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On Tuesday, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said if elected president he would encourage Americans to reach for the stars — literally — and that by the end of his second term there would be a permanent outpost on the moon "and it would be American."

But while his fellow GOP candidates panned the plan on the grounds that it would cost too much. Gingrich's proposal for stellar statehood faces another obstacle: It could violate space law.

"Statehood for a colony on the moon is going too far and would violate the [Outer Space Treaty of 1967] since it would involve rights to land on the moon and also require some type of territorial border," said Henry Hertzfeld, a research professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs Space Policy Institute, told BuzzFeed.

Gingrich introduced a bill in Congress in 1981 that would offer a path to statehood for a lunar colony with at least half a million residents. (Gingrich has mischaracterized the bill he introduced, saying it would grant statehood at 13,000 residents. In fact, the bill only provides for self-governance at 20,000 residents.)

At issue is the 1967 treaty, which the United States ratified, that prohibits any earth-based country from claiming sovereignty over moon or other space territory.

Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.

Hertzfeld said that can legally use the moon and put people, structures and property there — and they own those items, but not the land they're on — so Gingrich can have his space base, but it can't "be American."

(Getty Images / PAUL J. RICHARDS)

Yesterday Newt Gingrich revealed his "weirdest idea ever" — to provide a path to statehood for a hypothetical lunar colony.

With the help of the skilled research librarians in the Library of Congress Law Library, BuzzFeed tracked down the bill, which Gingrich called the "Northwest Ordinance for Space," or formally the "National Space and Aeronautics Policy Act of 1981."

“The Congress declares that the United States is committed to the expansion of free people and free institutions into space,” the bill stated, calling for an array of near earth and solar space travel vehicles to be completed by 2010.

It also called for the creation of "an environmentally acceptable space to Earth power capability that is economically competitive with power generation on Earth," by the year 2000.

Gingrich appears to have misstated the number of lunar colonists required for a space-based outpost to apply for statehood — the number is 20,000 for self-government in the original bill, not the 13,000 he mentioned yesterday. Statehood requires the population of the least populous state — or greater than Wyoming's 563,626 people in the 2010 Census.

Read the full bill below:

Updated population count to clarify between self-government and statehood.

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Via: metafilter.com

Source: thefrogman.me

It’s like the planet is crying out for us to STOP with all the ” Put A Ring On It ” jokes. Or it just hate physics.

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Men are from Mars, women are from…California? It’s been nearly 30 years since a country sent a lander on a mission to Venus but scientists at NASA are hoping to change that.

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Auroras and city lights aren't the only things on Earth visible from space. The images below show the Nyamuragira Volcano and its surrounding areas during a recent eruption.

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(AP / Dan Burbank / NASA)

Hear the astronaut talk about it.

Source: youtube.com

Via: photoblog.msnbc.msn.com

Call me Ishmael. The icy minerals found on comets could potentially help scientists unlock the secrets of the universe if they could only land the big one.

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In case you weren't on board either of Expeditions 28 or 29 earlier this year, the crew members took beautiful photos of Earth while aboard the International Space Station from August to October. This is midnight eye candy well worth your time.

Dumped tires are seen piled in a wooded area near Elloree, S.C. on Nov. 17, 2011. The tires started piling up on some county land in South Carolina, little by little, growing to a mound of about a million tires covering several acres of land. Officials say a $400 littering fine is hardly enough to deal with the problem.

(AP / Rainier Ehrhardt)

(AP / Rainier Ehrhardt)

Source: Rainier Ehrhardt

(AP / Rainier Ehrhardt)

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Overall winner - Damian Peach (UK)
Jupiter with lo and Ganymede

This photograph was taken as part of a long series of images taken over a three-week period from the island of Barbados in the Caribbean.

Source: damianpeach  /  via: nmm.ac.uk

Earth & Space Winner - Tunç Tezel (Turkey)

When I traveled to see the total solar eclipse of 11 July 2010, I stayed in Oneroa village on the west coast of Mangaia, Cook Islands. This is how the sky looked from a relatively open area just outside Oneroa village

Via: ttezel

Deep Space Winner - Marco Lorenzi (Italy)

I’ve always been inspired by supernova remnants, in particular by their reach and their different compositions. After all, several of the building bricks of life are created during these apocalyptic events.

Via: flickr.com

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So, this is kinda beautiful. (Photo by Anton Jankovoy )

Source: i.imgur.com  /  via: reddit.com

When the northern lights went further south due to active space weather, photographer Shane Black couldn’t help but be amazed at this wonder.

Space is so awesome. This time-lapse video was taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night.

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Alright, that's pretty big.

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