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*** 1AC
Woodward Academy
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Contention One is #MARS:
Risk of extinction is high—consensus of experts.
Matheny 7 — Jason G. Matheny, Research Associate at the Future of Human Institute at Oxford University, Ph.D.
Candidate in Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University, holds a Master’s in Public Health from the Bloomberg
School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University and an M.B.A. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke
University, 2007 (“Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction,” Risk Analysis, Volume 27, Issue 5, October, Available Online
at http://jgmatheny.org/matheny_extinction_risk.htm, Accessed 07-04-2011)
It is possible for humanity (or its descendents) to survive a million years or more, but we could
succumb to extinction as soon as this century. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, U.S. President Kennedy estimated the
probability of a nuclear holocaust as "somewhere between one out of three and even" (Kennedy, 1969 , p. 110). John von Neumann, as
Chairman of the U.S. Air Force Strategic Missiles Evaluation Committee, predicted that it was "absolutely certain (1) that there would be a
nuclear war; and (2) that everyone would die in it" (Leslie, 1996 , p. 26). More recent predictions of human extinction are little more
In their catalogs of extinction risks, Britain's Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees (2003) ,
gives humanity 50-50 odds on surviving the 21st century; philosopher Nick Bostrom argues that it
would be "misguided" to assume that the probability of extinction is less than 25%; and
philosopher John Leslie (1996) assigns a 30% probability to extinction during the next five centuries.
The "Stern Review" for the U.K. Treasury (2006) assumes that the probability of human extinction
during the next century is 10%. And some explanations of the "Fermi Paradox" imply a high probability (close to 100%) of
optimistic.
extinction among technological civilizations (Pisani, 2006 ).4 Estimating the probabilities of unprecedented events is subjective, so we
even if the probability of extinction is several orders lower,
because the stakes are high, it could be wise to invest in extinction countermeasures.
should treat these numbers skeptically. Still,
Extinction is inevitable if we don’t get off the rock—multiple scenarios
Austen 11 [Ben Austen, contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine, “After Earth: Why, Where, How, and When We
Might Leave Our Home Planet,” popular science, http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-02/after-earth-whywhere-how-and-when-we-might-leave-our-home-planet?page=3]
Earth won’t always be fit for occupation. We know that in two billion years or so, an expanding sun
will boil away our oceans, leaving our home in the universe uninhabitable—unless, that is, we
haven’t already been wiped out by the Andromeda galaxy, which is on a multibillion-year collision course with
our Milky Way. Moreover, at least a third of the thousand mile-wide asteroids that hurtle across
our orbital path will eventually crash into us, at a rate of about one every 300,000 years. Why?
Indeed, in 1989 a far smaller asteroid, the impact of which would still have been equivalent in
force to 1,000 nuclear bombs, crossed our orbit just six hours after Earth had passed. A recent
report by the Lifeboat Foundation, whose hundreds of researchers track a dozen different
existential risks to humanity, likens that one-in-300,000 chance of a catastrophic strike to a
game of Russian roulette: “If we keep pulling the trigger long enough we’ll blow our head off,
and there’s no guarantee it won’t be the next pull.” Many of the threats that might lead us to consider off-Earth
living arrangements are actually man-made, and not necessarily in the distant future. The amount we consume each year
already far outstrips what our planet can sustain, and the World Wildlife Fund estimates that
by 2030 we will be consuming two planets’ worth of natural resources annually. The Center for
Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, an international humanitarian organization, reports that the onslaught of droughts,
earthquakes, epic rains and floods over the past decade is triple the number from the 1980s
and nearly 54 times that of 1901, when this data was first collected. Some scenarios have climate change
leading to severe water shortages, the submersion of coastal areas, and widespread famine. Additionally, the world could
end by way of deadly pathogen, nuclear war or, as the Lifeboat Foundation warns, the
“misuse of increasingly powerful technologies.” Given the risks humans pose to the planet, we might also someday
leave Earth simply to conserve it, with our planet becoming a kind of nature sanctuary that we visit now and again, as we might Yosemite.
None of the threats we face are especially far-fetched. Climate change is already a major
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factor in human affairs, for instance, and our planet has undergone at least one previous mass
extinction as a result of asteroid impact. “The dinosaurs died out because they were too stupid
to build an adequate spacefaring civilization,” says Tihamer Toth-Fejel, a research engineer at the Advanced
Information Systems division of defense contractor General Dynamics and one of 85 members of the Lifeboat Foundation’s space-settlement
board. “So
far, the difference between us and them is barely measurable.” The Alliance to Rescue
Civilization, a project started by New York University chemist Robert Shapiro, contends that
the inevitability of any of several cataclysmic events means that we must prepare a copy of our
civilization and move it into outer space and out of harm’s way—a backup of our cultural
achievements and traditions. In 2005, then–NASA administrator Michael Griffin described the aims of the national space
program in similar terms. “If we humans want to survive for hundreds of thousands or millions of years, we must ultimately populate other
planets,” he said. “One
day, I don’t know when that day is, but there will be more human beings who
live off the Earth than on it.”
Reducing existential risk by even a tiny amount outweighs every other impact—the
math is conclusively on our side.
Bostrom 11 — Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, Director of the Future of
Humanity Institute, and Director of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the University of Oxford,
recipient of the 2009 Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement, holds a Ph.D. in
Philosophy from the London School of Economics, 2011 (“The Concept of Existential Risk,” Draft of a Paper published on
ExistentialRisk.com, Available Online at http://www.existentialrisk.com/concept.html, Accessed 07-04-2011)
For any fixed
probability, existential risks are thus more serious than other risk categories. But just
how much more serious might not be intuitively obvious. One might think we could get a grip on how bad an
existential catastrophe would be by considering some of the worst historical disasters we can
think of—such as the two world wars, the Spanish flu pandemic, or the Holocaust—and then imagining something just
a bit worse. Yet if we look at global population statistics over time, we find that these horrible
events of the past century fail to register (figure 3).
Holding probability constant, risks become more serious as we move toward the upper-right region of figure 2.
[Graphic Omitted]
Figure 3: World population over the last century. Calamities such as the Spanish flu pandemic, the two world wars, and the Holocaust
scarcely register. (If one stares hard at the graph, one can perhaps just barely make out a slight temporary reduction in the rate of growth of
the world population during these events.)
even this reflection fails to bring out the seriousness of existential risk. What makes
existential catastrophes especially bad is not that they would show up robustly on a plot like the one in figure 3,
causing a precipitous drop in world population or average quality of life. Instead, their significance lies primarily in the fact that
they would destroy the future. The philosopher Derek Parfit made a similar point with the following thought experiment:
But
I believe that if we destroy mankind, as we now can, this outcome will be much worse than most people think.
Compare three
outcomes:
(1) Peace.
(2) A nuclear war that kills 99% of the world’s existing population.
(3) A nuclear war that kills 100%.
(2) would be worse than (1), and (3) would be worse than (2) . Which is the greater of these two differences?
Most people believe that the greater difference is between (1) and (2). I believe that the difference between (2) and (3) is
very much greater. … The Earth will remain habitable for at least another billion years.
Civilization began only a few thousand years ago. If we do not destroy mankind, these few
thousand years may be only a tiny fraction of the whole of civilized human history.
The difference between (2) and (3) may thus be the difference between this tiny fraction and all
of the rest of this history. If we compare this possible history to a day, what has occurred
so far is only a fraction of a second. (10: 453-454)
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To calculate the loss associated with an existential catastrophe, we must consider how much
value would come to exist in its absence. It turns out that the ultimate potential for
Earth-originating intelligent life is literally astronomical.
If we
suppose with Parfit that our planet will remain habitable for at least another billion years, and we
assume that at least one billion people could live on it sustainably, then the potential exist for at
least 1018 human lives. These lives could also be considerably better than the average
contemporary human life, which is so often marred by disease, poverty, injustice, and
various biological limitations that could be partly overcome through continuing technological
and moral progress.
One gets a large number even if one confines one’s consideration to the potential for biological human beings living on Earth.
the relevant figure is not how many people could live on Earth but how many
descendants we could have in total. One lower bound of the number of biological human lifeyears in the future accessible universe (based on current cosmological estimates) is 1034 years.[10] Another
However,
estimate, which assumes that future minds will be mainly implemented in computational hardware instead of biological neuronal wetware,
If we
make the less conservative assumption that future civilizations could eventually press close to
the absolute bounds of known physics (using some as yet unimagined technology), we get radically higher
estimates of the amount of computation and memory storage that is achievable and thus of
the number of years of subjective experience that could be realized.[12]
produces a lower bound of 1054 human-brain-emulation subjective life-years (or 1071 basic computational operations).(4)[11]
Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates, which entirely ignores the
possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that the expected loss of an
existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 1018 human lives. This implies
that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of
one percentage point is at least ten times the value of a billion human lives. The
more technologically comprehensive estimate of 1054 human-brain-emulation subjective lifeyears (or 1052 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this
allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature
civilization a mere 1% chance of being correct, we find that the expected value of
reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one
percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human
lives.
One might consequently argue that even
the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected
value greater than that of the definite provision of any “ordinary” good, such as
the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect
effect of saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential risk —positive or negative—
is almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an action.[13]
The role of the ballot is to decrease existential risk—even if the probability is low the
stakes are too high.
Anissimov 4 — Michael Anissimov, science and technology writer focusing specializing in futurism, founding director
of the Immortality Institute—a non-profit organization focused on the abolition of nonconsensual death, member of the
World Transhumanist Association, associate of the Institute for Accelerating Change, member of the Center for
Responsible Nanotechnology's Global Task Force, 2004 (“Immortalist Utilitarianism,” Accelerating Future, May,
Available Online at http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/works/immethics.htm, Accessed 09-09-2011)
The value of contributing to Aubrey de Grey's anti-aging project assumes that there continues to be a world around for people's lives to be
The probability of human extinction is the
gateway function through which all efforts toward life extension must inevitably pass,
including cryonics, biogerontology, and nanomedicine. They are all useless if we blow ourselves up. At this
point one observes that there are many working toward life extension, but few focused on explicitly preventing apocalyptic global
extended. But if we nuke ourselves out of existence in 2010, then what?
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disaster. Such huge risks sound like fairy tales rather than real threats - because we have never seen
them happen before, we underestimate the probability of their occurrence. An existential
disaster has not yet occurred on this planet.
The risks worth worrying about are not pollution, asteroid impact, or alien invasion - the ones you see dramaticized in movies - these events
are all either very gradual or improbable. Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom warns us of existential risks, "...where an adverse outcome would
either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential." Bostrom continues, "Existential risks
are distinct from global endurable risks. Examples of the latter kind include: threats to the biodiversity of Earth’s ecosphere, moderate global
warming, global economic recessions (even major ones), and possibly stifling cultural or religious eras such as the “dark ages”, even if they
encompass the whole global community, provided they are transitory." The four main risks we know about so far are summarized by the
following, in ascending order of probability and severity over the course of the next 30 years:
Biological. More specifically, a genetically engineered supervirus. Bostrom writes, "With the fabulous advances in genetic technology
currently taking place, it may become possible for a tyrant, terrorist, or lunatic to create a doomsday virus, an organism that combines long
latency with high virulence and mortality." There are several factors necessary for a virus to be a risk. The first is the presence of biologists
with the knowledge necessary to genetically engineer a new virus of any sort. The second is access to the expensive machinery required for
synthesis. Third is specific knowledge of viral genetic engineering. Fourth is a weaponization strategy and a delivery mechanism. These are
nontrivial barriers, but are sure to fall in due time.
