Space Experts Call Gingrich's Moon Colony Plan A Vote-grabbing Gimmick- 1-30-2012

Republican presidential-hopeful Newt Gingrich's plans to build a lunar base has been dismissed as nothing more than a political ploy according to a space expert from Florida.

While speaking to voters in Florida last week, Gingrich, the former House speaker, promised to establish a permanent base on the moon by 2020 if he's elected president.

However, Howard Chipman, CEO of Aurora Aerospace, a company offering astronaut training, told the New York Daily News that Gingrich's claims are nothing more than a 'gimmick'. Mr Chipman claims: 'It's a cheap trick to get some Florida voters because of all of the space jobs here.'

Gingrich has called the current state of the U.S. space program 'a total mess, an embarrassment.' He claims that his plans for the space program would benefit 'science, tourism and manufacturing.'

Former president George Bush proposed the idea of a moon base and Nasa had detailed plans for a base which was to be constructed by 2024, but those plans were later scrapped by Obama's administration.

Defending his position that he was being 'grandiose', Gingrich explained: "The Wright Brothers standing at Kitty Hawk were grandiose. John F. Kennedy was grandiose. I accept the charge that I am grandiose and that Americans are instinctively grandiose."

Gingrich says that we wants the U.S. to develop a strong commercial space industry similar to the airline boom of the 1930s, which would ultimately lead to a permanent base on the moon.