I’m almost positive that Gingrich was hyping the moon initiative because he was campaigning in Florida, which has seen huge job losses as a result of the end of the Shuttle program. If he keeps talking about that idea in other states, then I give him some credit for sticking to his guns on a “big idea”. If he drops it, then it was clearly just pandering to Florida voters.
Actually, his pandering was even more targeted than that. He was speaking at a rally in Brevard County, the Space Coast, where Kennedy Space Center and virtually all the Florida space contractors are located (and perhaps less historically important, where I went to high school).
Voters in Tallahassee, Tampa or Miami couldn’t have cared less. Voters in Orlando, a bit, perhaps, but mostly talking up the space program gets you votes in Brevard.
I’m not suggesting a moon catapult throwing stuff from the moon’s gravity well into the earth’s gravity well and just see what ahppens. If you can maintain minimal maneuverability during approach and reentry to earth and throw a parachute on there, you can almost certainly control the reentry to hit the middle of the ocean.
I wonder if Newt still thinks Citizen’s United was a good Supreme Court decision.
Oh, I thought we were talking about launch costs from the Earth. Sure, launching from the moon is going to be cheaper. But setting up a launch system on the Moon is going to take a shitload of money. And getting the vehicles to the Moon that will be launching from the Moon is going to cost a shitload of money. Like that $1000 per pound cost of launching from Earth, which is what it will take to get the launcher to the Moon in the first place.
Even ignoring the costs of setting up a moonbase so you have a launch system there, and ignoring the cost of making a Moon-mining system to acquire whatever it is you’re bringing back, you’ve still got all the costs associated with building the things that are carrying the stuff to Earth. Is that a rocket you build on Earth,fly to the moon to pick up rocks/gold, then fly back to Earth? Is that a rocket you build on the Moon, requiring you have a rocket factory on the Moon? How much will that cost?
Yeah, your fuel costs on actual launch are going to be far cheaper, but that’s only a tiny fragment of the overall picture.
Getting stuff down in reasonable quantities under some kind of control without making craters out of cities? You either need hundreds of vehicles, or you have to drop large items into either the ocean or the Australian outback or other desolate nothing. And hope the associated Earthquakes are minor.
The larger the return item, the harder the “minimal maneuverability”. Also, there is the pesky “burn up on reentry” problem. You either need a large enough item that you have something left after reentry, or you need some sort of heat sheild that sacrificially burns up.
Sure, we could rig up a magneto-levitation type launcher on the Moon, and with timing and orbital mechanics we could probably fairly reliably drop huge chunks of rock into the ocean. But you’re going to have to sastisfy that safety conscious public that doesn’t want giant rocks landing on their house or obliterating their city block or whatever. And that means you’re going to have to build all that hardware that controls the stuff coming down, and either build it on Earth and then launch it from Earth to take it to the Moon, or you’re going to have to build it on the Moon, which will require a **HUGE **infrastructure on the Moon.
No shit.
Gingrich’s space proposal seems to be to sponsor X-prize type competitions, and let commercial and private interests spend their own money competing for that prize. Wait, who else proposed something like that? Obama.