Campaign '12

Webcasts of Gingrich’s Space Coast events

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is making two appearances on Florida’s Space Coast this afternoon, where he is expected to talk about his space policy ideas in greater detail. Both of those events will be broadcast/webcast. At 3:30 pm EST Gingrich will participate in an invitation-only event by the Economic Development Commission of Florida’s Space Coast; that event will be webcast on Florida Today’s web site. (The announcement of the event appears to have a long agenda, but according to the campaign web site it will be wrapped up by 4:15 pm.) At 4:30 pm he is scheduled to speak at a town hall meeting in Cocoa, Florida. That event will air live on C-SPAN and its web site.

Update: Florida Today reports the schedule of events has changed: the town hall meeting will go ahead as scheduled at 4:30, followed by the industry forum at approximately 5:45 pm. Gingrich is apparently running behind schedule, hence the change.

49 comments to Webcasts of Gingrich’s Space Coast events

  • DCSCA

    ‘Gingrich is apparently running behind schedule, hence the change.’

    Just like Space X. Birds of a feather.

  • Vladislaw

    A manned lunar base by 2020, funded by prizes. I can’t wait to see the numbers and how NASA will not be at the helm at all.

  • Just watched Newt’s space policy speech on local TV.

    I’ll give him credit for the bold vision that no candidate (including Obama) could have delivered in such detail.

    Nowhere in his speech did Newt actually mention Obama. He implicitly took a shot at George W. Bush for proposing $450 billion for a Mars mission.

    Much of Newt’s policy is what Obama is doing now, which may be why he didn’t mention the President.

    Missing from the speech was any hint of how he intends to pay for all his self-described “grandiose” ideas.

    There’s also a bit of a contradiction in his rhetoric. He criticizes NASA bureaucracy yet appears to rely on NASA bureaucracy to fulfill his grandiose dreams. He talks of prizes (10% of NASA’s budget should go to prizes) but there’s no way he can do what he wants without NASA’s bureaucracy.

    Most importantly, he doesn’t mention how he’ll pay for all this or how he’ll convince Congress to pay for it.

  • Mark

    I must say that I was more impressed than I feared I would be.

    Gingrich cannot be faulted for failing to set down markers. He seems to understand that if a thing is worth doing, like a lunar base, it is worth doing sooner rather than later. I’m not so affronted by the NASA bureaucracy slam. NASA is run by a bureaucracy. It is no insult to the talented people who work for the space agency who chaff under it as much as the rest of us are frustrated by it. If a new direction involves a reform of that system, then so be it.

    Some questions occur.

    What sort of goals would the space prize system foster? Two or two and a half billion a year (depending on how big Gingrich imagines NASA’s budget will be) will buy a lot of spacecraft, engine, and other technology development. The $10 billion Mars prize is a little silly, though, IMHO.

    That leads us to question two: What will NASA do with the other 90 percent of its budget? If JFK is the model, then it seems to me that the moon base and all the rest is to be built on the Apollo model, albeit with a slimmed down, more nimble management structure with commercial partnerships and so on,

  • DCSCA

    The selective, simplistic, scatter shot memory of the ‘I’m happy to be labeled grandiose’ “historian” Gingrich was just hilarious.

    gran·di·ose

    /ˈgrændiˌoʊs/ [gran-dee-ohs] adjective

    affectedly grand or important; pompous: grandiose words; more complicated or elaborate than necessary; overblown: a grandiose scheme. Psychiatry: having an exaggerated belief in one’s importance, sometimes reaching delusional proportions, and occurring as a common symptom of mental illnesses, as manic disorder.

  • gregori

    Its amazing the people that draw the most ire, bile and hatred are anybody who actually cares and wants to get more things done in space instead of being stuck with the status quote !!!

  • DCSCA

    “I’ll give him credit for the bold vision that no candidate (including Obama) could have delivered in such detail.”

