Campaign '12

Romney campaign continues to hammer away on Gingrich lunar base proposal

Earlier this week, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich spoke out against the criticism he received from fellow candidates about his lunar base proposal, chastising Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum for calling his proposal “really stupid” and expensive. “I mean, why did my two Republican competitors instinctively decide we couldn’t go into space? Because they’re cheap,” he said in a Tuesday speech in Dayton, Ohio. Yesterday, the Romney campaign pushed back.

“Our staggering national debt and recurring deficits are jeopardizing America’s fiscal future – yet he attacks critics of his moon base proposal for being ‘cheap’ and ‘stingy,'” Romney campaign spokesperson Amanda Henneberg said in a statement released Wednesday by the campaign. The statement made the case that Gingrich’s lunar base proposal—which the Romney campaign again said would cost up to “half a trillion dollars”—was the latest evidence that Gingrich was not serious about cutting federal spending. Given that record, said Henneberg, “it’s not surprising that his campaign hasn’t left the launch pad.”

55 comments to Romney campaign continues to hammer away on Gingrich lunar base proposal

  • SpaceColonizer

    Has Romney laid out any detailed plans to cut spending? Because I’ve never heard anything specific that would have any significant impact, so for him to accuse another candidate of not being serious about cutting spending is laughable. And once again we get this mysterious half a trillion $ figure… stupid. Will Newt have it in him to give another big policy speech, maybe when the Texas primary gets closer?

  • DCSCA

    Ms. Henneberg would do well to pick up a copy of ‘First On The Moon,’ published in 1970, and peruse the Epilogue, penned by Arthur C. Clarke, titled, ‘Beyond Apollo,’ then pass it along to her boss. It is factual, it is prescient and it reads fresh for a piece penned four decades ago. Henneberg will discover how foolish she sounds giving voice to Mr. Romney’s ignorance. ‘Newt Gingrich, Moon President’ should take a look at it, too, if only to educate himself on how a truly well informed individual properly pitches space advocacy without generating laughter. Then there is Mr. Santorum, who is the fish in the piece; left behind in the slime.

  • GeeSpace

    Romney is using the old NASA 90 day report figures which included a lot of things that, I think, are not in Gingrich’s proposal. Also, one of the missing things in the 90 day report is commerical space involvement.

    Romney;s statement states that “Our staggering national debt and recurring deficits are jeopardizing America’s fiscal future – yet he attacks critics of his moon base proposal for being ‘cheap’ and ‘stingy,”
    Well, it depends in your viewpoint. Compared with other federal spending, Ginrich;s proposal is probably “cheap” . And, not spending some money on research and development is probably “stingy”

    It would be informative if Romney explained is space policy (if he has one).

  • amightywind

    The strategy is clear and effective, make Newt constantly defend his inopportune statements to deny him from using his good ideas to his advantage. Conservatives have already abandoned Newt in favor of Santorum. Newt hasn’t been news in space politics for some time now.

  • BRC

    “Conservatives have already abandoned Newt in favor of Santorum. ”

    Assuming that is the case (outside of the Romney bandwagon), then the next best recourse for space advocates is to pipe some defendable (un-laughable) space-based knowledge into Rick. At least get the guy some for-real information that’s tailored to work with his ideals.

    Whether or not you like any particular candidate doesn’t mean he won’t end up as the “Space Commander n Chief”, who might do some real damage to the American space program. The trick is to tailor the information for what we want for space exploration/exploitation, in a manner that appears to be in sync with his platform (i.e., make him think it’s his idea). At the very least then, whomever wins won’t be tempted to immediately gut the space program for some quick knee-jerk PR event (“look-at-me-I’m-cutting-Gov-fat-to-feed-the-poor”).

  • Googaw

    |What a generous guy Newt is! With other people’s money. It appears to have slipped his daydreaming mind that astronaut extravaganzas have now joined bank bailouts and welfare moms as symbols of government profligacy.

    Fortunately the “moon president”, since regaling Florida with his lunar plans and being quite properly pilloried for them, is no longer the poll-leading alternative to the “food stamp president.” With luck we might just get somebody in the White House who is actually stingy when it comes to spending money borrowed from China on the backs of our children.

