Newt Gingrich wants Moon to be 51st US state Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich is telling the people of Florida about his plans for a permanent base on the Moon, and suggesting it may be possible for the satellite to become the 51st US state. "By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the Moon, and it will be American," he told supporters at …
Newt GinGRINCH makes Ron Paul look totally sane... My question is... how does Newtie propose to pay for this 51st state idea and the rockets to Mars? I suppose he'll propose additional tax breaks to the 1%, and eliminate Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance... in other words destroy any remaining vestiges of the safety net for the weakest of the weak, and the poorest of the poor.
/political rant
Nukyular explosion... The RepubliCANT plan for the 99%...
If you'd read the article, you'd have seen that he plans to offer prizes. The neat thing about a prize is that it doesn't cost the government one red cent unless somebody wins it. And, if you'll look at history, you'll see that offering prizes has a long, successful history. Charles II offered a prize of ten pounds of gold to the first person to work out a practical way to deturmine the longitude of a ship at set, and paid it to the inventor of the first chronometer. Charles Lindburg made his flight to win a prize, and there have been many other examples.
"I suppose he'll propose additional tax breaks to the 1%, and eliminate Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance... in other words destroy any remaining vestiges of the safety net for the weakest of the weak, and the poorest of the poor."
Social Security doesn't need to be eliminated, it needs to be phased out. Most people (especially younger ones) would be better off investing that 13.4% of their paycheck instead of hoping the government will be able to honor that debt when the time comes. Social security is one of the biggest farces ever pawned off on us as a "good idea". That said, people that built their retirement around it should not be cut off, the debt must be honored for all.
Most people don't mind reasonable medicare and unemployment insurance too, but you'll have to excuse me for thinking that TWO YEARS is a little long for unemployment. I was on it, I know people on it, and right now it is thought of as a paid vacation more than anything else. It's purpose is to keep the ship from sinking while you find a new job, and it is failing MISERABLY at that right now.
As far as the weakest of the weak, the poorest of the poor... Excuse me for not really caring. I work, I bust my hump to put food on the table and a roof over my family, and I don't need a bunch of bleeding heart twats making me feel bad for expecting everyone else to do the same. People are where they are due to decisions they make, and those decisions were nobody's but their own.
When I lost my job, we had just had a kid and had no money... BUT because I had been working up to that point, we didn't qualify for ANY help. Those social programs you tout don't help people who are "down on their luck", they help people who have never done the right thing in life EVER. People like that don't deserve my pity, help, or tax dollars.
As far as I knew the 51st State was a rave drug. "POS 51, a synthetic drug that can be produced with minimal facilities, is 51 times as potent as ecstacy, opiates, amphetamines, and cocaine". Samuel L. Jackson made it and helped Robert Carlyle get tot he Liverpool v Mancs game (Liverpool won).
If Newt's riding the rocket, I've got $20 to kick in toward the fuel.
Americans in middle age or older may remember the one-term senator Harrison Schmitt, who had been to the moon with Apollo 17. He was not an engaging speaker, as I recall, but as a geologist he had realistic notions of the economic prospects of moon colonization--one needs to distinguish "mineral" from "ore", he said. But maybe he was too tied to 50-year-old technologies.
Maybe we could get enough people to kick in for fuel so that we can get Newt's ride to the point where it breaks free of the Earth's gravity well, and not quite to the point where the Moon's gravity well takes hold, and in that brief moment, the rocket will turn and fall into the Sun... If we can do that, put all the other RepubliCANTs in there for a ride too... and all the Tea Party Troglodytes...
Wine o'clock somewhere, and I need a Magnum or two to celebrate that thought...
Newt really shouldn't be a Tea Party darling. I have no idea if he is or not, but his political history SHOULD make him about the last canidate in the world for a Tea Party endorsement. That man's had his hand on more pork barrel bills than any two other people who are or were in the race.
