“You could call it the Obama-Gingrich model if you want. Gingrich is doubling down on Obama,” said Charles Miller, a space industry consultant who until recently was a NASA official working on commercial spaceflight.
Obama has endorsed a manned mission to a near-Earth asteroid, with Mars remaining, as ever, the long-term objective of human spaceflight. But the president has not made space a major element of his political agenda.
Born out of a grand vision of space exploration after the Apollo moon missions, NASA's manned space vehicle, Columbia, lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in 1981. The final flight of Atlantis marked the end of the space shuttle era after 135 missions.
Congress has insisted that the administration speed up efforts to build a new, heavy-lift rocket for deep-space exploration. That is still years away. In the meantime, no one’s going anywhere, at least not in this part of the world. U.S. astronauts can get into orbit only when NASA purchases seats for them on a Russian spacecraft.
With NASA in this awkward transition, there’s a market for a big-idea candidate who has a passion for space. But small-government advocates may see a Gingrich-style moon mission as another example of big-government overreach.
People in the audience Wednesday night liked what they heard. Gingrich spoke without notes, throwing in personal history (how he read Isaac Asimov novels and Missiles and Rockets magazine as a kid), and bluntly declaring his disappointment with what’s happened to the Space Age dream.
“I come at space from a standpoint of a romantic belief that it really is part of our destiny. And it has been tragic to see what has happened to our space program over the last 30 years,” said Gingrich.
His vision of a moon base is distinctly American, even though space missions in recent decades have often involved international collaboration. Gingrich went so far as to bring up a proposal he made when he was a young congressman to create a “Northwest Ordinance” for space in which, as soon as 13,000 Americans lived on the moon, they could petition to become a state.
“Probably the best speech I’ve heard in this political season so far. Visionary,” said John Weiler, 67, a retired shuttle worker.
“What they blame Obama for is not having a vision,” said David McLaughlin, 53, a NASA technician.
About 700 people showed up for the speech, with many forced to wait outside, listening over loudspeakers. Gingrich provided a lesson in American progress and associated himself with some of the great names of American leadership and innovation. He spoke of Abraham Lincoln standing on the bank of the Missouri River in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1859, endorsing the construction of an intercontinental railroad. Lincoln, Gingrich said, had advocated railroad construction since long before he ever saw a train.
“I would just want you to note: Lincoln standing at Council Bluffs was grandiose. The Wright Brothers standing at Kitty Hawk were grandiose. John F. Kennedy was grandiose. I accept the charge that I am grandiose and that Americans are instinctively grandiose,” he said.
As he closed his speech, he hinted that historians would note what was said here on January 25, 2012, at the Holiday Inn Express off I-95 in Cocoa, Fla.
Someday, he told his supporters, they’d be able to say that they’d been there “at the beginning of the second great launch of the adventure that John F. Kennedy started.”
The Post Most: NationMost-viewed stories, videos and galleries int he past two hours
Featured Reads
Loading...
Comments