A Base on the Moon

I bow to no one in my disdain for Mr. Gingrich.  But, there's always a but.  I do have to admit to just a tad of regard for his pushing the idea of establishing a base on the moon. He's wrong, of course. He pushes the base as a national enterprise, redounding to the glory of the American nation.  What the President elected in November should do is make a major push to internationalize space, try to get the Chinese participating, open our efforts up to other nations.  Obama, and Gingrich, seem to want to commercialize space, relying mostly on private enterprise. That's well and good, but.

This but is the problem of space junk. Space, near-earth space,  is a "commons", and the human race is currently engaged in its destruction. The only way to prevent polluting space is with international governance, plus funding of engineering solutions, a space garbage collector.

Back to Newt. I grew up in the classic age of science fiction: Heinlein, Asimov, Anderson, Clarke, et. al. While I know better now, it's hard to abandon one's childhood, hence my attitude towards Newt and his base on the moon.