Nuclear. A traditional nuclear war could still break out, although it would be unlikely to result in our ultimate demise, it could drastically
curtail our potential and set us back thousands or even millions of years technologically and ethically. Bostrom mentions that the US and
Russia still have huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Miniaturization technology, along with improve manufacturing technologies, could
make it possible to mass produce nuclear weapons for easy delivery should an escalating arms race lead to that. As rogue nations begin to
acquire the technology for nuclear strikes, powerful nations will feel increasingly edgy.
Nanotechnological. The Transhumanist FAQ reads, "Molecular nanotechnology is an anticipated manufacturing technology that will make it
possible to build complex three-dimensional structures to atomic specification using chemical reactions directed by nonbiological
machinery." Because nanomachines could be self-replicating or at least auto-productive, the technology and its products could proliferate
very rapidly. Because nanotechnology could theoretically be used to create any chemically stable object, the potential for abuse is massive.
Nanotechnology could be used to manufacture large weapons or other oppressive apparatus in mere hours; the only limitations are raw
materials, management, software, and heat dissipation.
Human-indifferent superintelligence. In the near future, humanity will gain the technological capability to create forms of intelligence
radically better than our own. Artificial Intelligences will be implemented on superfast transistors instead of slow biological neurons, and
eventually gain the intellectual ability to fabricate new hardware and reprogram their source code. Such an intelligence could engage in
recursive self-improvement - improving its own intelligence, then directing that intelligence towards further intelligence improvements.
Such a process could lead far beyond our current level of intelligence in a relatively short time. We would be helpless to fight against such an
intelligence if it did not value our continuation.
So let's say I have another million dollars to spend. My last million dollars went to Aubrey de Grey's Methuselah Mouse Prize, for a grand
total of billions of expected utiles. But wait - I forgot to factor in the probability that humanity will be destroyed before the positive effects of
Even if my estimated probability of existential risk is very low, it is still
rational to focus on addressing the risk because my whole enterprise would be
ruined if disaster is not averted. If we value the prospect of all the future lives that could
be enjoyed if we pass beyond the threshold of risk - possibly quadrillions or more, if we expand
into the cosmos, then we will deeply value minimizing the probability of existential risk above all
other considerations.
life extension are borne out.
If my million dollars can avert the chance of existential disaster by, say, 0.0001%, then the expected utility of this action relative to the
expected utility of life extension advocacy is shocking. That's 0.0001% of the utility of quadrillions or more humans, transhumans, and
posthumans leading fulfilling lives. I'll spare the reader from working out the math and utility curves - I'm sure you can imagine them. So,
why is it that people tend to devote more resources to life extension than risk prevention? The follow includes my guesses, feel free to tell me
if you disagree:
They estimate the probability of any risk occurring to be extremely low.
They estimate their potential influence over the likelihood of risk to be extremely low.
They feel that positive PR towards any futurist goals will eventually result in higher awareness of risk.
They fear social ostracization if they focus on "Doomsday scenarios" rather than traditional extension.
Those are my guesses. Immortalists with objections are free to send in their arguments, and I will post them here if they are especially
the predicted utility of lowering the likelihood of existential risk
outclasses any life extension effort I can imagine.
strong. As far as I can tell however,
I cannot emphasize this enough.
If a existential disaster occurs,
not only will the possibilities of extreme life extension,
everyone will be dead,
never to come back. Because the we have so much to lose, existential risk is worth worrying
about even if our estimated probability of occurrence is extremely low.
sophisticated nanotechnology, intelligence enhancement, and space expansion never bear fruit, but
It is not the funding of life extension research projects that immortalists should be focusing on. It should be projects that decrease the risk of
existential risk. By default, once the probability of existential risk is minimized, life extension technologies can be developed and applied.
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Existential risk creates
a "loafer problem" — we always expect someone else to take care of it . I assert that this is a
dangerous strategy and should be discarded in favor of making prevention of such
risks a central focus.
There are powerful economic and social imperatives in that direction, but few towards risk management.
Err affirmative—the availability heuristic and “good story bias” will make you
undervalue our impact
Bostrom 11 — Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, Director of the Future of
Humanity Institute, and Director of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the University of Oxford,
recipient of the 2009 Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement, holds a Ph.D. in
Philosophy from the London School of Economics, 2011 (“The Concept of Existential Risk,” Draft of a Paper published on
ExistentialRisk.com, Available Online at http://www.existentialrisk.com/concept.html, Accessed 07-04-2011)
Many kinds of cognitive bias and other psychological phenomena impede efforts at thinking
clearly and dealing effectively with existential risk.[32]
use of the availability heuristic may create a “good-story bias” whereby people
evaluate the plausibility of existential-risk scenarios on the basis of experience, or on how
easily the various possibilities spring to mind. Since nobody has any real experience with
existential catastrophe, expectations may be formed instead on the basis of fictional evidence
derived from movies and novels. Such fictional exposures are systematically biased in favor of scenarios
that make for entertaining stories. Plotlines may feature a small band of human protagonists successfully repelling an alien
invasion or a robot army. A story in which humankind goes extinct suddenly—without warning and
without being replaced by some other interesting beings—is less likely to succeed at the box
office (although more likely to happen in reality).
For example,
Reducing the probability of existential disaster through space colonization is more
valuable than preventing specific impact scenarios. Overly detailed impact predictions
are improbable and create false perceptions of security.
Yudkowsky 6—Co-founder and Research Fellow of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence—a non–profit
research institute dedicated to increasing the likelihood of, and decreasing the time to, a maximally beneficial singularity,
one of the world’s foremost experts on Artificial Intelligence and rationality [Eliezer Yudkowsky, “Cognitive Biases
Potentially Affecting Judgment Of Global Risks,” Draft of a chapter in Global Catastrophic Risks, edited by Nick Bostrom
and Milan Cirkovic, August 31st, 2006, Available Online at http://singinst.org/upload/cognitive-biases.pdf, Accessed 1111-2010]
According to probability theory, adding additional detail onto a story must render the story
less probable. It is less probable that Linda is a feminist bank teller than that she is a bank
teller, since all feminist bank tellers are necessarily bank tellers. Yet human psychology seems
to follow the rule that adding an additional detail can make the story more plausible. People
might pay more for international diplomacy intended to prevent nanotechnological warfare
by China, than for an engineering project to defend against nanotechnological attack from
any source. The second threat scenario is less vivid and alarming, but the defense is more
useful because it is more vague. More valuable still would be strategies which make
humanity harder to extinguish without being specific to nanotechnologic threats - such as
colonizing space, or see Yudkowsky (this volume) on AI. Security expert Bruce Schneier observed (both before and after the 2005
hurricane in New Orleans) that the U.S. government was guarding specific domestic targets against
"movie-plot scenarios" of terrorism, at the cost of taking away resources from emergencyresponse capabilities that could respond to any disaster. (Schneier 2005.) Overly detailed
reassurances can also create false perceptions of safety: "X is not an existential risk and you
don't need to worry about it, because A, B, C, D, and E"; where the failure of any one of
propositions A, B, C, D, or E potentially extinguishes the human species. "We don't need to worry about
nanotechnologic war, because a UN commission will initially develop the technology and prevent its proliferation until such time as an active
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shield is developed, capable of defending against all accidental and malicious outbreaks that contemporary nanotechnology is capable of
Vivid, specific scenarios can inflate our probability
estimates of security, as well as misdirecting defensive investments into needlessly narrow
or implausibly detailed risk scenarios.
producing, and this condition will persist indefinitely."
Multiplying probability and magnitude is key to ethical risk assessment—the most
serious threats to humanity are the unknown and unthinkable.
Rees 8 — Sir Martin J. Rees, Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics and Master of Trinity College at the University of
Cambridge, Astronomer Royal and Visiting Professor at Imperial College London and Leicester University, Director of the
Institute of Astronomy, Research Professor at Cambridge, 2008 (“Foreward,” Global Catastrophic Risks, Edited by Nick
Bostrom and Milan M. Cirkovic, Published by Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780198570509, p. x-xi)
These concerns are not remotely futuristic - we will surely confront them within next 10-20 years. But what of the later decades of this
technologies could develop with runaway speed. Moreover,
human character and physique themselves will soon be malleable, to an extent that is qualitatively new in
century? It is hard to predict because some
our history. New drugs (and perhaps even implants into our brains) could change human character; the cyberworld has potential that is both
exhilarating and frightening.
We cannot confidently guess lifestyles, attitudes, social structures or population sizes a century hence. Indeed, it is not even clear how much
longer our descendants would remain distinctively 'human'. Darwin himself noted that 'not one living species will transmit its unaltered
likeness to a distant futurity'. Our own species will surely change and diversify faster than any predecessor - via human-induced
modifications (whether intelligently controlled or unintended) not by natural selection alone. The post-human era may be only centuries
We
should keep our minds open, or at least ajar, to concepts that seem on the fringe of science
fiction.
away. And what about Artificial Intelligence? Super-intelligent machine could be the last invention that humans need ever make.
These thoughts might seem irrelevant to practical policy - something for speculative academics to discuss in our spare moments. I used to
humans are now, individually and collectively, so greatly empowered by rapidly
changing technology that we can—by design or as unintended consequences—
engender irreversible global changes. It is surely irresponsible not to ponder what this
could mean; and it is real political progress that the challenges stemming from new
technologies are higher on the international agenda and that planners seriously address what
might happen more than a century hence.
think this. But
We cannot reap the benefits of science without accepting some risks - that has always been the case. Every new technology is risky in its
there is now an important difference from the past. Most of the risks
encountered in developing 'old' technology were localized: when, in the early days of steam, a boiler exploded,
it was horrible, but there was an 'upper bound' to just how horrible. In our evermore interconnected world, however,
there are new risks whose consequences could be global. Even a tiny probability of
global catastrophe is deeply disquieting.
pioneering stages. But
We cannot eliminate all threats to our civilization (even to the survival of our entire species). But it is surely
incumbent on us to think the unthinkable and study how to apply twenty-first century
technology optimally, while minimizing the 'downsides'. If we apply to catastrophic risks the
same prudent analysis that leads us to take everyday safety precautions, and sometimes to buy
insurance—multiplying probability by consequences—we had surely conclude that some of
the scenarios discussed in this book deserve more attention that they have received.
My background as a cosmologist, incidentally, offers an extra perspective -an extra motive for concern - with which I will briefly conclude.
The stupendous time spans of the evolutionary past are now part of common culture - except among some creationists and fundamentalists.
