Just don't make any unscheduled detours.
Posted on 01/23/2012 2:41:38 PM PST by JerseyanExile
According to the Space Politics blog, Newt Gingrich plans to make a space policy speech on Florida's space coast probably Wednesday. He said it would be "in the John F. Kennedy tradition rather than the current bureaucracy."
Gingrich has been a fierce critic of what he calls the NASA bureaucracy, according to Fox News, and an advocate for outside-the-box thinking like using prize competitions, according to Space Politics. It has been rare for candidates running for president to make speeches wholly devoted to space issues. Considering that Gingrich is now the front runner for the Republic nomination, this could be a history changer.
It will be interesting to see if Gingrich can lay out a compelling vision for America in space that not only incorporates some of the more interesting ideas such as space prizes and leveraging the commercial sector (in the right way) but which can be bought in by the various political players that control space policy. As a former speaker of the House, Gingrich has to be keenly aware of what it will take to propose and execute a change of direction and get Congress to go along.
(Excerpt) Read more at old.news.yahoo.com ...
Good idea. Get the commercial side of space moving, and that will spur new science as well... a reverse of what we’ve had in the past.
Newt just might begin to leave Mittsy in the dust here. Mitt has one line, “This election is about the soul of America.” He says it a lot and it’s true enough. The thing is Newt says the same thing in a lot of different ways. . . when he confronts liberal MSM bias; when he goes after liberal court decisions; when he calls Obama the food stamp president. The hollowness of Mitt’s convictions is becoming evident. Mitt’s got no game; so specifics to connect with voters. Given the cynical politics being played right now and the economic malaise, Newt talking about the space program is a great idea. Reminds America of what we once were.
I was in multiple meetings last week with organizations that would love to have a President that had a vision for space. Of course, all of them had an aerospace interest...
The other candidates will see to it respectively that there is government-subsidized healthcare in space, that there is no right to work for non-union astronauts, and that no spacecraft has a military payload.
What we need is a cheaper method of getting a load into orbit before we do anything else.
Very timely. This could be HUGE for Newt on the Space Coast. The national space program gave us thousands of jobs all over the Deep South. My parents worked in Louisiana during the 60’s on the rockets that sent us to the moon.
One of the saddest things my husband and I overheard this past weekend was a mom talking in line at the grocery. She said her son was on track to be an astronaut. Now, since our entire space shuttle program was essentially put out to pasture last year, he has learn to speak Russian, among all sorts of other new regulations. According to this lady, all future American manned space launches are planned to be out of Russia. Plus, all those former support jobs (not to mention tourist dollars, restaurants, etc) that WE used to do.
If Newt supports the Space Coast, Florida voters will support him.
Well, they wouldn’t remain worth trillions if we started mining them - supply and demand and all that, the price would plummet if cheap platinum flooded the market. But it could still revolutionize many industries that now have cheap access to previously scarce raw materials.
That is the Catch-22 of the industry right now. Completely new rocket tech is not being heavily funded. Old technology is preferred, since it has proven legacy. If things continue on the current path, the next "new" rocket engine will either be from technology that is 25 or 50 years old.
Also, with government funding, there are always portions of the work that have to go to certain areas to get funded.
The current administration reminds me of J.G. Ballard's haunting book of short stories, Memories of the Space Age.
“What we need is a cheaper method of getting a load into orbit before we do anything else.”
What about the EM rail idea...fail?
Rats...the book isn’t available on Kindle. But I’ll read it - it sounds interesting.
Even though I don’t know what Newt’s proposal is yet, the mere suggestion is exciting. One of the problems with Bambi and the left is that they are trapped in the past...in the 1930s, which they regard as their glory days with FDR. That was more than 75 years ago.
Aside from the fact that FDR’s “solutions” didn’t work anyway (although there was some great WPA art and I appreciate the CCC trail shelters on the Appalachian Trail), it was a model that is way too antiquated for modern technological life. But the left is fundamentally retrograde and anti-progress.
If Obama has a portrait of Alinsky in the WH, as he is rumored to have, he’s merely showing how out of date and ignorant he is. Alinsky’s “solutions” weren’t where the future or even the present lie.
Newt has been seriously "into space" for a LONG time. When he was in Congress, one of his telephone "kitchen cabinet" types was Jerry Pournelle. All you sci-fi fans undoubtedly know who JP is, but even you might not know that much of his writing and lobbying has been to boost practical, cheap access to space.
I highly recommend JP's online weblog (he dislikes the term 'blog, despite the fact that he probably invented the on-line personal commentary "thing" that became "blogging") He was certainly among the first to "blog".
http://jerrypournelle.com/jerrypournelle.c/chaosmanor/
Haven’t read the presentation tailored perfectly for Florida appeal. Upon just hearing the premise being related to space, expect mockery since the US is broke, and space advances are such a long term project as to be irrelevant in a depression like atmosphere. Newt will ne ready, I know that!
facinating!
Just don't make any unscheduled detours.
Biggest issues to me on this would be keeping the acceleration to a reasonable limit, the low altitude aerodynamic heating, and the size of the rig needed to launch a big payload.
How about Obama's inter-continental railroad?
Cool stuff. Platinum is a KEY element in catalytic converters, which is the single biggest reason that air isn’t smelly anymore, even in California.
The idea of cheap Platinum has HUGE (or HUGH) implications, as it means that anything that moves air can be turned into an air purifier. So a simple fan, for an extra $10, could pretty much clean out the in an otherwise nasty house...for example.
“What we need is a cheaper method of getting a load into orbit before we do anything else.”
That is why manufacturing in space is so important - you make what you need out there!
Solar energy is a very realistic energy source in space. It would be an endless energy source. Getting the stuff back to earth is a no brainer. Using a giant-sized rail gun to shoot payloads off the moon’s surface is a doable idea with current technology.
Robotics has advanced to the point where orbiting manufacturing platforms can be a reality.
There exists a treaty that has hamstrung all of this: the Russians find it irritating as well.
We’ll see what Gingrich has to say - i’m sure he has some angle on this treaty that none of us has considered.
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