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| Protect your Moon base |
In the latest tell-people-what-they-want-to-hear speech on the endless election circuit, teapublican presidential hopeful Newt "slime ball" Gingrich made a remarkable promise: he wants a moon base. Well... don’t we all?
Appealing to residents of the state's economically struggling "Space Coast," teapublican racist Newton Leroy Gingrich promised to have a permanent U.S. base on the moon by the end of his second term as president.
“By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American.”
In reality the U.S. is no closer to having a colony on the moon than it was when the last astronauts left in 1972, but it’s not for a lack of thinking about it. Until 2010, a moon base was exactly what NASA was working toward.
Space policy expert John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University, told SPACE.com:
"When we are not expecting a U.S. crewed launch to the ISS until 2016-2017 and are just getting started on a lunar-class launch vehicle, establishing a lunar outpost by 2020 is a fantasy,"
"It would be much better to set realistic goals, but that is not Mr. Gingrich's strong suit."
Given the parlous state of US finances and the retirement of NASA's shuttle fleet last year, the Newtster has raised a few eyebrows with his ambitious plans, but that did not seem to interfere with this grandiose vision for a moon colony as America's 51st state.
But how would the Newt-ron-bomb convince a future Congress to go along with what certainly would be an expensive proposition? President Obama couldn’t even convince Congress to give NASA an extra $6 billion over five years, and instead NASA’s budget has remained flat, without the big boost in technology development and science the current President was hoping for.
Technology will not be the problem when it comes to getting Gingrich’s (or even Bush’s) moon base built. With the right investment, America’s scientists and engineers could easily get the job done. The major issue today is the same as it was in 2004: where will the money come from?
In these economically straitened times, with Congress hell-bent on cutting every federal program going, finding the money to send a new generation of NASA astronauts to the moon will remain an impossible dream, and lets face it readers, we really need to concentrate on the "earth base" structures before we can focus on moon base fantasies.
My question to the Newt-ron-bomb, do we get Jedi Knight light sabers when we move to the moon?
NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West
