Mitt Romney would have fired Mike Griffin: Is Romney Already Being Trapped By Unsustainable Space Interests?, Space Frontier Foundation
"During last night's Republican presidential debate, Governor Mitt Romney stated that "a moonbase would be an enormous expense," and later stated that if someone had come to him saying they had wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, he would've said "You're fired." Today, it was revealed that former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin is member of the Romney Space Policy Advisory Group. This is the same NASA Administrator who was the chief architect of an unaffordable and unsustainable plan to return humans to the Moon that would have cost about $200 Billion."
Former NASA chief Mike Griffin backs Mitt Romney for president, Houston Chronicle
"GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney won the endorsement of former NASA administrator Mike Griffin on Friday, days before voters in Florida and along the famed Space Coast cast their ballots in the hotly contested GOP presidential primary."
Last man on moon, other space leaders backing Romney, MSNBC
"Players in the commercial space industry, including Eric Anderson, chairman and chief executive officer of space tourism firm Space Adventures; and Mark Albrecht, chairman of the board of satellite communications provider USSpace, also signed the letter. Other signers include Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University (who also serves as chairman of the Romney Space Policy Advisory Group); Peter Marquez, former director of space policy for the National Security Council; and William Martel, professor of International Security Studies at Tufts University."






Keith's update: At the first event in Florida today, Newt Gingrich called for setting aside 10% of the NASA budget for prizes (which would be awarded tax free), that there'd be a human base on the Moon by the end of his Administration flying an American flag, that progress on a trip to Mars would be made using propulsion that would dramatically reduce travel time, that there should be 5 launches a day - not just 1, and that the current NASA civil service system should be replaced with something more akin to what is used in the aerospace industry.









