Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

No Justins, No Peace

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

We still have time to mess this up!

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

After roe, women are no longer free.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

You are here: Home / Tea Party Plans Free Market Colonization of Uranus

Tea Party Plans Free Market Colonization of Uranus

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Excellent:

An offshoot of the South Florida Tea Party called “Tea Party In Space” is looking to break apart the government’s socialist takeover of the final frontier.

Andrew L. Gasser launched Tea Party In Space in June as a way to “bring fiscal responsibility” into the space program, he told TPM Tuesday. He called the group, which was formed in conjunction with the South Florida Tea Party, the first “issue-specific” tea party in the country.

Gasser explained that the group aims to bring the free markets into the space program, because right now, he say, there is only the government — which amounts to socialism. “It is socialism when you have the government coming down and saying, ‘this is what we want to build, and this is how we want you to build it,'” he said.

But Gasser stopped short of saying the government should be out of the space entirely. “There has to be limited government,” he said. “There has to be a partnership.”

“Some people inside NASA get it and some people don’t,” he later added.

Maybe we can get all these guys together, shoot them into outer space where they can do less damage. Plus, if they have their way, the rockets will be made by the lowest bidder, and I am ok with that.

Reader Interactions

123Comments

  1. 1.

    Violet

    An offshoot of the South Florida Tea Party called “Tea Party In Space”

    WALL-E beat them to it by a few years.

  2. 2.

    Nutella

    I’d like to see the Tea Party secede all the way to the moon.

    He’s a typical Tea Partier, you’ll notice. Private industry will make all the decisions and government will fund it. Capitalism at its best.

  3. 3.

    Crusty Dem

    So many Simpsons/Hitchhiker’s Guide ideas, it hurts..

    When we colonize, I suggest we put them all on Rocket #3.

  5. 5.

    Zifnab

    Oh good. “NASA is inefficient, so you should give me your NASA money”.

    It’s nice to know the Tea Party always has a hand out for a handout.

  7. 7.

    Gravenstone

    These fucking morons are aware of the various private, commercial enterprises currently working on manned spaceflight ventures, right? Right?

  11. 11.

    jl

    @Zifnab:

    Yes, that is a theme with the teabaggers and GOPpers, isn’t it? “Give me some government money”: solves government inefficiency and produces limited government in one easy step.

    Cole should have typed:

    ‘the unregulated free market rockets will be made by the lowest bidder’

    I wonder if they WILL make it into outer space, but I’d rather not think about it.

  12. 12.

    superluminar

    the free markets into the space program

    because of course the markets would have gone into space were it not for those pesky gubmint programs? I mean, loads of profit to be made beyond the Lagrange points, innit? Fuck, these people are stupid. someone tell them it’s only evil sockulist regulations that make them wear a spacesuit when they’re outside the ship. That would be fun.

  14. 14.

    Jewish Steel

    Wait’ll they find out Obama has said much the same thing. That’ll take the shine off it.

    Besides, the Vulcans aren’t going to let us out of the solar system til we get our shit straightened out anyway.

  16. 16.

    jl

    With unregulated free market lowest bidder rocket ships, the disasters will be the optimal outcome of the creative destruction of the market place.

    A theorem on that can be whipped up in no time, and the data will be found to fit it very nicely.

  17. 17.

    NonyNony

    @Zifnab:

    It’s nice to know the Tea Party always has a hand out for a handout.

    Don’t you think that this:

    “It is soshulism when you have the government coming down and saying, ‘this is what we want to build, and this is how we want you to build it,’” he said. But Gasser stopped short of saying the government should be out of the space entirely. “There has to be limited government,” he said. “There has to be a partnership.”

    Has a solid ring of “Keep the gubmint out of my Medicare” to it?

    ETA: Grod-dammit – moderated because I quoted the Teabagger when he used the soshulism word and I forgot to fix the spelling. Crap.

  18. 18.

    Keith

    An offshoot of the South Florida Tea Party called “TEAAAAAA PARTY…INNNN SPAAAAAAAAAAACE!”

    Fixed.

  19. 19.

    LittlePig

    Dammit. Cap’n Phealy beat me to it.

    And yeah, just tell them that’s what President Obama wants anyway. They’ll drop it like a hot moon rock.

  20. 20.

    dude

    Oh sweet simpletons. The government isn’t stopping private companies from entering space, the prohibitive cost of space travel stop private companies from entering space.

    But really, if you want private industries to no longer use NASA to put satellites above the sky, I hope you don’t mind redonkulously expensive cell phone service because Verizon, AT&T and others had to build their own space program.

