Newt Promises 'Permanent US Base on Moon' if he's Elected: (now we're talking!)

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

It;s not about thrust to get to Orbit, it's about the ship to leave orbit in with humans in it...and able to land and preferably fly BACK at some point in the future. It's that ship part we don't have, unless the Military DOES have the fruits of a parallel space program....in which case it's time to share and make a few leaps and bounds.

Orion is under development, with a test flight scheduled for 2013. We would need to develop a lunar lander, thats the only element that is missing.

reply to post by anon72


I was watching him say that, and this thought came to me. Why would he say a thing like that, if he did not think it could actually happen? After all, Newt is pulling out all the stops to appear to be telling the truth, and is spending money like mad hiding his past and fooling the people. Why would he say that if he did not think it possible? The only thing that answers this is: The Lunar Base is already there, already build with your tax dollars. Make sense?
Could America even afford a Moon Mission right now?

romney and others say it would be hundreds of bilions of dollars which should be not spend there. but that number of money they claim it would cost is only true if nasa stays the way it is now and due too bureaucracy .
If people like paul allen , elon musk and robert bigalow would work to getter and create it on the moon it would cost less then 500 milion dollars

so as newt says let us do it in with private commercial parties and a leener nasa.
i agree with his speech he had this week and I like to see it coming to fruitation.

Originally posted by anon72

Gingrich, the former House speaker, told a Florida audience that he wanted to develop a commercial space industry in line with the airline boom of the 1930s, leading to a permanent base on the moon. He also wanted to expand plans for the exploration of Mars. Russia and China would 'not come close', said Gingrich.

According to the Miami Herald, Gingrich said: 'By the end of my second term. We will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American... Does that mean I'm visionary? You betcha.' He added: 'We clearly have the capacity that Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to us.'

Gingrich said his plan would benefit 'science, tourism and manufacturing'. Gingrich, a long-time space enthusiast, also said he wanted to expand exploration of Mars, saying NASA could pay for ambitious plans by teaming up with the private sector. The plans are a vote-winner in Florida.

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk...

Here's what I am thinking that I would rather see.... (from the old show Space-1999-awesome show):

Starting to like him a bit more... with this kind of thinking. Sure better than the current administration.

The thing is... I believe him. I think the Space industry is KEY to the USA economic recovery. Is so many ways.

Well. I don't hear anyone else talking about it and for me-this is a top priority. It will be interesting to see who, if anyone else says anything like it.

Maybe Obama will change his tune even... it is an election year.

Don't leave out the important information on the moon. ---------- GDP Growth ---------- !!!

Of course there will be tourism but there will also be mining taking place. Helium-3

It's a very profitable venture. The moon is also a great jumping off point to the asteroid belt

that's in between Mars & Jupiter. - More mining -

Originally posted by Eurisko2012
Of course there will be tourism but there will also be mining taking place. Helium-3

It's a very profitable venture.

Seriously? Do you have a business plan? Do you know how much regolith must be mined, crunched and processed by heavy machinery?

en.wikipedia.org...

150 million tonnes of regolith to obtain one ton of helium 3

I don't blame you if you have hard time visualizing that. It's a large amount of rock, and the machinery required to handle this is heavy, massive in size and expensive to build -- and much more expensive to deploy on the moon.

So I'm sorry, but it's silly to base your business model on sci-fi. One day when space travel becomes trivial (and certainly not by the end of projected second term of Newt), this may be considered, but not in our lifetime.

Originally posted by Cosmic4life
reply to post by Maslo

 

Falcon Heavy, Atlas V HLV and Delta IV Heavy are only half the power of the Saturn V.

To build a base on the Moon your going to need something equivalent or bigger than Saturn V.

Cosmic..

Actually.. No..
All you need is something that takes up the parts to Earth orbit level.
A smaller rocket, or a space elevator..
Then you have a transporter vehicle that goes from Earth's orbit level to the Moon, and back to load more stuff.

reply to post by buddhasystem


For every person there is to initiate change there are a 1,000 to resist him.

We have the technology and the means to make a moon base happen.

All you have to do is take off your blinders.

Trust me. We can get there from here.

----------
Of course there will always be people sitting back and dreaming up reasons why we

should just forget the whole thing.


Anybody who even suggests such a venture should be shouted down and silenced.

Originally posted by Maslo
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

It;s not about thrust to get to Orbit, it's about the ship to leave orbit in with humans in it...and able to land and preferably fly BACK at some point in the future. It's that ship part we don't have, unless the Military DOES have the fruits of a parallel space program....in which case it's time to share and make a few leaps and bounds.

