Newt Gingrich may have been mocked for proposing to establish a permanent American settlement on the moon by 2020 if he was elected president, but it turns out the outspoken politician is serious about exploring the cosmos.
The former Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House said he would travel to space, "if I get the chance," reported Yahoo! News. He added that the ridicule he suffered for proposing such an ambitious plan is symptomatic of the broader political issues plaguing the nation.
"This is a good example of what's wrong with the current political system," Gingrich told Yahoo! News. "I gave a serious speech in Florida at the Space Coast outlining a very bold strategy. … I got savaged by two of my competitors, Romney and Santorum, who deliberately distorted the speech. I got ridiculed by 'Saturday Night Live.'"
Gingrich added that America's space program has been hobbled by NASA's budgetary woes. "The one period of glory in NASA was the first nine years when they weren't a bureaucracy yet … and they haven't gotten back to that excitement, that adventurism, and won't," he said. "So, I would take most of the NASA budget, and I would turn it into prizes for private sector."
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