  • amightywind

    pipe some defendable (un-laughable) space-based knowledge into Rick

    You joke, but the best hope for us space advocates have is that one of the GOP candidates is well advised by the right people if they win the election. The winning model is the one Obama used in appointing the leftist cabal of the Augustine Committee. Change the faces (and philosophies), and voila! We have a new (old) NASA policy.

  • Googaw

    “The winning model is the one Obama used in appointing the leftist cabal of the Augustine Committee. ”

    Just what we need, another central planning committee composed of people angling for NASA contracts.

  • Googaw

    “Ms. Henneberg would do well to pick up a copy of ‘First On The Moon,’ published in 1970″

    Somehow I think other politicians will be leaving the grandiose Cold War astronaut extravaganzas to Newt.

  • @Googaw

    China owns about 9% of our national debt. Japan owns about 6% of our debt. Foreigners and foreign institutions own about 26% of our debt in total.

    But Americans and American government and private institutions own about 74% of our national debt.

    While the foreign ownership of our debt is certainly not insignificant, it doesn’t mean that China owns our debt.

  • Robert G. Oler

    SpaceColonizer wrote @ February 9th, 2012 at 7:15 am

    Has Romney laid out any detailed plans to cut spending?”

    No.

    Willard has no plan to do anything except spend a lot of money getting himself elected President. (and he will fail at that).

    This is why “advisors” like the dolts who signed his space letter are so important…they lend some threads to an empty suit.

    In the near term Newt is going to have to (among other things) run directly at Willard on this issue and tie it to a lack of planning on Willards part to either grow the economy or shrink the deficit.

    Robert

  • The winning model is the one Obama used in appointing the leftist cabal of the Augustine Committee.

    Such a description of the Augustine Committee does not become less objectively insane from repetition.

  • Robert G. Oler

    http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-space-speech-newt-needs-to-give/

    It is an interesting effort by Simberg…he clearly is not a speech writer (grin) and probably isnt good at giving one…but he (Simberg) makes a run at how Newt should infact engage on this…and Muncy will do better but…

    If I was suggesting things to Newt (and I am NOT) I would suggest (grin) he give a speech hitting on a few points.

    1. The greatness of America is when an effort is undertaken by government on behalf of the people to change the future. That effort can only succeed when it harnesses the free enterprise system to allow personal initiative and innovation. something like “It was not planners in the US Navy who came up with the notion of adopting production techniques that built cargo ships on the average of one every 45 days. It was Henry Kaiser at his own shipyard. It was the Navy who used the ships, but Kaiser built them. It was not the US Army Air Corp that developed a four engine bomber that won the war, it was Boeing in Seattle….” and then go off an compare this with Boeing, SpaceX…etc all developing replacements for the shuttle that are far cheaper, more innovative, and such to resupply the space station.

    2. Then he needs to talk about why a lunar base would “focus our efforts and industry” (ok not original) on reshaping our industry so that the spinoffs are not products but capabilities which can be used to do other things in “the heavens” to take the tools that have reshaped our past into the future, and transform them to the tools that will summon our future.

    There is some explaining to do here in terms of how government/industry partnership developed communications satellites how assembling satellites etc can change our defense etc…but its not all that hard to put it into a good speech

    3. And he then needs to define how a lunar base would be different from the space station. …It would summon the best of American energies and disciplines to participate at an affordable cost in the exploration and hopefullly exploitation of not a continent but another world. The effort would be contrasted with a space station that is a government only tool. Yes this is vision.

    4…then he needs to tackle cost and this should be where he shoves it down Willards hole….. Saying that a lunar base would cost (whatever number the Willard campaign is using today) simply means that Willard and Steady Eddy are stuck in the notion of government doing things like it has done them for the past 50 years.

    The wrap up needs to be along the lines of the innovation a Gingrich Presidency would bring to all parts of government including defense and social programs etc…whereas the other two are stuck in the past.

    I havent spent much time on this…but those four things would refocus the debate from the grounds that Steady Eddie and Willard are pushing it …cost to the notion of how a “Gingrich Presidency” would reinnovate government.

    Robert

  • Coastal Ron

    amightywind wrote @ February 9th, 2012 at 8:11 am

    Conservatives have already abandoned Newt in favor of Santorum.

    Santorum is the flavor of the week, but nonetheless a weak one at that.