Orion is under development, with a test flight scheduled for 2013. We would need to develop a lunar lander, thats the only element that is missing.

Yikes... You may want to insure you're up to date on the latest? Perhaps I'm all wrong and you can show a more recent plan for how this is to be used.... However, by what I have found and read, the Orion / Constellation program is still being developed, but as a pathetic joke of what it was envisioned as:

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - A top NASA official said U.S President Barack Obama will announce plans to continue development of a stripped-down version of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle for use as a crew lifeboat on the International Space Station.

Garver said NASA's Orion contract with Denver-based Lockheed Martin Space Systems would be restructured to develop a variant of the space capsule that could be launched unmanned to station within the next couple of years to serve as a crew lifeboat. Garver said the plan would allow the agency to retain some of its multibillion-dollar investment in the program while reducing U.S. reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft currently used as an emergency crew escape capability on the space station.

Oh but there must be OTHER systems, since they've gutted and turned the replacement to the shuttles into something even the Soyuz program might look down upon, right? Of of course.. they thought of that!

Garver said Obama also would announce a plan select a heavy-lift vehicle design by 2015, an element previously missing from the human spaceflight plan put forward in Obama's 2011 budget. That omission has drawn fire from lawmakers concerned that a heavy-lift development program is needed to maintain the nation's leadership in manned space exploration.

Source

I sometimes have trouble myself keeping the lines of crap straight between what Dear Leader says and lies to the public vs. what is actually HAPPENING in real world action within the Government agencies, but in this case it would seem clear enough. Orion is a joke...and we literally have NOTHING ready to go, or even remotely close to ready, to replace it or the Shuttles with.

America has gone, under Obama's watch, from being a Space Super-Power to being a Space service power which can now give logistics and technical support beyond all reason to other nation's efforts in space but we can't get there ourselves. How outright sad and pathetic is that?!

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

Yikes... You may want to insure you're up to date on the latest? Perhaps I'm all wrong and you can show a more recent plan for how this is to be used....

Indeed I am. There were talks about developing Orion as an ISS lifeboat only, but that was back in 2010 and was abandoned as there are multiple other spacecrafts under development for that. Orion as of now is developed as a fully deep space capable vehicle, and is one part of Constellation program that was not cancelled after all.

www.nasa.gov...

www.nasaspaceflight.com...

What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary.

Politicians will do and say anything to get a vote. They are worse than horny teenagers trying to get in each other's pants!! This is pandering at its absolute worst. Go to the SpaceCoast, and promise them the moon. And people wonder why we don't trust Newt. It's because we know if we give it up too easy, he will never respect us in the morning!

Originally posted by Maslo
Indeed I am. There were talks about developing Orion as an ISS lifeboat only, but that was back in 2010 and was abandoned as there are multiple other spacecrafts under development for that. Orion as of now is developed as a fully deep space capable vehicle, and is one part of Constellation program that was not cancelled after all.

www.nasa.gov...

www.nasaspaceflight.com...

Thanks for those links. I appreciate it. There is a lot of detailed material that is encouraging. 2021 for a manned landing on the moon sounds real encouraging if they can make it happen on time.

Originally posted by autowrench
reply to post by anon72

 

I was watching him say that, and this thought came to me. Why would he say a thing like that, if he did not think it could actually happen? After all, Newt is pulling out all the stops to appear to be telling the truth, and is spending money like mad hiding his past and fooling the people. Why would he say that if he did not think it possible? The only thing that answers this is: The Lunar Base is already there, already build with your tax dollars. Make sense?
Could America even afford a Moon Mission right now?

My very thoughts, perhaps he is trying to find a way to uncover the truth to the American people under the guise of building a "New" moonbase when in actuality only exposing a 30-40 year old one.
Then he can spend 8 years siphoning off hundreds of billions of dollars to wage war upon the actual owners of the bases on the Moon and Mars.

reply to post by Xygoat


Private sector companies will provide tourism and lunar colonies on the moon.

That translates into GDP growth.

NYT

To that point, Gingrich told a crowd on Florida’s so-called Space Coast on Wednesday that “by the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the Moon. And it will be American.” And he said that he would push for the introduction of a “Northwest Ordinance for Space” so that when the number of colonists reached 13,000, they could petition for statehood.

