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Newt promises a permanent moonbase by the end of his second term

JoeTheJuggler said:
Could it have something to do with the fact that the topic is Newt's promise that he would do this if he were elected president? Sounds like he's talking about a massive government intervention. (Despite the fact that his tax proposal would cut federal revenues by more than a trillion dollars in the first year alone.)

Either you're defending this proposal or you're going off the topic of this thread.

If Newt's not talking about a government program, then why can't he establish a permanent moon base without being elected president?....
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The part I bolded is a good question, the other parts are speculation based on wrong facts.

The question is a good question. I can't see why the x-prize-like proposal for a moon base couldn't be generated without government subsidy. Arguably the dollar amount for the prize would be more than a private foundation could afford. Arguably the massive positive economic effects from the prize argue for a government offering it, or a consortium of governments (since the competitors might well be in different parts of the world).

Whoever is potus can push their pet projects. We do know that for a fact.
 
Ah so now you are arguing that your claim all along was that your whole grandiose scheme was going to be financed though private donation even though you never said anything of the sort?

The simpler answer is that you were simply caught being a lying hypocrite (AGAIN) and are coming up with new lies to try and cover your trail. No one believes you so you should probably just observe the rule of holes right about now...
 
mhaze said:
I can't see why the x-prize-like proposal for a moon base couldn't be generated without government subsidy.
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Well someone would have to contribute a bunch of money with no return on investment at least for a long time.

At any rate, that's certainly not what Newt was talking about. He said it as a campaign promise in his bid to win the office of President of the United States.

So are you no longer defending this outlandish campaign promise?
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Well someone would have to contribute a bunch of money with no return on investment at least for a long time.

At any rate, that's certainly not what Newt was talking about. He said it as a campaign promise in his bid to win the office of President of the United States.

So are you no longer defending this outlandish campaign promise?
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A prize? Yes, it was what he was talking about. Why misrepresent the facts? Because it doesn't make him look bad? Aw....

No return on investment for a long time? You are kidding right? Speculative minings stocks sell at initial exploration for a certain amount. They sell later for a higher or lower amount based on the firming up of what's in the ground. Years go by. Hundreds of holes are drilled to establish all this. Stock prices change. Ten years may go by or even much longer before actual mining starts. It may start small. This entire track record establishes the then-current stock price.
 
lomiller said:
Ah so now you are arguing that your claim all along was that your whole grandiose scheme was going to be financed though private donation even though you never said anything of the sort?

The simpler answer is that you were simply caught being a lying hypocrite (AGAIN) and are coming up with new lies to try and cover your trail. No one believes you so you should probably just observe the rule of holes right about now...
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Blah blah blah. Unfortunately the discussion IS ABOUT NEWT'S MOON concept not mine. More accurate, it's about continual misrepresentations and lies about what, exactly Newt's plan is and is not. Which I have been correcting. But be my guest - continue playing your stupid, silly little game.

So let’s go back to how to do it. I would want 10% of the NASA budget set aside for prize money. Lindberg flies to Paris for $25,000. You set up prizes – for example, I forget what the Bush administration estimate was, but it was something like $450 billion to get to Mars with a manned mission. So let’s put up $10 billion. And if somebody figures it out, we save $440 billion. If they don’t figure it out, it didn’t cost us anything.
But you’ll have for $10 billion – and I’d make it tax free because Americans love things tax free so much. It’s not the monetary value, it’s the psychic thrill that Uncle doesn’t get any of it. And this is why you are going to have to learn to have a lot more launches every day because if we put up the right prizes – and Bob Walker and I, shortly before I left Congress, actually hosted a two-day National Academy of Engineering Workshop on prizes, which is online, as it was published, and we were talking about the historic use of prizes going back to the 17th Century. You put up a bunch of interesting prizes, you are 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. The government was paying a reward, it was subsidizing the airmail, it was doing a variety of things. There were prizes – you know, Jimmy Doolittle got famous winning prize money before World War II, then he got famous for bombing Tokyo; I mean, he had a life that was very interesting.​

So what I've pointed out is that historically, this type of prize money attracts in private spending by competitors, orders of magnitude higher than the prize dollar amount. Since we know that there is a local economic effect to spending typically 4-5x, and taking a lower limit of 10x for private money spent toward a given prize, a $1B prize may have something in the order of a $50B increase in the economy.

Using a figure for NASA's budget of 20B, Newt's suggestion of 10% toward prizes is 2B, which would have a positive economic impact of $100B. More or less. Some of that might well be outside the US unless the prizes were limited to US citizens.

That's the general concepts that you - and others here - are continuing to misrepresent.

But I like to see the blind blindly stumbling into the abyss, so keep it up, Lomiller.

Priceless.
 
