I was nauseated when Newt Gingrich did the infamous global warming ad with Nancy Pelosi.
I was disgusted when he criticized Paul Ryan’s entitlement reforms.
But I’m not sure what my reaction is to Newt’s latest brain fart. For lack of anything clever, let’s just say I’m bemused by his proposed galactic boondoggle.
Here are some of the absurd details for a Politico report.
Newt Gingrich wants to colonize the moon. …“By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American,” Gingrich said… It’s just the kind of Gingrich big-think for which he has been ridiculed by others in the GOP field, including Mitt Romney. But Wednesday’s speech — which Gingrich himself called “grandiose” — could actually resonate politically in Florida, where space exploration is good politics… Gingrich even envisions a moon state. “When we have 13,000 Americans living on the moon, they can petition to become a state,” he said, drawing laughter from the crowd. …But Gingrich’s space fantasies don’t stop at the moon. He wants to see trips to Mars by 2020. “By the end of 2020, we will have the first continuous propulsion system in space capable of getting to Mars in a remarkably short time because I am sick of being told we have to be timid and I am sick of being told we have to be limited in technologies that are 50 years old,” he said.
But I’m not just bemused. To use Newt’s rhetoric, I am sick of politicians coming up with new ways to spend my money and I am sick of being told by the clowns in Washington that my wallet is a pinata to fund their grandiose dreams.
If Newt likes space travel and wants a base on the moon and trips to Mars, then he should take some of the money he “earned” as Freddie Mac’s “historian” and invest it in a space company.
About 10 days ago, I was in the British Virgin Islands, speaking at a conference that was keynoted by Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin empire. Branson is doing what Newt wants, but in an ethical fashion. He’s using private money to set up a profit-making space-travel business.
Too bad politics and ethics are mutually exclusive concepts.
You might want to finish your last sentence. Or maybe not.
All the private investment in the world is impotent if the legal framework remains what it is. And frankly we already have the investment. Remember the 0.8 billion plopped into Kistler? Newt does what he has to do, and I thank him for that. I also thank Obama for his courageous attempt to reform NASA in the way Bush did not even imagine possible. Of course with Obama being a mediocore flak, the reform failed in a predictable way, and the hideous waste of taxpayer money called “Constellation” has reconstituted itself as SLS and MPCV with the help of senators, whom Obama definitely should have beaten. It was his task as a polititian and he failed. I am going to watch Newt as he battles old porksters in Congress – or not. But if he succeeds, he’s going to do more for space — and ultimately the cause of liberty — than if he spent every cent of this fortune on a space startup.
Of course if Newt ends raising NASA budget instead, that is going to be a major bummer, a move befit a DC insider who forgot why “Conract with America” failed. However, Instapundit has some links to Newt’s old legislative proposals in this area. They weren’t so bad. You may do well to examine those instead of going half-cocked based on media reports.
Very good.
Newt is simply another big government hack. He is cut from the same cloth as Romney, Santorum and the rest. NASA or any other government entity will always have the problem of the pork barrel. Why is was mission control in Houston, JPL in Pasadena, and the rockets launched from Florida? So that everyone could get a piece of the pie! Free enterprise, and I mean TRULY FREE enterprise will always find a solution to the given problem faster and more efficiently than government. I have always supported space travel and I wept when Armstrong made his first footprint, but look at where we went from there. Nowhere! We had a “space truck” which was anything but. We have had one new plan after another which was cancelled in favor of the next newest and best plan. Today the list of cancelled programs and failures far exceeds the successes.
The bottom line is that we are BROKE. Yet everyone says “cut the other guy, mine is sacred”.
That is the road to collapse.
Hey Dan I’m a big fan and I believe you missed the big picture here. On the space program he was probably speaking euphemistically, you know bring back the sense of wonder in the Kennedy years. Second one our our major lines of defense will be laser based platforms in space that can detect and kill an ICBM during launch and potentially drop its payload on the aggressor. Obama has all but killed the Space Program.
What was Ryan’s plan but more government social engineering, it was well intended and has been accepted as the way forward. Newt has said a number of things that people don’t agree with, but as an Academic from CATO who better to appreciate the brilliance of News understanding of U.S., World, and Military History. Romney is a fraud, Obama light if you will. There is no way Obama can beat Newt in a debate. Thanks for your input, just think you overreached on this one, I’m J.C.
Oh right, and Ron Paul is the loon …
After launching taxes into hyperbolic orbit to create a moon colony, anyone living there would gladly declare independence. If Newt thinks they’d want to sign up for extra terrestrial taxes he’s got regolith in his head.
Amazing though. You can put a man on the moon, but still can’t explain how a guy who sucks hard vacuum can generate enough CO2 in ten seconds to clog every scrubber on Apollo 13.
Ironman try paying attention to what Newt said about the Space program. Like the Aussies, but you are making a clueless comment friend. J.C.
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