At Cape Canaveral Romney Isn’t Promising the Moon

In the fight against moroseness, pessimism and a downgrading feeling that is the 2012 American presidential campaign, the re-launching of space conquest is a promising theme. Especially for Republicans who had an easy time denouncing Barack Obama’s cancellation of Constellation’s return to the moon as a matter of national abandonment. Especially in Florida where the NASA space station at Cape Canaveral and its subcontractors provided thousands of jobs.

Newt Gingrich, never late for a crazy idea likely to stir controversy, proposed establishing “a permanent lunar colony to exploit the moon’s (mineral) resources.” Mitt Romney, his main adversary for the Florida primary, could not stay silent on a similar topic.

Thus he held a meeting on Jan. 27 at Cape Canaveral in the hangar of Astrotech, an aerospace engineering enterprise. In shirtsleeves and pepped up by his good performance in the previous day’s televised polls and by reports that suggest he caught up to Gingrich, he stated, “It’s time to have a mission for the space program for the United States of America. In the politics of the past, to get your vote in the Space Coast, I’d come here and promise hundreds of billions of dollars. I know that’s something that’s very attractive, very popular, but it’s simply the wrong thing to do,” he said by way of stirring up his opponent but without mentioning his name.

In space exploration, Republicans and Democrats play from different sides. The latter, more approving of the federal government’s intervention in the economy, drastically reduced public spending. Republicans, careful to set the patriotic cord vibrating, dangled the prospect of a revival of state investments. Romney reminded us that a large part of his career was “in private” and pointed out that space missions would have commercial and technological repercussions, as regards climatology, health and defense. Expression of this last theme triggered a thunder of applause from an audience with many veterans (Romney systematically begins his sessions by asking veterans to raise their hands and clap).

“To think that since Obama, we have depended on a Russian spacecraft in order to reach our space station,” mumbled Alicia, 54, accountant at the exit of the meeting. “With the space program the current president abandoned a part of what makes America.” Calling for, “less state and government,” she hopes for public spending in the domain “that makes this country great.”

Like the 200 something people present — not a single black person and few young people — she absorbed the words of Romney, who qualified space exploration as an element of American exceptionalism. “I will do anything for America to remain the greatest country in the world,”* he shot out, not indicating the precise direction in the least. The day before, during the televised debate, he proudly declared that once elected he would consult science and industry on the subject in order to validate a strong, dazzling program combining private industry and defense. “I would not try to establish a lunar colony. I think that such a project would cost hundreds of thousands, if not trillions. I would prefer to rebuild housing here, in the United States.”

* Editor’s note: The original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.