  21. 21.

    Citizen Alan

    These “people” really are sub-human in their ignorance. Between the Tea Party and literallyunbelievable.org, I’m starting to think that Idiocracy was too optimistic in its portrayal of the future.

  24. 24.

    Svensker

    Gasser explained that the group aims to bring the free markets into the space program, because right now, he say, there is only the government—which amounts to socialism.

    Is “socka-lism” a booga-booga word, or something? Whether something works or not isn’t important, it’s whether its sockalism or not-sockalism, based on some arbitrary definition?

    I need someone to invent non-sockalist time travel, so they can go back to the past and shoot me when I was one of those folks.

  28. 28.

    ppcli

    @Zifnab: Exactly. When I first read this, I couldn’t understand what the hell was the issue. There’s no law against building your own damned rocket and getting pictures from Venus or selling space-walks or whatever. There’s just nowhere near enough money to be made to cover the cost. But these guys have in mind the modern Republican free market: Give me the money and I may do it. Or fail. But whatever happens, give me the money.

  29. 29.

    Fulcanelli

    Yup, it’s a good thing the incoming Tea Party numbskulls in the House made the GOP caucus swear off any funding for pork projects.
    Funny how karma works… in’it?

  30. 30.

    Hunter Gathers

    They better hope that their Oscillation Overthruster works properly or they’ll never be able to return to Planet 10 in the 8th Dimension.

    Edit – I assume that they have the blessing of Grand Moff Rience Priebus.

  31. 31.

    drkrick

    God. If these people get any stupider, they aren’t going to be able to walk upright.

    Molly Ivins version: If their IQ were any lower, we’d have to water them.

  32. 32.

    Derf

    Of course the Tea Party, the GOP, and John Galt Cole will not give credit to Obama for actually pushing for privatizing many things NASA is doing. Such as resupply to the space station which SpaceX.com is on track to do in another year or two.

    In Fact the GOP tried to make political hay out of Obama’s cutbacks at Nasa, cancelling the rocket program for a Moon mission, and refocussing on what Nasa is good at. Which is doing things that have never been done before. In this case it is a focus on an eventual Mission to Mars.

    But you won’t read any of that good stuff here. It’s too cup half full for Baboon juice.

  34. 34.

    geg6

    @Jewish Steel:

    Yeah, I thought about the Obama NASA plan right away when I read about these idiots. Obama is already setting NASA on the public/private partnership path.

    Do these Teabagger idiots EVER pay attention to a current event? EVER?

  38. 38.

    JC

    You know the issue is that these guys get voted for, idiots or not.

    It’s easy for us to bag on them, because they are immensely easy to make fun of, but that doesn’t stop them getting elected.

    People keep choosing these idiots. Like in Wisconsin.

  39. 39.

    Roger Moore

    @Gravenstone:

    These fucking morons are aware of the various private, commercial enterprises currently working on manned spaceflight ventures, right?

    That’s a joke, right? When has the Tea Party let little things like facts interfere with their narrative? Just because private enterprise is where all the action is these days doesn’t mean we can’t bitch about soculism.

  42. 42.

    cyntax

    These guys get national coverage and can influence Republican policy at the federal level? We really need a communist party for some kind of balance.

  43. 43.

    Fulcanelli

    @drkrick: Molly Ivins version: If their IQ were any lower, we’d have to water them.
    Win. Please provide a shipping address to deliver your Internets.

  44. 44.

    Violet

    @geg6:

    Do these Teabagger idiots EVER pay attention to a current event? EVER?

    Was it covered by Fox News? If not, then no.

  46. 46.

    opal

    He called the group, which was formed in conjunction with the South Florida Tea Party, the first “issue-specific” tea party in the country

    I suppose that’s a step up from “Obama-specific” racism.

    Imagine if the Apollo program had been undertaken with teatard tax restraints.

  47. 47.

    David

    Breaking News!

    Tea Party in Space is planning a manned mission to the surface of the sun. When asked how they were going to cope with the extreme heat Andrew L. Gasser responded:

    “We’ve already figured that out. We’re going at night.”

  48. 48.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The stupid of the teatards.

    It burrrrrrrrrrrns!

    These fuckheads do realize (no, on second thought, they have no fucking clue) that the colonization of the Americas was, initially, a “loss leader” for the European powers, right? If the teatards were in 16th century Spain, France, Portugal, or England, they’d be protesting “government waste” by sending those explorers out to find things that might payoff some time in the future but of course no way to know if they ever will, therefore, they’re not “fiscally responsible” in the teatard sense of that phrase.

