My lead article in the special Reason February issue on space is on line now. This paragraph is somewhat pertinent to today’s events:
Can space policy be fixed? Not without the national will to do so. It would take either real visionaries making policy decisions or some sort of existential crisis (e.g., an asteroid with our number on it) to break out of the policy logjam. But the chances of the former are not as low as one might think. Had Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) not switched parties seven years ago while being allowed to keep his seniority, the 88-year-old defender of the status quo would not be the current chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. Instead the chairmanship would have fallen to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), who has defended the administration’s space policy. Rohrabacher will almost certainly take over when Hall retires or is term-limited out in five years. If Newt Gingrich by some miracle wins the GOP presidential nomination and the White House, he would be the most space-conversant commander in chief in American history. So the stars might yet align.
But I still think it’s an uphill battle for Gingrich to win, even if he wins Florida.
So, I haven’t seen it yet, but he reportedly called for a lunar base by the end of his second term, presumably utilizing prizes, and he implicitly proposed withdrawing from the Outer Space Treaty, which does not allow claims of national sovereignty off planet.
Just one more nail in the coffin of the notion that the enemy is fat. What’s important is the type of fat, and lard is actually just fine, at least in terms of either cholesterol or weight gain. The real problem with fried foods is the batter. And the potatoes in the fries.
It was entirely inevitable that once he gave the Republican response to the SOTU dreck last night, that people would start talking him up as a presidential candidate. Well, it didn’t take long.