• Gingrich promises US 'moon base' by 2020
    33 replies, posted
[URL]http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/01/2012127154624640211.html[/URL] [QUOTE]Forget Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine – Newt Gingrich wants to colonise the moon. "By the end of my second term [2020], we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American," the Republican US presidential hopeful told a cheering crowd in Cocoa, Florida, a town with links to the space industry. A whopping budget deficit and cuts to the military do not seem to have dampened Gingrich’s astronomically expensive plans for a lunar colony with 13,000 residents. "I want you to help me in Florida and across the country so you can someday say you were there the day it was announced that we’d have commercial space, moon colony and moving toward Mars," he said on Wednesday, comparing himself to John F Kennedy and the Wright Brothers [who invented airplanes]. “We clearly have a capacity that the Russians and the Chinese will never come anywhere close to matching." [B] Out of this world[/B] Candidates clashed over the space programme, and Gingrich’s plans, during Thursday’s Republican debate. "I spent 25 years in business. If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I’d say, ‘You’re fired,’" Mitt Romney, Republican front runner, told the audience in response to Gingrich’s plan. Rick Santorum, another Republican challenger, called Gingrich’s space plans "crass politics" which pandered to voters in Florida without addressing the US’s fiscal problems. NASA, the organisation which would manage such a scheme, declined to comment on the plans. A spokesman told Al Jazeera the agency could not speak about anything related to the campaign. Alan Boyle, an award winning science journalist who follows the US space programme, said that just to put humans on the moon would cost more than $100bn. "Building a base would require significantly more expense," he told Al Jazeera. "Gingrich thinks private-sector innovation would produce some savings", but plans of this nature would "require a dramatic upswing in NASA spending". Republicans generally claim to detest "big government" spending initiatives – and a moon base, like the military, certainly fits into this category. In an attempt to deflect criticism of a promise which would almost invariably require massive outlays of federal cash, Gingrich said he will entice the private sector to increase its involvement by offering "prizes", although specific details have not been forthcoming. "How big would the prizes need to be to stimulate commercial plans for a base?" wondered Jeff Foust, editor of spacepolitics.com. "The space programme has gone through an extended period of uncertainty," he told Al Jazeera. [B] 'Cold War mentality'[/B] During the Cold War and the space race against the former USSR, the US committed about five per cent of its GDP to the Apollo space mission, said Ian O'Neill, a space science producer with Discovery News. "NASA gets less than half a per cent of today’s GDP; they simply can’t afford this," O'Neill told Al Jazeera. "He is trying to invigorate a Cold War mentality, which is very different from the world we live in today." Romney, for his part, promised to create a commission of experts to study the space programme. Barack Obama, the US president, established a similar body – the Augustine commission – where experts could make recommendations for NASA’s future. In 2010, Obama announced plans for a new spacecraft, designed for long journeys, to be operational by 2025. He wants humans to be able to orbit Mars by the mid-2030s. "Bush, in 2004, wanted to get back to the moon by 2020," Foust said. "NASA was behind schedule, according to Obama’s committee [established in 2009], and [Obama] decided not to develop Constellation – the next generation of space ships – but focused on commercial travel instead." "Debates about space often blur party lines," he said, adding that no one, including Gingrich, has provided a convincing reason for building a moon base, other than "national prestige". Major oil companies are some of the only commercial entities with the resources to finance moon projects. Prospects of commercial mining on the moon, specifically related to the energy resource Helium-3, have been cited as a reason for establishing a long-term human presence. "There is a lot of research going into fusion power plants," O'Neill said of an energy technology that experts hope will work in a similar fashion to the sun, generating plentiful, pollution free power here on earth. "Helium-3 covers the moon’s surface and it would be a viable fuel source to generate power", however, the technology with which to establish fusion reactors with the moon’s plentiful energy source is at least "decades away" he said.[/QUOTE] I give him props for wanting to go to the moon and stay there, but to do it in two years is retarded.
Moon bases are stupid. The logistics for it are insane and completely not worth the price.
hes trolling for sure
[url]http://www.facepunch.com/threads/1158583[/url] It was on the first page.
It's cool he wants the US to do more work with the moon, props to him. But I agree, two years? Yeah... don't see that happening.
[QUOTE=Nikota;34438838]Moon bases are stupid. The logistics for it are insane and completely not worth the price.[/QUOTE] It'd be quite the accomplishment if we could move some life from earth onto the moon. Even if we got germs there we could start a whole new evolutionary process and create our own aliens.
[QUOTE=Rob Markia;34438868]It's cool he wants the US to do more work with the moon, props to him. But I agree, two years? Yeah... don't see that happening.[/QUOTE] 8 years you mean
Stupid Question: How do you provide oxygen?
