Santorum and Romney on Space in Florida
Santorum: Moon base idea is ‘crass politics’, Politico
“the idea that anybody’s going out and talking about grand, new, very expensive schemes to spend more money at a time when we do not have our fiscal house in order, in my opinion, is plain, crass politics.”
Romney schedules Cape Canaveral visit for Friday, Florida Today
“According to Romney’s campaign, he’ll visit Astrotech Space Operations Inc, 260 Magellan Road at 3 p.m. The event is open to the public.”
As a conservative tea party leader and as a republican – the VSE by both Mr. Romney and Mr. Santorum are horrible. We reached out to both campaigns, multiple times, without any answer.
If space is your issue and that is what you vote on, there really is only one choice. And its a good one: Newt Gingrich.
Respectfully,
Andrew Gasser
TEA Party in Space
Truly.
And for those who would scoff, with Obama we have…nothing.
Obama tried to free up nearly $2billion per year in NASA’s budget to pursue BEO technologies, by cancelling Constellation. Congress said, oh no you don’t, and promptly locked it back up with SLS.
Gingrich wants to free up nearly $2Billion (10%) of NASA’s budget for moon-base prizes. To do that he’ll have cancel SLS, ISS, or something of similar scale. He is loathed by his own party leadership, his space ambition is viewed with contempt. Tell me how he convinces Congress to support him?
I am sorry to report this. But as a Republican, I am sadden by our canidates. I support Obama’s space policy. I might just have to vote for him in November.
One of Romney’s chief space advisers is Mike Griffin. So if you don’t like Constellation/SLS, there’s that to remember. Don’t forget to vote for Gingrich in you state’s primary, even if you think you’ll vote against him in the main.
“I am sorry to report this.”
I mean this in the most respectful way, but it is the rusted-on loyalty of conservatives that is the reason the Republican party has become so insane. Whereas the Democrat left-wing are wishy-washy flubbernuts, which is why they have almost no influence on Dem policy.
They can make it simple. Commerical to hual astronauts up to the ISS; Dragon and the CST100. Let NASA take Americans into BEO with the SLS/MPCV.
Ain’t gonna happen. SLS will never fly, nor will MPCV. We’ve spent over $5 billion on Orion and it’s not even close to flying even a test flight. It will be $10 billion before that happens. That’s as much as we spent on developing the Shuttle, albeit in 70’s dollars, but still. SLS will cost at least $50 billion (regardless of what anyone claims) and at our budget levels, that will take 15 to 20 years. Both will be cancelled in the next 2 to 3 years.
Santorum is voicing what most layfolks I’ve talked to seem to feel. He’s wrong of course but we are notoriously short sighted in our culture. Newt’s got some great ideas for space, hopefully someone without his baggage and ethical failings can run with them.
It’s clear that if you’re for the classic government-led space development of the past, you better not vote Republican. Gingrich is obviously the most pro-space candidate of the bunch, but he wants a dramatic shift from the status quo. I wouldn’t be surprised if NASA didn’t exist as a federal agency by the end of his first term, especially if we have a Tea Party-led House and Senate
after 2012.
Santorum and Paul are much more negative, and actually articulate a rationale for being so. Romney was a little more ambiguous about his views. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that some who implies that a Moon Base is goofy is certainly not going to resurrect VSE.
How ironic that the man who the VSE advocates have criticized over the last 4 to 5 years (i.e., Obama) is the only one who continues to see the value of NASA and NASA-led exploration.
I also loved Gingrich’s comment about human-rating the Atlas 5 rocket. It’s safe to assume that SLS and other grandiose Griffinstructure elements would be gone for good.