Newt Gingrich on Future Endeavors in Space

In the past few weeks, space exploration and bold new undertakings in spaceflight, have been making headlines. Recently NASA completed another successful space shuttle mission, Anousheh Ansari became the first private civilian female to travel in space, and Virgin Galactic revealed plans and models for its private spaceflight corporation. These events motivated me to examine where Newt stands on aero-space issues. It should be noted that Newt Gingrich has always supported space exploration. As a member of the House of Representatives he co-founded the Congressional Space Caucus and enthusiastically backed American efforts in space exploration and technological advancement. In a recent interview with The Space Review Newt had this to say about new space undertakings:

“I am for a dramatic increase in our efforts to reach out into space, but I am for doing virtually all of it outside of NASA through prizes and tax incentives. NASA is an aging, unimaginative, bureaucracy committed to over-engineering and risk-avoidance which is actually diverting resources from the achievements we need and stifling the entrepreneurial and risk-taking spirit necessary to lead in space exploration.

We should have very large prizes for achievement. If you had priced the space station as a purely private achievement and paid for it only upon completion you could probably have had three or four companies building systems in one-third to one-fifth of the time for the same total amount of money or less. There ought to be tax credits for manufacturing in space and tax credits for developing commercial flights into near space for space tourism so we build a very robust launch program in the private sector. We need a lot of competitive players, not simply one or two cumbersome large bureaucratic government contractors.”


If Newt decides to run for President, it will be a blessing to have a candidate who is serious and enthusiastic about the new and vibrant endeavors in space.


Posted by David Doyle at 12:12 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)