Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks at the River Church on Monday in Tampa, Fla.Newt Gingrich's lust for the presidency is so overwhelming that he'll say almost anything to win votes. He proved that last week in the Florida Republican presidential primary. He told a crowd on that state's Space Coast that he would establish a permanent base on the moon and launch flights to Mars within a decade. That, of course, drew cheers in an area where recent changes in the nation's space program have hit hard. What Gingrich didn't mention was how he'd pay for his ambitious space travel, or how he'd develop the technology needed to make it feasible.
That, of course, is vintage Gingrich. He's big on offering grand ideas to the public, but unconcerned about the work and thought required to bring them to fruition. Clearly, Gingrich was more interested in winning votes from unemployed space industry workers than in offering a nuts-and-bolts plan for the future of the U.S. space program. His ploy seems to be a failure; polls indicate that Gingrich trails Mitt Romney in today's primary.
And no wonder. Gingrich's proposal to establish a permanent lunar base by the end of his second term as president -- what gall he has to assume even a first presidency -- without increasing NASA's budget is a non-starter. It takes a commitment of resources to achieve great feats in space exploration. Gingrich's plan to do it on the cheap would be impossible to achieve.
So would his plan to send flights to Mars. Gingrich conveniently overlooks a salient fact. The technology to sustain such long duration space flights currently does not exist, according to Frank DiBello, CEO of Space Florida, the state's economic development agency for the aerospace industry. DiBello, who should know what is involved in space travel, termed the candidate's mission to Mars "a little implausible." That view is a fair assessment of the candidate's space proposal, and his overall candidacy.
Still, Gingrich nattered on, blithely linking his ideas to those of President John F. Kennedy, whose call for space travel more than 50 years ago galvanized the nation and the world. What arrogance. Kennedy, of course, offered what Gingrich does not -- a plan to underwrite the cost of developing and employing new technology.
Gingrich's poorly developed proposals about space travel fall into a place Bob Dole knows well. When the Kansan was U.S. Senate majority leader, Gingrich was speaker of the House, so Dole had to listen to the many of the Georgian's grandiose ideas. Here's what Dole had to say about them:
"Gingrich's staff has these five file cabinets, four big ones and this little tiny one," Dole once told The New York Times. "Number one is 'Newt's ideas.' Number two, 'Newt's ideas.' Number three, number four, 'Newt's ideas.' The little one is 'Newt's Good Ideas.'" Gingrich's pandering to Florida space workers, like most everything else he's said on the campaign trail, certainly does not belong in the little box.