000's, and we'll probably see it again by the 2030's.

Some would say that's why we have the world's largest economy by far. We certainly have the most production per capita of any nation in history, and we are a lazy lot.

A rank that won't be ours for much longer. The BRIC countries are expanding at such a rate that by 2020 we will no longer hold either of those records.

-Rick

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

[StuartHankins]

I would chip in a few bucks to send Gingrich to the moon.

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

[s73v3r]

Except that just about every American has access to the technology and knowledge gathered through the Space Program.

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

[scot4875]

He didn't lie under oath.

a) He was testifying for something that he shouldn't have been testifying for to begin with.

b) He specifically asked the prosecutor to define sex. The prosecutor defined sex as not including blowjobs. Therefore, Clinton told the truth about not having had sex with Lewinsky; 100% true, and again, something he shouldn't have had to testify about to begin with.

c) The Republicans changed their definition of sex, in order for there to be *something* they could attempt impeachment over. Even with their millions of dollars worth of investigations, they uncovered NOTHING except some bullshit "lie" that was completely irrelevant to everything to begin with..

Fast forward to today and we still have morons who don't know what happened and try to play this bullshit "Clinton lied!" card. And even if he had lied, so fucking what? I'll say it one more time: it was about something that was nobody else's business to begin with. It wasn't about his finances. It wasn't about how the country was being run. It wasn't about anything relevant to his presidency or his previous career. It was about where he put his dick.

Personally, I'd rather have controversy over a stain on a blue dress than (for instance) controversy over whether or not our soldiers tortured people half way around the world, but then I guess my priorities are too fucked up to be a Republican.

--Jeremy

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

[KingSkippus]

That's bullshit all around and you know it.

Clinton was brought in to testify under the pretense that the questions were going to be about the so-called Whitewater scandal. Once he got there, he was ambushed, plain and simple, with questions that had absolutely NOTHING to do with Whitewater. Clinton KNEW--and he was 100% right--that although the testimony was supposed to be closed, the Republicans would leak it. The Republicans looked at this testimony as a carte blanche opportunity to get the President of the United States under oath and ask him any damn sordid question they wanted for the express purpose of embarrassing him and undermining his authority.

Now, keeping all of this in mind, that this inquiry was supposed to be about Whitewater and ONLY Whitewater, watch a snippet of the questioning and you tell me what the hell is going on there. Did he lie? Hell yeah, he did. And you know what? I don't blame him. I would have, too. Did Clinton screw up? Yes. But what he did was beans compared to the absolutely disgusting actions the Republicans took here.

So let's just say for fun that Newt Gingrich gets elected in November. As a Democrat who desperately doesn't want him to have a second term, I trump up some bogus charge against him. Doesn't matter what it is, just make shit up because the end goal isn't conviction. Get him into a room with a camera recording the "closed" proceedings when everyone in the room damn well knows that tomorrow afternoon, it will be posted on the Internet for everyone to see. Then start asking him extremely personal questions about leaving his first wife after she was diagnosed with cancer and his second wife after she was diagnosed with MS. The more sensationalistic, the more slimy, the better. Trust me on this, Newt Gingrich has WAY more skeletons in his closet than a tawdry little fling with an intern. The questions that are asked have NOTHING to do with the trumped up charges against him; they are specifically designed to politically smear him.

Would you still go with your "connivance of his foes" argument? Because I think that the shit people are giving him already about his personal life is disgusting. Do you still think he should be removed from office when he was so obviously set up? I don't, and I'm a Democrat. Everyone that was involved in that slimy plan should have been tried and convicted of prosecutorial misconduct. In a normal courtroom, a judge could squelch such questions because they're completely irrelevant to the case at hand. In this case, the power of the Independent Council was grossly misused.

As for removing him from office, that's a no-brainer. You tell me what the fuck lying about an affair that had NOTHING to do with the case at hand and in which NO ONE was hurt or injured in any way (barring emotional distress, undoubtedly) ranks as a high crime or misdemeanor. Anyone who claims that it is a high crime or misdemeanor isn't being rational or objective; they have an ax to grind, period, end of story. It's only idiotic Republicans like you who try to conflate what he did with "eating human babies," and it reflect more badly on you than on Clinton--as evidenced by his re-election in 1996 AFTER this scandal ran its course.

New Secret Service Code Name

[Gallenod]

Newt Gingrich's new Secret Service code name:

          MOONBAT ALPHA

So did George Bush Jr

[tp1024]

GWB set up a program that he knew he couldn't finance and thus put all the expenses on whoever would come after him. Of course, this didn't stop them from handing out heaps of money for useless non-development - like $450,000,000 dollars for the "Ares-1x" - an ordinary surplus shuttle booster with a mockup stage strapped on top of it, that didn't even manage to separate properly and couldn't tell anything about the flight characteristics of the real Ares-1 (with a longer 5-segment booster) anyway. For comparison: the cost of that flight was more than two full flights of the Ariane-5.