    Then he’s due for a credit check. Case in point:

    JFK’s pledge to put men on the moon was not ‘grandiose,’ as Newton Leroy asserts. It was, in FACT, a stated goal calculated on reasoned recomendations after an assessment of capabilities utilizing off-the-shelf assets with the minimum amount of ‘new’ technologies necessary to accomplish the task on schedule and at/under budget. That is not ‘grandiose’ but good managment. In FACT, organizing and managing existing technologies and assets is what made Apollo possible within that time frame. It was a triumph of organization and planning, not, ‘grandiose.’

    And Newt’s musings on the Wrights was just simplistic. Newt says they headed down to Kitty Hawk ‘with a lot of wood.’ As usual he ignored the FACTS regarding their experiences and experimentations w/kites, manned gliders and wing warping before attempting powered flight.

  • Vladislaw

    SpaceX sure laid it out for competition and contracting at the second event that Mr. Gingrich is attending. He has not really said much yet.

  • He is implicitly proposing withdrawing from the Outer Space Treaty, which doesn’t allow off-planet claims of national sovereignty.

  • common sense

    Just out of curiosity for those who think Gingrich’s is a viable plan. Let’s see the current WH tried to kill Constellation because they knew a big rocket and a capsule for stunts to the Moon was unaffordable, endorsed by Gingrich btw. Okay.

    Our Congress who actually vote the budget made it a nightmare to get a tiny amount for Commercial Space yet giving large if insufficient funds to the unfordable plan SLS/MPCV.

    My question is considering that this WH plan was fairly simple, how do you expect Gingrich to pass his prize ideas to Congress? What is it that will make it happen for him? In what way is that realistic while FY11 was not?

    Are we yet again in fantasy land?

  • DCSCA

    @gregori wrote @ January 25th, 2012 at 6:27 pm

    In fact, Newt’s grandiosity hurts it. He has zero credibility in this area, particularly as in 1995, he called for disbanding NASA after Apollo ended, yet today asserts how far along America could have been if Apollo and post Apollo space projects had just kept going. It’ contradictory if not opportunistic as the very thing he trumpeted was killed off by his fellow Republican, Nixon because of costs. Sure, it’s endearing that he read Asimov and missile magazines as a kid, but it’s dysfunctional Newt. His government funded prize proposal flies in the face of the less government character of GOP conservatism today.

    Vladislaw wrote @ January 25th, 2012 at 7:02 pm
    “SpaceX sure laid it out for competition and contracting…”
    Another PR event. Everything but flying. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Mark wrote @ January 25th, 2012 at 5:54 pm
    I’m not so affronted by the NASA bureaucracy slam. NASA is run by a bureaucracy. It is no insult to the talented people who work for the space agency who chaff under it as much as the rest of us are frustrated by it.”

    LOL whittington (this is you right?) is now defending bureaucracies

    The federal government and state government is full of agencies that are bureaucracies but the GOP faithful do not try and defend. So teachers are “Labor unions” and other goofy things.

    Anyway moving on

    The bureaucracy at NASA is there not because of the leadership at NASA but well because of the people. It is self perpetuating and getting worse.

    “If JFK is the model, then it seems to me that the moon base and all the rest is to be built on the Apollo model, ” the build a big rocket and throw it all away by the end…? They already have that go over to NASAspaceflight.com and see the goofy ideas being presented for a Mars mission…all that comes back is one capsule…the rest a 20-50 billion experience is “tossed’.

    This election is going to be so fun. The GOP is finally at war with itself and it is so exciting. If Gingrich wins FL (and I view right now that as likely) the leadership of the GOP and the god squad will simply explode. RGO

  • common sense wrote:

    My question is considering that this WH plan was fairly simple, how do you expect Gingrich to pass his prize ideas to Congress? What is it that will make it happen for him? In what way is that realistic while FY11 was not?

    This came up at the end of the Brevard Community College (BCC) roundtable, which Florida Today assures me will be online shortly.

    Dale Ketcham (who sometimes lurks here) asked him the bottom-line question, namely how Newt would get all this past the porkers in Congress. Newt dissembled about this and that, then said “I speak their language” because he had been House speaker, and that he would call on the American people to rise up and pressure Congress to support space instead of pork.

    Good luck with that.

