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On Wednesday, in an address to a crowd of over 700 people on Florida’s “Space Coast”, US Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich promised to build a lunar base by 2020 if he becomes the next US President in November. “By the end of my second term, we’ll have the first permanent base on the moon and it’ll be American”, Gingrich promised to an applauding crowd, as well as saying that he would push to develop “the first continuous propulsion system in space” that would enable humans to travel to Mars, Politico.com reported. The topic of the latest wrinkle in Gingrich’s campaign struck a particular chord with the residents of Florida’s “Space Coast”, as they’re still struggling economically after recent US federal cuts to the space programme. CBC News quoted Gingrich as saying, “We’ll have commercial near-Earth activities that include science, tourism, and manufacturing, and we design to create a robust industry precisely on the model of the development of the airlines of the 1930s, and the Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to matching it”.
Gingrich’s rival, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, mocked the idea of a lunar settlement, but Gingrich simply commented, “Here’s the difference between romantics and so-called practical people”. He referred to John F Kennedy, who first spoke of a national mission of landing a man on the Moon in a Joint Session of Congress on 25 May 1961. On Wednesday, Gingrich said, “John F Kennedy was grandiose, I accept the charge that I’m grandiose, and that Americans are instinctively grandiose”. Both Gingrich and Romney are campaigning to win Florida’s primary next Tuesday.
Special Bonus:
Click here for an interactive lunar globe from RIA-Novosti.
26 January 2012
RIA-Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/world/20120126/170962924.html
Editor’s Note:
Newt’s a space cadet, but literally? There’s NO money… none… busted… Mutha Hubbard’s Cupboard… American cosmonauts are going into space on Soyuz vehicles from Baikonur… and he’s going to found a lunar base in seven years. R – I – I – G – H – T. Newt’s known for his pixie-dust bloviating, but this takes the prize. It does take all kinds, and this proves it. The reality would be rather more prosaic… Newt would preside over a Robber Baron Oligarchy that wouldn’t allocate enough money for NASA to build a kiddie ride in Disney World, let alone a lunar base.
If you needed proof that Newt’s crackbrained and quackers, this is it. This proves that his link to reality, as it’s commonly known, is tenuous and frayed. It proves the gullibility of the average GOP base voter… scary, isn’t it?
BMD