But most educated people, even if they are fully aware that our emergence took billions of years, somehow think we humans are the
culmination of the evolutionary tree. That is not so. Our Sun is less than halfway through its life. It is slowly brightening, but Earth will
remain habitable for another billion years. However, even
in that cosmic time perspective—extending far into the future as
twenty-first century may be a defining moment. It is the first in our planet's
history where one species—ours—has Earth's future in its hands and could jeopardise not only
itself but also lifes immense potential.
well as into the past - the
The decisions that we make, individually and collectively, will determine whether the
outcomes of twenty-first century sciences are benign or devastating. We need to contend
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not only with threats to our environment but also with an entirely novel category of
risks—with seemingly low probability, but with such colossal consequences that they
merit far more attention than they have hitherto had. That is why we should welcome this fascinating and
provocative book. The editors have brought together a distinguished set of authors with formidably wide-ranging expertise. The issues and
arguments presented here should attract a wide readership - and deserve special attention from scientists, policy-makers and ethicists
Evaluate impacts through a one-thousand year lens—focus on short term impacts
makes extinction inevitable.
Tonn 4—Ph. D., leader of the Policy Analysis Systems Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a professor in the
Department of Political Science, University of Tennessee [Bruce E. Tonn, “Integrated 1000-year planning,” Futures, 36
(2004)
91–108,
http://longnow.org/static/djlongnow_media/press/pdf/0200402-TonnIntegrated1000yearplanning.pdf]
2. Why 1000 years?
Why tackle 1000 years and not shorter, more imaginable and manageable time horizons? Why worry about the long-term when there is so
the world needs to focus both on improving
the plight of the world’s poor in the short-term and protecting everyone’s well-being over the
long-term. Focusing only on the short-term is like worrying only about how to
arrange the chairs on the deck of the ill-fated Titanic. All the good work at improving
the arrangement of the chairs was lost because the longer-term issue (the survival of the ship)
was completely mis-handled, in part through misplaced overconfidence in the ability of the ship to withstand adversity. In the
same way, short-term activities to improve people’s lives, whose value should not be diminished
in any way, could be completely washed away (literally in the case of global warming) by problems orders
of magnitude more serious and intractable if the future is not also dealt with.
much suffering in the world right now? The most direct answer is that
Short time horizons constrain if not completely mask the recognition of big picture issues and threats.
For example, over the next ten years, oil supplies may be manageable; over 1000 years, oil
supplies and those of natural gas will probably be completely exhausted, thereby threatening
the world’s economic and political stability if a plan is not in place to develop substitutes for
these fossil fuels [1]. Over the next 50 years, rising sea levels may not be devastating, but within 1000 years, large swaths of countries
like Bangladesh will most certainly disappear.1 Humanity must be prepared to deal with climate change induced human tragedies, as the
window to prevent global warming has now closed. Even though only a fraction of the earth’s tropical rainforests disappear each year, add
those small changes up over 1000 years and the forests are gone forever. Thus, by playing out important trends past normal policy horizons,
the bigger picture contains some very disturbing and dangerous potential states-of-the-world.
The longer time horizon is also needed to facilitate a qualitative change in mindset from the
short-term to the long-term. In a seeming paradox, with a longer time perspective, some actions will
come to be seen as more urgent, such as actions needed to protect tropical rainforests and manage energy supplies.
Longer-term perspectives indict the inherent selfishness of many of today’s economic and
social policies, based as they are on purportedly rational theories but in reality on irrational,
self-fulfilling and dogmatic belief systems that temporally discount moral and ethical
obligations to future generations. A 1000-year perspective is long enough to drive home the
point that humans will most likely be living on this planet, with few or no other true alternatives, for many
thousands if not millions of years into the future. The daily closing state of the Dow Jones
Industrial Average as a matter of importance ought to pale in comparison with the goal of
keeping the planet liveable into the very distant future. This realization should lead to another, that 1000year planning ought to be a permanent responsibility of humanity . In other words, even
though 1000-year plans will most certainly need to be systematically evaluated and revised, maybe as often as every five years,
humanity must accept permanent responsibilities for wise use of energy, land, ocean, and among many important
resources that sustain life on earth.
A longer-time horizon is also needed to allow humanity to achieve the next to impossible .
Many of today’s habitual naysayers preach inaction because they do not believe success is
achievable, in the near-term. For example, we do not now have the technologies to defend the
planet from collision with space-based objects and will not in the short-term, so the thinking
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is why spend much if any money on this endeavor. Of course, with that myopic view,
conditions might never arise that would support the development of such technology. With a
1000-year perspective, the odds appreciably increase that such technology could be developed
and deployed, so why not start today! The relatively small amounts of global funding allocated
to fusion energy, space colonization, and carbon management are to some degree the result of
myopic naysaying and would probably be increased if perspectives were lengthened and
broadened. The longer time frame should foster the wisdom and allow the patience needed to
envision the implementation of comprehensive, challenging and integrated global plans.
Predictions about existential risk are possible and necessary.
Bostrom 9 — Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, Director of the Future of
Humanity Institute, and Director of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the University of Oxford,
recipient of the 2009 Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement, holds a Ph.D. in
Philosophy from the London School of Economics, 2009 (“The Future of Humanity,” Geopolitics, History and
International Relations, Volume 9, Issue 2, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via ProQuest Research Library,
Reprinted Online at http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/future.pdf, Accessed 07-06-2011, p. 2-4)
We need realistic pictures of what the future might bring in order to make sound decisions.
Increasingly, we need realistic pictures not only of our personal or local near-term futures, but also
of remoter global futures. Because of our expanded technological powers, some human
activities now have significant global impacts. The scale of human social organization has
also grown, creating new opportunities for coordination and action , and there are many institutions
and individuals who either do consider, or claim to consider, or ought to consider, possible long-term global
impacts of their actions. Climate change, national and international security, economic development,
nuclear waste disposal, biodiversity, natural resource conservation, population policy, and scientific and technological
research funding are examples of policy areas that involve long time-horizons. Arguments
in these areas often rely on implicit assumptions about the future of humanity.
By making these assumptions explicit, and subjecting them to critical analysis, it might be
possible to address some of the big challenges for humanity in a more wellconsidered and thoughtful manner.
The fact that we “need” realistic pictures of the future does not entail that we can have them. Predictions about future technical and social
developments are notoriously unreliable – to an extent that have lead some to propose that we do away with prediction altogether in our
while the methodological problems of such forecasting are
significant, the extreme view that we can or should do away with
prediction altogether is misguided. That view is expressed, to take one [end page 2] example, in a recent paper on
planning and preparation for the future. Yet
certainly very
the societal implications of nanotechnology by Michael Crow and Daniel Sarewitz, in which they argue that the issue of predictability is
“irrelevant”:
preparation for the future obviously does not require accurate prediction; rather, it requires a foundation of knowledge upon which to base
action, a capacity to learn from experience, close attention to what is going on in the present, and healthy and resilient institutions that can
effectively respond or adapt to change in a timely manner.2
Note that each of the elements Crow and Sarewitz mention as required for the preparation for the future relies in some way on accurate
prediction. A
capacity to learn from experience is not useful for preparing for the future unless we
can correctly assume (predict) that the lessons we derive from the past will be applicable to future
situations. Close attention to what is going on in the present is likewise futile unless we can
assume that what is going on in the present will reveal stable trends or otherwise shed light on
what is likely to happen next. It also requires non-trivial prediction to figure out what kind of
institution will prove healthy, resilient, and effective in responding or adapting to future
changes.
The reality is that predictability is a matter of degree, and different aspects of the future
are predictable with varying degrees of reliability and precision.3
It may often be a good idea
to develop plans that are flexible and to pursue policies that are robust under a wide range of
contingencies. In some cases, it also makes sense to adopt a reactive approach that relies on adapting quickly to changing
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these coping strategies are only
one part of the solution. Another part is to work to improve the accuracy of our beliefs
about the future (including the accuracy of conditional predictions of the form “if x is done, y will result”). There might
be traps that we are walking towards that we could only avoid falling into by means of
foresight. There are also opportunities that we could reach much sooner if we could see them
farther in advance. And in a strict sense, prediction is always necessary for
meaningful decision-making.4
circumstances rather than pursuing any detailed long-term plan or explicit agenda. Yet
Predictability does not necessarily fall off with temporal distance.
It may be highly
unpredictable where a traveler will be one hour after the start of her journey, yet predictable that after five hours she will be at her
The very long-term future of humanity may be relatively easy to predict, being a
there to be a degree of
predictability, it is not necessary that it be possible to identify one specific scenario
as what will definitely happen. If there is at least some scenario that can be ruled out,
that is also a degree of predictability. Even short of this, if there is some basis for
assigning different probabilities [end page 3] (in the sense of credences, degrees of belief) to different
propositions about logically possible future events, or some basis for criticizing some such
probability distributions as less rationally defensible or reasonable than others, then again there
is a degree of predictability. And this is surely the case with regard to many aspects of the
future of humanity. While our knowledge is insufficient to narrow down the space of
possibilities to one broadly outlined future for humanity, we do know of many relevant
arguments and considerations which in combination impose significant constraints on what a
plausible view of the future could look like. The future of humanity need not be a topic
on which all assumptions are entirely arbitrary and anything goes. There is a
vast gulf between knowing exactly what will happen and having absolutely no
clue about what will happen. Our actual epistemic location is some offshore
place in that gulf.5
destination.
matter amenable to study by the natural sciences, particularly cosmology (physical eschatology). And for
And Mars colonization would reduce existential risk—we need lifeboats for Spaceship
Earth
Gott 11—Ph.D., professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University, recipient of the Robert J. Trumpler Award,
an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the Astronomical League Award, and Princeton's President's Award for Distinguished
Teaching [J. Richard Gott, III, “A One-Way Trip to Mars,” Journal of Cosmology, 2011, Vol 13,
http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars151.html]
I've been advocating a one-way colonizing trip to Mars for many years (Gott, 1997, 2001, 2007). Here's what I said about it in my book, Time
Travel in Einstein's Universe:
"The
goal of the human spaceflight program should be to increase our survival prospects by
colonizing space. ... we should concentrate on establishing the first self-supporting colony in
space as soon as possible. ... We might want to follow the Mars Direct program advocated by American space expert Robert
Zubrin. But rather than bring astronauts back from Mars, we might choose to leave them there to
multiply, living off indigenous materials. We want them on Mars. That's where they benefit
human survivability.... Many people might hesitate to sign up for a one-way trip to Mars, but the beauty is that we only have to find
8 adventurous, willing souls" (Gott 2001).
