Newt the space cadet

Typically for the self-styled Republican 'visionary', Newt Gingrich's plans for a moon colony are wasteful, expensive, and pointless:

Now, four astronauts is not a permanent colony on the moon. To have a permanent colony, you would have to manufacture housing, most likely underground, or at least under significant shielding, since there is no atmosphere and no magnetic field to shield against the harmful effects of cosmic rays for an extended period. Not to mention the need to build facilities for waste recycling, plus food storage and preparation. That is, unless we continually provide food and other provisions for pilgrims from Earth, creating a non-self-sustaining colony. But Gingrich has already made it quite clear, in his attacks on President Obama, that he would not like to be remembered for championing any such sort of government-sponsored food program.

So, to truly embark on such an endeavor within a decade, we would have to spend somewhere between a few hundred billion and a trillion dollars. Whether we could develop the necessary technology for such a task within a decade is an open question, although for a sufficiently large investment, it might not be impossible. However, Gingrich is vying for leadership of a party whose major rallying cry is an end to big government programs and make-work projects to stimulate the economy.

Why does Gingrich seem to go so far out of his way simply to shatter his own already-tenuous credibility with this cosmic vanity project? Childish and expensive, certainly, and while it's also true that the American public have been lacking in something to actually put their enthusiasm behind, that's no excuse to embark on a grand space adventure.

While he might do well to reach for the stars — and certainly has done in this campaign — to do so literally has never seemed to be the correct course. There's little doubt in my mind that this will limit Gingrich's ability to argue convincingly on behalf of fiscal conservatism, and has provided ample ammunition to opponents, who will call him a naive dreamer, besotted with fantasies of space. Except unlike John Lennon, Gingrich really is the only one.

(Image via the National Post)