  50. 50.

    chopper

    Andrew L. Gasser, an out-of-work telephone sanitizer, launched Tea Party In Space in June…

  52. 52.

    Martin

    This really doesn’t go far enough.

    “It is socialism when you have the government coming down and saying, ‘this is what we want to build, and this is how we want you to build it,’” he said.

    The military is the much bigger soçialist threat here. Soldiers really should be able to pick out their own personal uniforms and firearms. And wouldn’t we really be better off unleashing America’s entrepreneurial and competitive spirit if we allowed Southwest Airlines 737s to carry AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missiles? On those Houston to San Diego legs, the pilots could strafe the US southern border, generating much needed revenue for Southwest, eliminating redundant overflight operations permitting massive tax cuts, and bypassing the excessive regulation of Border Patrol by Congress.

  53. 53.

    RSA

    Maybe we can get all these guys together, shoot them into outer space where they can do less damage. Plus, if they have their way, the rockets will be made by the lowest bidder, and I am ok with that.

    John, you’ve basically recounted the plot of the short story “The Marching Morons” (sorry if that’s a spoiler), the source for the movie “Idiocracy”.

  55. 55.

    Monala

    I clicked on the link, fully expecting to see The Onion or Borowtiz Report in the masthead. Silly me, forgetting that the Tea Party has long since passed the point of parody.

  63. 63.

    Bulworth

    So that gang that celebrated when Christie killed the bridgetunnel thing between NJ and NYC are going to give us a space program?

  64. 64.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @robertdsc-PowerBook: Did you see the recent Futurama episode where they traveled to the past, and at the end the flag was changed to show Bender, saying “Bite My Shiny Metal Ass!”?

    I want to take one of those flags to a Tea party rally.

  66. 66.

    daveNYC

    @Derf: Of course the Tea Party, the GOP, and John Galt Cole will not give credit to Obama for actually pushing for privatizing many things NASA is doing. Such as resupply to the space station which SpaceX.com is on track to do in another year or two.

    Are you shitting me? Twenty bucks says we’ll be using the RSA’s Progress until the ISS deorbits.

  67. 67.

    Suffern ACE

    @geg6: Nope. All they know is that with the space shuttle gone, and no one coming down to see it take off, that the government is inefficient. The private sector would never have cancelled that program.

  68. 68.

    Amir Khalid

    @Gravenstone:
    No, you are not. That show was one of the first to be seen here on color. It first played when color TV was being launched in Malaysia.

  69. 69.

    JGabriel

    @Gravenstone:

    Am I the only person here who remembers this?

    I had completely forgotten it until I clicked on that link. I even remember watching a few episodes when I was a kid, but it’s been decades since I thought of it.

    Damn you, Gravenstone! Now I’ll never be able to repurpose those brain cells!

    .

  72. 72.

    Redshift

    @daveNYC: SpaceX plans to send a test flight of their Dragon capsule to the ISS in November, and a cargo flight in February or March. They’ve been pretty good at hitting their goals. It’s already the first private spacecraft to orbit the Earth and return. Orbital is also planning to dock a craft there next February.

  73. 73.

    Tonal Crow

    The more TPers we can get working on their Randroid colony on Mars, the better off we’ll be.

  74. 74.

    Martin

    @geg6:

    Do these Teabagger idiots EVER pay attention to a current event? EVER?

    Look, it’s not their fault that the Founders were pushing for private sector space travel and it’s taken Obama 235 years to finally get around to it.

  76. 76.

    JGabriel

    @Suffern ACE:

    The private sector would never have cancelled that program.

    Of course they would. The Tea Baggers would demand that it be cancelled. It’s blatant pro-recycling propaganda!

    .

  77. 77.

    A Mom Anon

    @drkrick: I have a garden here that is totally offended by that statement.

    Sigh.Between these nitwits and fighting with the insurance company today I am so very,very tired. I shall now join my favoritest doggie in a howl and a growl.

  78. 78.

    JGabriel

    Tonal Crow:

    The more TPers we can get working on their Randroid colony on Mars, the better off we’ll be.

    In retrospect, we all should have known that Galt’s Gulch would be on Mars.

    .

  79. 79.

    sparky

    Trinity: agreed.

    sadly for them, George Bush beat them to it:

    NASA Invests in Private Sector Space Flight with SpaceX, Rocketplane-Kistler
    08.18.06
    NASA is making an unprecedented investment in commercial space transportation services with the hope of creating a competitive market for supply flights to the International Space Station (ISS).

    apparently, the head of this organization is planning to work on this project during his government-funded retirement.

  80. 80.