I've been stressing the fact that
we should be in a hurry to colonize space, to improve our survival
prospects, since my Nature paper in 1993 (Gott 1993). The real space race is whether we get off the planet before the money for the
space program runs out. The human spaceflight program is only 50 years old, and may go extinct on a similar timescale. Expensive programs
are often abandoned after a while. In the 1400s, China explored as far as Africa before abruptly abandoning its voyages. Right
now we
have all our eggs in one basket: Earth. The bones of extinct species in our natural history
museums give mute testimony that disasters on Earth routinely occur that cause species to go
extinct. It is like sailing on the Titanic with no lifeboats. We need some lifeboats. A
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colony on Mars might as much as double our long-term survival prospects by
giving us two chances instead of one.
you just send a few astronauts and they have descendants on Mars,
sustained by using indigenous materials. It's the colonists who do all the work. If one is worried that funds
will be cut off, it is important to establish a self-supporting colony as soon as possible. Some have
Colonies are a great bargain:
argued that older astronauts should be sent on a one-way trip to Mars since they ostensibly have less to lose. But I would want to recruit
young astronauts who can have children and grandchildren on Mars: people who would rather be the founders of a Martian civilization than
Founding a colony on Mars would change the course of world
history. You couldn't even call it "world" history anymore. If colonizing Mars to increase the survival prospects of the human species is
return to a ticker-tape parade on Earth.
our goal, then, since money is short, we should concentrate on that goal. In New Scientist (Gott 1997) I said:
"And if colonization were the goal, you would not have to bring astronauts back from Mars after all; that is where we want them. Instead we
could equip them to stay and establish a colony at the outset, a good strategy if one is worried that funding for the space programme may not
last. So we should be asking ourselves: what is the cheapest way to establish a permanent, self-sustaining colony on Mars?"
I have argued that it is a goal we could achieve in the next 50 years if we directed our efforts toward that end. We would need to launch into
low Earth orbit only about as many tons in the next 50 years as we have done in the last 50 years. But will we be wise enough to do this?
Colonization is necessary to avoid an inevitable extinction—Mars is the best place
Gott 9—Professor of Astrophysics at Princeton University, recipient of the Robert J. Trumpler Award, an Alfred P. Sloan
Fellowship, the Astronomical League Award, and Princeton's President's Award for Distinguished Teaching [J. Richard,
July
17th,
“A
Goal
for
the
Human
Spaceflight
Program,”
NASA,
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/368985main_GottSpaceflightGoal.pdf]
The goal of the human spaceflight program should be to increase the survival prospects of the
human race by colonizing space. Self-sustaining colonies in space, which could later plant still
other colonies, would provide us with a life insurance policy against any catastrophes which
might occur on Earth. Fossils of extinct species offer ample testimony that such catastrophes do occur. Our species is
200,000 years old; the Neanderthals went extinct after 300,000 years. Of our genus (Homo)
and the entire Hominidae family, we are the only species left. Most species leave no descendant species.
Improving our survival prospects is something we should be willing to spend large sums of
money on governments make large expenditures on defense for the survival of their citizens.
The Greeks put all their books in the great Alexandrian library. I'm sure they guarded it very well. But eventually it burnt down taking all the
books with it. It's fortunate that some copies of Sophocles' plays were stored elsewhere, for these are the only ones that we have now (7 out of
120 plays). We should be planting colonies off the Earth now as a life insurance policy against whatever unexpected catastrophes may await
us on the Earth. Of
course, we should still be doing everything possible to protect our environment
and safeguard our prospects on the Earth. But chaos theory tells us that we may well be unable to
predict the specific cause of our demise as a species. By definition, whatever causes us to go
extinct will be something the likes of which we have not experienced so far. We simply may not be
smart enough to know how best to spend our money on Earth to insure the greatest chance of survival here. Spending money
planting colonies in space simply gives us more chances--like storing some of Sophocles' plays away from the
Alexandrian library. If we made colonization our goal, we might formulate a strategy designed to
increase the likelihood of achieving it. Having such a goal makes us ask the right questions.
Where is the easiest place in space to plant a colony—the place to start? Overall, Mars offers
the most habitable location for Homo sapiens in the solar system outside of Earth, as Bruce Murray
has noted. Mars has water, reasonable gravity (1/3rd that of the Earth), an atmosphere, and all the chemicals necessary for life. Living
The Moon has no
atmosphere, less protection against solar flares and galactic cosmic rays, harsher temperature
ranges, lower gravity (1/6th that of the Earth), and no appreciable water. Asteroids are similar. The icy moons of
underground (like some of our cave dwelling ancestors) would lower radiation risks to acceptable levels.
Jupiter and Saturn offer water but are much colder and more distant. Mercury and Venus are too hot, and Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and
Neptune are inhospitable gas giants. Free floating colonies in space, as proposed by Gerard ONeill, would need material brought up from
planetary or asteroid surfaces.
If we want to plant a first permanent colony in space, Mars would seem
the logical place to start.
Now is the key time—decisions made now on Earth will determine the future of life in
the universe.
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Rees 3—Martin J. Rees, Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics and Master of Trinity College at the University of
Cambridge, Astronomer Royal and Visiting Professor at Imperial College London and Leicester University, Director of the
Institute of Astronomy, Research Professor at Cambridge, 2003 (“Prologue,” Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning:
How Terror, Error, And Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future In This Century—On Earth And
Beyond, Published by Basic Books, ISBN 046506826, p. 7-8)
It may not be absurd hyperbole—indeed, it may not even be an overstatement—to assert
that the most crucial location in space and time (apart from the big bang itself) could be here
and now. I think the odds are no better than fifty-fifty that our present civilisation on Earth will
survive to the end of the present century. Our choices and actions could ensure the
perpetual future of life (not just on Earth, but perhaps far beyond it, too). Or in contrast, through malign intent, or
through misadventure, twenty-first century technology could jeopardise life's potential, foreclosing
its human and posthuman future. What happens here on Earth, in this century, could
conceivably make the difference between a near eternity filled with ever more
complex and subtle forms of life and one filled with nothing but base matter.
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Plan:
The United States federal government should settle Mars.
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Contention Two is Solvency:
Here is the description of the mission
Zubrin 5—an astronautical engineer and author, is president of Pioneer Astronautics, a research and development
firm, and president of the Mars Society, a space advocacy group [Spring 2005, Robert Zubrin, “Getting Space Exploration
Right,” The New Atlantis, Number 8, pp. 15-48, http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/getting-space-explorationright]
How Do We Get There?
Some may say that human exploration of Mars is too ambitious a feat to select as our near-term goal, but that is the view of the faint of heart.
From the technological point of view, we’re ready. Despite the greater distance to Mars, we are
much better prepared today to send humans to Mars than we were to launch humans to the
Moon in 1961 when John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to achieve that goal—and we got there eight years later. Given the
will, we could have our first teams on Mars within a decade.
The key to success is rejecting the policy of continued stagnation represented by senile Shuttle Mode thinking, and returning
to the destination-driven Apollo Mode of planned operation that allowed the space agency to
perform so brilliantly during its youth. In addition, we must take a lesson from our own pioneer past and adopt a “travel
light and live off the land” mission strategy similar to that which has well-served terrestrial explorers for centuries. The plan to
explore the Red Planet in this way is known as Mars Direct. Here’s how it could be accomplished.
At an early launch opportunity—for example 2014—a single heavy lift booster with a capability equal to that of
the Saturn V used during the Apollo program is launched off Cape Canaveral and uses its upper stage to
throw a 40-tonne unmanned payload onto a trajectory to Mars. (A “tonne” is one metric ton.) Arriving at
Mars eight months later, the spacecraft uses friction between its aeroshield and the Martian atmosphere to brake itself into orbit around the
planet, and then lands with the help of a parachute. This is the Earth Return Vehicle (ERV). It
flies out to Mars with its two
methane/oxygen driven rocket propulsion stages unfueled. It also carries six tonnes of liquid
hydrogen, a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor mounted in the back of a methane/oxygen driven
light truck, a small set of compressors and an automated chemical processing unit, and axx
few small scientific rovers.
As soon as the craft lands successfully, the truck is telerobotically driven a few hundred
meters away from the site, and the reactor is deployed to provide power to the compressors
and chemical processing unit. The ERV will then start a ten-month process of fueling itself by
combining the hydrogen brought from Earth with the carbon dioxide in the Martian
atmosphere. The end result is a total of 108 tonnes of methane/oxygen rocket propellant.
Ninety-six tonnes of the propellant will be used to fuel the ERV, while 12 tonnes will be
available to support the use of high-powered, chemically-fueled, long-range ground vehicles.
Large additional stockpiles of oxygen can also be produced, both for breathing and for turning
into water by combination with hydrogen brought from Earth. Since water is 89 percent
oxygen (by weight), and since the larger part of most foodstuffs is water, this greatly reduces the
amount of life support consumables that need to be hauled from Earth.
in 2016 two more boosters lift off from Cape Canaveral
and throw their 40-tonne payloads towards Mars. One of the payloads is an unmanned fuelfactory/ERV just like the one launched in 2014; the other is a habitation module carrying a small
crew, a mixture of whole food and dehydrated provisions sufficient for three years, and a
pressurized methane/oxygen-powered ground rover.
With the propellant production successfully completed,
the manned craft lands at the 2014 landing site where a fully fueled ERV and
beaconed landing site await it. With the help of such navigational aids, the crew should be able to land right on the spot; but if
Upon arrival,
the landing is off course by tens or even hundreds of kilometers, the crew can still achieve the surface rendezvous by driving over in their
rover. If they are off by thousands of kilometers, the second ERV provides a backup.
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the second ERV will land several hundred
kilometers away to start making propellant for the 2018 mission, which in turn will fly out
with an additional ERV to open up Mars landing site number three. Thus, every other year two
heavy lift boosters are launched, one to land a crew, and the other to prepare a site for the
next mission, for an average launch rate of just one booster per year to pursue a continuing
program of Mars exploration. Since in a normal year we can launch about six shuttle stacks, this would only
represent about 16 percent of the U.S. heavy-lift capability, and would clearly be affordable. In
effect, this “live off the land” approach removes the manned Mars mission from the realm of
mega-spacecraft fantasy and reduces it in practice to a task of comparable difficulty to that
faced in launching the Apollo missions to the Moon.
Assuming the crew lands and rendezvous as planned at site number one,
The crew will stay on the surface for 1.5 years, taking advantage of the mobility afforded by
the high-powered chemically-driven ground vehicles to accomplish a great deal of surface
exploration. With a 12-tonne surface fuel stockpile, they have the capability for over 24,000 kilometers worth of traverse before they
leave, giving them the kind of mobility necessary to conduct a serious search for evidence of past or present life on Mars. Since no one
has been left in orbit, the entire crew will have available to them the natural gravity and
protection against cosmic rays and solar radiation afforded by the Martian environment, and
thus there will not be the strong pressure for a quick return to Earth that plagues other Mars mission plans
based upon orbiting mother-ships with small landing parties. At the conclusion of their stay, the crew returns to Earth in a direct flight from
the Martian surface in the ERV. As
the series of missions progresses, a string of small bases is left behind
on the Martian surface, opening up broad stretches of territory to human cognizance.
by taking advantage of the most obvious local resource available on Mars—its
atmosphere—the plan allows us to accomplish a manned Mars mission with what amounts to
a lunar-class transportation system. By eliminating any requirement to introduce a new order
of technology and complexity of operations beyond those needed for lunar transportation to
accomplish piloted Mars missions, the plan can reduce costs by an order of magnitude and
advance the schedule for the human exploration of Mars by a generation.
In essence,
And Mars is the only place in the solar system that can support civilization—natural
resource abundance. The Moon is deficient.
