Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Rick Perry on the Future of NASA (ContributorNetwork)

With issues like the economy, the Middle East and health care reform dominating the election cycle, the subject of space and the future of NASA have rarely come up in the presidential campaign, thus far.

However, three of the candidates -- Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Rick Perry -- have publicly expressed themselves about the space issue and how President Barack Obama has handled it.

What has Newt Gingrich have to say?

Gingrich, whose support for space goes back several decades, has taken a decidedly harsh approach against NASA's approach to space exploration. He has concluded that NASA, as a bureaucracy, is not redeemable. Therefore a President Gingrich would scrap the current space exploration effort, including the development of the Orion Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle and the heavy lift Space Launch System. Instead Gingrich would institute a series of prize competitions to encourage private sector space exploration. There would be a prize, for example, for the first private group to return people to the moon and sustain them there for an extended period of time. Gingrich is one of the authors of a "Mars Prize" plan that would award $20 billion to the first private organization to land an astronaut on Mars and return him or her safely to the Earth. The Gingrich approach is inspired by such competitions as the Ansari X Prize and the Google Lunar X Prize.

What did Herman Cain say about space and NASA?

Herman Cain was in Huntsville, Ala., the home of NASA's Marshal Space Flight Center, recently, and had some caustic things to say about President Obama's approach to space. He promised that a President Cain would reverse the space program "back to where it should be." This is presumed to mean some kind of restoration of the original Bush plan to return people to the moon and then send astronauts beyond. Cain also touted economic and technological spin-offs as a justification for having a space program. Thus the former corporate CEO took a more traditional approach to the space program than did Gingrich?

What about Rick Perry?

Perry, as governor of Texas, where the Johnson Space Flight Center is located, could be expected to raise space as a political issue. He did so, before actually becoming a candidate for president, on the occasion of the end of the very last space shuttle mission. He attacked President Obama's space policy and called for the restoration of NASA's core mission to explore space. Perry has since not been quoted on issues pertaining to space, however.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times and The Weekly Standard.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/space/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111030/us_ac/10324691_newt_gingrich_herman_cain_and_rick_perry_on_the_future_of_nasa

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