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 ...
In your dreams liberal.
Granted, this won't happen in our lifetimes and probably won't for many more generations to come. But if we are ever to get to that point, we have to start taking baby steps. It took hundreds of years for the Europeans to start pushing ships across the ocean to North America but once that happened, things started to develop much more rapidly.
Let's take a baby step toward respecting the Constitutional limitations on federal power.
>Therefore the federal government does not have that power; read the Tenth Amendment.
Read Article II Section 2 Clause 2. The Louisiana Purchase was also a treaty.
>The military is authorized by the Constitution. Have you ever read it?
Sorry, due to the vacuousness of your statement, I assumed you meant refraining from all spending.
“...we have to start taking baby steps...”
The first step is paying for it. Will you vote for raising taxes? Or do think we should borrow more money that future generations will be paying the interest on?
Read Article II Section 2 Clause 2. The Louisiana Purchase was also a treaty.
Who would we be making a treaty with as part of colonizing the moon?
I guess destroying entrepreneurial spirit is conservative.
You think refraining from spending taxpayer money is “destroying entrepreneurial spirit”? Have the decency to not call yourself a conservative.
Fine, let’s fire everyone in the military. Smart.
The military is authorized by the Constitution. Have you ever read it?
Sorry, due to the vacuousness of your statement, I assumed you meant refraining from all spending.
What's vacuous is your identification of not spending taxpayer dollars on a moon base as "destroying entrepreneurial spirit."
>>>Nothing is stopping you and your like minded citizens from forming a corporation WITH YOUR OWN MONEY and exploring space to your heart’s content. My problem is not with space exploration per se, but with the people who think that they shoudl rob their fellow taxpayers to do it. Bad enough to be robbed to support some a$$hole welfare recipient who made a lifetime of bad choices, but then supporting a bunch of engineers and PhDs who could actually earn a living seems even more excessive.
The problem is that countries pay others to do exploration, and then the companies follow - as it has always been. Who paid Columbus? Who paid Lewis and Clark? Who made the space station? After foothold has been established, then comes the companies.
>>Lewis and Clark were paid by TAXPAYER DOLLARS.
>So what? You think the space program is in any way analogous to L&C? Ha ha.
Very much so. I’m sure Lewis and Clark’s discovery of Yellowstone was analogous to Armstrong’s first step on the moon - it was all a discovery and a foothold for people to later follow.
>>Undoubtedly. In fact it has happened before, and appears to happen on average ever couple of hundred million years, but look there is still life on the planet, and who is to say that the vast wealth required to explore space would not be better survive a disaster right here. There are much more likely catastrophes than a meteor strike. (like a second 0 term)
I am in total agreement about the second Obama term. However, a devastating meteor strike, a spread of modified bird flu, or any other disaster necessitates another family at other places to carry on.
What I think we should do is eliminate government transfer payments such as welfare and food stamps and use that money for space exploration. A mission to Mars is much worthier than supplying Doritos and malt liquor to layabouts.
What I think we should do is eliminate government transfer payments such as welfare and food stamps and use that money for leaving in the wallets of the people who earned it.
You may have heard of this - it's called conservatism.
>>Who would we be making a treaty with as part of colonizing the moon?
So back to my original point which was INVESTING in new territory. The Louisiana Purchase was that investment. I’m glad you agree with my analysis of the Constitution.
>>What’s vacuous is your identification of not spending taxpayer dollars on a moon base as “destroying entrepreneurial spirit.”
In another post, I stated that even Lewis and Clark were paid for by taxpayer dollars. The people and companies followed. The government frequently pays people to put their lives on the line, whether explorers or the military. Space is a frontier, just like the frontier that was the American West only 200 years ago.
A moon base? What a colossal waste of taxpayer money. And, Mars? Seriously?
When it comes to big government spending, some so-called “conservatives” wet their pants with glee whenever anyone suggests throwing taxpayer dollars into space, especially manned space exploration. There’s no valid reason for it.
Let the private sector do it. The armchair Captain Kirks among us are free to finance their own pipe dreams and hobbies.
(By the way, unless you honestly believe “Go forth and multiply” was intended to extend beyond Earth, spare me the strawman arguments, mm-kay? This planet is more than adequate to support all of humankind.)
The only Constitutional basis you've offered for that is treaty-making - which doesn't apply to space.
“What I think we should do is eliminate government transfer payments such as welfare and food stamps and use that money for space exploration. A mission to Mars is much worthier than supplying Doritos and malt liquor to layabouts.”
see post #169
I’d rather pay off my mortgage than pay interest on more debt.
It is a nice idea, but how are we going to pay for it?
We have no money.
On this we will NEVER be in agreement. I keep coming back to the inflation adjusted cost of returning anything from the moon, and of course the fact that the moon consists of unremarkable (from a resource viewpoint)rocks and dirt. You can get rocks and dirt without paying $4.5 million an ounce for it.
that countries pay others to do exploration, and then the
SO let the Chinese screw up their economy to do it, and then follow them. They're currently more capitalistic than we are, so I'm sure they would not be adverse to foreign investment if there were anything worth investing in to be found there.
Meteor strike
If the dinosaurs had technology, then they probably would have survived without leaving the planet. There have been volcanically induced "summerless" years in the past, and humanity survived.
“The Ansari X Prize was a space competition in which the X Prize Foundation offered a US$10,000,000 prize for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. It was modeled after early 20th-century aviation prizes, and aimed to spur development of low-cost spaceflight.
Created in May 1996 and initially called just the “X Prize”, it was renamed the “Ansari X Prize” on May 6, 2004 following a multi-million dollar donation from entrepreneurs Anousheh Ansari and Amir Ansari.
The prize was won on October 4, 2004, the 47th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch, by the Tier One project designed by Burt Rutan and financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, using the experimental spaceplane SpaceShipOne. $10 million was awarded to the winner, but more than $100 million was invested in new technologies in pursuit of the prize.
Several other X Prizes have since been announced by the X Prize Foundation, promoting further development in space exploration and other technological fields.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansari_X_Prize
IIRC, the X-Prize Foundation bought an insurance policy from Lloyds against the prize being won. The premium was $1 million, the payout was $10 million. I doubt that Lloyds would issue another policy like that!
See also:
100% agreement from me. What I don't get is how someone can think they're a conservative when they call for the government to tax and spend on their pet project. They're no different in action than the black democrats calling for "reparations for slavery." They both fervently believe that their pet project is worth robbing their fellow citizens to support. A true conservative believes that the role of government is to defend freedom, not transfer wealth.
Mars isn’t 0 G, it has gravity at 38% of Earth’s, in fact. We don’t know one way or another how humans handle partial gravity.
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