Zubrin 11—formerly a senior astronautical engineer at Lockheed Martin, chairman of the executive committee of the
National Space Society, President of Pioneer Astronautics, a space-exploration research and development firm, and
president of the Mars Society, a space advocacy group [Robert Zubrin, “8: THE COLONIZATION OF MARS,” Chapter 8,
The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must, Simon & Schuster, Inc., ISBN-10: 145160811X,
Publication Date: June 28, 2011, pg. Kindle]
Among extraterrestrial bodies in our solar system, Mars is singular in that it possesses all the
raw materials required to support not only life, but a new branch of human civilization. This
uniqueness is illustrated most clearly if we contrast Mars with the Earth’s Moon, the most frequently cited alternative location for
extraterrestrial human colonization.
In contrast to the Moon, Mars is rich in carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, all in
biologically readily accessible forms such as carbon dioxide gas, nitrogen gas, and water ice
and permafrost. Carbon and nitrogen are only present on the Moon in parts-per-million
quantities. There is some water ice, but only in permanently shaded ultracold (−230°C) polar
craters—locations so frigid as to make their contents virtually inaccessible outside of such
environments. Oxygen is abundant, but only in tightly bound oxides such as silicon dioxide (SiO2), ferrous
oxide (Fe2O3), magnesium oxide (MgO), and alumina oxide (Al2O3), which require very high energy processes to
reduce. Current knowledge indicates that if Mars were smooth and all its ice and permafrost
melted into liquid water, the entire planet would be covered with an ocean over 100 meters
deep. This contrasts strongly with the Moon, which is so dry that if concrete were found there,
lunar colonists would mine it to get the water out. Thus, if plants could be grown in
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greenhouses on the Moon (an unlikely proposition, as we’ve seen) most of their biomass material would
have to be imported.
The Moon is also deficient in about half the metals of interest to industrial society (copper, nickel,
and zinc, for example), as well as many other elements of interest such as sulfur, fluorine, bromine, phosphorus, and
chlorine. Mars has every required element in abundance. Moreover, on Mars, as on Earth, hydrologic and
volcanic processes have occurred that are likely to have consolidated various elements into
local concentrations of high-grade mineral ore. Indeed, the geologic history of Mars has been compared to that of
Africa,43 with very optimistic implications as to its mineral wealth as a corollary. In contrast, the Moon has had virtually no
history of water or volcanic action, with the result that it is basically composed of trash rocks
with very little differentiation into ores that represent useful concentrations of anything
interesting.
Mars col provides cheap access to space—tech spin offs
Zubrin 11—formerly a senior astronautical engineer at Lockheed Martin, chairman of the executive committee of the
National Space Society, President of Pioneer Astronautics, a space-exploration research and development firm, and
president of the Mars Society, a space advocacy group [Robert Zubrin, “8: THE COLONIZATION OF MARS,” Chapter 8,
The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must, Simon & Schuster, Inc., ISBN-10: 145160811X,
Publication Date: June 28, 2011, pg. Kindle]
AIR-BREATHING LAUNCH SYSTEMS
Current rocket-based launch systems are only about 2 percent as efficient in hauling cargo as
jet aircraft. The reason for this difference is simple—rockets haul their own oxidizer while jets
get theirs from the air. Since the oxidizer makes up about 75 percent of the total propellant
weight, this enormously compromises a rocket vehicle’s performance. Launch vehicles
attempting to reach orbit are flying through an ocean of oxidizer. Why don’t they try to use
any of it?
technical difficulties and lack of will have intersected to stall the development of
hypersonic air-breathing propulsion. Current ramjet engines used on some missiles can make
it to Mach 5.5, but beyond this speed it becomes impossible to slow the air that enters the jet
engine to subsonic speeds without heating the air too much in the process. Thus, the
combustion inside the engine must take place in a supersonic flow. An engine that can do this
is a new type of animal, a “scramjet,” and is in a sense as much of an advance over existing jet
engines as jets were over propellers. The National Aerospace Plane (NASP) program—canceled in 1993 due to lack of
perceived necessity—conducted extensive computer calculations showing that scramjets will work. A somewhat less
technologically challenging approach that can obtain much of the scramjet’s benefits is the
air-augmented rocket: a rocket that obtains part of its needed oxidizer from the atmosphere
during its upward flight. Air-augmented rockets that could get a specific impulse over 1,000
seconds were demonstrated on the test stand at The Marquardt Company in 1966.
Unfortunately, a change in governmental bureaucratic whims canceled the program before
the engines could be flight tested.
Unfortunately,
The use of scramjets or air-augmented rockets on even part of the launch trajectory of a
single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicle would greatly increase its payload. This is exactly what is
needed to meet the logistics demands of a developing Mars settlement, which will call for the
cheap delivery of large amounts of cargo to orbit, and beyond. The colonization of Mars is
thus central to the development of the technologies that will give us cheap access
to space.
And No impact to radiation—low dose rates
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Zubrin 11—formerly a senior astronautical engineer at Lockheed Martin, chairman of the executive committee of the
National Space Society, President of Pioneer Astronautics, a space-exploration research and development firm, and
president of the Mars Society, a space advocacy group [Robert Zubrin, “5: KILLING THE DRAGONS, AVOIDING THE
SIRENS,” Chapter 5, The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must, Simon & Schuster, Inc.,
ISBN-10: 145160811X, Publication Date: June 28, 2011, pg. Kindle]
RADIATION HAZARDS
Radiation is deadly, we are told, and
only by using ultrafast spacecraft that can speed through the supposedly radiation-infested
seas of space in impossibly short times can we be sure of a safe voyage. Or alternatively, we are told that
only by using huge spacecraft with masses approaching those of asteroids can we shield the crew well enough to assure their health. We
are further warned that cosmic radiation is something totally new in character, and only after
we have spent decades studying its long-term effects on humans in interplanetary space can a
trip to Mars be risked.
One of the leading dragons barring the path to Mars goes by the name radiation.
But, in fact, almost all the assertions quoted in the above paragraph are sheer nonsense. The only
one of them that is even close to being true is the first, that “radiation is deadly,” which it certainly is, but only if taken in excessive
quantities.
Human beings have evolved in an environment featuring a significant amount of natural
background radiation. In the United States today, people who live near sea level receive an annual radiation dose of about 150
millirem. (A millirem is a thousandth of a rem, the basic unit used to measure radiation doses in the United States. Europeans use Sieverts.
One Sievert equals 100 rem.) Those who can afford to live in Vail or Aspen, on the other hand, take an annual dose of more than 300
millirem in consequence of their willingness to forgo a significant fraction of the cosmic ray shielding offered to them by the Earth’s
Because we have evolved in a radiation field, humans actually need radiation to stay
healthy. It may be counter to popular belief and the orientation of various governmental regulatory agencies, but numerous
studies of individuals subjected to an unnaturally radiation-free environment have shown
significant health deterioration relative to controls exposed to natural levels of ionizing
radiation. This phenomenon, known as hormesis,15,16 is caused by the fact that the human
body needs a certain amount of pummeling by natural radiation in order to keep its selfrepair mechanisms stimulated. It is unclear what the optimum radiation exposure level for human health is, but it is not zero.
atmosphere.
it is certainly true that very large amounts of radiation delivered over very short
amounts of time, such as the exposure to a huge dose within seconds via the gamma-ray flash
from an atomic bomb blast, or within minutes by exposure to unshielded release products from a disabled nuclear reactor,
can and will kill. The effects of such prompt doses of radiation are well-known from studies of the victims of the Hiroshima and
Nagasaki bombings. These studies have revealed that prompt doses of less than 75 rem result in no
apparent health effects. If the doses are between 75 and 200 rem, radiation sickness (whose
symptoms are vomiting, fatigue, and loss of appetite) will appear in from 5 percent to 50 percent of exposed
individuals, with the percentages increasing from the low to high end of this range as the dose increases from 75 to 200 rem. At this
level of exposure almost everyone recovers within a few weeks. At 300 rem, radiation sickness
is universal, and some fatalities start to appear, rising to 50 percent at 450 rem and 80
percent at 600 rem. Almost no one survives doses of 1,000 rem or more.
That said,
These, however, are the effects of prompt doses, which is to say doses that occur on a time scale
much shorter than the weeks-to-months time scale for cellular reproduction and bodily selfrepair. The situation is much like drinking alcohol or any other chemical toxin. A man could
drink a martini a night for years and suffer no obvious ill effects, his liver having adequate
time to cleanse his body after each drink. Drinking a hundred martinis in a single night,
though, would kill him. Similarly, radiation causes damage to living organisms by inducing
chemical reactions within cells that create toxic substances that can kill or otherwise derange
individual cells. Below a certain dose rate, the self-repair capabilities of individual cells can
act fast enough to reject the radiation-induced toxin and save the cell. At significantly higher
rates, human body tissues acting as a whole are able to generate replacement cells for those
that have become casualties, before the loss of those cells causes problems for the body as a
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whole. It is only when dose rates occur at a pace that overwhelms these selfrepair mechanisms that severe health impacts occur.
And No impact to zero gravity—empirics prove astronauts always recover
Zubrin 11—formerly a senior astronautical engineer at Lockheed Martin, chairman of the executive committee of the
National Space Society, President of Pioneer Astronautics, a space-exploration research and development firm, and
president of the Mars Society, a space advocacy group [Robert Zubrin, “5: KILLING THE DRAGONS, AVOIDING THE
SIRENS,” Chapter 5, The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must, Simon & Schuster, Inc.,
ISBN-10: 145160811X, Publication Date: June 28, 2011, pg. Kindle]
ZERO GRAVITY
Another dragon barring the path to Mars is the menace of zero gravity. Long-duration exposure to zero
gravity carries the risk of serious deterioration of human muscles and bone tissue, we are told, and, therefore, before astronauts go to Mars
we must undertake a long-term program of experimentation with human subjects exposed to extended periods of zero gravity on board the
Space Station. This program will require several decades, many billions of dollars in “microgravity life science research,” and a few dozen
human beings willing to sacrifice their health to “scientific research.”
