"No one laughed when JFK said we would go to the moon in a few years — something seemingly unthinkable at the time. No, Americans accepted the challenge and met it."

...that's because we hadn't been to the moon before, and because we were locked in a mortal struggle with the Soviet Union.

Kennedy made that push May 25, 1961. Francis Gary Powers had been shot down in a U2 one year previously. The Bay of Pigs invasion had failed catastrophically one month previously. One month later, Kennedy asked for a 25% increase in the defense budget. Three months later, the Soviets closed Berlin border and started building the Berlin Wall. Fifteen months later and we were in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Rockets are now, have always been and likely always will be primarily military. "Let's go to the moon" is government-speak for "let's spend a shitload of money on ballistic missile research while wrapped in the flag." I'm a big, big fan of space exploration and think a moon base would be fucking awesome, but let's not pretend that the circumstances in January 2012 are even vaguely like circumstances in May 1961.

"But there is nothing particularly wild about the idea. It fact, it has been U.S. space policy with presidential support for decades, only being put aside in recent years by President Obama."

This is an outright fabrication. Presidents routinely pay lip service to something like "hey, let's go back to the moon" while they campaign until someone points out that you can't get there in a space shuttle and space shuttles are all we had. GWB pushed good'n'hard for us to go to Mars by 2020... until he was re-elected in 2004 at which point not another word was said. His snipe about Obama "putting aside" "the idea" is a swipe at the cancellation of the Constellation program, which actually morphed into Orion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft)

"But that doesn’t mean it is some kind of fantasy. It is achievable and the effort would undoubtedly benefit mankind, as did the moon landing."

Again, there's a world of difference between Golden-age mad-money money's-no-object Apollo projects and "we're already 12 trillion in the hole and we have no real justification to hurry and get this thing done in 8 years." That's why people laugh at Gingrich suggesting a moon base - not because moon bases are ridiculous, but because when the transmission on your car is about to go, you're hocked to your eyeballs paying for the new washing machine and those jerks across the street are about to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, "Let's go to Disneyland" is a laughable suggestion.

Some perspective: A Saturn V will throw 131 TONS into Low Earth Orbit. The biggest mammer-jammer we have right now is the Atlas V, which will only throw 32. And yeah - we've known how to build them for 40 years. But if we wanted to build a new Concorde tomorrow it'd take us a long time and a lot of money to gear up, presuming we change nothing.

In 2009, NASA estimated the cost of redoing the Apollo program at $170 billion dollars. Keep in mind: NASA estimated the payload cost for the shuttle at $1400/kilo when in fact it was closer to $60,000/kilo.

Could we go back to the moon in 8 years? Yeah, if we were willing to make some major, major sacrifices. Personally, I'd hope that we'd go back to the moon using what we learned the first time, with real reason to do it, with a real plan to stay there and do some useful science. Gingrich, on the other hand, proposed it because now that the Shuttle's gone a new moon program would mean shitloads of pork for Florida.

And that's why people make fun of him. He's transparent, craven, and a doofus.