59 thoughts on “Newt’s Speech”

  1. Lunar base, 10% of NASA’s budget to be allocated to prizes, and the Northwest Territories Act for Space, allowing any extraterrestrial territory with 13,000 US citizens to apply for statehood.

        1. Trent,

          Yes, 13,000 is a bit low. Stephen Austin and company had about 30,000 Americans settled in Texas when they broke it free from Mexico. Of course they had to wait a few years because of the issue of slavery to become a state, but it was their basic goal.

          However that number probably wasn’t too far off when the Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown in 1893, so maybe France is on his agenda 🙂

          1. First, the Northwest Territory Act was not passed for Texas. Austin didn’t enter Texas until 33 years after the Act was signed.

            Second, there was a lot of concern that Texas was too large to come in as a state. There was serious consideration given to making it five states.

          2. Edward,

            Neither of which has anything to do with what I posted, which is how a large number of Americans moved to foreign countries, over threw the government and then petitioned to become states. Or didn’t you even bother to read Trent’s comment about France?

      2. 13,000 people? So, 25% the population of a smallish town, and 7% of the population of Guam.

        What’s your point? There are independent countries with smaller populations.

        1. Well, would Newt be in favor of statehood for Guam, if the citizens there wanted it? DC (a special case) and Puerto Rico (not a special case) are the other obvious candidates. But the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands all have at least 4 times as much as the 13,000 limit. My understanding is the majority in each of these places isn’t interested in statehood in favor of the status quo (which should be food for thought for Newt) but suppose they wanted statehood — should these small places become states, with as much representation in the Senate as California?

          Wait, before you answer: consider that once there are 13,000 American citizens off Earth, I think it is likely there will soon be many more than that. If these citizens were clever about it, with Earthly allies, they could swamp the Senate. 56 US States on Earth and hundreds in the heavens… 🙂

          1. Sorry – I didn’t mean to imply that a majority in DC don’t want statehood.

            Anyway, the real problem is that easy to attain statehood competes with the space libertarian dream!

          2. Well, would Newt be in favor of statehood for Guam, if the citizens there wanted it?

            Are you under the impression that Guam is an extraterrestrial territory, or are you just trolling?

          3. Well, would Newt be in favor of statehood for Guam, if the citizens there wanted it?

            Are you under the impression that Guam is an extraterrestrial territory, or are you just trolling?

          4. nyway, the real problem is that easy to attain statehood competes with the space libertarian dream!

            There’s a difference between an option and having a mandate. I don’t recall the Northwest Territory Act forcing Ohio to apply for statehood.

          5. Not trolling. And I like this idea, and I like Newt very much (albeit in doses smaller than presidential powers for 4 years).

            Serious question: Should we treat extra-continental territories differently than extraterrestrial territories?

          6. Serious question: Should we treat extra-continental territories differently than extraterrestrial territories?

            Of course we should. Things that are different should be treated differently.

            There are a number of reasons for creating an incentive for Americans to settle outer space.

            I can’t think of any reason to create an incentive for Americans to settle foreign territories on Earth. And even if there were, the natives would likely object.

          8. To answer your question, if there was an underpopulated area on Earth which was of great economic or strategic interest to the United States, Congress might pass some sort of incentive for settling that area — as they did with the Northwest Territory Act of 1789.

            But there is no such area. Guam is of some strategic value but it’s not underpopulated — and if the Navy needed more people there, it could simply assign a few more sailors.

      3. Smallish town?

        The population of New York City was only 49,000 in 1789. Washington, DC was less than 13,000. Or do you not understand the historical reference?

        1. I understand the reference, but times change. Too many small states would give a very few people disproportionate power in the Senate, and why would this be good? Lets not bicker — I think the key idea was to make extraterrestrial territory US soil. Statehood is a distraction.

          1. The idea is to create an incentive for settlement. Having a better-than-average chance of founding a new state might appeal to some people.

          3. Too many small states would give a very few people disproportionate power in the Senate

            The Northwest Territory Act set 13,000 as the minimum population, not the maximum.

            Ohio is not generally considered a “small state” today. Nor are Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus, etc. separate states.

        1. The comments are brutal. How sad! I do like the sentiment – I would just adjust the number of people.

          1. I was just about to come back and mention the comments. I hadn’t read them before I posted the link. The TV comedians are already behind the curve.

    3. That Northwest Ordinance thing was something he proposed in the 1980s, not something he’s proposing now.

      He mentioned that he had proposed it before in the 1980s as a way of tweaking Romney and bragging on how bold his vision had been, but he never said that he wanted to revive the proposal.

      I listened to his speech, this is something that is being widely misreported.

      1. You’re wrong. He proposed it in the 1980’s, and he said that he would call on Congress to pass it if he’s elected President.

    1. Last year I was standing in the middle of a cotton field with a guy testing his alcohol/nox rocket when he off-hand mentioned that he doesn’t think NASA gets enough money. Without skipping a beat the guy next to me said “if you had $17 billion dollars a year, how far along would you be now?”

