Neil DeGrasse Tyson — one of my favourite space people — was interviewed by MSNBC’s Martin Bashir about Newt Gingrich’s moon base plan by 2020. The short version: Newt got it wrong. The long version: watch the video.
I want the world to have a permanent base on the Moon. It will be great for the US and humanity as a whole. Just setting up a liquid space telescope — hundreds of times more powerful than any telescope ever created — would justify it. The things we would learn as species would push civilisation forward in a way we never imagined before.
But doing this by 2020 in the current situation is a pretty crazy idea… unless all the governments — US, Russia, Europe and China — put all their weight behind it. Like the US did with Apollo. Which is precisely what the Newtanaut — which his illegal idea of a US-only base funded by private companies — doesn’t want to do.
[Video: MSNBC]