Posted on 01/26/2012 7:36:33 AM PST by The_Victor
The United States will have a permanent manned colony on the moon by 2020 if Newt Gingrich is in charge, the Republican presidential hopeful announced today (Jan. 25).
Gingrich laid out this goal during a speech in the city of Cocoa, on Florida's Space Coast. He also said that near-Earth space would be bustling with commercial activity by 2020, and that America would possess a next-generation propulsion system by then, allowing the nation to get astronauts to Mars quickly and efficiently.
"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American," Gingrich said.
The former Speaker of the House made no apologies for the boldness of his amibitions, which depend primarily on the emergence of a vibrant commercial spaceflight industry. He said the U.S. space program needs a kick in the pants like the one President John F. Kennedy gave it in 1961, when he promised to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
And - when liberals take over the whole planet, we have somewhere to escape to.
A rail gun on the moon could fire cargo pallets of valuable metals back to earth for very little money.
Getting there the first time is the expensive part. With the moon’s light gravity and no atmosphere, a solar powered rail gun would become just another basic piece of industrial hardware.
Fire the pallets into Low Earth Orbit to be collected by an autonomous tug for a consolidated delivery package. Have the rail gun send an ablative heat shield made from moon rock to protect the cargo during entry into the earth’s atmosphere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBQHtF3WhMw
Earth and Moon Gravity Well Comparison
“I thought the federal government building the US railway system to open the west was a very good one.”
The transcontinental railway did not open up the west. There was a gold rush going on in California at the time. By 1861 over 300,000 people had arrived in the state.
General Ulysses S. Grant-”I do not know what we would do in this great national emergency [Civil War] were it not for the gold sent from California.”
I excitedly posted his Cocoa speech on an astronomy forum I frequent and they removed it after reportedly negative replies. I was asleep so I didn’t see the replies before they removed it, so I guess I have to take their word for it.
The comments at the end of the Space.com article on Newt were overwhelmingly negative.
What the heck is up with all these eggheads?
The science is not settled on global warming or evolution, but I bet these are the types who believe it.
Do THAT and we actually WILL have a space program...with factories in space, colonization, interplanetary economies, the whole lot. Until then, it's a very noble but very expensive pursuit.
http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/prize-details
The Google Lunar X PRIZE is igniting a new era of lunar exploration by offering the largest international incentive prize of all time. A total of $30 million in prizes are available to the first privately funded teams to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, have that robot travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send video, images and data back to the Earth. Teams must be at least 90% privately funded, though commercially reasonable sales to government customers are allowed without limit.
Does the Constitution recognize the right to abortion, as the Supreme Court held in Roe v Wade and has reaffirmed in a number of subsequent rulings?
Sadly, I agree. However, all that a properly run government does is a waste of resources: courts to punish criminal activity and settle private disputes, and military spending for attacks that rarely come.
The question is, then: what is justifiable waste? A moon base for 'scientific' or 'jobs' purposes, no. Stopping a Chinese orbital missile base, yes. This is why the Constitution permits Army and Navy spending, but not scientific spending (not that anyone notices that, anymore).
If Newt can keep U.S. rocket/missile technology ahead of China's, then I think that "giant waste of resources" is actually well spent.
We can’t even make a rail gun work reliably here on earth. And more to the point what valuable metals? The astronauts didn’t see any valuable metals lying around on the lunar surface. They found rocks and dirt very similar to what you’d find in Hawaii. Nothing that you’d get anything valuable from
I'm trying to figure out why the Chinese would base missiles a quarter of a million miles away from the us giving a couple of days flight time when they can put them in boomers 50 miles off the coast.
I agree. Obviously, the solution is to build a post road from Moon Base Alpha to Moon Base Beta. Now that the constitutionality is out of the way, what's your real objection?
Come back when you want a serious discussion.
YES!!! I think this will answer everybody's objections.
That authorizes the road - but not the bases.
LLS
I've heard that it is the final frontier.
It makes no short-term sense, true. Our spending should reflect the greater threat. That doesn't mean that the Chinese aren't planing to do it eventually; they make very long-term plans. Is Newt over-enthusiastic? Yes. Is it also a ploy to get aerospace worker votes? Yes.
It doesn't mean that NO public money should go toward it.
“Railgun” should read “Linear Motor”, the broader category that includes railgun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_motor
Common lunar minerals
Calcium (Ca)
Aluminium (Al)
Iron (Fe),
Magnesium (Mg)
Silicon (Si)
Titanium (Ti)
Oxygen (O)
The value of these is that they are common industrial raw materials and they are NOT at the bottom of the earth’s gravity well. They may be used to fabricate space vehicles & habitat without having to pay the HUGE cost for the freight elevator ride up out of Earth’s enormous (relative to the Moon’s) gravity well.
Aha! Post Offices!
More seriously, I'm just objecting to the knee-jerk "it's unconstitutional!" that people have when they don't like a policy. Just because something's a bad idea doesn't mean it's unconstitutional.
Honestly, moon bases are more constitutional than, say, Medicare or Social Security.
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