      Newt’s message is that NASA already gets more than enough money. When I hear people get upset at that message I wish they had a cotton field experience.

      1. He did say something to the effect of “NASA has this gigantic bureaucracy at $17B/yr, and we’re relying on the Russians to carry our astronauts? You gotta be kidding me.”

        Hmmm… good point.

  5. Withdrawal from the OST is a non-starter. Both Russia and China will just threaten to also withdraw and place nukes in LEO orbit. Think of MAD on steroids. And neither will stand by and just allow the U.S. to claim the Moon.

    And, once again, you don’t need real property rights to use lunar resources. Now they are just there for the taking. No EPA, no royalties, just scoop and process.

      1. He didn’t propose withdrawing from OST, either explicitly or implicitly.

        The statehood scheme certainly implies withdrawal or abrogation.

    2. Oh yes you do. Because their lawyers, bureaucrats, politicians and policemen will be able to shut down any of your operation that remains on Earth. So unless you plan to be instantly self-sufficient on the Moon, better watch out. Even then, I bet it would be pretty easy to launch, say, a CBU-97 to the Moon with a fairly inexpensive rocket, if somebody decided it was really important.

      1. Patrick,

        The Moon is NOT the Earth. Lunar real property laws will actually create the nightmare you talk about, not prevent it. You have been reading too much of that nonsense the SFF points out to rise money.

          1. Patrick,

            SFF = Space Frontier Foundation. The folks who think space is the Wild West except the cowboys ride rockets instead of horses.

    3. Nukes in LEO, a very volatile situation of short notice attacks whenever the platform would pass overhead. Nukes in geostationary, where it takes a few hours to make the trip either way, much more stable situation.

      1. While feasible, the nukes in orbit seems like a tactical mistake. In geostationary orbit, a nuke would be further from the target and more readily monitored than one on the ground. In LEO your nuke is severely limited in its choice of targets at any given moment. I won’t even bother with the maintenance and station keeping issues. It strikes me as a non-starter when you have an alternative, ICBM or SLBM, that can be launched on command and be not more than 12,000 miles and one hour from the target.

  6. If he means it, and isn’t just saying it to get votes from the space fanbois, I might just stop calling him the “human Chobit.”

    Oh, and we should take all international “treaties” that try to control where future Americans can go in outer space, where no one is yet, and set them on fire in a big bonfire in the UN parking lot. I’d go to NYC to see that.

    2. I strongly suspect he means it; Newt is very interested in space, just not in a gynormous bureaucracy to get there and stay there. See Jerry Pournelle’s place for more details, including how Pournelle got to know Newt in the first place.

  8. I didn’t hear the entire speech but I did get the snippet where he suggested NASA use money to create “Prizes” and let organizations compete for them. If no one is interested in the prize then the money is not spent. IF someone wins the prize then the money is spent.

    Still seems like Government selecting “winners and losers” in terms of projects: urging efforts in directions it sees fit. But it’s a little more benign, I suppose.

    But that turns NASA into a Prizemaster rather than an R&D organization. Seems a little silly. Also quite a bit of room for corruption in that NASA (like any gubbmint agency) can put up a prize based upon knowing which crony has the best chance of winning.

    That can be done in the private sector as well, but it’s private money, so who cares?

    Nope……strikes me as too American Idol-ish. Though I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.

    I’d much rather see NASA become the R&D organization which tests promising technologies – as they do in the aeronautical field.

  9. Once again, space looks like a freak sideshow. Those of us who follow it closely recognize that Newt proposed some far-out, but reachable goals with some new ways to achieve them in this speech. People who don’t follow space (read: most people) will see headlines like “Gingrich Proposes Moon Base” or “Gingrich says Moon can be new State” and think he’s insane.

  10. And lots of people who do follow space news just see this speech as shameless pandering to residents of the Space Coast.

    1. If you’re going to be shamelessly pandered to by a politician (an absolute certainty), at least be pandered to by someone who knows something about the subject.

      1. Politicians always pander to a certain degree, but one commenter at NSF.com made the point that if Newt was really pandering to Space Coast voters, then he could have simply come out in favor of SLS and castigated Obama for “killing the space program”.

  11. One upside to the prize regime is that it can be funded through different agencies. The NRO can fund prizes related to remote sensing. The DOE can fund prizes related to power generation and storage in space. The The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement can fund prizes related to moon and asteroid mining. NASA can focus on funding Aerospace milestones. It doesn’t have to come entirely from NASA’s budget.

  12. FWIW, it seems that Newt was misremembering the details of his bill. (Not surprising, considering how long ago it was introduced.)

    It wasn’t actually “13,000 people can apply for statehood.” According to the Christian Science Monitor, the bill says that a of population 20,000 allows the colony to apply for home rule. They can apply for statehood when they have a population equal to the least populous US state. That’s currently just short of 600,000.

    http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2012/0126/Is-moon-base-really-the-weirdest-Newt-Gingrich-idea-Maybe-not

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