Newt’s ‘Zany’ Space Policy
I suppose I should be glad that civil space policy has actually become an issue in the presidential campaign. It’s not usually a topic of interest to most people, nor one on which most people’s vote is likely to hinge, so it’s unusual for it to become newsworthy. Unfortunately, though, there hasn’t been a serious discussion about it. Rather, it has merely served as a crude cudgel that Mitt Romney has taken up to knock down his surging rival, Newt Gingrich.
It started in the debate on December 10th in Des Moines, Iowa. When asked for issues on which he disagreed with the former House speaker, Governor Romney led with a space-related topic: “We could start with his idea to have a lunar colony that would mine minerals from the Moon,” he said. “I’m not in favor of spending that kind of money to do that.” His intent was to ridicule the speaker’s ideas, and he at least partially succeeded, judging by the laughter among some in the audience.
He followed up with another: “He even talked about a series of mirrors that we could put in space that would light our highways at night. I’ve got some better ideas for our resources.”
As I noted at National Review Online the following Monday, these are not current Gingrich policy positions, or campaign talking points, but rather a couple ideas from a book he wrote over a quarter of a century ago that David Brooks had cited in a column at the New York Times the day before the debate. But either Romney himself or his campaign staff apparently decided that it would be politically advantageous to mock Newt’s vision, making his ideas sound too “far out” for America.
In the days after, it became clear that it wasn’t just an off-hand comment, but a calculated ongoing strategy to marginalize Gingrich by reinforcing the narrative that Gingrich is mercurial, with half-baked ideas. Romney started to use the word “zany” to describe the former speaker’s positions. This past Sunday, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, he doubled down when asked to be more specific on what was “zany” about Gingrich’s ideas:
This was being battled on Capitol Hill and the speaker sat down with Nancy Pelosi and spoke in favor of legislation dealing with climate change. He has been unreliable in those settings and zany, I wouldn’t think you’d call mirrors in space to light highways at night particularly practical or a lunar colony a practical idea. Not at a stage like this.
Never give a nerd who doesn’t know his place an even break. – Mitt Romney internal dialogue
There is something about the establishment Republicans, George H. W. Bush, John Sununu, Bob Dole, John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney that he cannot tolerate eve a hint of compentcy in any subject before they have to beat the man down.
It isn’t frat boy stupidity on their parts at least in Professor Sununu’s case (MIT) he should understand every word yet he still tries to kill every good idea and keeps the US locked into unworkable policies. Arguably the most valuable education was Ronald Reagan’s BA in Economics from Eureka College but the establishment boys still beat down Economics Professor Phil Gram when he tried to run in 1996 to rescue the Reagan legacy.
After serving for eight years as Reagan’s VP during the biggest economic recovery since 1920 to George H. W. Bush proven economic theory was a complete mystery like magic. He ignored the cost of letting regulators run lose and lost the election when he was too stiff necked to apologize for being wrong and raising taxes.
Mitt Romney had a lady appointed as his Massachusetts State Environmental Secretary who is now among the worst of Obama’s EPA personnel. We are supposed to trust Romney’s personnel Judgments?????! The man must be high on acid.
Nobody should vote for Romney until he takes responsibility for screwing up Massachusetts and explains what he will do different.
“The man must be high on acid.”
No, it’s just the natural consequences of believing in nothing but -
1) Wanting to be president and
2) Bailing out Wall Street endlessly.
Those are the ONLY 2 position’s Romney has not flip/flopped over. They are also Obama’s stated positions.
He IS the Wall Street WHITE OBAMA, that is why his support is stuck at 25% despite the mountains of money and influence peddling/arm twisting spent trying to increase it. He is an empty suit weather vane, twisting in the wind as expediency dictates.
Obama believes in socialism and fascism, hates America and would have been impeached or executed for treason in a different time, but at least he believes in something (The transformation of the United States into Zimbabwe). Romney, there’s nothing there folks…
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Wanted: A Republican presidential candidate who is fiscally conservative, willing to fight to the death for the constitution and the Rule Of Law, has more than 1/2 brain, stays out of our bedroom, keeps his/her pants on, is not a human weather vane, can string a coherent sentence together and is NOT associated with the loony bin factions of the party. America desperately needs you. Please apply ASAP.
Hi, Random Blowhard – I am thinking about emailing the link below to Rand Simberg in case he might find it interesting. It’s of a speech by Newt Gingrich at a Southern Iowa Tea Party Town Hall in Lamoni, Iowa, from July, 2011.
