Atlas 5 rocket from launch pad 41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida on November 26, 2011. Photo credit: BRUCE WEAVER/AFP/Getty Images.
Bill Press consults Derrick Pitts, “Countdown” contributor and chief astronomer of Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute Science Museum, to find out whether Newt Gingrich’s outer space aspirations are grounded in reality.
BILL PRESS: It all started in the 1950s with one man and a simple idea. “One of these days — Bang! Zoom. Straight to the moon.” From there, NASA started and that dream was realized as man walked on the moon.
Since then, nothing major has happened in space, but in our number-one story tonight — one man seems destined to re-ignite America’s fascination with the lunar surface. That man, of course — Newt Gingrich. At a campaign stop in Cocoa Beach, Florida today, Gingrich channeled past space visionaries like JFK and Wernher von Braun.
(Excerpt from video clip) NEWT GINGRICH: By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American.
PRESS: But the modern-day Captain Kirk didn’t stop there. He looked beyond the moon to our sister planet, Mars.
GINGRICH: By the end of 2020, we will have the first continuous-propulsion system in space, capable of getting to Mars in a remarkably short time, because I am sick of being told we have to be timid, and I am sick of being told we have to be limited to technologies that are 50 years old.
PRESS: Yeah. Of course, there’s a big difference between being timid and having a lack of funds to support what would be an incredibly expensive undertaking. But the economy’s not a concern of Newt Gingrich’s, no. He’s running on his ability to get people to believe, just like he did 26 years ago when he said, “Tourism in space is coming.” And it looks like he was as correct then as he is now.
All right, let’s bring in Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer for the Franklin Institute Science Museum, as well as a “Countdown” contributor. Derrick, good to see you tonight. Thanks for your time. So, in talking about this moon colony by 2020, is Newt Gingrich a visionary or just plain nuts?
DERRICK PITTS: You know, Bill, I think I’m going for the latter on this. Unfortunately. You know, I can understand his enthusiasm about this and I can understand the idea that he wants to, sort of, put out this great idea of something that can be used to spark technological development here in the U.S.
Excuse me — but the fact of the matter is that we don’t have the technology available right now. It’s going to take us much longer than 2020 to get to where we can actually establish a base on the moon and, besides that, there is the issue of funding. It takes a real commitment to do that. And I think the biggest — the real — the biggest sort of impediment to this is that — what he’s done is he’s spoken to a congressional district that has space industries, and they love to hear that. But would he make that same argument in another congressional district without space industries? Those people there really don’t care about that.
PRESS: Well, sooner or later, he’s going to have to get to the point of how much this is going to cost, right? I mean, do we have any idea? I mean, talk about — all that equipment you’d have to put up there, not to mention just the vehicles to get there and what would be necessary to support life on the moon.
PITTS: It would be tremendously expensive to do this in the period of time that he’s talking about doing it. In fact, what would have to happen is — we would have to completely refocus all of our attentions in this country, from things like international terrorism and the economic problems we’re having here in the U.S. right now, all these other things. We’d have to push our attention away from that and look specifically at this. And then, at the same time, we’d have to devote a great deal of our national economy to making this work. So, it would equal the amounts that we’ve been spending in Iraq and in Afghanistan on those wars to actually try to make this work.
PRESS: And if we got there, and if we were able to establish this base, what would we get out of it scientifically? What would we learn?
PITTS: Well, there’s a lot for us to understand about the moon, and the origin of the moon and, likewise, some about the origin of the earth. But, if we’re expecting — as Newt, I think, indicated — that there’s a possibility that commercial companies might take this on, there has to be a financial benefit for them, and you know what? There is none.
PRESS: Mhmm. You know, Derrick, Newt Gingrich, when he was in Congress — he also introduced a bill called the Northwest Ordinance Space Plan or something, which said that if you get up to 13,000 residents on the moon, they could apply to Congress for statehood. So — we could be looking at two senators from the moon, right?
PITTS: You know, and the real issue here is — I hope we can get one of those senators there early. I won’t say which one.
PRESS: Right. Well, I — I frankly already think we have a couple of senators from the moon, maybe Jim DeMint, for example. Quickly, just about 30 seconds, Mars. This shuttle back and forth to Mars —
PITTS: Yeah.
PRESS: Possible?
PITTS: What is coming down the pike in the future are better propulsion systems for rocketry. We do have to put more money into the research to make this happen, but if we expect to be able to so-called “shrink the solar system” so that we can travel around in the solar system, we will have to come up with better methods. One of them — the ion propulsion system — is already in use, but that really is based on very, very long-distance travel. Hopefully, we’ll come up with something that will cut the travel time between here and Mars soon.
PRESS: All right. Sign me up. Beam me up. “Countdown” contributor Derrick Pitts. Many thanks for your time tonight, Derrick.
PITTS: Thank you, Bill.