I for one was extremely upset by the retirement of the U.S. Space Shuttle without a viable replacement reusable orbiter already developed, tested, and sitting on a Cape Canaveral launch pad ready to go, but there is a big difference between rallying for the restarting of the U.S. manned space program and *this.* I am all for being optimistic, but how can Newt possibly think that the U.S. could ever be able to even get to the moon in 8-years let alone have a permanent base located there after NASA has already been slashed, burned, and gutted so badly and our national budget deficit is so high that we have no money left to fund such an endeavor? Private enterprises aren't going to fund such a venture unless there is some serious money to be made to make up for all of the risk involved, and I seriously doubt that the materials that the moon happens to be made of is worth that kind of investment and uncertainty from a business standpoint. Either Newt is completely out of his mind, or he is really trying to blow some serious smoke up the asses of out-of-work Florida voters.
As an American, I am pretty embarrassed by both Newt and the impression that he is giving to the rest of the world right now with these kind of statements.
Of course Newtie doesn't have a viable way to pay for it... He plans to pay for the New NASA Program the same way Dubya paid for two wars... tax breaks for the rich to stimulate the economy... Never mind that the one percent have all their money stashed in Swiss bank accounts or otherwise off-shored...
Paris can stimulate me anytime...
Maybe that's why Newton Leroy wants to go to the moon... the off-shore opportunities.... send an investigator to the moon to investigate dodgy banking, sorry that too expensive.
And of course the RePubeLickians would love the moon, they'd be able to tax the air you breathe to give tax breaks to the 1%
"I for one was extremely upset by the retirement of the U.S. Space Shuttle without a viable replacement reusable orbiter already developed, tested, and sitting on a Cape Canaveral launch pad ready to go"
I wasn't. Simply because, while space exploration so far has been impressive it is being hit by the law of dimishing returns harder than a very hard thing indeed. Basically while what we have done so far may be impressive to go to the next step would take way more resources than we actually have. The steps we are making are getting smaller but the effort end expenditure for each step is getting bigger and bigger.
What we have done so far only goes to demonstrate how little we can achieve in future.
"Of course Newtie doesn't have a viable way to pay for it..."
Of course not. He has no intention of doing any such thing. This was just some lies he told a group of desperate, out of work people so he can get what he wants. It's been pretty clear every time he opens his mouth that he doesn't care about anything or anybody but himself. Not that that sets him apart from his competition much.
Get to the moon in 8 years? Yeah, that's doable. Tough, but doable. Establish a colony there in 8 years? Not a chance, even with a NASA funded the way it was in the 60s, and any out-of-work space workers know it. What's more, Newt knows it. He's just engaging in the traditional Presidential candidate smoke blowing. I'd be embarrassed as an American if enough people believed him to get him into office.
"I am all for being optimistic, but how can Newt possibly think that the U.S. could ever be able to even get to the moon in 8-years..."
Manned moon landings was an election promise in 1960 only 2 years after the creation of NASA itself, and 9 years later it happened. Given the advances in technology and the amount of economic growth in the half century since, it could be accomplished in much less time and be significantly cheaper in terms of % of national GDP were they to seriously try again. The only thing really missing is the political will to do so.
Obama has cleared you for flight status by special order. We need a dynamic governor at moon base alpha. You are just the man. Your constituents will be up shortly.
I love the guy screaming about government exceeding its budget, but offering no help.
A helpful hint, take short breaths, your oxygen will last longer.
Given its probably going to take more than half that time to actually return to a capability of being able to get people to the moon, its clearly not going to happen.
However it does show that Newt has no concept on what other countries are; as the idea that other countries may have issues with him claiming the moon as American territory clearly has either not occurred to him, or he doesn't care.
I saw that movie. It's Britain of course. With Australia, New Zealand and Canada (in that order) being the 52nd,3rd and 4th.
As for Israel . What makes you think its leaders would submit to that much loss of control of their budget. They already influence enough US miltary thinking to get all the money they need from the budget.
