Sensible Erection | Gingrich: If elected, bang, zoom, straight to the Moon!

Thursday, 26 January 2012

Gingrich: If elected, bang, zoom, straight to the Moon!

quote [ Gingrich surprised many with an ambitious plan that involves a permanent U.S. base on the moon, activities and tourism in orbit and a rocket engine capable of getting astronauts to Mars, all by 2020. "The reason you have to have a bold and large vision is you don't arouse the American nation with trivial, bureaucratic, rational objectives". Gingrich thinks the moon could be the 51st state, and there could be 5 or more launches a day. ]

Of course, he wants to still be able to see other planets...

[politics] [by Ankylosaur@7:57amGMT] [+9 Funny]

Comments

todde said @ 8:21am GMT on 26th Jan [Score:5 Informative]
You know, the Office of Technology Assessment will be really useful here. They could facilitate the transfer of the technologies this will require between government and industry. They could use their world renowned skills to figure out how the project will affect American science, engineering and society. They could even identify areas where choices the program makes can be used in other areas.

Wait.

Newt got rid of the OTA when he was Speaker of the House. Their assessment of Star Wars didn't give him the results he wanted. So he had a hissy fit and destroyed it.

Fuck him in the mouth.

happiest_sadist said @ 7:57pm GMT on 26th Jan [Score:1 Underrated]
Don't forget to knock out his teeth first.

cb361 said @ 8:42am GMT on 26th Jan [Score:1 Interesting]
He's just heard that orbital law's a lot softer on genetic engineering, and he wants a harem of cryogenically preserved women because it's not adultery if your other wives are all legally dead.

gunthar said @ 8:42am GMT on 26th Jan [Score:1 Underrated]
+10 troll

Bodnoirbabe said @ 5:50pm GMT on 26th Jan
I've done my part.

endopol said @ 6:12pm GMT on 26th Jan
Wait till my brother gets here.

sacrelicious said @ 8:43am GMT on 26th Jan
one of the two things I liked about Bush II was that his ambitious plan for space exploration. unfortunately a president can talk all he wants about that, but in the end it's at the mercy of congress. Obama realized quickly that if congress was towards the end somewhat reluctant to Bush's space exploration policy, they would be downright hostile if he took ownership of it, so he kept his hands off it, which probably prevented them from gutting the space program more than they already did.

I'm all for plans to go back to the moon and beyond, and in the unlikely event Newt won and got his space vision enacted in some form, that would at least be a consolation prize, but good god, he is not fit to lead a [sorry, I can't think of a good "not fit to lead a" joke right now. please fill it in with your own]

willrogers said @ 9:25am GMT on 26th Jan
Newt would either (A) entirely abandon the space exploration plans once elected, potentially under the rationale that it's not fiscally responsible (B) or, if he goes ahead with it, cut programs for poor and middle class people to fund it.

swiggy said @ 9:31am GMT on 26th Jan
Republicans? Being fiscally responsible?

Yeah, I mean, I know it's part of their whole "fiscal conservative" deal, but all I've EVER seen them do is shit monumental torrents of cash into the military/industrial toilet.

lilmookieesquire said @ 3:41pm GMT on 26th Jan
I've never seen a republican president be financially responsible. How did they even get that reputation?

happiest_sadist said @ 7:59pm GMT on 26th Jan [Score:1 Informative]
By claiming it repeatedly for over three decades while ignoring most evidence to the contrary, the rest of which they blamed on the opposition.

azazel said @ 9:30am GMT on 26th Jan
So This is an awesome precedent, don't you think? (non-copy found to be infringing)

cb361 said @ 1:42pm GMT on 26th Jan
So you can copyright "red London bus driving past the Houses of Parliament?" Weird.

bruceski said @ 9:40am GMT on 26th Jan
Eight years? I recall estimates that it would take us ten years just to get the infrastructure testing and training together for another moon landing, since all our recent stuff has been based around orbital maneuvers. Then there's the time it would take to build an actual moon base, a lunar day is about one month (since the moon's orbitally locked into always facing us it does a full rotation for every... well, full rotation) so you need to sufficient energy stores to maintain power and heating for two weeks without solar cell use.

Anyone out there an engineer who didn't throw up their hands upon hearing the timeline? This seems much easier said than done.

structured_spirits said @ 3:18am GMT on 28th Jan
It's doable if you're willing to work on different sections of the problem in a massively parallel way and budget for it, you'll have tons of waste and not necessarily the most efficient program of course. I would imagine any moon base would be making use of some type of radioisotope/stirling engine device instead of solar for power. I'd be more worried about radiation dosing on a long term lunar mission than anything.

I thought this was quite telling though:

"I'll convince the people; they’re Congress's boss," Gingrich said.