I find this argument bizarre. Now, it is certainly true that spending long periods in zero gravity
will cause cardiovascular deterioration, decalcification and demineralization of the bones, and
a general deterioration of muscular fitness due to lack of exercise . Zero gravity also depresses some aspects
of the body’s immune system. These effects are well documented from the experiences not only of the
U.S. Skylab astronauts, who spent up to three months at a time on-orbit, and crews on the International Space
Station, whose standard rotation lasts six months, but of Soviet cosmonauts, some of whom have spent
stints in zero gravity on their Mir space station of almost eighteen months—nearly three times
the duration of the trans-Mars or trans-Earth cruises required to perform the Mars Direct
mission. In all cases, near total recovery of the musculature and immune system
occurs after reentry and reconditioning to a one-gravity environment on Earth. The
demineralization of the bones ceases upon return to Earth, but actual restoration of the bones to preflight
condition appears to be a very extended process. The Soviets have experimented with various countermeasures to zero gravity, including
intensive exercise, drugs, and elastic “penguin suits” that force the body to exert significant physical effort in the course of routine
programs of intensive (three hours a day) exercise have proven effective in
reducing general muscular deconditioning, and to some extent cardiovascular deterioration,
but countermeasures taken to date have shown little benefit in slowing bone demineralization. It should be understood that while these
effects are all quite tangible and definitely not desirable, they are not too extreme; in no
case have such zero-gravity “adaptations” prevented astronauts or cosmonauts from
satisfactorily performing their duties while they are in the zero-gravity environment, and after
even the longest flights, crew members recovered enough to become basically functional
again within 48 hours after landing. Indeed, within a week of landing, the members of the 84-day Skylab 3 crew were able
to play strong games of tennis. The recovery time to functionality upon Mars arrival after a six-month
zero-gravity exposure should be swifter, because the crew will only have to deal with
reacclimation to Mars’ 0.38g environment after landing, instead of the 1g shock experienced
after reentry on Earth. The point, however, is that an awful lot of research has already been done in this
area, and we know what the effects are. Given that is the case, we can rightly ask whether it is necessary, or even ethical,
movement. As might be expected,
to subject further astronaut crews to such experimentation solely for the purpose of more exhaustive research on zero-gravity health
deterioration effects. I don’t think it is. In fact, given what we know today, I’d have to classify the proposed program of continued
experimentation on humans with long duration zero-gravity health effects as unethical and worthless, and I know a lot of astronauts who
agree with me on that point. It just doesn’t make sense to expose dozens of astronauts to a larger zero-gravity dose than a Mars mission
might provide in order to “ensure the safety” of a much smaller crew who actually fly there. Doing so is like training bomber pilots by having
them fly their planes through real flak. If you are willing to accept the health consequences of long-duration exposure to zero gravity, you
might as well take your licks in the process of actually getting to Mars.
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Contention Three is Impact Defense:
Great power war is obsolete – cooperation is more likely than competition.
Deudney and Ikenberry 9 —*Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins AND **Albert G. Milbank Professor
of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University [Jan/Feb, 2009, Daniel Deudney and John Ikenberry, “The
Myth of the Autocratic Revival: Why Liberal Democracy Will Prevail,” Foreign Affairs]
This bleak outlook is based on an exaggeration of recent developments and ignores powerful countervailing factors and forces. Indeed,
the most striking features of the contemporary international
landscape are the intensification of economic globalization, thickening institutions, and
shared problems of interdependence. The overall structure of the international system today is quite unlike
that of the nineteenth century. Compared to older orders, the contemporary liberal-centered
international order provides a set of constraints and opportunities-of pushes and pulls-that
reduce the likelihood of severe conflict while creating strong imperatives for cooperative
problem solving. Those invoking the nineteenth century as a model for the twenty-first also fail to acknowledge the extent to which
war as a path to conflict resolution and great-power expansion has become
largely obsolete. Most important, nuclear weapons have transformed great-power war from a routine
feature of international politics into an exercise in national suicide. With all of the great powers
possessing nuclear weapons and ample means to rapidly expand their deterrent forces, warfare among these
states has truly become an option of last resort. The prospect of such great losses has instilled in the
great powers a level of caution and restraint that effectively precludes major revisionist
efforts. Furthermore, the diffusion of small arms and the near universality of nationalism have
severely limited the ability of great powers to conquer and occupy territory inhabited by resisting
contrary to what the revivalists describe,
populations (as Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and now Iraq have demonstrated). Unlike during the days of empire building in the
states today cannot translate great asymmetries of power into effective
territorial control; at most, they can hope for loose hegemonic relationships that require them to give something in return. Also
unlike in the nineteenth century, today the density of trade, investment, and production networks across
international borders raises even more the costs of war. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, to take
one of the most plausible cases of a future interstate war, would pose for the Chinese
communist regime daunting economic costs, both domestic and international. Taken together,
these changes in the economy of violence mean that the international system is far more
primed for peace than the autocratic revivalists acknowledge.
nineteenth century,
No War—empirics and longitudinal trends—the world is entering a new era of great
power peace
Fettweis 10—Christopher J. Fettweis, Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs in the National Security
Decision Making Department at the U.S. Naval War College, holds a Ph.D. in International Relations and Comparative
Politics from the University of Maryland-College Park, October 27, 2010 (Dangerous Times?: The International Politics of
Great Power Peace, Georgetown University Press, ISBN 978-1-58901-710-8, Chapter 4: Evaluating the Crystal Balls, p.
83-85)
The obsolescence-of-major-war vision of the future differs most drastically from all the others, including the neorealist, in its expectations of
If the post– Cold War world conformed to neorealist and
other pessimistic predictions, warfare ought to continue to be present at all levels of the
system, appearing with increasing regularity once the stabilizing influence of bipolarity was removed. If the
liberal-constructivist vision is correct, then the world ought to have seen not only no major
wars, but also a decrease in the volume and intensity of all kinds of conflict in every region as
well.
the future of conflict in the international system.
The evidence supports the latter. Major wars tend to be rather memorable, so there is little need to
demonstrate that there has been no such conflict since the end of the Cold War. But the data
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seem to support the “trickledown” theory of stability as well. Empirical analyses of warfare
have consistently shown that the number of all types of wars—interstate, civil, ethnic,
revolutionary, and so forth— declined throughout the 1990s and into the new century, after a brief
surge of postcolonial conflicts in the first few years of that decade. 2 Overall levels of conflict tell only part of the story, however. Many
other aspects of international behavior, including some that might be considered secondary
effects of warfare, are on the decline as well. Some of the more important, if perhaps under reported, aggregate
global trends include the following:
Ethnonational wars for independence have declined to their lowest level since
1960, the first year for which we have data. 3
Ethnic conflict.
The Minorities at Risk project at the University of
tracked a decline in the number of minority groups around the world that experience
discrimination at the hands of states, from seventy-five in 1991 to forty-one in 2003. 4
Repression and political discrimination against ethnic minorities.
Maryland has
War termination settlements have proven to be more stable over time,
and the number of new conflicts is lower than ever before. 5
War termination versus outbreak.
The average number of battle deaths per conflict per year has been
steadily declining. 6 The risk for the average person of dying in battle has been plummeting
since World War II— and rather drastically so since the end of the Cold War. 7
Magnitude of conflict/battle deaths.
the incidence of
genocide and other mass slaughters declined by 90 percent between 1989 and 2005, memorable
Genocide. Since war is usually a necessary condition for genocide, 8 perhaps it should be unsurprising that
tragedies notwithstanding. 9
Armed overthrow of government is becoming increasingly rare, even as the number of national
be coup plotters no longer garner the kind of
automatic outside support that they could have expected during the Cold War, or at virtually
any time of great power tension.
Coups.
governments is expanding along with the number of states. 10 Would
Third party intervention. Those conflicts that do persist have less support from outside actors, just as the
constructivists expected. When the great powers have intervened in local conflicts, it has usually been in the attempt to bring a conflict to an
end or, in the case of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, to punish aggression. 11
the number of largescale abuses of human rights is also
declining. Overall, there has been a clear, if uneven, decrease in what the Human Security Centre calls “one-sided
violence against civilians” since 1989. 12
Human rights abuses. Though not completely gone,
World military spending declined by one third in the first decade after the
fall of the Berlin Wall. 13 Today that spending is less than 2.5 percent of global GDP, which is
about two-thirds of what it was during the Cold War.
Global military spending.
Terrorist attacks. In perhaps the most counterintuitive trend, the number of worldwide terrorist incidents is far smaller than it was during
the Cold War. If Iraq and South Asia were to be removed from the data, a clear, steady downward trend would become apparent. There were
300 terrorist incidents worldwide in 1991, for instance, and 58 in 2005. 14
International conflict and crises have steadily declined in number and intensity since the end
of the Cold War. By virtually all measures, the world is a far more peaceful place than it has
been at any time in recorded history. Taken together, these trends seem to suggest that the rules by which international
politics are run may indeed be changing.
No risk of nuclear war or great power conflict—nuclear deterrence.
Tepperman 9 — Jonathan Tepperman, Deputy Editor of Newsweek, Member of the Council on Foreign Relations,
now Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs, holds a B.A. in English Literature from Yale University, an M.A. in
Jurisprudence from Oxford University, and an LL.M. in International Law from New York University, 2009 (“Why Obama
Should
Learn
to
Love
the
Bomb,”
The
Daily
Beast,
August
28th,
Available
Online
at
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/08/28/why-obama-should-learn-to-love-the-bomb.print.html, Accessed
01-27-2012)
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A growing and compelling body of research suggests that nuclear weapons may not, in fact, make the
world more dangerous, as Obama and most people assume. The bomb may actually make us safer. In this era of rogue
states and transnational terrorists, that idea sounds so obviously wrongheaded that few politicians or policymakers are willing to entertain it.
But that's a mistake. Knowing the truth about nukes would have a profound impact on government policy. Obama's idealistic campaign, so
out of character for a pragmatic administration, may be unlikely to get far (past presidents have tried and failed). But it's not even clear he
should make the effort. There are more important measures the U.S. government can and should take to make the real world safer, and these
mustn't be ignored in the name of a dreamy ideal (a nuke-free planet) that's both unrealistic and possibly undesirable.
The argument that nuclear weapons can be agents of peace as well as destruction rests on two deceptively simple observations. First,
nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945. Second, there's never been a nuclear, or even a
nonnuclear, war between two states that possess them. Just stop for a second and think about that: it's hard to overstate
how remarkable it is, especially given the singular viciousness of the 20th century. As Kenneth Waltz, the leading "nuclear optimist" and a
professor emeritus of political science at UC Berkeley puts it, "We now have 64 years of experience since Hiroshima. It's striking and against
all historical precedent that for that substantial period, there has not been any war among nuclear states."
To understand why—and why the next 64 years are likely to play out the same way—you need to start by recognizing that all
states are
rational on some basic level. Their leaders may be stupid, petty, venal, even evil, but they tend to do things only when
they're pretty sure they can get away with them. Take war: a country will start a fight only when it's almost certain it can get what it wants at
Not even Hitler or Saddam waged wars they didn't think they could
win. The problem historically has been that leaders often make the wrong gamble and
underestimate the other side—and millions of innocents pay the price.
an acceptable price.
Nuclear weapons change all that by making the costs of war obvious, inevitable, and
unacceptable. Suddenly, when both sides have the ability to turn the other to ashes with the push
of a button—and everybody knows it—the basic math shifts. Even the craziest tin-pot
dictator is forced to accept that war with a nuclear state is unwinnable and thus not
worth the effort. As Waltz puts it, "Why fight if you can't win and might lose everything?"
The iron logic of deterrence and mutually assured destruction is so
compelling, it's led to what's known as the nuclear peace: the virtually unprecedented stretch
since the end of World War II in which all the world's major powers have avoided
coming to blows. They did fight proxy wars, ranging from Korea to Vietnam to Angola to Latin America. But these never
Why indeed?
matched the furious destruction of full-on, great-power war (World War II alone was responsible for some 50 million to 70 million deaths).
nuclear powers have
scrupulously avoided direct combat, and there's very good reason to think they always will.
There have been some near misses, but a close look at these cases is fundamentally
reassuring—because in each instance, very different leaders all came to the same
safe conclusion.