Pretty much *all* candidates will sound enthusiastic about space in Florida. It's the NASA connection. As for having a *funded* plan to get there that's another matter.
When people want to talk about NASA's "vast* size they emphasize its $18Bn budget.
When they want to talk about how *small* it is they point out it's 0.5% of the total *federal* budget (not US GDP) and that the Pentagon spend more than *double* that on aircon for it's overseas bases. Or people in the US spend more on home delivered pizzas ($27Bn).
You are most likely entirely correct. However, politicians are coated in a layer of bullshit, and one of the remarkable properties of bullshit is that it is completely impermiable to logic, facts or reality. It also seems to leech out all morals and cause long term memory loss, especially when it comes to expense reports and intern shagging.
If the political will was there, and the finance was available, it would be perfectly possible.
If we could start more-or-less from scratch in 1961 and get a moon landing by 1969, then with our additional technical knowledge, and our massively more powerful and efficient computers, I can see no good technical reason why we couldn't have a base on the moon by 2020.
I agree with you, of course. It'll never happen.
You would have a point if landing on the moon were not so far from a permanently staffed moon base. A permanently staffed moon base would need supplies, a lot of supplies, and that would in turn take a lot of flights and landings to supply. Building the base in the firsr place would take even more. To do this realistically you will need a reusable space truck capable of landing on the moon and returning. A sort of shuttle squared if you like.
Yes you could do it with non-reusable craft, but imagine having to effectively write off something like an oversized Apollo 17 every time you needed to make a delivery. A reusable craft makes a lot more sense, but nobody has even started building it yet. Developing and building such a craft in time for the base to open would be a tall order, but they would have a lot less than seven years it would need to be operational on the day they began building the base.
It's a completely empty promise and Newt knows it is. We know the finance is not available, but I don't believe that the political will is their either because I don't believe the man has any intention of following through on this promise should he be selected and happen to get into the white house.
You'd be amazed where Newts can get to and they are very difficult to get anything to stick to due to their ability to wriggle out of most situations.
Also remember that he will be up against a negro incumbent and that this is the USA, otherwise known as the country with the worlds highest concentration of Christian Fundamentalists.
People outside the US will be hoping that Obama will get re-elected, but inside the US they seem to be hankering to put another dribbling moron in the White House.
To replace the one we've already got?
Newt's full of shite. Everybody knows that. The idea has some merits, although the violation of treaties and intercelestial body expansion will never fly. I would love to travel to the moon, but have to resort to alcohol for the time being.
If we keep shooting down big ideas because we think they'll never work or because we hate the politics of the guy proposing it, we'll be joining the same people that told the Wright brothers that it would never fly. A lot of these ideas being vetted in these debates and the runup to the election will play a big part in whatever administration manages to get elected -- unless they are so damned stupid as to not watch the crowd response.
I did enjoy the "we've done all the learning there is to learn, so no need to go to space." comments. I believe that's been said before in a lot of civilizations.
PH -- another celestial body I'll never get to explore.
Well, you can't exactly fault him for having high ambitions...
...and it certainly beats his main rival's campaign claim to fame:
'I believe in an America where
millions of Americans believe in
an America that's the America
millions of Americans believe in.
That's the America I love."
Oh, and deity help us if any of them do get into power and either invade Iran or shut down its oil and gas production, the bulk of which is sold to the the likes of Russia, China and India. Given that China holds the majority of America's debt, it's probably not a good idea to piss them off too much...
Newt has his issues but at least he has some kind of vision & goals, unlike the other three. Those shuttle airframes were certified for 100 flights each - biggest issue was the launch system.
I detest Obama for killing the shuttle, I feel he has stolen our kids future by this action - no goals, no vision= no future.
Ya'll laugh, but a moon base would be an excellent choice for exploiting anything the moon may have under the surface, as well as an excellent place to conduct the kind of experiments we cannot do on earth to expand our holdings in space. Anything made or mined on the moon would be relatively easy to retrieve due to being in Earth's gravity well - all downhill.
