I must be missing something. If the point of spending loads of money is to "create jobs", why not just hire those ten million people to dig holes and fill them back up again? Is there a point to the goal? Or is it the same as all the millions of dollars Obama spent creating jobs in solar power and electric vehicles?
The mission to land men on the moon in the 60's made sense. We needed to spend the money developing the technical ability to spy on the Soviets from space and to rain nuclear warheads down on their heads, without coming out and saying that that was what we were doing.
Unless there is some tangible point to Newt's moonbase project, it doesn't make any more sense to me than any spendthrift racking up gobs of debt on his credit cards buying pointless stuff just for the thrill of spending. I guess the one difference is that, like with all government projects, they get to have fun spending other people's money instead of their own.
Real Americans thrived on pioneer spirit. People have flocked to frontiers throughout history. We have been nanny stated and without frontiers for too long.
When the going gets rough, the rough go somewhere easier. Exploiting lunar resources and a climate of pro business there would breath new life into our economy.
Make incentives for private sector investment and we could be booming again. I for one would envy the chance to go there.
The moon is full of minerals, helium and many other vital things that we need and can use. Anybody who gets up there is going to be making a fortune, and it’s also going to be the stepping stone to the other planets in our solar system, some of which probably also have exploitable resources.
Will some people go bust on it? Of course. They did in the opening of the West, too. But that was what put us over the top, and opening the moon to commerce and development might be the thing that puts us over the top in this century. And, like everything from the Gold Rush to the railroads, it will be private...with the government doing its sole job, which is to provide security, encouragement and the stable environment in which things can happen.
The tangible point to Newt’s proposal is that this Nation has too many people sitting around doing nothing. NO JOBS.
The Chief Executive sets the vision and strategy and surrounds himself with smart people that will execute that vision.
Imagine the entire USA focused on having a base on the moon by 2020.
Wonder what the expected benefit was to those Polynesian Islanders who struck out into the Pacific in wooden sail boats just to figure out how come the waves looked different at different times of the year???
What is the single NATIONAL PROJECT we have today that our young men and women look to aspire to work on? Infrastructure Building?
G
There are vast rare metal deposits on the moon and the planets waiting to be developed. The Chinese have plans to develop these resources on the moon as well as establish a military presence there (think huge missile platform 240,000 miles from earth).
I listened to the speech Newt gave on this issue. He is not proposing some new big spending project. In fact he spent a good part of the speech pointing out that Government does not handle development of technology as well as the private sector.
Using examples such as the Wright Brothers. He said to take a small part of the Budget for some prizes to let the American people/enterprise develop the technology that would be necessary, and also a way to keep our technology ahead of China/Russia.
When Kennedy announced goal of going to the moon. People all over the USA had the same reaction I am hearing today. How stupid. What a waste of money. Yet from a national security stand point, it would have been disastrous to have done otherwise.