    Once Charlie Bolden retires, I think it would be quite amusing if Obama or his successor nominated Newt to be NASA administrator. Hilarity would ensue.

  • As an amusing aside … Rick Santorum told News 13 here that under his administration NASA’s principal mission would be defense:

    http://www.cfnews13.com/article/news/2012/january/374027/Gingrich-surges-in-new-Florida-poll-after-South-Carolina-primary-win

    Apparently he’s unaware that the National Aeronautics and Space Act specifically puts military space research and development in the Defense Department, and prohibits NASA from doing so.

    Doofus.

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ January 25th, 2012 at 8:05 pm

    Are we yet again in fantasy land?…”

    NO actually we have never left. We have been in fantasy world well most of this century.

    But to the point. Look I find it awkward even being fair to a Republican running for POTUS because they are appealing to a primitive group that is completely out of touch with reality…but I would say two points.

    Newt is something that Obama has failed to be so far…and that is someone who enjoys the give and take of battle (political battle) and is not shy about taking his case to The Public and probably would not be all that shy with well “LBJing” people in the Congress. I dont understand Obama with this, but leadership is taking ones case to the people; trying to convince others in government to go along and when they are “difficult” helping them understand by other means how useful their help is…particularly when they open themselves up to the use of “other means”. LBJ was great at this, so was Nixon and Ronaldus the Great was a little less brutal but he could play the game. and that is the legitimate game. If necessary in our new political world you have to take the slime that people are throwing atyou…and toss it right back. In fact toss a little harder. Democrats never seem to grasp that fact.

    Second Leroy would probably spin what he wants to do in a manner where it was concieved as a big government program even as (if he can do it) he changes the direction of NASA. Obama’s space policy while good is incapable of having a vision for what the result is…hence it gives the GOP idiots and all the space hangers on a chance to say “he is abandoning the moon” even though we were never really going there.

    Note I make on comment on what Newt said. I am still thinking about it and am in fact more interested in where the FL primary is going in general…but Newt enjoys knife fights…Obama thinks he is at a wine and cheese party where reasonable people are reasoning together.

    RGO

  • Das Boese

    Rand Simberg wrote @ January 25th, 2012 at 7:36 pm

    He is implicitly proposing withdrawing from the Outer Space Treaty, which doesn’t allow off-planet claims of national sovereignty.

    Starting a cold war in space isn’t a particularly bright idea, especially if you have ambitious exploration goals, but whatever.

    If Gingrich becomes president and gets a GOP majority congress, space will be the least of your worries.

  • Explorer08

    @ RGO – You said, “Democrats never seem to grasp that fact.”

    You are so right. While the Republicans are simply corrupt, the Democrats are incoherent. Since space exploration, to be successful, requires the “long view” (strategic planning) what are we to do?

  • NASA Fan

    Do not depend on the Federal Government to make the right moves for any long term space initiative. Does not matter who the President is, or who is in Congress. $15Trillion in debt is enough evidence for this assertion.

  • Vladislaw

    common sense wrote:

    “My question is considering that this WH plan was fairly simple, how do you expect Gingrich to pass his prize ideas to Congress? What is it that will make it happen for him? In what way is that realistic while FY11 was not?”

    If you listened to the second event, the business roundtable, at the very end, he addressed this point. You can find that online. He mentions how Reagan did it and would use the same tactic, bypass congress and sell the dream to the general public and force congress to go along. As Robert was mentioning:

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ January 25th, 2012 at 9:01 pm

    “Newt is something that Obama has failed to be so far…and that is someone who enjoys the give and take of battle (political battle) and is not shy about taking his case to The Public and probably would not be all that shy with well “LBJing” people in the Congress”

    He would have to start selling that during the run up to the election so a vote for him would be that. I don’t think he can sell this though.

  • Vladislaw

    Rand Simberg wrote:

    “He is implicitly proposing withdrawing from the Outer Space Treaty, which doesn’t allow off-planet claims of national sovereignty.”

    I wonder if that was input from Robert Bigelow who says claim it before the chinese do.