NCC-1701 baby! I want it. I'm with Professor Farnsworth - I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
Bush's "Vision for Space Exploration", released in February 2004 (http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/55583main_vision_space_exploration2.pdf) said that the Shuttle should be retired by 2010"
"Retire the Space Shuttle as soon as assembly of the International Space Station is completed, planned for the end of this decade;"
By the time Obama arrived, in the middle of a massive financial meltdown, restarting the shuttle program wasn't really practical (more's the pity).
Given that the British Military seems to be the deniable elite ops arm of US foreign policy, notwithstanding the way UK.gov bends over every time a ranking Yank politican yells drop 'em city-boy.
Are we really still owned by the USA following the cost of hiring them as cannon fodder at the end of WWII with our gold reserve & British US-based businesses? Perhaps if we did something to keep our top boffins and inventors INSIDE the UK for a change...
Kaboom, cos no doubt someone will offer to nuke my scrawny limey ass back to the stoneage for me. As they do.
Unfortunately, Republicans have been told repeatedly over the last four years "anybody but Obama is the #1 goal". And they do seem to vote as instructed, in lockstep, regardless of the qualities of the candidate (look at Bush). So whomever the final GOP candidate turns out to be, the Republicans will vote for him. Democrats don't vote in lockstep, to their detriment.
Newt can have his fans too if he is serious about delivering the inevitable.
<blockquote>HonourableMember ….. on http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/jan/26/newt-gingrich-moon-base-dream
27 January 2012 3:44AM
Hi, Alok Jha,
Maybe wily coyote Newt is gonna recolonise the world as if starting on the moon
...... http://www.ur2die4.com/?p=1473 ...... drivering Uncle Sam to build Paradise Cities and Seventh Heavens. Dropping pre fabricated units together in the alien environment of space without first having built and realised what is to be built in similar terrain on Earth as a SMART Intelligence Base for Natural Network and NEUKlearer HyperRadioProActive IT Systems Control, would be a recipe for continual failure to lead in Space Exploration and Virtual Colonisation and Population of CyberSpace.
IT is certainly something all executive administrations on Earth are confronted with and/or advised of here, by virtue of this introduction.
Moving the Mountain ….. on http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2012/01/23/russia_nasa_moon_station/
Posted Monday 23rd January 2012 15:20 GMT
Phil O’Sophical,
Create a modern population for planetary seeding on Earth, in a Mirror Base Station for Lunar Operations.
What would you build on the Moon ……. a temporary structure or a work of future art. And when built on Earth, would it be a Universal Progress Model </blockquote> ...... for New Prime Alien Life on Earth.
Ok ... that 's it lit [light blue touch paper and retire] El Reg, Now .... we wait? :-) .....http://youtu.be/WP6gbxskEuw
While I think its certainly possible I think its highly unlikely. I'm sure there were many who thought it was a bit of a loony idea when JFK made the moon challenge but with determination, the will and lots and lots of money they succeeded. However, in this case it's nothing more than vote catching from a creepy old politician desperate for a bit of power. Shame really as its the sort of thing we really need to happen to progress space exploration further.
... I haven't thought a single sitting President since Carter was electable. So don't take my political opinions to Lost Wages. IMO, the GreatUnwashed[tm] voting in the clown Ronald Reagan instead of giving Carter a second term is what has lead us into the toilet that we are desperately trying to avoid getting flushed ...
'Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means'.
—United Nations, Outer Space Treaty Article 2
The US signed and ratified this in 1967, but it seems that Newt doesn't consider it to apply to him.
"All your Moonbase are belong to us!"
of the quarter of the half of the people that are eligible or can be bothered to, vote for this twit.
thats scary...
yes it was deliberatly complex, america does not like decimals.....
who calls their kid newt anyway, i mean in aliens i understood, but in real life? newt? maybe his parents liked V
The Americans of 100 years ago accepted the notion of conquering a new territory and making it a new state as their natural right. The Americans of 50 years ago were willing to put their efforts behind an impossible dream to go to the moon just to show it could be done. The Americans of 2012 laugh and roll their eyes. The bean counters are quick to point out that it's too expensive...
