Are Newt's Grandiose Moon Base Plans Safe?
Over the last few weeks, GOP Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has been repeatedly saying he wants to send Americans past our lower Earth orbit prison, to a permanent settlement on the Moon "by the end of my second term".
Why is it that all of these big plans only seem to happen if a candidate gets a second term?
Of course, Gingrich's big idea might have something to do with the fact that he was on the Florida leg of his journey across the United States to drum up support for his Presidential nod. One of his proclamations was before a group of supporters along Florida's "Space Coast" area, where shuttering the Shuttle program has led to over 6,000 layoffs.
Oh, we all know politicians are long-practiced experts at telling us what we want to hear, wherever we are. So, how is Gingrich's "let's do it alone, cheap and fast" space message floating with Floridians?
In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Aubrey Jewett, Political Science Professor for the University of Central Florida, thinks recharging our Space program is a grandiose idea, but is skeptical when it comes to Gingrich's offer. Gingrich, according to Jewett, "is an idea factory, and the follow-through is often not there, or he comes up with big ideas that just can't be done in some cases."
Gingrich took that as a compliment, citing the grandiose plans of others, including Abraham Lincoln, the Wright Brothers, and John F. Kennedy.
Gingrich certainly appears to be driven on the space travel score. He attended a panel of space experts, telling them "I want to relentlessly adopt the model of World War II, where we learned to fly B-26s off aircraft carriers in a matter of months, because we had no choice." When told that retrofitting NASA's payload-hoisting Atlas 5 rockets for humans would take four or five years under current conditions, Gingrich asked for a time quote based on far lesser government oversight.
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