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mhaze said:
Unfortunately the discussion IS ABOUT NEWT'S MOON
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Well, if Newt is going to construct his own Moon, then it's only natural he'd want to build a base there. I withdraw my objections and wish him well in his endeavor, and hope he remembers not to gnaw on the papier-mache because it will make him sick.
 
mhaze said:
So let’s go back to how to do it. I would want 10% of the NASA budget set aside for prize money. Lindberg flies to Paris for $25,000. You set up prizes – for example, I forget what the Bush administration estimate was, but it was something like $450 billion to get to Mars with a manned mission. So let’s put up $10 billion. And if somebody figures it out, we save $440 billion. If they don’t figure it out, it didn’t cost us anything.
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So... Newt's plan is to offer a $10 billion prize for someone to do something that is estimated to cost $450 billion?

That's a stroke of genius. Now all he has to do is find someone with $450 billion who is smart enough to figure how to get to Mars, but stupid enough to do it at a loss of $440 billion.
 
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mhaze said:
A prize? Yes, it was what he was talking about. Why misrepresent the facts? Because it doesn't make him look bad? Aw....

No return on investment for a long time? You are kidding right? Speculative minings stocks sell at initial exploration for a certain amount. They sell later for a higher or lower amount based on the firming up of what's in the ground. Years go by. Hundreds of holes are drilled to establish all this. Stock prices change. Ten years may go by or even much longer before actual mining starts. It may start small. This entire track record establishes the then-current stock price.
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Newt promised a permanent moon base by the end of his second term.

It was a silly campaign promise.
 
mhaze said:
[apparently quoting Newt]

So let’s go back to how to do it. I would want 10% of the NASA budget set aside for prize money.​
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First, $2 billion won't even come close to getting a permanent moon base within 8 years.

Second, Newt also proposed a tax plan that would reduce federal revenues by over $1 trillion in the year 2013 alone. Unless he's fine with skyrocketing budget deficits, there won't be any NASA under Newt's proposals.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
First, $2 billion won't even come close to getting a permanent moon base within 8 years.

Second, Newt also proposed a tax plan that would reduce federal revenues by over $1 trillion in the year 2013 alone. Unless he's fine with skyrocketing budget deficits, there won't be any NASA under Newt's proposals.
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2B for each year, not 2B gross.

So now you admit that you didn't know anything about Newt's ACTUAL proposal? Which, yes, I quoted a small part of. Which .... you don't show from your response much evidence of actually understanding, but that can be chalked up under the "if it was said by a Republican there's no reason to read or understand it" category, which alternately translates to "let's be morons when it comes to understanding political competitors".

Whatever.

Newt's comment that "there will be a moonbase" was based on private industry doing it, not the government. If under his scheme, private industry did not choose to do it, that's that. In that case, under a Newt presidency, there is no moonbase in his second term.

Again. What part of this is difficult to understand?
 
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mhaze said:
A prize? Yes, it was what he was talking about. Why misrepresent the facts?
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If this prize is offered by the government it’s a subsidy.

If it’s not it has nothing whatsoever to do with Newt’s presidential campaign and would be off topic in this thread. It also would not happen because the whole notion is insane, and you would never get private donations for this multi-billion dollar prize.
 
mhaze said:
2B for each year, not 2B gross.

So now you admit that you didn't know anything about Newt's ACTUAL proposal? Which, yes, I quoted a small part of. Which .... you don't show from your response much evidence of actually understanding, but that can be chalked up under the "if it was said by a Republican there's no reason to read or understand it" category, which alternately translates to "let's be morons when it comes to understanding political competitors".

Whatever.

Newt's comment that "there will be a moonbase" was based on private industry doing it, not the government. If under his scheme, private industry did not choose to do it, that's that. In that case, under a Newt presidency, there is no moonbase in his second term.

Again. What part of this is difficult to understand?
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The part where he said there "will be" instead of there "might be" if someone in private industry actually does it.

Saying "will be" means he plans on seeing to it that it's done. And since he can't control private industry the only way to do that would be for the government to do it. And since he plans on gutting the government, one wonders how he plans on accomplishing that.
 
mhaze said:
So what I've pointed out is that historically, this type of prize money attracts in private spending by competitors, orders of magnitude higher than the prize dollar amount.
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Many government programs yield positive ROI. In fact other than social security and military related spending, most government spending has a positive ROI.

mhaze said:
Using a figure for NASA's budget of 20B, Newt's suggestion of 10% toward prizes is 2B, which would have a positive economic impact of $100B. More or less. Some of that might well be outside the US unless the prizes were limited to US citizens.
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Taking money from the NASA budget and handing it out as a prize is still a subsidy, you know the very thing you called me a “liar” for calling you on.
 
mhaze said:
So what I've pointed out is that historically, this type of prize money attracts in private spending by competitors, orders of magnitude higher than the prize dollar amount.
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You have? Where?

In Newt's example that you quoted he talked about offering a $10 billion prize for an endeavor estimated to cost $450 billion.

Who would ever spend 45 times the value of a prize in order to win that prize?
 
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