Post by Deleted on Jan 27, 2012 15:27:07 GMT 10
Space experts ground Gingrich moon plan
From: AFP January 27, 2012 12:36PM
REPUBLICAN presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has stirred strong passions by claiming he will establish a permanent moon base by 2020 if elected, but experts say he is living on another planet.
The basic idea is not actually as far-fetched as it sounds. NASA in 2006 announced plans to set up a colony on the south pole of the moon, in around 2020, as a base for further manned exploration of the solar system.
The problem for Gingrich, a space enthusiast with ideas dating back decades for zero-gravity honeymoons and lunar greenhouses, is that the 2008 financial crisis came along and turned feasible projects into pipe dreams.
"A lunar base by 2020 is a total fantasy," John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, told AFP.
"We got to the moon in the 1960s by spending over four per cent of the federal budget on Apollo. NASA's now at one-tenth of that level."
During boom-time, President George W Bush called for a return to the moon, followed by Mars expeditions, and NASA drew up plans called Constellation to meet these goals and replace the shuttle fleet when it retired.
But President Barack Obama scrapped Constellation in 2010, saying the plans were "over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation". The once-proud shuttle fleet now lies mothballed.
American astronauts now have to rely on Russian spacecraft to get to the International Space Station.
Against this depressed backdrop, Gingrich has left himself open to the charge that his grandiose vision for human spaceflight is simply an attempt to pander to vulnerable voters.
"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American," he told supporters at a Florida rally.
Never one to shy away from bold statements, Gingrich compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, John F Kennedy, and the Wright Brothers, boasting: "I accept the charge that I am an American and Americans are instinctively grandiose."
From: AFP January 27, 2012 12:36PM
REPUBLICAN presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has stirred strong passions by claiming he will establish a permanent moon base by 2020 if elected, but experts say he is living on another planet.
The basic idea is not actually as far-fetched as it sounds. NASA in 2006 announced plans to set up a colony on the south pole of the moon, in around 2020, as a base for further manned exploration of the solar system.
The problem for Gingrich, a space enthusiast with ideas dating back decades for zero-gravity honeymoons and lunar greenhouses, is that the 2008 financial crisis came along and turned feasible projects into pipe dreams.
"A lunar base by 2020 is a total fantasy," John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, told AFP.
"We got to the moon in the 1960s by spending over four per cent of the federal budget on Apollo. NASA's now at one-tenth of that level."
During boom-time, President George W Bush called for a return to the moon, followed by Mars expeditions, and NASA drew up plans called Constellation to meet these goals and replace the shuttle fleet when it retired.
But President Barack Obama scrapped Constellation in 2010, saying the plans were "over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation". The once-proud shuttle fleet now lies mothballed.
American astronauts now have to rely on Russian spacecraft to get to the International Space Station.
Against this depressed backdrop, Gingrich has left himself open to the charge that his grandiose vision for human spaceflight is simply an attempt to pander to vulnerable voters.
"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American," he told supporters at a Florida rally.
Never one to shy away from bold statements, Gingrich compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, John F Kennedy, and the Wright Brothers, boasting: "I accept the charge that I am an American and Americans are instinctively grandiose."
Retard