Newt and the Magic Moonbase
Sorry if I also don't get really fired up about a moonbase. I was promised a mission to Mars by Bush the younger and how did that work out. The fact is building a real moonbase would cost mega $$$. Do I think a man that had trouble funding the rather small space station in low Earth Orbit while in congress, is going to push through a huge increase in NASA's budget at the expense of the military. No. On top of this he's promising to cut taxes and cut the debt. He's going to balance the budget! He's going to do that and build a moonbase? No.
On the scientific side when I here a politician say I'm gonna build a moonbase or I'm gonna live on Mars, I don't think "wow that's totally inspiring". I think "wow there's a politician so lazy he can't talk to the American people in an honest intelligent way about Americas role in space". The thing is America does have a vast space infrastructure. We have weather satellites, communication satellites, GPS amd those magical others that get Bin Laden dead. This infrastructure has slowly been build up while American politicians talked to us about moonbases, space stations and living on Mars. The entire fleet of Americas Launch vehicles almost never gets talked about in the press or by our politicians. When we set a record for exploratory spacecraft in orbit around other solar system objects, do people like Newt say word one? So I don't get that excited by talk of moonbases. People like Newt or Bush have no fucking clue what America actually does in space. They don't want to know. They don't really give a shit about science, infrastructure or even peoples dreams. It's a quick line in a campaign that they are never going to fund. Moonbase, you're lucky if Newt buys you a moon pie.
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"MARS, BITCHES" 
When Newt was house speaker we went to what is called "acquisition reform" in the space industry. NASA called it faster, better, cheaper. You usually can do 2 of these three easy The idea was to run the space industry more like say our oil industry. Little regulations and the companies basically self regulated. You the government buy a ride on their rocket and trust it works. If there is a problem trust they have the people to fix it. This is not how the industry is now and both NASA and the USAF have independent laboratories to verify space vehicles are operational. This adds cost, but the stakes are high. You can't recall a rocket or a satellite like you can your car.
The result of acquisition reform in the 1990's was a mess for the US space infrastructure. A mess we are still digging out of. Think of the way offshore oil drillers self regulated themselves and when problems come up the Federal government turned to the same vary companies to solve it. That's Newt's vision of the space industry. The US tried it once. It didn't work anymore than it worked for offshore oil drilling. It turns out you need places like JPL and NASA to have space success.
