Last Call

To the moon, Alice!

As he says, Newt Gingrich thinks grandiose thoughts. Today’s pitch to Florida’s Space Coast: a lunar base within the next eight years.

“By the end of my second term we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American,” he said. According to Newt, the base would be used for “science, tourism, and manufacturing” and create a “robust industry” modeled on the airline business in the 20th century.

From there, Gingrich suggested moving towards a Mars mission by the end of the next decade. He proposed setting aside 10% of NASA’s budget in prize money for private research into interplanetary exploration.

“I accept the charge that I am grandiose,” he said. “Because Americans are instinctively grandiose.”

This is actually a pretty awesome idea...until you see the budget cuts in non awesome moon base parts of our spending Newt will need in order to do this.  And considering how much Newt plans to lower revenues by cutting taxes on the rich with his flat tax shell game, the odds of being able to afford a moon base on NASA's budget is about as likely as I would be needing a pap smear in the next month.

I mean, we could totally have USA MOON BASE GO! if we didn't want to fund, you know, Social Security and Medicare.  Which I think is his point.