(By the way, I find it interesting that Gingrich didn’t insist on answering the question about Puerto Rican statehood at Thursday’s debate, yet he’s advocating for a state on the Moon. Earth to Newt: phone home.)

In the speech, Gingrich implied that he was “bold” and “romantic” and called himself “visionary” and “grandiose” in the vein of Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and the Wright brothers. Gingrich is a virtual supernova of megalomaniacal madness.

In a way, the space speech made sense. Gingrich was doing what he does: tossing out random ideas like darts at a board, hoping to score. He was repackaging the idea of Manifest Destiny for the Moon and appealing to an area of the country whose pride and purpose were wounded by the ending of the space shuttle program.

But, on the other hand, this is exactly the kind of election-year lunacy that establishment Republicans have been worrying about. Florida has one of the highest state unemployment rates in the country and has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country. The last thing that people who can’t hold on to their jobs and houses here on Earth want to hear about is a colony on the Moon. The whole thing bespeaks a man detached from the real world concerns of real people.

reply to post by anon72

If they can find a way to make it economically viable, especially wiht respect to industry, then I'd be excited. For example, maybe we could mine something on the moon for cheaper than on earth. Or maybe we could use telescopes on the backside of the moon for viewing into deep space. Or maybe we could use a base on the moon for a military strategic advantage of some kind I'm unaware of. Either way, if we're going there just to put on a show then ti's a waste of money. I don't support a PR stunt. We don't have money to throw away like that. We have to be responsible and that's why I usually support private industry because they're more about reality than fancy words. Politics, btw, is famous for its fancy words.

Bottom line: it needs to pay for itself. Space is not about exploration. It's about survival.

But there's something else I want to say about NASA. We give 14 billion to NASA each year. The music industry makes about 50 billion a year. The US spends 100's of billions on sports-related things both legal and illegal. How much do you think we spend on watching movies? How much do you think we spend on porn-related services and/or goods? Surely, NASA is at least as useful to society as these things.

Regardless of fine detail, Newt says it's private companies that will settle the Moon within the next short 8 or 9 years. I'm not aware of any private enterprise that will be capable of reaching even simple orbital flight with manned craft, by 2020, with any certainty or even probability. Ferrying large structures to the Moon is three orders of magnitude more difficult and expensive.

So Newt either lives in a la-la land, or is a liar.

Either way, it takes a moron to consider him for presidency.

reply to post by buddhasystem

I remember the expensive space station freedom that never got off the ground:
en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
I suppose Newt forgets to mention that *HIS CONGRESS* showed absolutely no interest whatsoever in updating or replacing the Shuttle Fleet back when they were already showing their age and their replacement could have been in service and had some time to work the bugs out by the recent time of ending the STS program. What an idiot.

NEWS FLASH for Newt. We can't build a base on the moon because we CANNOT GET THERE. The last vehicle we had with even a marginal ability to be modified to the task is now sitting in museums or mothballed for national archives. We need to invent the system, given the fact Orion never WAS a very hot idea..and Obama killed it before it came to much anyway.

So..... Neat.... a base in 8 years on a surface we can't physically get to with technology that doesn't even exist yet. This isn't the 1960's and he sure as hell isn't Jack Kennedy.

This is it exactly. Back when things like planning the shuttle replacement should have been going on it was his congress that did nothing. I like the space program and we should be more in space than we have been but right now is not the time for this to even be a discussion. Private enterprise only cares about such endeavors when it means putting up a new satellite or who gets to put the first it can be seen on earth billboards up there. Because it requires massive amounts of investment with little to no immediate return.

newt, how will you pay for it, get rid of the bush tax breaks for the wealthy ?


bwahahahahahahahaha

Originally posted by buddhasystem
Regardless of fine detail, Newt says it's private companies that will settle the Moon within the next short 8 or 9 years. I'm not aware of any private enterprise that will be capable of reaching even simple orbital flight with manned craft, by 2020, with any certainty or even probability. Ferrying large structures to the Moon is three orders of magnitude more difficult and expensive.

So Newt either lives in a la-la land, or is a liar.

Either way, it takes a moron to consider him for presidency.

Gingrich, a long-time space enthusiast, also said he wanted to expand exploration of Mars, saying NASA could pay for ambitious plans by teaming up with the private sector.

So he means private companies (SpaceX, Bigelow, ULA etc.), but payed for by public money. That is indeed plausible (even tough I doubt the 2020 date in current financial situation, as that would surely require increased space budgets). I do think that as a space enthusiast, Newt knows what he is talking about in this area, regardless of his other opinions.