And since the end of the Cold War, such bloodshed has declined precipitously. Meanwhile, the
Take the mother of all nuclear standoffs: the Cuban missile crisis. For 13 days in October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union each
threatened the other with destruction. But both countries soon stepped back from the brink when they recognized that a war would have
meant curtains for everyone. As important as the fact that they did is the reason why: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's aide Fyodor
Burlatsky said later on, "It is impossible to win a nuclear war, and both sides realized that, maybe for the first time."
The record since then shows the same pattern repeating:
nuclear-armed enemies slide toward war, then pull
back, always for the same reasons. The best recent example is India and Pakistan, which fought three bloody wars after
independence before acquiring their own nukes in 1998. Getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction didn't do anything to lessen
their animosity. But it did dramatically mellow their behavior. Since acquiring atomic weapons, the two sides have never fought another war,
despite severe provocations (like Pakistani-based terrorist attacks on India in 2001 and 2008). They have skirmished once. But during that
flare-up, in Kashmir in 1999, both countries were careful to keep the fighting limited and to avoid threatening the other's vital interests.
Sumit Ganguly, an Indiana University professor and coauthor of the forthcoming India, Pakistan, and the Bomb, has found that on both
sides, officials' thinking was strikingly similar to that of the Russians and Americans in 1962. The prospect of war brought Delhi and
Islamabad face to face with a nuclear holocaust, and leaders in each country did what they had to do to avoid it.
Nuclear pessimists—and there are many—insist that even if this pattern has held in the past, it's crazy to rely on it in the future, for several
reasons. The first is that today's nuclear wannabes are so completely unhinged, you'd be mad to trust them with a bomb. Take the sybaritic
Kim Jong Il, who's never missed a chance to demonstrate his battiness, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has denied the Holocaust and
promised the destruction of Israel, and who, according to some respected Middle East scholars, runs a messianic martyrdom cult that would
welcome nuclear obliteration. These regimes are the ultimate rogues, the thinking goes—and there's no deterring rogues.
But are Kim and Ahmadinejad really scarier and crazier than were Stalin and Mao? It might look that way from Seoul or Tel Aviv, but history
says otherwise. Khrushchev, remember, threatened to "bury" the United States, and in 1957, Mao blithely declared that a nuclear war with
America wouldn't be so bad because even "if half of mankind died … the whole world would become socialist." Pyongyang and Tehran
support terrorism—but so did Moscow and Beijing. And as for seeming suicidal, Michael Desch of the University of Notre Dame points out
that Stalin and Mao are the real record holders here: both were responsible for the deaths of some 20 million of their own citizens.
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when push came to shove, their regimes balked at nuclear suicide, and so would
today's international bogeymen. For all of Ahmadinejad's antics, his power is limited, and the clerical regime has
Yet
always proved rational and pragmatic when its life is on the line. Revolutionary Iran has never started a war, has done deals with both
Washington and Jerusalem, and sued for peace in its war with Iraq (which Saddam started) once it realized it couldn't win. North Korea,
meanwhile, is a tiny, impoverished, family-run country with a history of being invaded; its overwhelming preoccupation is survival, and
every time it becomes more belligerent it reverses itself a few months later (witness last week, when Pyongyang told Seoul and Washington it
countries may be brutally oppressive, but nothing in
their behavior suggests they have a death wish.
was ready to return to the bargaining table). These
No impact to resource wars – decline will spur cooperation, not war
Bennett and Nordstrom 2K—department of political science at Penn State [D Scott and Timothy, The Journal of
Conflict Resolution, 44:1, “Foreign policy substitutability and internal economic problems in enduring rivalries”,
ProQuest]
Conflict settlement is also a distinct route to dealing with internal problems that leaders in rivalries may pursue when faced with internal
Military competition between states requires large amounts of resources, and rivals require even
Leaders may choose to negotiate a settlement that ends a rivalry to free up
important resources that may be reallocated to the domestic economy. In a "guns versus butter" world of
economic trade-offs, when a state can no longer afford to pay the expenses associated with
competition in a rivalry, it is quite rational for leaders to reduce costs by ending a rivalry. This gain (a peace
problems.
more attention.
dividend) could be achieved at any time by ending a rivalry. However, such a gain is likely to be most important and attractive to leaders
Support for policy change away
from continued rivalry is more likely to develop when the economic situation sours and elites
and masses are looking for ways to improve a worsening situation. It is at these times that the pressure to
when internal conditions are bad and the leader is seeking ways to alleviate active problems.
cut military investment will be greatest and that state leaders will be forced to recognize the difficulty of continuing to pay for a rivalry.
this argument also encompasses the view that the cold war ended because the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics could no longer compete economically with the United States.
Among other things,
“Nuclear Winter” theory is incorrect—it’s based on flawed data
Ball 6— Professor at the Strategic and Defense Studies Centre at the Australian National University, former Head of the
Strategic & Defence Studies Centre, former Co-chairman of the Steering Committee of the Council for Security
Cooperation in Asia-Pacific [Desmond, May, “The Probabilities of On the Beach: Assessing ‘Armageddon Scenarios’ in the
21st Century,” http://rspas.anu.edu.au/papers/sdsc/wp/wp_sdsc_401.pdf]
In the early 1980s, various scientists and scientific organisations questioned the simplicity of
these calculations, and especially their neglect of longer-term ecological and environmental consequences. Atmospheric
physicists and biologists/ecologists demonstrated that the sudden injection of a couple of
hundred million tonnes of smoke, soot and other particulate matter into the upper atmosphere would have
catastrophic environmental consequences, characterised as ‘Nuclear Winter’ . They argued that an allout exchange would involve expenditure of 5,000 to 10,000 megatons. The most widely cited baseline scenario
involved some 14,750 warheads with a total of 5,750 megatons, with almost every city in the
world with a population of three million or more being attacked with fifteen warheads
totalling ten megatons and those with populations of 1-3 million each being allocated three 1
megaton weapons. A baseline counter-force scenario allocated 4,000 megatons to strategic counterforce targets, which ignited
wildfires over 500,000 square kilometres of forest, brush and grasslands, consuming some 0.5 grams per square centimetre of fuel in the
‘approximately
50 percent of the land areas in the countries likely to be involved in a nuclear exchange are covered
by forest or brush, which are flammable about 50 percent of the time’. 6 The leading
populariser of the ‘Nuclear Winter’ hypothesis was Carl Sagan, the brilliant planetary scientist
and humanist. He had noticed in 1971, when Mariner 1 was examining Mars, that the planet
was subject to global dust storms which markedly affected the atmospheric and surface
temperatures. Large amounts of dust in the upper atmosphere absorbed sunlight, heating the atmosphere but cooling the surface,
spreading ‘cold and darkness’ over the planet. He recognised that wholesale ground-bursts of nuclear
weapons and the incineration of hundreds of cities could produce sufficient dust and smoke
process and producing some 76.5 million tonnes of smoke. This was said to ‘follow statistically’ from the fact that
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to cause a similar effect on the Earth. Sagan even postulated the existence of some threshold
level— around 100 million tonnes of smoke—for production of ‘Nuclear Winter’. 7 I argued
vigorously with Sagan about the ‘Nuclear Winter’ hypothesis, both in lengthy correspondence and, in August-September 1985, when I was a
guest in the lovely house he and Ann Druyan had overlooking Ithaca in up-state New York. I
argued that, with more realistic
data about the operational characteristics of the respective US and Soviet force configurations
(such as bomber delivery profiles, impact footprints of MIRVed warheads) and more plausible exchange scenarios, it
was impossible to generate anywhere near the postulated levels of smoke. The
megatonnage expended on cities (economic/industrial targets) was more likely to be around 140-650
than over 1,000; the amount of smoke generated would have ranged from around 18 million
tonnes to perhaps 80 million tonnes. In the case of counter-force scenarios, most missile forces were (and still are) located
in either ploughed fields or tundra and, even where they are generally located in forested or grassed areas, very few of the actual missile silos
A target-by-target analysis of the actual locations of
the strategic nuclear forces in the United States and the Soviet Union showed that the actual
amount of smoke produced even by a 4,000 megaton counter-force scenario would range
from only 300 tonnes (if the exchange occurred in January) to 2,000 tonnes (for an exchange in July)—the worst
case being a factor of 40 smaller than that postulated by the ‘Nuclear Winter’
theorists. I thought that it was just as wrong to overestimate the possible consequences of nuclear war, and to raise the spectre of
are less than several kilometres from combustible material.
extermination of human life as a serious likelihood, as to underestimate them (e.g., by omitting fallout casualties).
Global warming is not an existential threat—adaptation solves
Lomborg 10—Bjorn Lomborg, Adjunct Professor at the Copenhagen Business School, Director of the Copenhagen
Consensus Centre, former director of the Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen, holds a Ph.D. in Political
Science from the University of Copenhagen, 11-17-2010 (“Cost-effective ways to address climate change,” Washington
Post,
November
17th,
Available
Online
at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2010/11/16/AR2010111604973.html)
Since 1930, excessive groundwater withdrawal has caused Tokyo to subside by as much as 15
feet. Similar subsidence has occurred over the past century in numerous cities, including Tianjin, Shanghai, Osaka, Bangkok and Jakarta.
And in each case, the city has managed to protect itself from such large relative sea-level rises
without much difficulty. The process is called adaptation, and it's something we humans are
very good at. That isn't surprising, since we've been doing it for millennia. As climate economist Richard Tol notes,
our ability to adapt to widely varying climates explains how people live happily at both the equator and the poles. In the debate over global
Humankind is not
completely at the mercy of nature. To the contrary, when it comes to dealing with the impact
of climate change, we've compiled a pretty impressive track record. While this doesn't mean we can afford
to ignore climate change, it provides a powerful reason not to panic about it either. There is no better
example of how human ingenuity can literally keep our heads above water than the
Netherlands. Although a fifth of their country lies below sea level - and fully half is less than three feet above
it - the Dutch maintain an enormously productive economy and enjoy one of the world's
highest standards of living. The secret is a centuries-old system of dikes, supplemented in recent decades by an elaborate
network of floodgates and other barriers. All this adaptation is not only effective but also amazingly
inexpensive. Keeping Holland protected from any future sea-level rises for the next century
will cost only about one-tenth of 1 percent of the country's gross domestic product. Coping with
warming, in which some have argued that civilization as we know it is at stake, this is an important point.
rising sea levels is hardly the only place where low-cost, high-impact adaptation strategies can make a huge difference. One of the most
pernicious impacts of global warming is the extent to which it exacerbates the phenomenon known as the urban "heat island effect" - the fact
that because they lack greenery and are chockablock with heat-absorbing black surfaces such as tar roofs and asphalt roads, urban areas tend
to be much warmer than the surrounding countryside. Ultimately, we're not going to solve any of these problems until we figure out a way to
stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But
in the meantime, there are simple adaptive measures
we can employ to cool down our cities: We can paint them. Hashem Akbari, a senior scientist at Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory who specializes in cost-effective methods of combating the effects of climate change in urban areas, has
shown that by painting roofs white, covering asphalt roadways with concrete-colored surfaces
and planting shade trees, local temperatures could be reduced by as much as 5 degrees
Fahrenheit. Akbari and colleagues reported in the journal Climatic Change last year that for every 100 square feet of black rooftop
converted to white surface, the effects of roughly one ton of carbon dioxide would be offset. Painting streets and rooftops
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white may sound impractical, if not silly, but it's a realistic strategy - which is to say, it's effective
and affordable. Indeed, for an initial expenditure of $1 billion, we could lighten enough Los
Angeles streets and rooftops to reduce temperatures in the L.A. Basin more than global warming
would increase them over the next 90 years. Obviously, whether it involves dikes or buckets of white paint,
adaptation is not a long-term solution to global warming. Rather, it will enable us to get by
while we figure out the best way to address the root causes of man-made climate change. This
may not seem like much, but at a time when fears of a supposedly imminent apocalypse threaten to swamp rational debate about climate
policy, it's worth noting that coping
with climate change is something we know how to do.
