http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/25/10237875-gingrich-promises-us-moon-colony-by-2020
I think we can deduce at least two things from this:
How does he sell himself as a deficit hawk after this?
The cognitive dissonance surrounding Newt is so great at this stage, what’s one more thing added to the pile?
I dont’ get it. What’s so bad about him wanting a base on the moon? I think that issue crosses party lines. Some people just like space travel and space exploration.
So, among other things, I like that he’s promising it by the end of his second term.
Wanting a base on the moon is fine. It’s promising a base on the moon and a Mars-capable transport by 2020 that’s the issue. It’s unrealistic as hell. Especially in this economy.
I hope it’s a military base.
There’s nothing wrong about wanting a moon base per se. In fact, the fourteen-year-old boy that I mentally mostly still am applauds it. But it’s sort of hard to paint yourself as a being fiscally responsible on one hand, and “DUDE! MOON FORT!” on the other.
Well, for starters, how is he going to pay for it and cut taxes at the same time?
That and his presumptuous, “By the end of my second term we will have the first permanent base on the moon.”
I actually totally support this kind of thing. Putting a base on the moon would actually be a real accomplishment, which we seem to be severely lacking these days.
Nothing wrong with a moon base per se. Getting one built by the end of the decade is not very realistic. Then there is the question of price.
Even a very modest moon base would probably cost $200 billion ++. A moon base that could becoma the 51st state would probably enter Darien scheme levels of money.
Yeah, I support it too, if we were to fix our tax structure first so affording it wouldn’t come straight out of the middle class’s pockets – something Gingrich will never do.
Republicans don’t get to have big grandiose plans when they insist on blowing everything on adventurism and tax cuts for the rich. Such big plans require the sort of big government that the GOP is fundamentally against.
And honestly, do you believe Gingrich has the grit to actually follow through on such a plan? I don’t. He’s just blowing smoke and looking for political points.
Nothing at all wrong with having a permanent moon base. But how does one propose that–in under a decade, no less–and simultaneously claim to want to rein in spending? You could point to all the jobs it would create, but those jobs would be bad, “gummint” jobs, not the good kind.
Well, in my mind, I tend to think that something like a moon base is a better expenditure of funds than pretty much any other part of government. So I’d be willing to cut spending of pretty much ANYTHING else to fund such a project.
Regarding suggestions that we couldn’t do it in 10 years… I suspect we could. In 10 years, we can do pretty much anything.
Newt doesn’t want NASA to do it, he wants to offer large tax free prizes for private companies to do it.
This isn’t, on the face of it an entirely bad idea, but there are two large problems:
I think the figure thrown around was $10 billion. This is too low. I think you could probably establish the infrastructure and logistics for a entry-level permanent lunar outpost (not a city, think more along the lines of the size/crew of the ISS) for $30-$40 billion. Needless to say, this would not involve using SLS or Orion, or really having NASA in the loop except for data and some technical insight.
It sidesteps the issue of what do you do once you have a moon base. Even a small moon base will cost several billion dollars a year a minimum to maintain, replenish and rotate crew, to say nothing of working to expand it. Who pays for it?
Yeah, I just don’t take a conservative like you seriously on this. We’re probably talking a Trillion dollars or more for a “moon colony” with enough people to become a “51st state”. All the numbers floating around are pie in the sky lowballs. And that’s without even getting into the issue of it being an ongoing maintenance expense, not the sort of thing that provides a direct return on investment.
Again, where does this kind of money come from? Private companies? Hardly.
Newt either hasn’t thought through his suggestion at all, or he is being entirely disingenuous. And again, how can you possibly square such grandiose plans with his being a supposed fiscal conservative?
As much as it pains me to say this, $40 billion is kind of a drop in the bucket at this point. If that’s all it costs to make a base, then I say go for it.
Honestly, if you set up a moon base then it could likely pay for itself quite quickly. Set up a He3 harvesting operation, which doesn’t really involve any complex technology development, and you’ll be able to easily pay for the base’s operation, costs of transporting the Helium back to earth, and make a pretty huge profit on top of that. Something like one shuttle load of it provides enough energy to power the entire US for a year.
So build some fusion reactors, and harvest the helium, and you get infinite cheap fuel that produces no harmful waste at all.
It sidesteps the issue of what do you do once you have a moon base.
Get cabin fever and have rambling discussions with the supervising AI, natch.
Which is still essentially the government paying for it, as it would come directly out of tax revenues.
While the health implications of prolonged exposure to .16G is obviously less harmful than prolonged exposure to 0G, I’m assuming we’d have to do some sort of study of the skeletal/cardiovascular effects of moon gravity before setting up a base big enough to start the Mars colonization effort that Gingrich is on about. That alone will impact the time table.
Also, Dude, eight years…is…the…2020 minus 2012 equals eight.
Oh yeah, other than the inconvenient fact that fusion doesn’t yet work and may never be cost effective, a He3 harvesting moon base is pure profit.