    Since Romney and Santorum have only been able to “win” over 50% of the vote at any state primary only once each, I’d say there is no clear winner. And, of course, Romney is still ahead in the delegate count.

    Regarding space politics, I don’t know if we’ll get more out of the candidates than we already have. Romney and Santorum seem like they would back a stronger commercial push into space, Paul would likely defund NASA since it’s not in the Constitution, and Gingrinch is still defending his Moon plan, which is supposed to fit within the current NASA budget profile (more a change in destination than a major change in policy).

    I guess we’ll have to wait and see what is said when the candidates get to California, Texas and Alabama.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Coastal Ron wrote @ February 9th, 2012 at 1:06 pm

    It will be before California, etc…Ohio is the big upcoming pivot point…what happens in ohio will determine trends…Cleveland is big in Ohio,

    Space and human spaceflight will come up. RGO

  • amightywind

    Such a description of the Augustine Committee does not become less objectively insane from repetition.

    You cannot appeal to the non-partisan results of a non-partisan commission when it is clearly not one. Nothing insane about that simple deduction.

    Santorum is the flavor of the week, but nonetheless a weak one at that.

    Perhaps, but case you haven’t noticed, there are few new flavors left in the freezer left to sample. Surviving is what the primary season is about. For the record, I voted for Santorum at this week’s caucus.

  • Dick Morris

    Good advice, though I would put #4 at the top of the list. Gingrich needs to wake up to the fact that he is being “swift boated” by Romney and Santorum, who charge that Gingrich wants to spend half a trillion dollars in this decade to build a 13,000 person colony by 2020. He needs to very firmly refute that charge. If he has done so, I guess I missed it.

    Give me $20 billion up front, let me decide to how to invest it, and I could have a permanent lunar base IOC by 2020. That might be a good cost figure for Gingrich to use. (I have also seen an estimate of $35 billion by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, so that seems to be about the right ballpark.)

  • Googaw

    Marcel, I care far more about how people are trying to sell my children into debt slavery to fund their cult rituals than about who specifically they are trying to sell them to. Although the fact that some of the debt holders will be Chinese is ironic given that this cult is obsessed with borrowing ever more money to try to avoid their dreaded nightmare of taikonauts walking in Neil Armstrong’s sacred footsteps.

  • You cannot appeal to the non-partisan results of a non-partisan commission when it is clearly not one.

    It was only clear that it was partisan to loons who don’t actually know any of the people on it.

  • Googaw

    Rand on PJ Media: “Note that not a single one of [Romney’s first three] goals requires sending humans into space.”

    Earth to Rand: this is a feature, not a bug.

    continued: “Such a base would prove out the concepts of the utilization of resources on the moon,”

    Earth to Rand: No such budget items actually exist in the low-balled lunar base budgets. They’re just hobbit holes: tiny RVs buried in the lunar dirt. That’s it. The astronauts are not there to accomplish anything, they are there to satisfy the spiritual yearnings of the astronaut cultists.

    continued: “So, suppose that I’m right, and we can do it for just a few billion dollars?”

    Suppose I can wave a wand, intone “private enterprise is magic” three times, intone “government contracts are private enterprise” twice, and “Alakazaam!” in one final shout? And presto cosmico the costs of the Iraq War were lowered by a factor of fifty by using Blackwater instead of the 5th Infantry? Oh what a delightfully wonderful alternative universe that was!

    It is hilarious to see you trying to dig Newt’s hole even deeper.

  • well

    Gingrich said he wouldnt increase the NASA budget. So is Romney now campaigning on reducing it? He should say so and not be coy about it.

  • It is hilarious to see you trying to dig Newt’s hole even deeper.

    It is much more so to see you completely missing the point.

  • John Malkin

    amightywind wrote @ February 9th, 2012 at 1:17 pm

    #1 on the options list that the Augustine Committee submitted was POR aka Constellation aka moon base. They simply said that it needed $3B more to produce the desired goals. There wasn’t any Congress member that disagreed with this fact and none supported adding the money. However the Committees did want to try and salvage it. So now we have SLS which is costing nearly Constellation’s proposed cost with far fewer goals.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Dick Morris wrote @ February 9th, 2012 at 1:28 pm

    thank you. Newt is not only being swiftboated…but he is also struggling now to find a niche in the GOP crowd.