  • red

    “What sort of goals would the space prize system foster? Two or two and a half billion a year (depending on how big Gingrich imagines NASA’s budget will be) will buy a lot of spacecraft, engine, and other technology development. The $10 billion Mars prize is a little silly, though, IMHO.”

    If he tries for 10%/year, and gets 1% per year, he could probably still accomplish quite a bit. That would still be in the ballpark of $180M/year, orders of magnitude more than Centennial Challenges gets now when it gets anything. If the prizes are picked carefully, so they are for accomplishments that advance NASA exploration goals or other U.S. space goals, while at the same time offering the potential competitors a reasonable path to long-term success (e.g.: ongoing business based on a demonstrated space technology), ~$180M/year could result in some substantial advances.

    “What will NASA do with the other 90 percent of its budget? If JFK is the model, then it seems to me that the moon base and all the rest is to be built on the Apollo model, albeit with a slimmed down, more nimble management structure with commercial partnerships and so on”

    I would get that a bunch of it wouldn’t be changed much by it (e.g.: Aeronautics). I also get the sense that Gingrich would push for something along the line of Bush’s COTS or Obama’s commercial crew for some of it. One can only guess what components that might be – lunar robotics, crew transport to lunar orbit or Lagrange points, habitats, etc. He talked about understanding Congress and picking his battles, so I doubt that he would try to completely replace both SLS and MPCV all at once. He might go after 1 of them though, or change them in some major way.

  • DCSCA

    ‘Apparently he’s unaware that the National Aeronautics and Space Act specifically puts military space research and development in the Defense Department, and prohibits NASA from doing so.

    It’s a piece of paper and what’s on it can be changed.’ Doofus.

  • <em.Obama thinks he is at a wine and cheese party where reasonable people are reasoning together.

    More political ignorance from Oler: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/obama-we-bring-a-gun/

  • Doug Lassiter

    I have no big problem with Gingrich’s lunar colony. It’s a creative, bold, and innovative, but not self-evidently good idea. As pointed out just about everywhere, the issue is with the financing, and to the extent that federal funds are going to finance it, perhaps through prizes, the problem is likely to be Congress rather than the Administration. It’s one thing to say he’ll budget money for it. It’s another thing to believe that Congress will pay for it.

    The importance of his idea, however, is that it drives some public discourse about lunar colonies. Are they really a good idea? Do they really offer some return to the nation? Gingrich justifies them with some handwaving about mining. But it almost sounds like the colonies are really being posed as a goal in themselves, rather than a goal to achieve something noble or profitable. It sounds as if the real purpose of these lunar colonies are to be bold, grandiose, visionary, and not timid, which are things that are arguably noble or profitable. The news media thus far seems to be reporting his idea with some gentle skepticism. As in, is this just nuts, or what? We’ll see if the public discourse ever gets past that. He’s dropped the bait. Let’s see who bites. Especially among congressional leaders and respected public figures.

  • Starting a cold war in space isn’t a particularly bright idea, especially if you have ambitious exploration goals, but whatever.

    I’m not sure it would start a “cold war in space,” but there are actually better ways to accomplish what Newt wants without treaty withdrawal. It just wouldn’t be an American state. It would be more like the Texas Republic.

    By the way, still betting that you won’t be using deutschemarks soon? ;-)

    It’s either that, or southern Europe is back to drachmas and the lira.

  • DCSCA

    @Rand Simberg wrote @ January 25th, 2012 at 7:36 pm

    “He is implicitly proposing withdrawing from the Outer Space Treaty, which doesn’t allow off-planet claims of national sovereignty.”

    Nah. He’s a self-described romantic about it – one of the few pols to actually frame his scatter-shot pitch with it- he even used it in the presentation today. He’s a big kid about it and is using Lindy, flag waving as an emotional pull, that’s all. Half-expected him to say ‘Moon, American, Gingrich, Newton Leroy’ a la 2001 in his stumper. He’s not that smart about the OST angle, but you get credit for considering something he most likely didn’t.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Explorer08 wrote @ January 25th, 2012 at 9:44 pm

    @ RGO – You said, “Democrats never seem to grasp that fact.”