It’s a great speech for anyone who loves space and understands the science, engineering and technology issues we face.
Newt talks about Boeing manufacturing using new materials that are lighter than aluminum and stronger than aluminum, and how the parts are manufactured all over the world, and yet all fit together, and how Boeing is continuously improving what they’re doing.
Newt also talks about Lean Six Sigma as a method of constant improvement and how it could be used to transform government bureaucracies, and why it will be difficult to get the bureaucracies to change. He talks about the Wright brothers and Edison and the scientific model, and what it takes to run experiments when you don’t know what you’re doing. He talks about Salk and the polio vaccine and the iron lung, and how it is that we don’t need iron lungs and bureaus of bureaucrats to regulate the use of the iron lungs. He talks about brain science and the breakthroughs that are coming for things like Alzheimer’s.
I know that people look at Newt’s past and reject him. But I have watched every speech of Newt’s that I can find and I have concluded that Newt has grappled with whatever interior dynamic resulted in his marital infidelities back then. Also I think he did not “suffer fools gladly,” which I think may be behind some of the attacks from guys who worked with him and are, as far as I can tell, engaged in political pay-back. I think Newt now is a man who has an interior calm, an interior connection with Spirit, and I think he has undergone a lot emotionally and spiritually to mature to that point.
I watch the news media and wonder if it is a requirement to give up your awareness of yourself as a human being in order to work in “news.” This includes those on the Right and the Left. It’s as if they’ve never cried late at night over the mistakes they’ve made, never wondered how they could have been so wrong or so stupid.
It’s as if the “news” media don’t know about the process of becoming a more mature person, and the painful process one goes through in admitting one’s mistakes — to whatever you call what is Greater within us — God, Spirit, Conscience, All-That-Is, The Universe — whatever — the point is, we intend to be loving to others, and we often fail. Sooner of later, if we have the courage, we admit our mistakes and go through the terrible experience of remorse.
We have to forgive ourselves. That means turning to Something within and making peace and finding reconciliation. We call that Great Presence by many names, but this is what humans have to go through in order to mature, especially if we started out really immature, and especially if we started out particularly wounded from childhood.
So, having watched hours and hours of speeches, I have concluded that Newt has gone through this kind of process. I don’t think Newt is emotionally the same inside as he was in the 90′s. I think Newt is more mature. So for me, Newt’s behavior of the past is not enough of an issue anymore to affect my decision to support him.
I found Transterrestrial Musings via InstaPundit some years ago. I was so delighted to learn something about our space policy and other things, and I enjoy the comments here very much.
I want offer a path to anyone here who is eager to find the kind of candidate Random Blowhard described, because I think Newt is that candidate. He’s hidden in plain sight.
And I hope very much that people do decide to team up and solve the problems he’s talking about solving. Because I think the socialist traps and snares that are currently in our regulatory systems and tax code, to name just two items, MUST be corrected if our children, grandchildren and their progeny are going to have a vital, vibrant America to live in.
So this is a great speech to watch if you are interested. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6akbSAFquQ
And on this Christmas Eve day, may I wish Merry Christmas to all to whom that applies, Happy Holidays to all to whom that applies, and Good Will on Earth to Us All, Every One. My virtual friends.
Being President is more than having big ideas. You need to understand how to run a business on a very large scale. Obama has shown that he can’t do this and I don’t think that Newt could do this. He is an ideas type of guy. Both Newt and Mitt have both said things that small government types would not care for. At this time the voters will not elect someone that will make the spending cuts of the size we need to make. Romney has shown that he can solve problems such as the Salt Lake games had. Ronmney is not a socialst and has done well in business.
The conservative goal is to _minimize_ government’s role in society,
first of all by opposing the thoroughly discredited idea that top-down
control can run a country as though it were a large business;
The motivation behind every such claim is a desire to obtain, and abuse
power over others. Heinlein said it best:
‘The human race divides politically into two classes: Those who want
to control other people’s behavior, and those who have no such desire.’
There is a vast difference between running a business, no matter how big it is, and the federal government. In a business you have deputies that are hired by you and who support your vision and if they screw up, then get tossed to the curb. Running the federal government requires getting a majority of 535 people, very few of whom owe you more than titular loyality, who are not dependent on you for their jobs for the most part, and who can mess up even the best laid plans.