Re:So did George Bush Jr

[jo_ham]

Still didn't go far enough. He should have just fallen on his sword an "died on [the] hill" of universal healthcare to get it through. The US desperately needs a European-style healthcare system. Obama should have just taken the political suicide and forced it through by any means necessary.

The satisfaction in knowing he was right, and the realisation of everyone who opposed it after a couple of years of it running will make up for it.

Imagine a world where people were free to change jobs and pursue their (american) dream because they're not trapped by healthcare in their 9-5 (and cannot afford to go it alone). Imagine a world where people don't go bankrupt and drop out of the working population in the long term due to getting a serious illness. Imagine a world where you actually get the treatment or tests the doctor prescribes you, rather than what the non-medically-trained insurance company bean counters think is "more than adequate" for you ("oh, your doctor says to monitor your blood sugar 4 times a day?! pff! what does he know? We will only cover you for two tests per day" [hi, person that I know personally!]).

No need to imagine it - it's every developed country except the US.

Gingrich's real plan

[dkleinsc]

After building a base on the moon, he will point a giant "laser" at the Earth, and threaten the rest of the world with annihilating a major city every day unless the world pays the US (evil pinky finger) $10.5 trillion. Then he will use that money to pay off the national debt (except that which is owed to Social Security), and thus balance the budget.

Of course, the whole thing will be stopped when a spy with bad teeth shows up.

Back to the future

[PhaseChange]

"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.

Re:Back to the future

[realityimpaired]

And that was done. By the Russians.

Re:Back to the future

[BeardedChimp]

And building a moon base will be done by the Chinese.

Bigger governmnet

[roman_mir]

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".

Nutcase

[RazzleFrog]

It amazes me that anybody is still taking him seriously - let alone voting for him in these primaries.

Re:Nutcase

[SgtChaireBourne]

Here is a pretty good video of how he has gained ground.

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.

It's an election, remember.

[MetricT]

Gingrich said this in Florida, a few weeks before the Floriday primary. Newt needs a win here to cement his momentum, because if Romney wins it's a serious blow to his candidacy. Because of that, I expect him to spend the next couple of weeks telling voters any outlandish fantasy it takes to get elected, up to and including telling people in Miami he'll invade Cuba and kill Castro.

of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Floridians are promised a moon base right before primary night. Texans will be promised their independence. Arizonians will be promised a border fence. Pennsylvania will be promised a revitalized steel industry. The grain belt will be promised increased access to foreign markets for meat, milk, and grain. Alaska will get more wells AND greater environmental protections at the same time. So will Ohio. Such is the power of American ingenuity. We will have the largest economy, the largest and best equipped army, the healthiest economy, the best education, equal opportunity for everyone, but no limit on personal wealth and power. Anyone can have a gun, and we will be the safest nation on earth.

Meanwhile, opponents will be defined by their positions on controversial hot-button but trivial issues of no national consequence whatsoever.

Could be almost any politician's platform; except that Newt is an exemplary example of how extreme such cynical manipulation of the electorate can go. He truly holds the citizens of this country in contempt; no one sees the world as clearly as he does; no one possesses such incisive insight. He will do or say anything to get elected. In short he is a psychopath.

Alarmingly, that seems to be what an inexplicably large proportion of the population wants right now. It's a scary time to be an American.

When did he become a democrat?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Government undertaking grandiose projects, be it man on moon, be it universal healthcare, be it war on poverty, are all typically Democratic thinking. The Republicans usually slant towards free markets, low deficits, small government etc. In moderation both sides have good ideas. When ideas from either party are taken to the extremes, it becomes grotesque. Suddenly because Floridians think they will benefit by the revival of government spending on space research, he is pandering to them. Such pandering is the bane of democracy.

Re:When did he become a democrat?

[roman_mir]

When did he become a democrat?

- better question is: "what the hell happened to the conservatives in US that they think Republicans are conservatives?"

It's not Small Potatoes

[NReitzel]

Going back to the moon is not small potatoes, by any measure.

The pessimistic case, it's done by Government, will cost a fortune and get us what, a publicity stunt? Worse, NASA will take it seriously, develop extensive plans for what we really ought to do, and then as soon as the publicity wears off, cancel everything at even more cost. 1972, deja vu.