    You are so right. While the Republicans are simply corrupt, the Democrats are incoherent. Since space exploration, to be successful, requires the “long view” (strategic planning) what are we to do?”

    As my friend Brian would say “drink heavily”…well its not that bad.

    The first thing one has to do is, in my view get over the “we love space” mentality. (I have not read or seen Newt’s speech so I wont comment directly on it) …but

    Circling around the blogs the most interesting comments I see people make is “I want to be one of the 13000 (or so) on the Moon”.

    There wont be more then single digits on the Moon ever unless some notion can be made of how they pay for themselves. And that notion is going to take a very very long slog and no matter how its cut a lot of federal dollars in investment to create infrastructure where there is now almost none.

    My suggestion for a lot of people is just to sit back and let free enterprise with appropriate government investment work or see if it can work. Obama in his SOTU was correct…there are some federal investments in technology and infrastructure that fail but the ones that succeed change America. And it takes some time to find out (as well as some failures).

    We are going to have to have some “Solyndra’s” (spell) at some point. The commercial crew/cargo are not even remotely in that arena…but we are going to have to have some to see if there is a space infrastructure that supports human activity.

    hope springs eternal RGO

  • DCSCA

    @Explorer08 wrote @ January 25th, 2012 at 9:44 pm

    ‘Since space exploration, to be successful, requires the “long view” (strategic planning) what are we to do?’

    Mostly without. Or what we have always done- react when somebody else acts. When the PRC ramps up, pols will rediscover the need for a space program again to reassert American technical prowess. The ol’ Nixon line to NK about ‘you have more missiles but we have color TV’ won’t wash yet again. American space efforts have never been proactive. Always fits and starts– and gaps. Russia has maintained HSF operations in a fairly consistent fashion for half a century through some convulsive economic and political change. Because they made the decision to make it part of their national character. That kind of long term commitment eludes America, because space exploration is not a part of the American character– but competiton is. Hence the desperate pitches about ‘prizes.’
    What was the ‘prize’ to orbit Gagarin? Geo-political points. A propaganda score, where perception is reality.

  • Dennis Wingo

    as Newton Leroy asserts. It was, in FACT, a stated goal calculated on reasoned recomendations after an assessment of capabilities utilizing off-the-shelf assets with the minimum amount of ‘new’ technologies necessary to accomplish the task on schedule and at/under budget.

    Whoever Newton Leroy is his assertion is patently false. Off the shelf? You gotta be kidding me. I just had a conversation today with an astronaut that was talking about how NASA in the early 70’s fostered the development of digital fly by wire systems. A group of engineers came in to the AA on the subject and told him about all of the advances and improvements that could be made by incorporating fly by wire. The engineers wanted to use analog computers to do this. The AA said wrong answer, you need to do this with a digital computer. The engineers said that they had looked at the problem and that digital computers were not capable of doing the job. The AA looked at them and told them about the digital computer fly by wire system that he had used to fly to the Moon (the Apollo CSM), and land on the Moon (The LM). That particular AA was Neil Armstrong.

    Much of what NASA did in going to the moon simply did not exist before hand, from metals, manufacturing techniques (the common bulkhead for the SII stage is just one example).

    Whoever this guy is, he simply does not know what he is talking about. I was at the air and space museum a few years ago and looked at the guidance system for the Minuteman I. It had some of the very first integrated circuits in existence onboard. Have you ever looked at the S-IIVB flight computer built by IBM? Off the shelf my left foot….

  • Does anyone here remember “The Mouse on the Moon,” a 1963 movie based on a book of the same name by Leonard Wibberley.

    The plot concerns a tiny country which persuades the Americans and Soviets that they’re starting a space program, when they really just want some money for new plumbing.

    Gingrich is attempting to persuade the American public (especially those living in Florida) that he’s restarting a space program, when all he really wants is to become the republican presidential nominee.

    Why isn’t this obvious?

  • SpaceColonizer

    “Everybody who wants to have pork, you’re on that side of the room, and everybody who wants to get to the moon and Mars, and be part of America’s future, you’re on this side of the room.” -Newt Gingrich at round table, (26:10 in video linked above)

    I’ve got a guess where that 10% is going to come from.

