The treaties on space neutrality are wind up being, I’m fairly sure, a temporary part of international law. The thing is, the things we can currently do in space are exploration, communication, observation, and science – all things that lend themselves very well to being shared. But someday, people are going to be living in space, we’re going to have industry there. What would it mean to live – or better yet, to be born – in an “international” colony? What laws would you follow? What rights would you have? What elections would you vote in? And it’s possible to imagine an “international” mining company or manufacturing plant… but who gets to keep the money? When space becomes a place for residence and industry, in addition to the things done there now, either the treaties on space neutrality will have to be changed, or countries will need to develop radical new ways to collaborate and share control. The latter wouldn’t necessarily be bad… but the former is much more likely.

As for the “continuous propulsion system,” that’s actually a real thing – it’s not like Newt was proposing the warp drive. It just means a reaction drive that, unlike a chemical rocket, is “cheap” enough in terms of mass of fuel that it can be left on for a long time. Since we’re talking about space, this constant acceleration just keeps adding up, so a continuous propulsion system can be very useful on a long trip – a Japanese vehicle, the Hayabusa, has already been past Mars’ orbit and back on a continuous propulsion system (specifically an ion drive), to bring back samples from an asteroid.

But while an ion drive or other CPS can stay on for a long time, the actual thrust, the force of the propulsion, is relatively weak. This is acceptable for small unmanned vehicles, which don’t need as much force to get going, but manned vehicles are much more massive, and a CPS would have a very hard time imparting useful accelerations. In other words, while a CPS actually might be faster for sending a probe to Mars, if we want to send people, it would probably be slower than a rocket. (Barring big tech advances, of course, which, as you rightly point out, Gingrich has no reason to assume.)

Foreigners exist to hate, exploit, or fear – or preferably all three at once. The very idea that a President of the United States should have to even have to know about an international treaty is some kinda commie socialist thinking.

And while I’ve no real objection to having my sneakers or personal electronics fail randomly due to the above policies, it seems like there would be safety issues involved when you get into lunar flight and residence.

Isn’t there some guy out there claiming total ownership of the Moon, selling small plots of lunar territory to paying customers? Claiming he can do this because of a loophole where no nation is allowed to control the Moon, but private citizens have no such restriction? Am I making this up, or is this real? If there is such a guy, obviously very few take him seriously, but is that claim technically true, or (as I suspect) is it a straight-out lie to fuel the scam?

adding that the current state of the space program was a “tragedy.”

You mean, because of lack of government funding?

Also, even if private ventures could and did establish a moon base in the next eight years, wouldn’t it remain a private holding? Yes, the company or companies that funded it would be American ones, but it wouldn’t have any ties to the American government without some type of prior agreement… I just don’t understand what Gingrich thinks the situation should be.