    Tonal Crow

    Rush says that blatterbeasts make a perfect meal for intrepid travellers.

    ETA: Also I’m going to ROTFLMFAO about teh stupid about terraforming Mars that will uttered within mere words of proclamations that the greenhouse effect is a liberal fraud.

  81. 81.

    daveNYC

    @Redshift: My cynicism regarding the US and it’s efforts in space knows no bounds. Seriously, I worked in it in the late 90s. Just a mess.

  82. 82.

    Judas Escargot

    Full disclosure: I’m a minor drone in the aerospace industry who works from time to time on both NASA and ‘commercial crew’ projects. So, grain of salt at all I ever say on the subject, etc.

    Politically, this is bizarre: The Teeps are inadvertently taking on some of the most powerful GOP Senators and Congressmen from Florida, Alabama and Texas. Most of the commercial crew, on the other hand, happens to be based in blue or purple states like CA, NV or NM. (VA has plenty of both).

    So the politics of this make zero sense. They’ll never get those cuts. And they can’t use this to win any elections. So WTF?

    I really do think some Teeps just saw the word “commercial” in commercial-crew, and decided that that must be the best, most Randian thing that we must implement at once because obviously Obama must hate it (even though he’s the one to fund it).

  83. 83.

    Carol from CO

    I heard recently that privatizing rockets to the space station will be privatized and that NASA will concentrate on unmanned exploration. I mention this only because that tper will take credit for it, which is a revolting thought.

  84. 84.

    themanintheguyfawkesmask

    Aren’t there a ton of orbiting communications satellites that are privately owned?

  85. 85.

    RareSanity

    Gasser explained that the group aims to bring the free markets into the space program, because right now, he say, there is only the government—which amounts to soçialism. “It is soçialism when you have the government coming down and saying, ‘this is what we want to build, and this is how we want you to build it”

    What really pisses me off is that, if you try and engage in a conversation with someone that makes a statement like this, you have to make a decision. Do I try to address the premise of space flight and the fact that the free market IS involved. Or, do I address the fact that this person has no fucking idea what soçialism actually is?

    The Tea Partiers have gotten so stupid, they make you sound stupid because you don’t know how, or where, to begin addressing their stupid.

    You see how stupid that statement just made me sound!

  86. 86.

    Tonal Crow

    @RareSanity: There’s a lot of truth in the maxim “Don’t argue with an idiot. He’ll drag you down to his level, then beat you with experience.”

  87. 87.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    @superluminar:

    Apparently, another hallmark of Tea Partiers is an inability to add. The numbers on manned spaceflight are ugly. Even assuming that companies like SpaceX deliver on everything they promise (and they won’t), there’s nothing people could do in orbit that would be remotely profitable apart from space tourism.

    We were discussing asteroid mining in another forum, and for giggles I estimated how much material you’d have to bring back per launch based on projected launch costs for a Falcon Heavy and how much that material was trading for.

    The numbers for iron ore were laugh-out-loud insane – at $0.00178/kg, you’d have to bring back between 40,000 and 70,000 metric tons per launch to just be cost competitive. Nickel was a lot better at roughly $22/kg, between 3 and 7 metric tons, but even that’s a hugely optimistic best case scenario. I SWAG’d it at $50/kg to be feasible, and that’s probably low.

  89. 89.

    Mike in NC

    He called the group, which was formed in conjunction with the South Florida Tea Party, the first “issue-specific” tea party in the country.

    Yeah, it’s no coincidence that Dave Barry chose to live in South Florida. Makes his work so much easier.

  91. 91.

    ericblair

    Politically, this is bizarre: The Teeps are inadvertently taking on some of the most powerful GOP Senators and Congressmen from Florida, Alabama and Texas. Most of the commercial crew, on the other hand, happens to be based in blue or purple states like CA, NV or NM. (VA has plenty of both).

    This would be the part where Mighty Red State Producer/Crappy Blue State Mooch mythology tends to bite them in the ass. Not that Mr. Fuckit-I’ll-Make-My-Own-Facts has any idea what he’s doing anyway.

    I did enjoy the bit where a contract project with a statement of work is soshalistic. Everybody knows that when you want to buy an orbital launch vehicle you just take your pickemup down to the Wal-Mart and buy one with a pile of $20 double eagles.

  92. 92.

    Bago

    @Derf:Re:Resupplying the ISS. Well that would certainly be an accomplishment. As in past tense. An accomplishment that has never occurred in the entire written history of humanity. You would do well to study why those in pursuit of profits have never landed on the moon, yet governments have.

