Newt Gingrich cares a lot about Star Trek America’s domination of space. He talks about moon colonies in the Republican debates and he wrote about casual space travel in past books. But in 1981, as a member of Congress he introduced H.R. 4286, a House Resolution that mapped out a plan for America to claim permanent space in…space.
Details of the resolution were published in Roll Call today:
- “All persons residing in any community in space organized under … the United States shall be entitled to the protection of the Constitution….”
- “Whenever such community shall have acquired twenty thousand inhabitants … they shall receive from Congress authority with appointment … to establish a permanent constitution and government for themselves.”
- “Whenever any such community shall have as many inhabitants as shall be in the least numerous of the United States such a community shall be admitted as a State into the Congress of the United States on an equal footing with the original States.”
The best part: Gingrich wanted this stuff done by 2010.
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bbhouston
Jan. 28, 2012 at 1:36amAbout colonizing the moon…..One day many years in the future Gingrich will be appreciated for being the visionary and big thinker that he is. The America I live in now can only mock him…..egged on by establishment Republicans. Yes there was a time when the greatest thinkers and scientists on earth believed and professed that the Earth is Flat……
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Greatnesslostislegend
Jan. 27, 2012 at 9:49pmHypothetically Newt is correct. Exploiting near space for profit is impossible due to UN treaty. It is defined as a common resource for all mankind. Carter signed the treaty that stipulates the UN can tax any product, and determine who gets to colonize the Moon and where. In addition after Three Mile Island another UN treaty makes it illegal to use a nuclear reactor (NERVA type) for propulsion. You have no legal title to whatever you develop on the Moon, an asteroid, or planet anywhere in the Solar System.
Would people had settled in the west if land was not able to be secured by legal title? No mineral rights? A far away unaccountable government able to determine what to tax you in an unpredictable manner based on envy? The answer is no. People would have stayed in the 13 colonies. America as we know it would have never existed.
That is the problem. Newt knows this and attempted through Congress to codify the United States was not going to accept UN stewardship of near space, and was going to apply rule of law and property rights per the constitution to it.
2 years ago NASA crashed a satellite into Foley Crater on the Moon. Elements detected in the plume indicate asteroids that crashed into it billions of years ago are still strewn ad-hoc over its surface. The plume indicated there is more silver in Foley than has been mined in all of human history. There is also water there. The UN would take all profits away, hence no moon base plan to exploit
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