Everything Newt talks about is a goddamned lie/obfuscation/misinformation.
Take his nonsense about space exploration and rocket launches:
National Space Council needs to build off Falcon Heavy momentum and actively pursue public-private partnerships with innovative companies, like @SpaceX, who are out-competing government programs so that America can start winning the space race again. https://t.co/CHbQonzvQK pic.twitter.com/4XsOX5WjIb
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) February 14, 2018
SLS (Boeing, other defense contractors) want to maintain their contracts, which is why they’ve fought to fend off Space X as a competitor.
There’s a market for launches. NASA helps oversee unmanned program, space exploration, research - aka basic science.— lawhawk (@lawhawk) February 14, 2018
Congrats to SpaceX for the Falcon Heavy. You’ve just managed to reengineer something NASA did 50 years ago when the engineers had slide rules and African American women were the computers.
The US gave up that heavy lift capability to pursue the space shuttle to get to low earth orbit. Turned out that was a costly mistake as the shuttle never lived up to its lofty ambitions of a safe reusable and low cost method to get to space.
Now, we’ve got SpaceX competing with longstanding defense contractors like SLS (Boeing) who don’t want to see their contracts lost. That’s where the competition is.
NASA isn’t the problem. NASA continues doing the basic science and deep space exploration and manned space program.
But the GOP doesn’t consider basic science to be a priority (or even a thing).