Newt Gingrich understands THAT system far better than Romney, and even after three years, Obama.
They have both said things which make conservatives uneasy, that is true.
Yet only romney has accomplished things in his governance anathemic to conservatives. Did Newt sit on a couch with the face of progressive evil today.. well yes he did. But every thing Newt actually accomplished in government is pure Conservative. Even amazingly so.
And yes, romney is a progressive/socialist cockroach.
Of course you do not have to take my word for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pVqZzHm3Z4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu0zQRUCDlM
The comparison is an insult to cockroaches.
Well said.
Romney is a liberal in RINO clothing. His every act in elected office was pure leftist activism.
I strongly suspect that what has happened since ’08 to make Romney change his opinion of the affordability vs. the utility of a manned lunar base is 3 years of Obama and Friends mangling the economy.
By the same token, before I credit Romney with actually being in favor of an actual space program, manned or otherwise, I must note that he was speaking at KSC, to a crowd he must have been reasonably sure were space advocates. Romney shares the President’s bad habit of telling any crowd what he thinks they want to hear, and then seeing no hypocrisy in telling someone else exactly the opposite, if he thinks it’s what that different audience wants to hear (as he apparently did with Chris Wallace). It’s one more reason I, and I think others as well, wonder what Romney actually believes in, other than his desire to be important.
As for Gingrich’s positions of a quarter-century ago, I consider them now much as I did then. The manned lunar base was a reasonable idea, far more so than Gerard O’Neill’s “L5″ colony proposal that got so much publicity.
Lagrangian points are bad places to put space stations, especially Paolo Soleri-scale habitats. Being gravitational sumps, they collect debris. The result is that your station soon looks like Daffy Duck when he stands in front of Elmer Fudd’s double-barrel. Even if this doesn’t happen immediately, dust accretion due to the combination of the Lagrangian “sump” and the station’s own microgravity will in short order cause serious problems with its solar cells and (especially) waste heat management. As Dr. John D. Clark once said of a certain liquid rocket monopropellant, the system is just too precious to work.
O’Neill also called for a lunar colony, to supply the resources to build the Lagrangian one. He never understood that if you have the lunar colony, you don’t actually need the L5. Gingrich apparently figured this out for himself. (Thirty years after Arthur C. Clarke and R.A. Smith, which may be a world record for a politician compared to actual experts in the field.)
As for the “space mirror”, that idea apparently was first put forward by Hermann Oberth, one of the early liquid-fuel rocket pioneers. He was less interested in lighting highways than he was in using a parabolic mirror to incinerate armies. Why? According to Willy Ley, because as late as the 1930s he believed that an atomic bomb could never be made to work. (“Rockets, Missiles, And Space Travel”: New York; Viking Press, 1951, pp. 337-339.)
The Nazis considered the idea during World War Two- exactly why, no one is able to say, other than their seemingly limitless infatuation with “wonder weapons”. Since Ehricke was a Peenemunde alumnus, he probably got the idea then.
Unlike his former employers, Ehricke wasn’t really interested in such a device for its destructive potential. (Unlike Oberth, he knew that nuclear weapons worked, considering that his work for the United States included IRBM and ICBM development.) He saw it as a potential power-generation system, beaming sunlight down to solar cell “farms” on the surface even in local nighttime conditions. Later on, he abandoned the solar mirror concept in favor of putting the solar cell farms themselves in orbit, and sending the power down to a ground station by microwave emission. Unlike O’Neill, Ehricke took the maintenance factor into account, realizing that solar cells needed to be more durable than those we have now to make the idea cost-effective. (Gingrich may not have read Ehricke’s later work on the subject.)
Overall, with one hit and one miss, I give Gingrich’s plan of the 1980′s a 50%, which works out to a C-. Romney, I have to give an “Incomplete”- he doesn’t seem interested in showing his work.
clear ether
eon
So Mitt Romney wants to paint the unflattering picture of Newt as being “zany, far out and kind off” with the space mirrors and moon mining comments. I would ask Romney, who is kidding who? Most politicians won’t go near the subject or admit to knowledge of space mirrors or shall we say ionospheric mirrors and ongoing and experimentation upon our planet and it’s uninformed population with this technology. These ionospheric projects have been ongoing before our very eyes since 1976 and highly stepped up over the past several years.
We could only wish the objective they had in mind was to light our highways but unfortunately, as always, those lusting for power, money and control have a way of corrupting and misusing anything for their own purposes.