    Fingers crossed for more space talk at the debate tomorrow. Maybe get the media talking about it more when Romney talks about space stuff on Friday.

  • The real doofuses in all this talk are the Flexible Path people who want the Moon avoided at all cost! They killed Constellation just because the destination had been previously visited (40 freakin’ years ago, folks! It’s not like American spacemen were there last week!). Yet they have no problem with our astronauts going up to LEO over & over again—-some 200 miles above Earth, going ’round in circles—-THAT would suit them just fine for the next two decades! America held hostage in LEO, doing nothing else but that! Well, I say screw the ISS! That colossal waste of aluminum, should still be plunged down into the Pacific, come 2015!

  • DCSCA

    Dennis Wingo wrote @ January 26th, 2012 at 12:18 am

    You misunderstand; yes, ‘off the shelf’ meaning they made a concerted effort to minimize having to depend on the development of new systems and kept the designs as simple as possible. Sure, some of it was new engineering extrapolations on existing technologies but Faget often cited this ‘KISS’ guideline, particularly w/Apollo to make redundency easier to design into the systems and minimze SPFs. Like using hypergolic fuels in the SPS systems and simplier engine designs, etc., It was a mind set chiefly so as not to depend on major breakthroughs in new technologies which could inhibit propelling the program forward. Not that they couldn’t created new systems, but not in the time frame at hand. It was smart planning, good organization and very good managment.

    “Much of what NASA did in going to the moon simply did not exist.. ” Actually much of it did exist– it simply had to be all pulled together, engineered, assembled, designed, modified, adapted and managed into systems and hardware adapted for the challenge at hand. They used existing LVs (Redstone, Atlas & Titan) for Mercury and Gemini (keep in mind Mercury and the Mark II aka ‘Gemini’ were on the drawing boards before JFK took office) and with Saturn V went with the F-1s, a late 50s engine design BTW, w/kerosene for the S-IC, and the slick. restartable hydrogen J-2s for the S II and SIVs which were the real breakthroughs. If you look at the numbers from 1964-1966, a lot of the Apollo costs went to basic infrastructure construction- unique to Apollo but nothing dramatically ‘new’ there, just basic construction like the VAB, crawlers and launch towers, pads 39A and B… even the MSC in Houston. None of this existed- and what didn’t exist was engineered into being but the whole point was to use as much as was possible on hand and that was a matter of good managment and planning in putting it all together. You may have been talking to a 1970s astronaut but the systems and hardware for the space race period between 61 and 70 was pretty much late 50s to mid-sixties stuff and the point was to minimize having to develop anything new to meet the schedule. And the hardware was upgraded. That doesnt mean new things werent engineered – particularly in component miniaturization to save weight snd space- the computer software; the EMUs, the LRVs, establishing the DSTN, specialized alloys and so on, but they tried to not have to depend on having to invent anything so new as to be so critical as to stopping the whole thing. Recall the Huntsville people weren’t very keen on doing the Saturn V ‘all-up test’- which proved to be a success and saved both time and money. Just go down the list and you’ll see most of it was adapted or modified from existing technologies– and for the better. Which was the genius of it all- the planning, organization and managment. That’s really the triumph of Apollo. FYI, Newton Leroy as in his name, Newton Leroy Gingrich.

  • Florida Today‘s final article on yesterday’s Gingrich event:

    http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20120126/NEWS01/301260048/Gingrich-Grandiose-space-plans-possible

    A cursory search of other “mainstream media” sites shows this didn’t get much coverage, which is pretty much what I expected. As I’ve written many times, outside of Brevard County nobody cares about space. Not even the Houston Chronicle seems to have anything about it. But if anyone can find a significant article on this outside of the space web sites, please post the link.

  • Dennis Wingo

    50s to mid-sixties stuff and the point was to minimize having to develop anything new to meet the schedule

    There simply is no way to respond to something so stunningly and completely wrong.