[QUOTE=The Baconator;34438942]Stupid Question: How do you provide oxygen?[/QUOTE] just put it in plastic bottles and sell it at unreasonable prices [editline]28th January 2012[/editline] capitalism moon base
[QUOTE=SomeRandomGuy16;34438888]8 years you mean[/QUOTE] 2020 - 2012 = 2 yo
Not gonna lie, if Obama said this then everyone would be all over the idea and would be praising him for thinking of it.
[QUOTE=Arcana;34438969]2020 - 2012 = 2 yo[/QUOTE] ...From 2012 to 2020 is 8 years
[QUOTE=RIPBILLYMAYS;34438879]It'd be quite the accomplishment if we could move some life from earth onto the moon. Even if we got germs there we could start a whole new evolutionary process and create our own aliens.[/QUOTE] Ehh, we should fix our own issues on Earth first I mean fuck, just look at how many current issues we have... just imagine if there's a huge system failure on the moon and we can't afford to fix that. [QUOTE=SomeRandomGuy16;34439004]...From 2012 to 2020 is 8 years[/QUOTE] I think he was kidding? Or is he just that blind... :v:
[QUOTE=Nikota;34438838]Moon bases are stupid. The logistics for it are insane and completely not worth the price.[/QUOTE] not true, the aliens there will reimburse us in extraterrestrial euros
[release][h2]LATE[/h2][/release]
[img]http://www.ironsky.net/site/files/ironsky_art2.jpg[/img] Nazis beat him to it already.
newt gingrich: avid space fan, and conservative gay hater
[QUOTE=Valdor;34438955]just put it in plastic bottles and sell it at unreasonable prices [editline]28th January 2012[/editline] capitalism moon base[/QUOTE] "[i]The purest Earth air bottled fresh from the Alps[/i]" (It's actually just compressed air from Beijing.)
[QUOTE=lulzbocksV2;34438989]Not gonna lie, if Obama said this then everyone would be all over the idea and would be praising him for thinking of it.[/QUOTE] Not really. Sending stuff into space is kind of expensive.
[QUOTE=lulzbocksV2;34438989]Not gonna lie, if Obama said this then everyone would be all over the idea and would be praising him for thinking of it.[/QUOTE] I was thinking the same. I'm sensing a great degree of hypocrisy here.Just because a backwards moron comes up with a single good idea you don't all of a sudden have to bail ship and abandon the idea because it's in someway linked to him. I reckon MOST people on Facepunch would love a moonbase to be built, but... if it means having a person like Gingrich in power it might just be best to wait for another decade or so (I can't believe I'm saying that).
[QUOTE=Nikota;34438838]Moon bases are stupid. The logistics for it are insane and completely not worth the price.[/QUOTE] You are so very wrong in so many ways. The deployment of a base on the moon would be a footstep in the door towards colonization to other planets such as mars, and beyond it would be well worth it later down the road if the human race decides to continue our exploration of the final frontier.
Aeiou
I don't think Gingrich is really willing to fulfill this promise. Considering the states where he is trying to win and their historic intertwining with NASA (Flordia), I believe he is just saying what they want to hear so he can get elected and completely ignore his promise. I would not trust Gingrich, what with all of his scandals that he has had over the years.
[QUOTE=Valdor;34438955]just put it in plastic bottles and sell it at unreasonable prices [editline]28th January 2012[/editline] capitalism moon base[/QUOTE] I always preferred air from a can. [img]http://www.davidairey.com/images/packaging/perri-air-mel-brooks.jpg[/img]
[QUOTE=The Baconator;34438942]Stupid Question: How do you provide oxygen?[/QUOTE] Well one of the most logical places for landing and establishing a moon base is on the poles due to logistics and there is also high concentrations of frozen water/oxygen there, and furthermore I do believe the regolith on the moon contains oxygen.
A Moon Base you say? Their calling it Alpha, you say? :v:
John Madden
if this were true I would vote for him but he is a flip flopper
[QUOTE=Jim Harbaugh;34441910]John Madden[/QUOTE] aeiouaeiouaeiouaeiou johnmaddenjohnmaddenjohnmaddenjohnmaddenjohnmaddenjohnmaddenjohnmaddenjohnmaddenjohnmaddenjohnmadden [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Shit posting on alt. Didn't trolling like this get you permabanned once before?" - postal))[/highlight] [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Shit posting on alt. Didn't trolling like this get you permabanned once before?" - postal))[/highlight]
[QUOTE=RIPBILLYMAYS;34438879]It'd be quite the accomplishment if we could move some life from earth onto the moon. Even if we got germs there we could start a whole new evolutionary process and create our own aliens.[/QUOTE] And by the time we have multi-celled organisms, the sun has already turned into a red giant and ate the solar system.
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