I give Newt credit for even going there because this is supposed to be the best kept secret on the planet. By dismissing Newt’s comments and labeling him “zany” it tells me a lot about Romney and his willingness to keep the status quo on a far too secretive subject that affects humanity’s health, welfare, environment and future existence.
Creating artificial layers of ionization in the upper atmosphere, where such layers act as mirrors for transmission of many things for many purposes is not sci-fi, it’s reality. One has to ask where all the money comes from to fund these projects? Surely it is in the budget..oh I forgot, we are broke and haven’t operated with a budget for the past three years.
For interesting related reading search:
Bernard Eastlund, Tesla, weather modification,ionospheric mirrors, High Auroral Atmospheric Research Program, HAARP Facility at Gakona, Alaska, earthquake signature 2.5 HZ, weather wars, smart meters etc.
The current political power structure has something in common
with the ancient Chinese; They both think they live in the best
of all possible worlds, hence any change must be for the worse,
and the status quo must be maintained at all costs.
Private commercial exploitation of space for profit will transform the world
to a degree not seen since the microcomputer revolution, may by itself be
enough to drive a world-wide economic recovery, and will be resisted
to the bitter end by TPTB; Time for a Circulation of Elites.
Can you imagine the freedom you will have off planet. No tree-hugers to retard economic activity. No taxes for our huge lazy government and it’s protected class of welfare do nothings. Human migration into space will be small in number but it will happen.
Human nature is portable. I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for any political eschatons in space.
What about that “Air” tax?
“The current political power structure has something in common
with the ancient Chinese; They both think they live in the best
of all possible worlds, hence any change must be for the worse,
and the status quo must be maintained at all costs.”
They do live in the best of all possible worlds – for them. The world of the rest of us: not nearly as nice and getting worse.
Fusion reactors using Deuterium and Tritium can’t be made to work efficiently because of the energy lost to high energy neutrons. Fusion reactors using He3 have been made to work very well with out the neutron problem. Unfortunately the only source of He3 on earth is decaying nuclear weapons. The Moon on the other hand is covered with the stuff.
He3 is a component of the solar wind. He3 has been bombarding and being captured by the lunar soil for billions of years. Returning to the moon could be very profitable.
Rare earth metals are having a growing impact on the specialty electronics industry. Finding and processing an asteroid high in metal content would be very valuable.
One of the lunar astronauts has made a solid proposal and case for building a lunay base. There is a scientist who has devised a way to build fusion power plants. Fusion being a much safer and cleaner way of providing energy than fission. The materials to fuel a fusion power plan are rare on earth, but plentiful on the moon.
Energy has been the key ingredient in the industrialization of earth. It will holds it’s importance in the years to come. If we are to continue the advancement of civilization, the developement of energy will be the engine that propells us forward. Returning to the moon and mining it’s resources should be one of the pillars of the future economy.
Many will not visualize how important this can be. Space travel has been much like the internet was early on. It is there. It is interesting, but how do we profit from it? Perhaps history has a parallel. Developement of space may resemble the developement of the new world in the 17th and 18th centuries. Trading companies may form and colonize first the moon, and later the stars.
If we survive the next decade, I think it’s inevitable.
Americans would be better off electing either Romney or Gingrich , even if they believed the moon was made of green cheese, rather that have a Commander-in-Chief that actually directed NASA to share it strategic science with governments that support Islamic terror.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7875584/Barack-Obama-Nasa-must-try-to-make-Muslims-feel-good.html
The supposedly extravagant costs of space exploration are modest if judged by the scale of ordinary government spending — and a good deal of that spending, by the way, is not nearly as popular with the public. The real reason the “establishment” types like Romney are against colonizing space is that, according to them, it would not serve the interests of Science. It would be much cheaper to use robots, they say, or to spend the money on more telescopes. But science is only a perquisite, not the main purpose, of space exploration. Our ancestors did not risk life and limb to sail around the world and to colonize the Americas just so they could catalogue a few measurements for the reference books.
This is a totally specious argument. The federal budget is filled with things that only cost pennies per day per person; it’s the go to excuse for government largess.
Our ancestors were traveling with a realistic expectation of a fairly high return on THEIR investment (not some unnamed descendent) and could migrate relatively safely since they were pretty much going from on highly habitable area to another. Antarctica is far more habitable than the moon or mars and it is far cheaper to get there, yet only scientists have bothered colonizing it at very high costs (and very low returns on investment.)