  94. 94.

    quaker in a basement

    I disagree with the Tea Party on most things, but not this. I resolutely believe the government should keep its hands off Uranus.

  97. 97.

    bisquits

    I’m listening to Particle while reading this thread. Does not go well with the idea of teatard space flight.

  100. 100.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Delia:

    Exactly. Some corporation with defense contracts wanted to seize the Alien and somehow turn it into a controllable weapon.

  101. 101.

    Vor

    Socialism = whatever we don’t like. My local paper published a letter to the editor where the writer complained about “road pirate”, known to most people as State Troopers, who had the audacity to give him a ticket for not wearing his seat belt. Since it was his god-given right to endanger himself by not wearing it and how dare they interfere? He called it socialism.

  102. 102.

    Bill Murray

    @Derf: you do realize that Bago is saying that the ISS has been resupplied many a-time by government-built, -owned, -run space shuttles, not that SpacerX has not said they will resupply the shuttle.

    In any case NASA and other space agencies will be paying SpaceX to do this, probably on a cost plus basis, so it seems unlikely the cost to the US will be much different.

    IIRC, it costs about $10,000/pound to get into orbit for cargo, when the orbiter is going up anyway and probably closer to $100,000 per pound without any other mission

  104. 104.

    JaneGoth

    Cos of the costs and low likelihood of turning a profit in the next 100 years. The next people to land on the Moon or be the first to Mars will be the quasi communist Chinese.

  105. 105.

    Mnemosyne

    @Delia:

    “You know, Burke, I don’t know which species is worse. You don’t seem them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage.”

    (Okay, that’s from Aliens, but they play the corporate angle up much more in that one.)

  107. 107.

    General Stuck

    Well, we here in the Land of Enchantment haz the world’s only commercial spaceport, that sits not far from the Arizona and Texas borders, both being states lousy with wingnuts.

    I figure we advertize for a weekend get away of illicit gay sex, maybe to Vegas or Baltimore, to lure em onto the space ships. Then blast the fuckers to Uranus, or wherever. Only way to be sure.

  108. 108.

    grandpajohn

    @Gravenstone: Nope. A junkyard owner builds his own space ship from salvage and uses it to go out and get space junk. This program came to mind as I was reading the post.

  109. 109.

    Monkey Business

    I’m absolutely fine with the Tea Party building a space program from scratch.

    Best case scenario: they fail and, in the process, waste a fuckton of money and possibly blow themselves up.

    Equally best case scenario: they succeed and go colonize the Moon, and leave running the country to us socialists, what with our socialist government and whatnot.

  111. 111.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Grumpy Code Monkey:

    We were discussing asteroid mining in another forum, and for giggles I estimated how much material you’d have to bring back per launch based on projected launch costs for a Falcon Heavy and how much that material was trading for.

    Well you wouldn’t actually have to haul all that metal back to Earth on board your ship. It would be so much easier to perturb the orbit of the asteroid in just the right way so that it is pointed in our direction, and let the Earth’s gravity well do the rest, on the cheap as it were. The only cons are that it might take a while to get here and you’d lose a lot of the asteroid to ablation as it comes through the atmosphere, so you’d better pick a really big one just to make sure there is plenty left over after the impact to cover the expected profit margin. What could possibly go wrong?

    The next K/T event will come with corporate sponsorship.

  112. 112.

    Bill White

    To make money “doing” asteroid mining, one scenario would be to play the futures market.

    1. Take short positions in platinum group metals.

    2. Drop credible hints that you found 500 tons of platinum on some asteroid.

    3. Close out your shorts and buy platinum

    4. Release updated data that #2 was in error.

  114. 114.

    Mary

    @Bill Murray</a

    The big deal with SpaceX isn't that they're taking over for the government – it's that they're competing with the traditional government contractors (boeing and lockheed) and blowing them out of the water by doing everything at a low cost. Boeing and Lockheed have been working at cost plus for all of eternity, but SpaceX is essentially trying to run on a commercial fix-priced model. Whether they'll succeed with that remains to be seen, but they really are trying to change the paradigm.

  118. 118.

    Petorado

    Funny how aerospace workers working in the relatively cushy confines of federally-funded space programs, lamenting the loss of lucrative work, are thinking the gravy train will get hooked back up with a privatized space program. Their highly paid jobs will evaporate to the same places that other other American well-paid work went off to.

    Have fun watching the US-based executive overlords reward themselves with large bonuses at the launch of a new Chinese-manufactured rocket with astronauts from India onboard. Do you really think a profit-driven company will build this stuff in South Florida when labor is so much cheaper elsewhere?

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