Clearly the man has learned absolutely nothing from his failure as congressional speaker. He'd never get this project of the ground with that kind of attitude.

ComposerNate said @ 10:14am GMT on 26th Jan

chold_numa said @ 12:03pm GMT on 26th Jan
It reminded me of this response, when Bush proposed the same thing.

ComposerNate said @ 1:38pm GMT on 26th Jan
I have trouble not holding the threat of a Gingrich nomination as some sort of personal insult.

Remember the first two years of Obama's administration when Republicans created an accusations laundry list to sling against him, see what of their ridiculous shitmuck stuck? Gingrich is worst, an offense against all reasonable and moral humanity. He sickens even Limbaugh.

sanepride said @ 3:08pm GMT on 26th Jan
This is exactly why Dems are now actively working to discredit Romney. If the goal is to get Obama re-elected, a Gingrich nomination (or even a strong challenge) is a good thing.
It's not personal, it's only business.

ComposerNate said @ 3:34pm GMT on 26th Jan [Score:5 Funny]
"Why do people take such an instant dislike to me?" asked Gingrich, to whom Bob Dole replied "Because it saves them time."

hellboy said @ 5:14am GMT on 27th Jan
That made my day.

RailRoader said @ 2:00pm GMT on 26th Jan
Would Kennedy have gotten elected if he had proposed something as far-fetched as landing on the moon DURING his campaign?

sanepride said @ 3:06pm GMT on 26th Jan
Not that a permanent moon base and mission to Mars aren't cool, but isn't Newt supposed to be touting fiscal responsibility and cutting back gov't spending?
Not to imply that Newt is consistent about this stuff. We are talking about a guy with a $500k line of credit at Tiffany's.

hackiavelli said @ 10:30am GMT on 27th Jan
We're talking about a Republican here. They don't believe in small government, they believe in a different form of big government.

IBM said @ 4:31pm GMT on 26th Jan
He's a lunatic.

Bodnoirbabe said @ 5:52pm GMT on 26th Jan
Where does he plan on getting the money for his ambitious plan?

Ankylosaur said @ 6:59pm GMT on 26th Jan
HARVESTING PRECIOUS MOON CHEESE!

cb361 said @ 8:25pm GMT on 26th Jan
In China I lived on Moon Cakes for a week.

sanepride said @ 6:00pm GMT on 26th Jan [Score:4 Underrated]
Great thumb pic btw. But I must point out that despite his empty threats of domestic violence, Ralph Cramden was actually a far more devoted husband than Newt Gingrich.

sherlock said @ 7:44pm GMT on 26th Jan
Can we go through one goddamn president without changing NASA's entire vision? Just let the dudes do their shit.

sherlock said @ 7:51pm GMT on 26th Jan
I don't really see why we need to go to do manned missions right now when there is so much to be learned with cheaper, robotic ones.

Two examples off the top of my head:

Saturn's Moon Titan has fucking lakes of liquid methane. Might life or the ingredients for life be there too?

Enceladus has an icy surface with a thermal heat source below, causing eruptions of plumes of ice hundreds of miles into space. All we would have to do is fly a spacecraft through on of these plumes, gather up some of the ice, and we might find life there.

There are tons of other moons we know little to nothing about.

Ankylosaur said @ 8:03pm GMT on 26th Jan

foobar said @ 8:24pm GMT on 26th Jan
Because NASA should be about more than science. Science should certainly have a role, but engineering should be at the forefront because when you advance the latter you get extra capacity and can actually do more of the former for less.

Ankylosaur said @ 6:02am GMT on 27th Jan [Score:1 Insightful]
Manned missions are more expensive than robotic ones. That means you can't do as many. Also, manned missions are more conservative since if you screw up you not only waste a lot of money but people die.

More missions + more relatively risky missions = more, and more interesting, engineering.

kichijoii said @ 9:13pm GMT on 26th Jan
I think its a safe assumption that the majority of the voting American populace only know about one moon: the one that's closest to us. If he started talking about other moons (indeed, if he even knew about them at all), millions of eyes would glaze over until the next commercial break.

sanepride said @ 7:31pm GMT on 27th Jan
Well since NASA is an agency under the federal government executive branch, with an administrator directly appointed by the president, the answer is no, we can not go through one goddamn president without changing NASA's entire vision.

Supreme_Coconut said @ 11:55pm GMT on 26th Jan
A friend of mine posted this on my fb wall in response to this article. Talk about disgusting. Question 8 sickens me:
http://supervillainornewt.com/

sanepride said @ 7:37pm GMT on 27th Jan
But I note that the answer to question 8 is not Newt, but a fictional Nazi super-villain.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 8:09am GMT on 28th Jan
I think the order of questions is randomized. Supreme_Coconut, to which "question 8" did you refer?