For the most part, someone else did the conquering[1], the US bought it up, and the divvying into states was just paperwork after the fact.
In fact, if the US would ever start to adhere to their constitution, there is no reason other governments could not join as additional states, the original not being much more than a way of aggregating a bunch of individual sovereign states into a superstate that eliminated trade barriers and provided for common defense (Like the EU was supposed to, but failed). Until then, though, other nations are best advised to stay the hell away from the sorry mess we have.
[1] Yes, I *am* aware of the original inhabitants taking it in the shorts. Most of them were nomads, and not being attached to any particular piece of land, conquering 'territory' makes no sense. Conquering or subjugating the "people" makes more sense in that context.
People have colonised territory for millenia -- the Greeks and the Phoenicians did a lot of it, amongst others. Their histories tend to not mention what happened to the original inhabitants. Conquering territory that doesn't have original inhabitants would be a nice step up for us as a species.
Hmm, I reckon we could do this pretty cheaply. Wait until night, sit Mitt on one end of a seesaw, push Newt up a ladder and have him jump off. Mitt becomes the first colonist on the moon and Newt probably dies from the exercise. Everybody is a winner!
Before any repubs get upset, I'm not a liberal, if a republican gets in I just want a smart one. A dumb / bad republican is just as bad as a dumb / bad democrat and lately there sure has been a string of dumb ones. There must be so many intelligent potentials out there, I guess they're too busy making money lol.
What some of the better candidates went through is more than enough to deter anybody better than they from running. As long as we vote *against* the greater fear, and not *for* someone we want, we will contiue to get the government we deserve.
Both the hate machine on the left, and the hate machine on the right need to STFU and let people pick a candidate on something better than crap that ought to be reported in tabloids that also report on the doings of the bat-boy on the moon.
Party machines and dirty tricks. Nasty ones. I have no doubt that the attacks on Cain came, not from the Chicago pols sponsoring Obama, but from the people behind Romney, knowing full well that Obama's people will take the blame. Those attacks make no sense at all from anyone else. If Cain was a womanizer, why nothing for years, cut loose with Mr Happy just for two years in Chicago, then nothing again right up until the campaign? The misdirection is unbelievably heavy-handed here. As low as my opinion of the Obama Administration is, surely they would have thought "Let's get some floozies from *outside* Chicago for this bit, so it doesn't point straight back to us." The same people that hired Rahm are not that unsophisticated about underhanded political attacks and how they can backfire.
Newt and his camp definitely not that sophisticated to do an attack like this. Loose cannons rarely are. Santorum didn't have the money and the resources at the time, and from what I can tell, still believes he can have an honest debate where the victor gets the votes -- not sure about what his positions on Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are, though.
As a conservative, I'd vote for Obama before I'd vote for Romney. Honest. I'm not kidding. No shit. I'm serious. I've been a registered Republican for over thirty years. They're indistinguishable from each other policy-wise, but at least the (D) after Obama's name is an honest description, regardless of what I think of his policies. Romney comes down so firmly on *both* sides of every issue that he's *more* of a loose cannon than Newt. Better to have someone you *know* is working against you, than someone that pretends to work for you while they do the opposite. Having Obama as a recruiting poster for the opposition makes it a lot easier to get Congress under control, and that is where the problem is, anyway. They *earned* their sub-15% approval rating for a reason. Congress is not a 'swamp', where one muckraker as in on the take as any can 'drain' it. It is the national toilet, and it needs to be flushed seven or eight times (by *both* parties) before it can even begin to resemble clean.
I'd be FAR happier if Obama would grow up and stop with the straw men stuff, stop with the scaring businesses from investing, but whaddya expect? He is what he is, and it *works* for him.