    Sweater Eddy is going to get the god squad vote, Willard the “he is our corporate guy vote” and Newt had been angling for the “change the federal government” vote and that is why Willard and Sweater run hard at his moon plan.

    If he (newt) cannot get traction in the change the federal government effort…then he has no path RGO

  • MrEarl

    This whole issue has long ago transformed from legitimate debating point to a way for one group to bash another. Facts are few and far between and only get in the way of the bashing and fear mongering.

    “Gingrich is selling our children to debt slavery in China for a Moon Colony!!!!!”

    “Romney and Santorum are subjecting our children to Chinese domination of space!!!”

    WAKE UP PEOPLE!

    You get the government you deserve. From the looks of the race so far and peoples reaction to it, that’s really scary!

  • Googaw

    “It is much more so to see you completely missing the point.”

    Please don’t keep us in suspense about the cosmic mystery you’ve solved that will lower the cost of a lunar base by a factor of fifty and throw in for free all sorts of wonderful things that aren’t actually in the budget!

    Me and millions of other Americans have already busted our guts laughing at Newt, but Romney asking Newt on stage what astral magic he has invoked to achieve Rand’s budget would provide enough comedy to last the rest of the year.

  • amightywind

    It was only clear that it was partisan to loons who don’t actually know any of the people on it.

    I know some of the people on the committee (or did). And deduce enough from the others to be confident in my opinion. The committee excluded space advocates and leaders I most identity with. That is not a coincidence. If you want to be duped by democrat slight of hand, be my guest.

  • Mark

    The problem with the Augustine Committee was not that it was partisan. The problem is that the Obama administration choose to cherry pick proposals from the report that suited them and rejected the rest. The Augustine Report had a perfectly sensible option for a return to the Moon that Obama (and now Romney and Santorum) chose to sneer at.

  • @Mr. Earl
    Good point. Unfortunately many people find logic confusing. :)

  • Coastal Ron

    Mark wrote @ February 9th, 2012 at 4:57 pm

    The problem is that the Obama administration choose to cherry pick proposals from the report that suited them and rejected the rest.

    The Augustine Commission provided a menu of suggestions, so how in the world can you come up with the suggestion of “cherry picking”?

    And let’s keep in mind the conclusion of their report:

    NASA is the most accomplished space organization in the world. Its human spaceflight activities are nonetheless at a tipping point, primarily due to a mismatch of goals and resources. Either additional funds need to be made avail- able or a far more modest program involving little or no exploration needs to be adopted. Various options can be identified that offer exciting and worthwhile opportunities for the human exploration of space if appropriate funds can be made available. Such funds can be considerably leveraged by having NASA attack its overhead costs and change some of its traditional ways of conducting its affairs—and by giving its management the authority to bring about such changes. The American public can take pride in NASA’s past accomplishments; the opportunity now exists to provide for the future human spaceflight program worthy of a great nation.

    They were addressing the elephant in the room, which is the disconnect between what people want NASA to do, and what they are willing to fund NASA to do.

    The Augustine Report had a perfectly sensible option for a return to the Moon that Obama (and now Romney and Santorum) chose to sneer at.

    I know you feel there is only one true destination for us in the universe – the Moon. The reality is that the Moon is one of many places we all want to go, and it will be VERY expensive when we decide to go back. But why should the U.S. Taxpayer pay for that? We’ve already been there, so let companies take over the job of exploiting what the Moon has to offer.

    The bottom line is that there is no economic reason to go to the Moon yet, and since America has already conquered the Moon, it doesn’t have the same allure it did in the 60’s.

    Since there is no national consensus on where we should go next, blaming politicians for listening to their constituents is kind of nonsensical. Obama picked a low-cost exploration path, which would do what Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton didn’t plan to do – take us out of LEO. And considering how badly Griffin ran the Bush 43 Moon program, no one is likely to want to retry that for a while. Best get used to disappointment.

  • John Malkin

    amightywind wrote @ February 9th, 2012 at 4:07 pm
    It was only clear that it was partisan to loons who don’t actually know any of the people on it.

