Santorum mostly silent on space in Huntsville

On Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich visited the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville for a speech, which included a brief discussion about space policy. Two days later another GOP candidate, Rick Santorum, visited the very same venue. This time, though, beyond a nod to the historical backdrop to his talk, there was virtually no mention of space.

“This is—what a venue,” he remarked early in his speech, which was webcast live by local TV stations. “It just takes me back to my childhood, growing up in the Mercury and Apollo time in our country in the ’60s and ’70s.” He recalled staying up late at night to watch the Apollo 11 “lunar spacewalk”, among other recollections of that era. “Just as an American, I just want to say thank you, Huntsville, thank you for the great work that you’ve done for our country.”

After that trip down memory lane, though, he went on to other topics, and didn’t return to space during the rest of the approximately 40-minute speech. The closest he came was in a discussion of defense spending, where he noted that “a very important part of our defense is space,” without going into greater detail. Advocates of NASA, though, might be disappointed in a statement he made a little earlier in his speech. “I will not cut the defense budget while I’m president of the United States,” he said to cheers from the several hundred people in attendance. “In fact, it is the only area of the budget that will grow under my administration.” NASA, it seems, would have to make do with, at best, a flat budget in a Santorum Administration.

Local TV station WHNT claimed to be the only media outlet to get a one-on-one interview with Santorum after his speech, but even then space did not come up: Santorum talked on topics from gas prices to missile defense.