Actually, although Wallace did have his friendly face on instead of the sneer he used with Perry, he did not, himself call Newt zany.
Rather, he said to Mitt, “You’ve called Gingrich zany and so on ...” which gave Mitt the chance to explain how Newt wants to bounce light off of satellites to light the streets, etc.
I never heard that particular idea but Newt does have flights of fancy. That’s not entirely a bad thing as long as he stays focused on important stuff and doesn’t dream about taking role electronically when he should be fighting Obamacare.
I left after that.
Mitt actually took valuable time to mention that dig at Newt??
Newt described the mirrors-in-space idea in a futurist type of book that he wrote 27 years ago. He was reciting a list of proposals by participants at a NASA-sponsored brainstorming conference.
Some of the futuristic ideas Newt mentioned in that book have come to pass. Some have not. That is the nature of futuristic ideas.
There is no evidence to suggest that Newt has mentioned that idea since.
I think it's a safe bet to conclude that Newt's cite of that idea 27 years ago (lol) is not any indication that it would be part of his current day policy "focus".
However Mitt's lack of focus on current day policy, given his 27 years old deceptively framed cite of a Newt book passage, seems to be a problem.