    I know some of the people on the committee (or did). And deduce enough from the others to be confident in my opinion. The committee excluded space advocates and leaders I most identity with. That is not a coincidence. If you want to be duped by democrat slight of hand, be my guest

    It’s not so much who you know but who knows you. Who and how did the committee exclude? Maybe they just sat on their hands or hid in a lab.

  • Space Realist

    The Augustine Report had a perfectly sensible option for a return to the Moon

    Returning to the moon with humans is not ‘sensible’ in any way shape or form when we can’t even get Americans to the International Space Station. A human orented moon base is not only unaffordable and unsustainable, it provides no value to the people who would have to pay for it, and what needs to be done in terms of science at the poles in the near term can be done orders of magnitude more cheaply by unmanned teleoperated devices, and even then those craters are the coldest places in the solar system and would require a massive investment in technology to explore even superficially. The Augustine Committee report was as delusional as Constellation was. It was a great disappointment among space realists.

  • I know some of the people on the committee (or did). And deduce enough from the others to be confident in my opinion.

    And yet you never elaborate on this in any credible way, simply insanely calling them (including Augustine himself, and Jeff Greason) “leftists.”

  • The Augustine Committee report was as delusional as Constellation was. It was a great disappointment among space realists.

    Well, it must be true, seeing as it was posted by some pseudonymous troll calling itself “Space Realist.” I mean, who better to rely on a source of the space-realist community?

  • Robert G. Oler

    Mark wrote @ February 9th, 2012 at 4:57 pm

    The problem with the Augustine Committee was not that it was partisan. The problem is that the Obama administration choose to cherry pick proposals from the report that suited them and rejected the rest. The Augustine Report had a perfectly sensible option for a return to the Moon that Obama (and now Romney and Santorum) chose to sneer at>>

    LOL…the “sensible” notion aside the only people mocking a return to the Moon outright is the Willard and Sweater Rick campaigns…Obama just chose not to go there. How does it feel Mark? The GOP laughing at a return to the Moon…? RGO

  • Space Realist

    “Well, it must be true, seeing as it was posted by some pseudonymous troll calling itself “Space Realist.”

    I guess that’s explains why three years after Augustine, we’re still stuck with Constellation, with no end of Constellation in sight. That’s real progress!

    Seriously, the Augustine Committee was an epic failure, with the exception that it revealed some of the committee members for what they were.

  • Doug

    Amazing how many in USA are completely unaware of the low cost commercial space program that exist today in the shadow of NASA. Anyone referencing anything from the 70’s or anything NASA based is totally out of touch and needs to bone up on recent commercial (non-NASA) activities. Newt knows NASA is not going back to the moon. He also knows USA commercial companies have know-how to do low cost reuseable LEO and lunar missions. Newt also knows NASA is and has been a pork based program for the lat forty years. NASA manned space program exist to feed the pork based space jobs for votes infrastructure developed during Apollo and cemented in place during the shuttled program. newt knows commercial
    prize based space program is the way to go. Mitt is clueless and is slamming a vital commercial space industry that the USA needs to miantian its future tech lead.

  • Space Fantasist claimed:

    Seriously, the Augustine Committee was an epic failure, with the exception that it revealed some of the committee members for what they were.

    You mean they were finally exposed as trans-dimensional beings from the future trying to change the course of history?!

    Amazing how those in denial of reality love to smear but fail to provide one single fact to back up their falsehoods. You can tell they learned how to “debate” on the Internet.

  • DCSCA

    Googaw wrote @ February 9th, 2012 at 12:11 pm

    Clearly you haven’t read the epilogue, as it spells out pretty much everything as it was, is and will be.

  • DCSCA

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ February 9th, 2012 at 12:53 pm

    Not really. The speech ‘Newt Gingeich, Moon President’ needs to give is a given- and goes something like this: “I have concluded it is impossible for me to secure enough delegates to win my party’s nomination. Accordingly, I will suspend my campaign effective immediately.'”

  • DCSCA

    Gingrich is a punchline for lunar lunacies forever now. His credibility on matters space in national discourse is nil, now. The SNL skit will be in his NBC News obit.

  • Googaw

    Space Realist: “The Augustine Committee report was as delusional as Constellation was. It was a great disappointment among space realists.”

    Well said. Worship of the output of central planning committees, composed of people fishing for fat NASA contracts rather than pursuing real commerce or military objectives in space, is one of the more bizarre aspects of the often very bizarre space activist community.

