•  Campaign Videos (January 2012) « Newt 2012
  

[Crowd cheering and applauding] Gingrich: ...Between romantics and so-called practical people.  I wanted every young American to say to themselves, I could be one of those 13,000, I could be a pioneer, I need to study science and math and engineering; I need to learn how to be a technician.  I can be part of building a bigger, better future.  I can go out and actually live the future looking at the solar system and being part of a generation of courageous people who do something big and bold and heroic.

And I will as president encourage the introduction of the Northwest Ordinance for Space to put a marker down that we want Americans to think boldly about the future and we want Americans to go out and study hard and work hard and together we're going to unleash the American people to rebuild the country we love. [applause]

By the end of my second term [applause] we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American. [applause]

We will have commercial near earth activities that include science, tourism and manufacturing, and are designed to create a robust industry precisely on the model of the development of the airlines in the 1930s because it is in our interest to acquire so much experience in space that we clearly have a capacity that the Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to matching. [applause]

And by the end of 2020 we will have the first continuous propulsion system in space capable of getting to Mars in a remarkably short time, because I am sick of being told we have to be timid and I'm sick of being told we have to be limited to technologies that are 50 years old. [applause]

Does that mean I'm a visionary.  You betcha. [applause]

You know, I was attacked the other night for being grandious.  I just want you to know.  Lincoln standing at Council Bluffs was grandious.  The Wright brothers going down to Kitty Hawk was grandious.  John F. Kennedy standing there and saying we'll get to the moon in eight years was grandious.  I accept the charge that I am an American, and Americans are instinctively grandious because we believe in a bigger future.

If I become your president you will have a 365 day a year relentless pressure to be faster, quicker, leaner, more innovative, more thoughtful, more daring, more visionary.  And so let's go back to how to do it.  I would want 10-percent of the NASA budget set aside for prize money.  You put up a bunch of interesting prizes, you're going to have so many people showing up who want to fly.  It's going to be unbelievable.  So the model I want us to build is largely the model of the '20s and '30s, when the government was actively encouraging development, but the government wasn't doing it.

[applause] I want you to help me, both in Florida and across the country so that you can someday say you were here the day it was announced that of course we'd have commercial space and near space, of course we'd have a manned colony on the moon that flew an American flag, and of course we'd be moving towards Mars by the end of the next decade.  After all we are Americans and you were there at the beginning of the second great launch of the adventure that John F. Kennedy started.  Thank you very, very much.  Good luck and God bless you.  [applause]

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Notes: Here is Gingrich's much mocked pledge to build a permanent base on the moon in context of his broader remarks on space policy.  The video consists of clips from Gingrich's speech in Brevard County, Florida edited together pretty seamlessly, including many shots of the audience applauding.  The edits are pretty tight so it is often difficult to see where one clip ends and the next begins, and there are a bit too many audience applause scenes.

Copyright © 2012 Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action.