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‘Newt Skywalker’ aims for the Moon and Mars

In a campaign stop today along Florida’s Space Coast, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich unveiled his vision for US goals in space: by 2020, he says, he wants a permanent base on the Moon. By then, he also wants constant near-Earth-orbit commercial activity supporting science, tourism and manufacturing — and he also wants a propulsion system in place by then that would allow a manned trip to Mars by 2030. He even suggests that he would devote 10% of NASA’s budget to support entrepreneurial prizes of the kind that spurred Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic.

The campaign stop in Cocoa came as Gingrich looked ahead to the 31 January primary election in Florida, a crucial state that could propel either Gingrich or his chief rival, Mitt Romney, to the Republican nomination.

Romney has made fun of Gingrich’s tendency to romanticize space — ‘Newt Skywalker’ is one of Gingrich’s self-acknowledged nicknames. But Gingrich is unabashed in his enthusiasm. “I have a deep passion about this because I’m old enough that I used to read Missiles and Rockets magazine,” he told supporters.  Yet even as he exhorted NASA to reach higher, he denigrated a bureaucratic culture that he says spends more time studying things than doing things. “It’s tragic to see what’s happened to our space programme over the last 30 years,” he says. “I’m sick of being told we have to be timid.”

How would Gingrich change NASA’s culture? He had several prescriptions. In addition to supporting tax-free prizes, he says that NASA should be attempting “five or eight” launches a day. NASA and the military should be working to make their rockets interchangeable, and extra space on rocket flights should not be wasted. Finally, he says that NASA should just be doing more things, and taking more risks: “1% of the studies and 10 times as many experiments”. Overall, it sounds a lot like the earlier NASA culture of “faster, better, cheaper” under former administrator Dan Goldin. “We want to become lean and aggressive,” Gingrich says.

Image credit: Gage Skidmore

 

 

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