It pains me to write this, but I have to give some props to Newt Gingrich. Many people have been making fun of him for this “Colony on the Moon” idea, myself included. My favorite was “What will Newt name his State on the moon?” But, in all of that snarky political meanness, I think we should realize something:
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
That was not part of Newt Gingrich’s speech, it was a speech delivered by Democratic President John F. Kennedy in 1962. He spoke to the hopes and dreams of America. The remembrance that the generation behind us had led us here. The prospects of jobs and education for Science, Technology, Engineers, and Math (STEM). It was a different time – it was a better time.
Now, we are suffering from a large national debt – but no more than we were during the 1940′s (as a % of GDP):
When JFK made that speech, the technology was not there and the money was astronomical:
To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year’s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year–a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United Stated, for we have given this program a high national priority–even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us. But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun–almost as hot as it is here today–and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out–then we must be bold.
In a time when politics is corrosive and vile – when Republicans call people socialist, demonize poor people as drug addicts, and want to cut funding to our senior citizens, I am glad there is one candidate who, at least on one issue, appeal to our better angels.