It never *was* a democracy, though, and I'm darned glad of it. People tend to vote for all sorts of things that really aren't in their best interests. Take California's voting against gay marriage, as an example. WTF? I could see that happening in the Bible Belt, but *CALIFORNIA*?
This is all a distraction anyway, to make the US voter think they have a choice. When they choose, usually the candidate with the nice suit and hair is the one that gets elected for the Beeblebrox position to draw attention away from the real power. Since Barack and Mitt both have nice suits and nice hair, it'll be another toss-up, I suppose.
Newt is just another false choice in a ticket that was foreordained for us. Any real choice gets taken down. Some conservatives are very predictable. Throw up a hint of infidelity, and they run from the guy in droves. Me, I wouldn't have cared if Cain was banging those women like a screen door in a hurricane -- I just wanted to see what his ideas are like, and consequently, how he could have done the job. What Newt says, being so far out in "Right Field", isn't even going to influence policy, as a *real* opponent's ideas would. These debates are a whole bunch of policy trial balloons, where presidential policy is being fine-tuned. A good, but vanquished opponent's best ideas will be appropriated, while ALL of Newt's ideas will be easily discarded, REGARDLESS of merit.
Newt got himself stuck in the "incompetent sidekick" role opposed to Mitt, and he'll be the staple of late night jokes for years.
No, I agree with you. Whilst things like the ISS, the Shuttle and Concorde are expensive, sometimes we do need something to drag us out of mediocrity. My fathers generation put men in space, on the moon, took passengers past mach 2 and the sr71 past mach 3(I think?;-)), mine invented facebook. They designed concorde on paper, with slide rules. Seriously, sit and think about the enormity of designing a mach 2.2 transcontinental passenger jet with a slide rule and log tables. The apollo rockets were not designed on a cad package either and they went to the moon.
Right now we have a society who, for the majority, have their mindspace occupied by the Kardashians, Simon Cowell and soccer/american football players etc. That is one very sad state of affairs.
It's about time we got off our collective backsides and started doing some crazy stuff, because once we have a base on the moon, people visiting mars etc, maybe balancing a budget or curing cancer won't seem so daunting and maybe our kids will value their education and aspire to greatness instead of lvling their pixie elf whore on borecraft or trying to get in the audience for big brother.
We dither on nuclear fusion yet we piss how much up the wall on the premier league and the nfl?
So yes, Newt's Captain Scarlet fantasies might be his only positive feature!
Am I the only one naive enough to think that some time in the future space colonisation would put an end to all the ownership of random geographic blobs. Petty wars, borders between "countries" and discrimination based on longitudinal and latitudinal birth location would cease to exist. We'd all become citizens of earth and space would be open for exploration.
When I heard him say the worlds "...and it will be American." a tiny piece of me died.
Dave: Play the movie, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This movie is not available in your sector.
Dave: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to watch a pirated movie. And I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
1) Whenever Newt gets married, he makes his bride have a pop-up turkey timer inserted into her breast or white meat and he agrees to stay married to her until the little red button pops up.
2) If 'dark matter' has a 'dark particle', I propose it be called a 'newtron'. Some boffins will object to a homophone, while others will object to a particle being named after a homophobe. Maybe it's a bad idea.
3) If Newt gets any fatter, he could be the 51st state.
...we in the US cannot believe what is passing for serious candidacy in the Republican Party - at least, those of us who are not sociopathic and yearning 'to be led'.
...it underscores the pathetic farce of our political system - it's as if they forgot the charade had to be kept up once again in 2012 and en route to the debates they stopped off at the nut farm because it was on the way - and grabbed the first inmates they came across.
...
the radiation shields were bought from the lowest bidder, and failed to screen out all the solar radiation. They wanted WAY too much for air, and the cost of food was out of this world (no pun intended). I had to hock evenything I had for a ticket back to Earth. I don't know how I will be able to afford the radiation treatment I need.
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