It’s really easy to be altruistic with other people’s money.
Joe, Google is your friend; It can inform you that Antarctica
is used by NASA as an analog to the Moon and Mars, conditions
in all three locations having much in common. If there is money
to be made in any of those places, a way will be found for humans
to live and work there; Space based mining and manufacturing will
likely be the first profit centers, with colonization coming later,
probably in large habitats built in orbit.
I think the whole “not having air” thing is still hard to reproduce…
Joe, you’re my hero. Lovely come back to all the “let’s live on the moon” crazies.
Living in a large self-governing society means that your money will be spent, inevitably, on projects and causes with which you personally might not sympathize. You don’t need to be a big-government leftist to accept this reality.
One of the ironies of a society like ours, dominated by science and technology, is that, instead of zealously pursuing manned space exploration, as the science-fiction writers used to predict, it has rejected space exploration on crudely-rationalist considerations, which are the only kind it permits. Any purpose which cannot be understood by a computer, so to speak, is summarily dismissed as irrational.
Was gonna say that moon colonization is perhaps on a mental image scale along with the earth covered with windmills and solar panels.
There’s a reason why magic-like technologies exist on science-fiction shows.
We went to the moon not to explore but to beat the USSR there as a show of economic/political/technical prowess, nothing more. Science took a back seat to the Apollo 11 landing and each year it became harder and harder to convince congress to fund more moon missions.
Mining the moon would cost astronomical sums of money (sorry, no pun intended). If a private corporation was to find a way to do it and absorb the costs and make it happen then great. There is a market for rare-earth metals, of course. My hat’s off to the first entity that can go and return on a regular basis with a cargo of the stuff.
A manned mission to Mars is a fool’s errand. At least right now it is. Thanks to the growing sophistication of technology, probes and rovers have been far more than adequate. And, quite frankly, cheap. Take the cost of the Mars rover missions and then multiply by ten thousand to send one or two humans there. The logistics alone is staggering. Mind you, some might say that similar things were said about going to the Moon but it’s 230,000 miles away. Mars at its closest is 34.65 million miles.
Probes and rovers don’t need water, air, waste disposal, space suits, and, the biggest factor, a way to prevent going batty. The next probe, Curiosity, a VW-sized rover is set to lift off in 224 days. Given the amount of science that Opportunity and Spirit provided and that they far outlived their expected lifespans, Curiosity will most likely provide volumes more. But still, it could crash, or land successfully and not function, etc.
There is no reason to put people on any planet other than Earth in this solar system. Someday if/when we reach the pinnacle of Star Trek technology, then we can go. They make it look easy because they’re telling a story. The real stuff is monumentally more difficult. And right now, unnecessary.
Most space policy is crazy; it’s about a romantic notion of colonization often spurred by science fiction, largely divorced from reality. Almost every discussion has that nasty “magic happens” clause somewhere in the middle. Fusion power being a prime example–it doesn’t work. It may someday, but it doesn’t now and going to the moon isn’t going to magically make it work.
Rand asks the following without stepping back and answering his own question: “If we are not going to settle the moon and other locations in the solar system, what in your mind is the purpose of having a human spaceflight program? Why are we doing it?” Why settle the moon? Why put man man on mars? What is the utility to mankind or the US in particular? Even if you invoke science, what can man do that robots can’t other than pump up your ego?
I’ve no problem doing science for science sake or going somewhere just so you can say you’ve been, but I do have a problem of my pockets being robbed so you can engage in that. If you want to go to mars, nobody is stopping you. If you don’t like NASA’s policies on private space flight, spend the effort to have them changed and/or go to Mexico or Bolivia.
Joe, what is the only 100% efficient machine ?
Answer: An electrical space heater; All the input energy comes out as heat.
Government funded ‘Big Science’ space or fusion, is even more ‘efficient’;
It wastes all the time and money spent on it, accomplishes little or nothing,
and as a bonus, serves to block private enterprise access _by_design_.
The ‘small science’ fusion research carried out by Dr. Bussard with Navy funds
indicates that the Tokamak fusion approach cannot work; The bigger it gets,
the more it leaks. Bussard’s Polywell fusion experiment, now near completion,
may demonstrate a workable approach, if the Navy does not re-classify the results and restrict them to military use, in the interests of national security.
News Flash for the Navy and the Federal government: The interests of national
_economic_ security are best served by making the results public, and building
a follow-on demonstrator power plant, soonest.
