Posted on 01/28/2012 3:30:36 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
COMMENTARY | During the Republican presidential debate in Jacksonville, Fla., Thursday night, the subject of Newt Gingrich's moon colony idea came up. During the exchange, Mitt Romney especially revealed a smallness of vision and an ignorance of the issue.
[snip]
If Romney wants to know why Gingrich is so focused on the moon, he could go no further than to read Paul Spudis' The Case for Renewed Human Exploration of the Moon" in which the rationale for returning to the moon, not only for science, but also as a prelude to the exploration of the Solar System is examined. Spudis also covers mining lunar resources, such as water.
Then Romney can read Taylor Dinerman's piece about the strategic value of the moon and its importance to national security. Spudis also covers the Chinese challenge where it comes to the moon.
Can we afford to return to the moon with a $15 trillion national debt? The question is actually whether we can afford not to?
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Welcome to FR.
The Moon Treaty provides that the Moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of mankind and the harvesting of those resources is forbidden except through an international regime established to govern the exploitation of such resources when it becomes feasible to do so.
While we never ratified it it has become accepted as international law because we never directly opposed it. I would have been a lot more impressed if Gingrich had said he would openly defy it rather than his ridiculous promise that will fail miserably.
Some day in the future its going to happen, the odds are not on our side of a planetary impact event, either we build a defense against it or we build a way to survive it.
EXACTLY, We have to at least go to the moon, attach large rockets with thrust into the moon in 8 directions. That way we can use it to sheild us from a threat...like a pool ball. That`s the ticket!
If we surrender the Moon the Chinese will colonize it and build consumer goods there ...
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Since they will at that point have militarized the moon, they will be demanding that the rest of the world produce consumer goods for their burgeoning middle class population (a sector which is already larger than the entire population of the US) or suffer the consequences ... we will be the Chinese labor camp.
If Newt is crazy for his moon proposal, so was John F Kennedy for his!!!! And we went to the moon, didn’t we?
PHOOEY to the obama-kissing media!!!! PHOOEY to Romney!!!!
Would you kindly read the proposal? One of the very things that Gingrich is trying to avoid by restructuring NASA is government boondoggles.
I’m sorry to say Newt was not on his game and could have knocked this out of the park if he had only thought of harkening to JFK’s challenge to put a man on the moon within 10 years and out having accomplishing same and then went on to list all of the subsequent inventions and benefits to mankind we enjoy today as a result thereof.
And you really think the Chinese will care about that if they get there first?
And we're sitting here communicating using miniaturized computers and advanced technology, much of which was developed for the space program -- the list is long.
Get real.
Off the top of my head...
No solution yet to micro-gravity damage to human beings...no solution yet for long term protection from solar radiation and cosmic rays...no solution yet for Moon based food, oxygen, and water supply...no experience in mining a micro-gravity environment...no knowledge of long term impact of regolith (moon dust) on man and machines...not one of the allegedly priceless minerals on the moon has ever been tested commercially on Earth...how long before the Green Party demands the Moon be designated a pristine wilderness area?...the Space Station, in low Earth orbit, has cost $100 billion for construction and maintenance...on the Moon, multiply by 10.
I absolutely believe the day will come when man can travel Star Wars style through the Milky Way Galaxy.
But that day is thousands of years in the future.
We should be spending most of the manned space budget on robotic explorers and space telescopes.
Too what end?
With the Moon we get a return on our investment and experience -- see link posted in Post #15.
When the Apollo mission was conceived, no one had ever been to the moon. Everything which had to be done was INVENTED, including orbital mechanics of getting beyond LEO. Out of all those inventions, which were given away, came a long list of things we take for granted today, and even “cannot live without” - cell phones for example.
Since NASA gave the invented tech away, they received little ROI, and the public perceived those new things as coming from this or that corporation's resident geniuses. No connection was made, and therefore the general pubic perceived the whole enterprise as a waste of time, money, and maybe even faked.
Sure we have been to the moon and the Chinese can use that to get there. However, no one has ever lived on the moon. All the tech necessary to live on the moon will have to be INVENTED.
As patterns go, all the tech which flows from those inventions will become common place one day.
But unlike the US, China will not give that tech away, and that is the money to be made by living on the moon.
NG may be all the things his detractors say he is, but then so it it for the other candidates as well.
I do not long for the return of days of Reagan, since I was personally screwed by his policies, but I do long for the return for the days of US manned space exploration.
And Obama and his Science and Technology Czar, John P. Holdren (”Population Bomb” and former Mitt Romney environmental adviser) are working to remove the idea of and ability for American exceptionalism and space resource exploitation, development and utilization (to them it unbalances the world when the U.S. is strong).
Actually, the Chinese will build a military base on the moon. If they build it on the dark side, it would be virtually invulnerable to attack.
What you are arguing here is that we should just throw money at this project because something unforeseen "might" be invented.
That is not how a prudent capitalist uses money. That any inventions came from government spending is irrelevant. Who is to say that they wouldn't have been invented by private industry.
What this shows more than any other thing is that Newt is not serious about reducing government spending in any way.
There is no way he can cut back on entitlement funding for "the poor" and battle the entrenched interests that protect it while at the same time throwing money away on space circuses.
Last August, I met with Rick Santorum personally. I explained to him two important Florida issues: The Future of NASA, and the Future of Cuba. Without getting into the blow, by blow, the case I made to Rick, was almost exactly the case presented to voters by Newt. Rick was not programmed to receive.
I support Rick Santorum because he is the most ethical conservative in the race. He is lacking in the vision thing. And I confess that I am conflicted because both my wife and I like what Newt says that much.
-—I think we do need to go back to the moon and move beyond.——
You are correct. We need to look over the top of our rut. We need to look beyond the rut’s confining walls.
Much of the hardware is already designed. There is a private Nevada company with a functioning space station module already in space. For an already determined and advertised fee, they will build a larger station to suit.
In old Engineering News Record’s there are articles describing moon base structures of several designs for various purposes. There is at least one private company with vehicles capable of reaching beyond the earth
Newt is right. We have already much of the necessary technology available in private hands. The project is doable
Then there are China and Japan. Why go alone? Why not have some collaboration? We have all sorts of American/foreign design and construction joint ventures to carry out all sorts of projects. The work is done in English following long established American engineering protocols.
All of the companies involved, both foreign and domestic, know the process and could just as easily focus on the moon as the far deserts of Mongolia. Such consortia of multinational joint ventures built Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and soon Iraq. I’m doing my very small part next week on just such a project in Mongolia.
Newt is hated and dangerous because he thinks. No one else has his vision. He could lead the process of culling the non thinkers and cleansing the system
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