  • Googaw

    Gingrich: “I mean, why did my two Republican competitors instinctively decide we couldn’t go into space?”

    BTW, if you want to talk about politicians lying, this one takes the cake. Neither Santorum nor Romney said anything remotely resembling “[deciding] that we couldn’t go in space.” Did they say they were going to stop the launch of military satellites? Of course not. No more GPS? Far from it. Ban the launch of communications satellites? Nothing of the sort. Stop building and launching science spacecraft? No such statement. They didn’t even decide or say or even suggest that humans shouldn’t go in space at U.S. taxpayer expense (although that, by contrast with the above, would be quite reasonable). They simply decided and said that Newt Gingrich’s lunar base/astronaut temple/colony/51st State plan is what it clearly is: fiscal insanity.

    So on top of his pathological economic fantasy Gingrich adds pathological lies about his opponents’ opinions on space.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ February 9th, 2012 at 9:12 pm

    Not really. The speech ‘Newt Gingeich, Moon President’ needs to give is a given- and goes something like this: “I have concluded it is impossible for me to secure enough delegates to win my party’s nomination. Accordingly, I will suspend my campaign effective immediately.’”

    That would at this stage of the GOP nominating process be a goofy conclusion. See what the end of feb looks like…both Newt and Sweater Ricky seem to be “OK” for money …RGO

  • E.P. Grondine

    Is anyone here going to provide googaw with THE answer to the “Why?” question?

    Has anyone here actually spoken with non-space enthusiasts about what they expect from NASA?

    The thing that gets me about space polls, is that they never ask about impact. Simple questions, like:

    “Should NASA find the next piece of “Stuff” from space before it hits the Earth?”

    “Should NASA try to prevent the next piece of “Stuff” headed our way from hitting?”

    Oh well, the budget comes out Monday.

  • adastramike

    Cutting spending is not a bad thing if we cut in the right areas those things that are clearly in excess or not working for us (JWST is one example). What we need are cuts to the large things, not to relatively smaller things with high public return like scientific research and space exploration. The average person hears $1B for a NASA mission and may think it’s a waste of money, without realizing the size of our national budget and the small fraction that NASA’s budget is. Consider the $1.5B/yr planetary science budget, it’s nothing compared to the national budget or the national debt. Then consider what people spend on movies per year or on soda or popcorn. Why target Mars for cuts? First this administration cut the Moon because we’ve “been there”, yet proposes an equally expensive asteroid mission 3 presidential terms in the future. As if that will last. We have to ask Romney and believe it or not Santorum exactly what NASA, in terms of human spaceflight, should be doing? We obviously cannot shut down a crown jewel of America, the space program, as that would relinquish our leadership. Yet we endured two Space shuttle disasters that prompted the question: why risk people’s lives on dangerous spacecraft if the goal, the destination, the science is not worth it? Create a goal, an impetus, a vision that is worthy of the risk that astronauts take in exploring space. In my view a moon base SHOULD be pursued instead of the ISS. Get commerical involved in that rather than limiting us to LEO where we’ve been stuck for decades.

  • DCSCA

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ February 10th, 2012 at 12:46 am

    “That would at this stage of the GOP nominating process be a goofy conclusion.”

    Nonsense. He has no chance, no gravitas, no credibility and has become the necessary go-to clown in the media now that Cain and Perry and Bachmann are out of it. And every time he opens his mouth, the inevitable “Newt Gingrich, Moon President” reference comes up, lampooning his credibility in the media even more while doing continuing damage to any serious discussion of space policy for months- if not years. Case in point, Simberg’s laughable spin. The readers of this forum have an interest in advancing viable space policies not the Gingrich Follies.

  • DCSCA

    Every time Newt mentions NASA, everyone thinks ‘moon president’ and ‘May di-vorce be with you.” He’s a disaster.

  • I’ll wait until Monday when the budget is officially released to really see what’s what, but for the moment let’s assume the Mars budget has been reduced to fund JWST.

    I suspect the answer is Senator Barbara Mikulski.

    Let’s not forget that the GOP House majority voted to kill JWST for FY 12. When the budget got to the Senate, Mikulski (D-MD) saved JWST because she is chairwoman of the Senate’s science subcommittee.