M. Report
There is nothing that is 100%. Even a space heater makes noise and light, plus the energy comes from a less than 100% source. If you are trying to be ironic, please try harder.
odd how many people with law degrees and such seem to always determine the thrust and direction of our medical future, the space program, what is left of it, oil exploration, environmental studies, and any other scientific endeavor. very strange.
however, it looks like some of these lawyer types may have hit on some things they might be good at (finally):
1. selling guns illegally to drug dealers and known murderers
2. laundering drug $$$
3. destroying the oil and natural gas industries of the u.s.
4. waging illegal undeclared wars against half-pint governments
5. handing out tax $$$ to questionable sorts in order to get political kickbacks
6. finding racism under every branch, nook and cranny
7. taking vacations on our dime
If there were a Constitutional position called “America’s Science Officer,” Newt Gingrich would be terrific for that job.
But the job we’re discussing is Chief Executive, and Gingrich has no executive experience. (Sorry, but Speaker of the House is not an executive position. It’s a wheeler-dealer position, and Gingrich got fired from that job anyway.)
You’re forgetting why he got fired.
He was effective at setting back the leftist agenda, so they went all out to destroy him.
We are at a point where if space can not be made profitable it will never advance. Gov’t has gone about as far as they are willing to go or able for that matter. Misuse of public funds and an inadvisable increase of the American population by continued immigration from 200 to 300 million for no particular purpose has caused a massive loss of economic power due to lack of productivity from our new citizens who have as little interest in curiosity for its own sake as does a rock.
We are deep in a gravity well and it is expensive to get out.
Well, there they go again.
I wish that our candidates would remember the Eleventh Commandment.
Everything negative they say about each other is being saved by the Democrats and their Press Corpse so they can use it against the eventual nominee. How can they not know this?
Any candidate who makes such attacks puts themselves before the best interests of the party.
Still, I’ll march down to the polls and vote for whoever wins. If nothing else, they’ll be better than any Democrat, especially Comrade O.
Gingrich is the personification of bloviation. Gringrich can be substituted for that word in the future.
Once the energy source is perfected and our spending gets more under control, it is not a bad idea, He doesn’t mention that it will keep China from claiming the whole place either.
Who knows how low the cost of space travel will go as private enterprise becomes more involved? Try checking early estimates of Space Shuttle delivery to orbit if you want to know the real cost and if you want to compare the cost of the government doing it as it has been in practice.
As far as fusion power and research is concerned their are 2 projects currently in progress that have the potential to bring it to commercial reality.
1) The international consortium known as ITER (USA, Canada, Brazil, China, India, Eurozone, Australia…). Status – Decades away ~ 2050 is the latest timeline estimate.
2) The “Polywell Fusion” project of the late Ron L Bussard (Bussard ramjet fame). Currently ran by the Dept Of Defense. Status – Ongoing? But theoretically 5-10 y IF Bussards theories were correct and Defense went full bore on it.
One of the religious tenets of the Mormon church is extra biblical revelation. Would it surprise Nitt that his church already has a colony on the far side of the moon? You can look it up..heaven help us if this man, the establishment candidate,
-sorry to the bearer of bad tidings…although if they are still up there, I see a landslide election for Nitt…
Like Obama, Romney wants to be a ‘blank slate’ for the election. There’s no way you’ll pin him down on a any policy position whatsoever. His interest is only in destroying his opponent so he can be President. He doesn’t actually have any values, certainly not any principles.
That’s not hard to do, since it’s accurate.
If someone is chatting at a party, a half-baked nonsensical idea can be excused. When one publishes a book, one is expected to do some fact checking.
Putting mirrors in space to do X (whatever X you want it to be) is doomed by the inverse square law, which is taught in any reasonable high school science course.
Actually, I learned it in junior high – probably 7th grade, if I remember correctly. It’s pretty basic.
However, I should add that, given the poor choice of Newt vs. Romney, it’s no contest.
All of his negatives aside, Newt will likely appoint good judges.
Romney would be a disaster of epic proportions. I see NOTHING good coming out of a Romney nomination.
Putting mirrors in space to do X (whatever X you want it to be) is doomed by the inverse square law, which is taught in any reasonable high school science course.
Nonsense. It does matter what “X” is. There are some potential applications for them that don’t defy laws of physics, though they may not make economic sense. I have no idea what you mean by “the inverse square law.” Krafft Ehricke certainly understood optics.