  • DCSCA

    @Dennis Wingo wrote @ January 26th, 2012 at 7:43 am

    =yawn= No it’s not. You might want to look up the history of the F-1 for starts. Late 50s technology. The J-2, early 60s… even the Apollo escape tower was SRM powered- an established technology. The construction industry and the aerospace industry simply did not invent everything ‘new’ for Apollo, Dennis. Faget’s KISS methodology was a case in point. They borrowed, enhanced, modified, engineered and crafted what they could from existing technologies, incorporated the simplest and most efficient designs to minimize SPF and what didn’t exist, they created, particularly in microcircuitry and computer software. But the point was, from a managment and planning perspective, to make uses of existing technologies to the fullest so as not to depend on major breakthroughs and stay on schedule. Apollo was a triumph of managment, organization and planning between industry, government and universities.

  • Byeman

    Plain idiotic.
    When something has to be ” pulled together, engineered, assembled, designed, modified, adapted and managed into systems and hardware” and later stated “what didn’t exist, they created”

    It means that it did not exist nor was not “off the shelf”.

    Just more of DCSCA’s revisionism history. Reality and actual history are foreign to DCSCA. DCSCA thinks himself as a student of spaceflight history but nothing could be further from the truth or reality.

    “It’s a piece of paper and what’s on it can be changed.’
    Statements like the above show no grasp of reality, Congress is not going to change the paper.

  • jgrunt

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ January 26th, 2012 at 6:53 am
    …please post the link

    http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/25/gingrich-shoots-for-the-moon/

  • Vladislaw

    I did a yahoo news search on Gingrich going to the moon, about a dozen links from various news outlet websites with close to 700 comments. There was only 6 positive comments about a lunar base and of those 3 said it should be entirely financed by the private sector. I wonder how that tracks with the nation as a whole?

  • The real doofuses in all this talk are the Flexible Path people who want the Moon avoided at all cost!

    This is a monumentally ignorant statement. From “the real doofus in all this talk.”

  • common sense

    @ Vladislaw wrote @ January 25th, 2012 at 10:39 pm

    “If you listened to the second event, the business roundtable, at the very end, he addressed this point. You can find that online. He mentions how Reagan did it and would use the same tactic, bypass congress and sell the dream to the general public and force congress to go along.”

    I actually did after I posted. So what? Do you take this at face value? I believe Gingrich also mentioned something about using political capital. Now for the sake of it, assume he becomes President in 2012. How do you think NASA/HSF will compare with other issues facing this nation? How much capital do you think he will invest in this?

    Again my question. Why would it work for Gingrich? The answer “just because he is Gingrich and has been in Congress for a million years does not count”. Sorry.

    “He would have to start selling that during the run up to the election so a vote for him would be that. I don’t think he can sell this though.”

    Okay I think you answered my question. Gingrich CANNOT sell this outside a number of space cadets.

    Can we get back to serious things now?

  • Dennis Wingo

    The construction industry and the aerospace industry simply did not invent everything ‘new’ for Apollo, Dennis.

    Just as one simple answer, everything was off the shelf and already existing as an automobile resembles the lunar rover.

    Simply and incredibly and stunningly wrong. I know about the F1, started in 1959. Do you realize that it cost $3 billion dollars in 1962 dollars just for the RL-10?

    Read some of the trade journals of the era and then make your claims.

  • Vladislaw

    common sense wrote:

    “actually did after I posted. So what? Do you take this at face value? I believe Gingrich also mentioned something about using political capital. Now for the sake of it, assume he becomes President in 2012. How do you think NASA/HSF will compare with other issues facing this nation? How much capital do you think he will invest in this?”

    Whoa … back the truck up. I was mearly answering a question. How does he think he can do it. All I did was provide his words on how he plans to do it.

    I do actually take it at face value on how Gingrich would try to do it. Newt can’t help being Newt and if he ever did become president he would either be some sort of manchurian candidate and do a 180 degree about face or he would do what he did as speaker. Try and bully everyone to his point of view and take it to the public. He went against Reagan in the 80’s as E. Abrams wrote about today and was always public about it.

