Instead, she might appreciate a $5 gift card to the local coffee shop inside a refillable
coffee mug – something she will enjoy on cold winter mornings driving a bus
full of children around town. We eat and are exposed to all types of chemicals and toxins
each day.

I stood a quick read through the history section for the Casio website (more than a coffee) and found a picture of 14-A, the first all-electric compact calculator
conceived in 1957.

But that’s what this discussion is about. I don’t believe there are such statements that REQUIRE settlement. You have yet to show me a convincing one by people who express national consensus or leadership. I’m not sure what an “emergent goal” is. Is that a goal that we’re too embarrassed to make explicit, maybe? You can only ask people to work towards “explicit” goals.

That’s right. Obama wasn’t saying we weren’t going back to the Moon. What he said was that going to new places was a priority. That doesn’t sound like space settlement as a priority.

I’m sorry, but it’s going to take more than pretending to rationalize this. I think it’s a real shame because, as I said, I think the only credible rationale for human spaceflight is colonization and settlement.

As to Newt, you think the space community rallying to him would have changed popular opinion about him? No, popular opinion would have seen crazies defending crazies. The “space community”, such as it is, has ZERO impact in determination of national policy. What Newt needed was for other political leaders to rally to him. But none wanted to touch it with a ten foot pole.

Further, he didn’t say we don’t need to go to the moon. He said,
“Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before. Buzz has been there. There’s a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do. So I believe it’s more important to ramp up our capabilities to reach — and operate at — a series of increasingly demanding targets, while advancing our technological capabilities with each step forward”

That isn’t saying that we aren’t going back to the moon. What that is saying is that NASA isn’t going to be primarily focused on the moon, particularly for exploration. And frankly, exploration should not be the primary focus in going back to the moon – lunar spaceflight should be about development. In other words, its a rejection of going to the moon Constellation (or Apollo) style, not no going to the moon, period.

Settlement may not be an explicit goal, but there are enough statements about items that require settlement in presidential speeches, in national statements, and in previous NASA authorization laws, that, while its not an explicit goal, it is an emergent goal of this country.

Final point, regarding Newt – part of the reason I’d argue that his lunar statehood speech hurt him is because the space community didn’t rally to him. If it had, or at least the Republican part of the space community, had rallied to him, I think it could have been different.

Though, you know. What he described comes pretty close to what we now have on ISS.

If Obama was talking about colonization and settlement of other worlds, he would have been more specific.

Try again.

Newt, front runner for the Republican nomination? Yep, that was before he endorsed lunar statehood. That took care of him.

“Fifty years after the creation of NASA, our goal is no longer just a destination to reach. Our goal is the capacity for people to work and learn and operate and live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time, ultimately in ways that are more sustainable and even indefinite”

That is settlement.

(Regarding Newt – for a short while, he was seen as a front-runner for the Republican Nomination. However, in the context of what we are talking about, I was more referring to how almost no one in the space community defended his speech in Florida, which is a real shame and very telling)