Newt Gingrich's Guest Appearance in My Thesis

After completing my introduction and outline of the structure for my thesis last week, I'm just beginning to sink my teeth into the meat of my thesis. Right now I'm focused on teasing out the connection between Olamina's hyperempathy syndrome and her religious belief system, which includes space travel. And for that reason, I can't stop thinking about Newt Gingrich as I'm working on my thesis. I'm considering an extended footnote to address this.

What's cool about Octavia Butler's vision of space as a new spiritual frontier and a place of hopefulness for the future is rooted in the fact that space is not colonized. Thus, it offers a kind of blank slate that isn't possible on Earth. Newt Gingrich wants to privatize space exploration (90% he says would be private industry) for the most part and expand American power into space. Privatized space missions and potential colonies is a really terrifying prospect in my opinion. Because, um, privatization has not exactly been the best thing for the majority, ya know.

The funny thing about this is that for all of the criticism and jokes (warranted, I do believe) that Gingrich is enduring for his space commentary, the thing that strikes me as odd is that people seem to be more outraged over the very idea of investing in space than the method to his madness. The method is where I think the problem is! I actually think space travel is a useful way to spend taxpayer money, and I think it helps us to learn more about our universe, etc. What I have serious issues with is the notion of colonizing the moon or any other entities in space (I'm sure Mars would be next on the agenda). In Butler's Parable series, increased privatization has led to companies overtaking schools, food outlets, etc. to such an extent that workers become indentured servants within the companies they work for (and this also resonates with old mining towns in Appalachia, no?). Except for the 1% of course.

Gingrich's opponents suggest that we have too many political issues here on Earth to deal with that preclude an investment in space exploration. However, how can we continue to progress as a nation in terms of science or in other ways as well without looking forward and beyond the day-to-day (or more like election-to-election) need?  Privatization is certainly not the answer.