    I have not seen any actual numbers from Gingrich other that 10% of the NASA budget. I have not formed any opinions until I see some of the devil in the details.

    I like ideas for more commercial space activies and prizes, in general, work for me. But without a lot more blanks filled in it is hard to form an opinion for a Lunar Base in eight years.

  • DCSCA

    Dennis Wingo wrote @ January 26th, 2012 at 3:51 pm

    So you’re refuted you own assertion. That ‘off the shelf’ managment mind set is part of the Apollo managment planning culture. Its in their own history. They discuss it openly. It was smart and pragmatic and cost-effective. Faget relished it. It’s not a ‘claim’ — they had to do it, it’s in their own history. They simply did not re-invent the wheel for Apollo- they made use of existing technologies, modified and adapted what they could and what they didn’t have to solve a problem at hand, they worked around it or created a solution. Nobody said they didn’t create new hardware- as noted in an earlier post mentioning the LRV. And the LRV is an electric car- a battery powered vehicle- a technology born of Edison’s era BTW and 100 years ago there were more electric vans on the streets of Manhattan than you could beleive. Look it up. And the LRV has been compared in sparse pragmatics to an ol’buckboard. Naysayers will tell you they souped up a golf cart, stuck a few rakes, a TV camera and antenna on it and sent it to the moon. If Kennedy had given NASA 30 years instead of a decade, maybe they’d have developed and incorporated newer, more complex or effiricent systems into the designs for hardware and collateral systems, but they didn’t have that luxury. Frankly, they did a fine job w/what was on hand at the time.

  • common sense

    @ Vladislaw wrote @ January 26th, 2012 at 5:01 pm

    “Whoa … back the truck up. I was mearly answering a question. How does he think he can do it. All I did was provide his words on how he plans to do it.”

    Sorry for the truck ;) I may have overreacted a little after reading email that we cannot, should not dare criticize Gingrich for whatever reason. Only trying to instill a little reality in whatever candidate Gingrich is saying to some people in Florida to gain their support…

    “I do actually take it at face value on how Gingrich would try to do it. Newt can’t help being Newt and if he ever did become president he would either be some sort of manchurian candidate and do a 180 degree about face or he would do what he did as speaker. Try and bully everyone to his point of view and take it to the public. He went against Reagan in the 80′s as E. Abrams wrote about today and was always public about it.”

    Well he might but he would be the President and I suspect it may affect him a lot more than he even thinks.

    “I have not seen any actual numbers from Gingrich other that 10% of the NASA budget. I have not formed any opinions until I see some of the devil in the details.”

    But the 10% is not realistic. Not like this, not by arm-wrestling it through Congress.

    “I like ideas for more commercial space activies and prizes, in general, work for me. But without a lot more blanks filled in it is hard to form an opinion for a Lunar Base in eight years.”

    Prizes may become a distraction especially if he aims for such large amount of money. Invite and nurture commercial space to define and build an infrastructure that supports the US government as a start and then…

  • DCSCA wrote:

    [the usual bunch of mindless blather]

    For someone who narcissistically and pseudonymously refers to itself as “this writer,” you sure don’t know much about paragraphs.

  • Das Boese

    Rand Simberg wrote @ January 25th, 2012 at 11:13 pm

    I’m not sure it would start a “cold war in space,” but there are actually better ways to accomplish what Newt wants without treaty withdrawal. It just wouldn’t be an American state. It would be more like the Texas Republic.

    We probably agree that a vague proposals for a lunar outpost by the end of the decade isn’t a terribly convincing reason for pulling out of the treaty.

    By the way, still betting that you won’t be using deutschemarks soon? ;-)

    Yep. If it truly does come to that, I think I’d rather switch to using US$. Actually I might do that anyway if the opportunity arises.

    It’s either that, or southern Europe is back to drachmas and the lira.

    Now that’s a different and somewhat more likely possibility, although no less unpleasant. It all depends on wether our leaders show some spine, which unfortunately is unlikely with people like Merkel, Cameron and Sarko in charge.
    Luckily elections aren’t terribly far off, Merkel’s coalition may not even last its full term.

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