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]

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??

[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??

[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??

[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??

[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??

[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??

[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??

[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??

[StuartHankins]

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

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: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.

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.

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....