    JWST gets saved because Mikulski will make sure it does. JWST is being built in her state so all she cares about are Maryland pork.

    Who’s in a position of power to save the next Mars mission?

    That’s not a flippant question. I ask in all sincerity. Where would it be built? Who is that locale’s senator and is that person in a position to fight for Mars pork?

    Mikulski was re-elected in 2010 so she’s in position until 2016 or the Senate majority removes her from the chair of that subcommittee.

  • Space Realist

    You mean they were finally exposed as trans-dimensional beings from the future trying to change the course of history?!

    No, they were revealed to be staunch advocates of the NASA astronaut office and industry executives protecting their blatant earmark contract profits.

    If the Augustine Committee report had been definitively blunt we would not still be saddled with the SLS and MPCV. There is no way around that result.

    I look forward to the theater of Augustine 2 at some time in the near future.

  • Googaw: “Marcel, I care far more about how people are trying to sell my children into debt slavery to fund their cult rituals than about who specifically they are trying to sell them to. Although the fact that some of the debt holders will be Chinese is ironic given that this cult is obsessed with borrowing ever more money to try to avoid their dreaded nightmare of taikonauts walking in Neil Armstrong’s sacred footsteps.”

    MW: Even if you totally eliminated the $8 billion a year, NASA spends of manned spaceflight, it would take nearly 2000 years for those savings to reduce or $15 trilllion debt. But since NASA spending actually creates more wealth than it consumes, such a cut would actually increase our debt.

    The fact that a fascist state that oppress its own people while strongly supporting American enemies like Iran and North Korea– may soon become the most powerful economy on Earth is cause for alarm, IMO.

    China is not a paper tiger!

    Marcel F. Williams

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ February 10th, 2012 at 5:56 am
    Nonsense. He has no chance, no gravitas, no credibility and has become the necessary go-to clown in the media now that Cain and Perry and Bachmann are out of it”

    maybe but I am not so sure.

    First there is a good chance that Newt can turn this around…as I noted (as did others) he needs to come up with a plan of attack on this…but I think that they are trying to do that.

    Second…the GOP field right now is not “cut and dried”.

    If all things were “Normal” Willard should have this sewn up by now…but he clearly does not and then one is left with figuring out how a front runner (Willard) who cant seal the deal, Newt a flawed but entertaining candidate, and Sweater Ricky who is a right wing evangelical nut cake…what his high end base of support is.

    We will see about a lot of this. The “god wing” of the GOP claims (see Ricky’s speech this morning) that it is the GOP. And in fact represents large blocks of America…I am not so sure that they do on either count…and if they dont Ricky S goes nowhere…but I dont see Willard picking up either Ricky’s support or that of Newts…GOP primaries look more like SC then Florida…ie there are more extremist.

    So see how this plays out.

    Newt has the chance to turn his “lunar fiasco” Into something usable that could resonate well. There is a time a moment where he can start this…the GOP faithful are all excited about birth control now…but the moment might come.

    This could be a long hard slog…RGO

  • Googaw

    “The fact that a fascist state that oppress its own people while strongly supporting American enemies like Iran and North Korea– may soon become the most powerful economy on Earth is cause for alarm.”

    A power that has nothing to do with the dreaded taikonauts.Indeed, from this conservative point of view it would be nice if they wasted more money on astronaut frivolities like we do. That money would come out of their businesses making them less competitive, at the margin, like it does here.

    And let’s not hear any more of that “it’s such a small fraction of the budget” nonsense. Every bureaucrat wasting money can say that about their own budget. Every single one. It has no bearing on the issue of whether they are wasting money or not.

  • DCSCA

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ February 10th, 2012 at 12:46 pm

    “First there is a good chance that Newt can turn this around.”

    Nonsense. Everytime he– he being “Newt Gingrich, Moon President” opens his mouth he does more damage to spaceflight advocacy. Abnd space policy is the focus of this forum, not general politics.

  • DCSCA

    @Robert G. Oler wrote @ February 10th, 2012 at 12:46 pm

    Postscript- case in point: Gingrich’s CPAC address today touched on all the usual talking points save one- noticably missing from “Newt Gingrich – Moon President’s” lecture was any reference to his lunar base/colony proposal.

Leave a Reply to DCSCA Cancel reply

  

  

  

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>