In the what-should-be-done vein, we (humans) need to go to the moon, plant a base, and then develop that base into an industrial economy in its own right. This means that we will need to find resources on the moon, develop them, and aim for a self-sustaining colony.

No politician will ever support this, because the time frame of such a project is fifty years, or a hundred years. Where's the electability in that? What political force in the US could ever conceive of something that didn't pay off in the current election cycle? What money manager would invest hard cash in a project that was two hundred quarters out? Nobody I know.

China, maybe. They are not (yet) governed by short sighted kapitalists (sic) or even more short sighted politicians.

USA has 11 aircraft carriers

[Taco Cowboy]

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

Re:USA has 11 aircraft carriers

[CrimsonAvenger]

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

Unlikely. Several carriers are in the yards at any given time.

So, 9 or 10 carriers means six to eight available at any given moment. One in the Med, one in the Indian Ocean, a couple in the Pacific, one in the Atlantic is about minimum.

And that assumes that the operational carriers are at sea basically 100% of the time. With no time for transit to duty stations.

So unless you're good with the notion that the carrier battle group in the western pacific or the med or the Indian Ocean NEVER gets to come home, and the sailors on same never get to see families for their entire enlistment, it won't happen.

That said, there is NO chance of a moon base by 2020. Even if Gingrich got behind for real (promising space activity in Florida campaign speeches is normal - every President since Kennedy has done it, including Obama), there isn't time to develop the heavy-lift capability, much less actually move hardware to the moon - we're actually behind where we were in 1962 right now, in that we're not even in working on a heavy lift vehicle yet....

Re:USA has 11 aircraft carriers

[jo_ham]

Don;t need to mothball a carrier to do that. Just repeal the Bush Era tax cuts. 2 trillion right there.

Won't even hurt anyone in the bottom 90%. Then you can look at mothballing carriers and looking at social security reform etc.

Re:USA has 11 aircraft carriers

[Shotgun]

Ummh? Ron Paul?

Of course, the corporate media is doing the best they can to ignore him, and getting absolutely frantic when he makes a good showing...almost EXCLUSIVELY because he talks about military cuts.

Re:USA has 11 aircraft carriers

[tbannist]

They're very relevant. Ending the Bush tax cuts would cut the deficit to less than half of what it is, and given the current activities of the "job creators" whom it would effect, it would have next to no impact on the economy. They're not spending that money creating jobs. Do you know what they're doing with that money? They're loaning it back to the government and charging interest on the loan. That's exactly how stupid the Bush tax cuts are.

Re:USA has 11 aircraft carriers

[SteveFoerster]

And yet amazingly, there are plenty of countries that make it through each day without any carrier groups at all!

Re:USA has 11 aircraft carriers

[Just Some Guy]

When did Paul advocate eliminating the military? Look, I'm a vet. I'm very much for having a strong national defense. There is no credible way in which you could describe me as anti-military. But we spend 78% percent as much as the rest of the world combined ($687B for America vs $876B total for everyone else). Do we have to? I mean, could we reduce that to just outspending China, France, UK, Russia, Japan, Germany, and Saudia Arabia combined ($426.8B)? That'd save $260B from the budget each year while still giving us a stronger military than the next 7 put together. Can we call that good enough?

He's not serious

[XxtraLarGe]

Gingrich has no serious plans about building a moon base. He's just pandering to Floridians to get their votes. You can rest assured that after Florida is done, he'll drop it like a bad habit.

Speaking of going to the Moon

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Coincidentally today is NASA's day of remembrance for all those who lost their lives during the pursuit of space.

Tomorrow (Jan 27) marks the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire that killed Command Pilot Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Edward H. White and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee.

Saturday (Jan 28) marks the 26th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster that killed Greg Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka Judith Resnik, Michael J. Smith and Dick Scobee.

Next Wednesday (Feb 1) marks the 9 anniversary of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster that killed Rick D. Husband, William McCool, Michael P. Anderson, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel B. Clark, and Ilan Ramon.

Also the following were killed during astronaut training: Theodore Freeman, Elliot See, Charles Bassett, Clifton "C.C." Williams, and Robert Lawrence.

The following are were killed during space flight or cosmonaut training: Vladimir Komarov, Georgi Dobrovolski, Viktor Patsayev, Vladislav Volkov, Valentin Bondarenko, Yuri Gagarin, and Sergei Vozovikov.

Space Elevator

[Curunir_wolf]

If Gingrich was anything close to a "visionary", he'd be talking space elevator, not moon bases.

What he is, is a liar that will say anything to gain power for himself, and that's quite clear from his history. The American voter has a very short memory, though, which is why these tyrants keep coming back even after leaving in disgrace.