Why we don't have a base on the Moon.

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Probably so.
That's it! (fingers snap) Gingrich will convince us that we need a moon base to fight the Venusians, and their Martian allies! There, a military solution.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Because these guys didn't want us there.

Romney and Ron Paul made it clear they don't want a Moon base. Paul doesnt seem to want a non-defense space program.

Gingrich is obviously a space fan and knows something about the subject (mentioned Atlas V in a national debate) but the Bush and Apollo era space movers seem to back Romney. Gingrich is interested in space but might upset some apple carts. They are probably afraid he'd kill the SLS rocket.

Ron Paul would not object to a privately capitalized space program. And why not? The railroad were privately capitalized. During the time large ocean vessels carried passengers from one continent to another the ships were built using private capital. The commercial air industry was mostly privately capitalized although some government mail contracts helped. The first modern passenger plane the DC-3 was built one hundred percent with private money

ruveyn

My favorite explanation so far for Newt's moon enthusiasm? "He wants to leave us for a younger, thinner planet!" (courtesy of Jon Stewart)

I must admit I like that man.

Stewart, not Newt.

Considering that Gingrich is currently sinking in the polls since he started talking about that moon base, it seems his credibility has preceded him off the planet.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Laws against private space launches without Federal approval. Back in cold war times, the Federal government was very jealous of its space launch monopoly.

If a company had the financial balls big enough to go in to space, lobbying the government to change a law is not a big deal.

I got the impression from watching Gingrich's statements during the debate that he wasn't talking about a program funded primarily by government. Government might play a part in providing seed money or renting out launch facilities, but he was mostly counting on private participation.

There was a lot of private money attracted by the Ansari X prize. Whether private money would be enough for a moon base is another question.

All the progress in private space flight since the cold war - and there has been a lot - has been through small startups, one step at a time - small companies who wouldn't have had the lobbying power during the cold war.

From what I've heard Gingrich say in a campaign speech prior to the debate, he thought manufacturing could be conducted on the moon, and that the base could eventually become a state. Now, realistically - it would be far more expensive to get parts and resources to the moon, and then retrieve them back to earth than it would be to just set up shop in the USA! If anything, we'd be supporting the Moonites to the extent that Gingrich's political successors would be bitching about lunar welfare. Either Gingrich has more than a few screws loose, or he's really overestimated the ignorance of the American public- which is pretty tough to do in most cases.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I should have been more clear, I'm talking about the here and now.

He said something about transitioning 10% of the NASA budget to prizes. That's 1.8 billion a year from 2014 through 2020, assuming Congress listened to a word of it. That will get you nothing. Without significant increases, no moon base by 2025, let alone 2020. 2020 is a crash program. There isnt even a lander in the pipeline.

He wants to double down on the Obama pro-commercial efforts and use it to attain the Bush 2005 goals (long behind schedule, then cancelled). That's quite a Hail Mary. Not many people are taking it seriously. It's nice that he has an interest though.

What's interesting is that both the Gingrich and Romney camps are talking up commercial space. Something that was seen as terrible by Obama critics has now become the status quo. It's not like Obama invented the idea so there was no reason to demonize it in the first place.

That depends on just what is being manufactured. For things that are sufficiently value dense, like high end computer chips and certain pharmaceuticals, the transportation costs wouldn't be unreasonable. That would be especially true for things for which most of the raw materials are available on the moon.

The question is, are there or could there be sufficiently value dense products that require high vacuum or low gravity to manufacture? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Virgin Galactic sells tourism trips to the ISS for $30 million. Costs to the moon are typically triple costs to orbit, so call it $90 million per person. $1.8 billion should pay to get 20 people to the moon per year, even without considering a multiplier from private enterprise.

I'm starting to think Gingrich has actually worked out the numbers pretty well.

lol.

Good luck with that.