Nuclear war doesn’t cause extinction
Martin 84, physicist whose research interests include stratospheric modeling. He is a research associate in the Dept. of
Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Australian National University, and a member of SANA (Brian, May 16th,
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/84sana1.html)
By the 1950s, a large number of people
had come to believe that the killing of much or all of the world's
population would result from global nuclear war. This idea was promoted by the peace movement, among which the
idea of 'overkill' - in the sense that nuclear arsenals could kill everyone on earth several times over - became an article of faith. Yet in spite
of the widespread belief in nuclear extinction, there was almost no scientific support for such a possibility. The scenario of the
book and movie On the Beach,[2] with fallout clouds gradually enveloping the earth and wiping out all life, was and is
fiction. The scientific evidence is that fallout would only kill people who are immediately downwind of surface nuclear explosions and
who are heavily exposed during the first few days. Global fallout has no potential for causing massive immediate
death (though it could cause up to millions of cancers worldwide over many decades).[3] In spite of the lack of evidence, large sections of
the peace movement have left unaddressed the question of whether nuclear war inevitably means global extinction. The next effect to which
beliefs in nuclear extinction were attached was ozone depletion. Beginning in the mid-1970s,
scares about stratospheric ozone
developed, culminating in 1982 in the release of Jonathan Schell's book The Fate of the Earth.[4] Schell painted a picture of
human annihilation from nuclear war based almost entirely on effects from increased ultraviolet light at the earth's surface due to ozone
by the time the
book was published, the scientific basis for ozone-based nuclear extinction had almost
entirely evaporated. The ongoing switch by the military forces of the United States and the Soviet Union from multi-megatonne
reductions caused by nuclear explosions. Schell's book was greeted with adulation rarely observed in any field. Yet
nuclear weapons to larger numbers of smaller weapons means that the effect on ozone from even the largest nuclear war is unlikely to lead to
any major effect on human population levels, and extinction from ozone reductions is virtually out of the question. [3] The latest stimulus for
doomsday beliefs is 'nuclear winter': the blocking of sunlight from dust raised by nuclear explosions and smoke from fires ignited by
nuclear attacks. This would result in a few months of darkness and lowered temperatures, mainly in the northern mid-latitudes.[5] The
effects could be quite significant, perhaps causing the deaths of up to several hundred million more people than would die from the
immediate effects of blast, heat and radiation. But the evidence, so far,
seems to provide little basis for beliefs in
nuclear extinction. The impact of nuclear winter on populations nearer the equator, such as in India, does not seem likely to be
significant. The most serious possibilities would result from major ecological destruction, but this remains speculative
at present. As in the previous doomsday scenarios, antiwar scientists and peace movements have taken up
the crusading torch of extinction politics. Few doubts have been voiced about the evidence about nuclear winter or the
politics of promoting beliefs in nuclear extinction. Opponents of war, including scientists, have often exaggerated the
effects of nuclear war and emphasized worst cases. Schell continually bends evidence to give the
worst impression. For example, he implies that a nuclear attack is inevitably followed by a firestorm or conflagration. He invariably gives the
maximum time for people having to remain in shelters from fallout. And he takes a pessimistic view of the potential for ecological resilience
to radiation exposure and for human resourcefulness in a crisis. Similarly, in several of the scientific studies of nuclear winter, I have noticed
a strong tendency to focus on worst cases and to avoid examination of ways to overcome the effects. For example, no one seems to have
looked at possibilities for migration to coastal areas away from the freezing continental temperatures or looked at people changing their diets
Nuclear doomsdayism
political strategy and effectiveness of the peace
away from grain-fed beef to direct consumption of the grain, thereby greatly extending reserves of food.
should be of concern because of its effect on
the
movement. While beliefs in nuclear extinction may stimulate some people into antiwar action, it may discourage others by fostering
peace movement activities may be inhibited because they allegedly
threaten the delicate balance of state terror. The irony here is that there should be no need to exaggerate the effects of
resignation. Furthermore, some
nuclear war, since, even well short of extinction, the consequences would be sufficiently devastating to justify the greatest efforts against it.
The effect of extinction politics is apparent in responses to the concept of limited nuclear war. Antiwar activists, quite justifiably, have
attacked military planning and apologetics for limited nuclear war in which the effects are minimized in order to make them more
acceptable. But opposition to military planning often has led antiwar activists to refuse to acknowledge the possibility that nuclear war could
be 'limited' in the sense that less than total annihilation could result. A 'limited' nuclear war with 100 million deaths is certainly possible, but
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the peace movement has not seriously examined the political implications of such a war. Yet even the smallest of nuclear wars could have
enormous political consequences, for which the peace movement is totally unprepared.[6]
*** 2AC
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And empirics prove
Ferguson 6—Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover
Institution at Stanford University, (Niall, September/October 2006 “The next war of the world”, Foreign Affairs. V85. No
5, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61916/niall-ferguson/the-next-war-of-the-world)
Nor can economic crises explain the bloodshed.
What may be the most familiar causal chain in modern
historiography links the Great Depression to the rise of fascism and the outbreak of World War II. But that simple story leaves too much out.
Nazi Germany started the war in Europe only after its economy had recovered. Not all the
countries affected by the Great Depression were taken over by fascist regimes, nor did all such regimes
start wars of aggression. In fact, no general relationship between economics and conflict is discernible
for the century as a whole. Some wars came after periods of growth, others were the causes rather than the
consequences of economic catastrophe, and some severe economic crises were not followed by wars.
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1. Perm do both
3. The free market can’t and won’t solve space development—too long term
Hickman 99—Ph. D. Associate Professor of Government, Department of Government and International Relations at
Berry College [John Hickman, “The Political Economy of Very Large Space Projects,” Journal of Evolution and
Technology, Volume 4, November 1999, http://www.jetpress.org/volume4/space.pdf] **long time period=5 years
Attempting to persuade investors to risk enough capital to finance the construction of a very
large space development project would run up against the same capitalization problems now
faced by entrepreneurs seeking capital for ordinary space development projects such as launching
communication satellites. Investors and lenders seek to maximize economic returns from capital while avoiding risk. The cost of
capital is higher for riskier investments. Persuading investors and lenders to part with their
capital requires making credible promises that they will receive better returns than they
would have received from making alternative investments during the same time period
commensurate with risk. While investors often accept higher levels of risk than do lenders, they do so in the expectation of even
better returns. Ordinary space development projects confront not only the risks that their
businesses might not make money and that the technology might fail to work as projected,
but also that they might not attract enough investment because the necessary capital
investment is too “chunky.” In other words, the “up−front” capital investment necessary to proceed
with even an ordinary space development project tends to be relatively large and to take a
relatively long time period before generating cash flows or profits (Simonoff 1997: 73−74; U.S.
Department of Commerce 1990: 55−60; McLucas 1991). It is important for the subsequent discussion that the reader note that many
investors typically understand the phrase “long time period” to mean “5 years” (Marshall and Bansal 1992: 99−100).
If attracting capital for projects using proven technologies like communications satellites
remains difficult, imagine the difficulty of attracting sufficient capital to construct a mining
facility on the Moon or terraforming Mars or Venus. Such projects are extraordinarily “chunky” in that
they would require massive amounts of capital to be invested “up front” and would take long
or very long time periods before generating economic returns. The total amount of capital
available for investment in anything is finite and the private investors and lenders who
control most of it normally enjoy multiple investment opportunities. Investors and lenders are
typically reluctant to concentrate their risks on a single project. Investors and lenders are also
reluctant to lock up their capital in very long time investments or loans because this
increases their opportunity costs.
4. Free market can’t solve colonization—up-front costs are too large. Government is
key—empirics.
Hickman 99—Ph. D. Associate Professor of Government, Department of Government and International Relations at
Berry College [John Hickman, “The Political Economy of Very Large Space Projects,” Journal of Evolution and
Technology, Volume 4, November 1999, http://www.jetpress.org/volume4/space.pdf] **long time period=5 years
very large space development projects are probably too
unattractive as investments for private investors and lenders. For the current
generation of space development enthusiasts, indoctrinated in the principles of neo−classical
or free market economics popularized in the Reagan years, this is a very disquieting conclusion. Many exhibit
a fierce libertarianism. They share an ideological conviction that private enterprise and unfettered
markets are capable of overcoming almost any technological or economic obstacle.[4]
Government appears less as the driving force for space exploration than as the political and bureaucratic obstacle
to technological innovation and the commercial development of space. Given the disappointing
The lesson is that, ceteris paribus,
performance of NASA in the 1970's and 1980's, convictions such as these are hardly surprising (Kay 1995:161−171). Space development
enthusiasts watched as government funding for NASA programs declined steadily while important opportunities for commercial launch
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capability and space industrialization in near Earth space were lost. Yet the “lessons” drawn about from the disappointments of the 1970's
Government participation in the
economic development of space is essential. Why else would promoters combine
libertarian denunciations of the government’s role in space development with political
demands for indirect subsidies in the form of tax credits for space commerce and the
privatization of public assets in the form of the International Space Station (Lehrer 1999).
Complaints about the role of government in space development would be more convincing if
private sector efforts in space had produced comparable results. Government space programs
can point to records of successfully launching interplanetary probes and spacecraft with
human crews. Even after all the excuses have been made, the record of private sector
accomplishments in space is unimpressive. Of course, identifying space sector efforts as
“private” is somewhat problematic because many employ technology developed with
government funds, or employ castoff parts and borrowed facilities from government
programs, or anticipate that the government will be their primary buyer.
and 1980's are probably the wrong lessons for space development.
The fundamental problem in opening any contemporary frontier, whether geographic or technological, is
not lack of imagination or will, but lack of capital to finance initial construction which makes
the subsequent and typically more profitable economic development possible. Solving this
fundamental problem involves using one or more forms of direct or indirect government
intervention in the capital market.
When space development enthusiasts describe how permanent human communities might be
established in space, they often draw analogies to the European colonization of the Americas
and to the “winning” of the western frontiers of the United States and Canada, analogies which are often
given a very contemporary libertarian spin. Complex historical processes are offered up as examples of the triumph of
individualism and private enterprise.
The unspun truth about European colonization in the Americas, and in Asia and Africa, is that the
state played a central role in all colonial enterprises. European colonies often emerged out of trading ventures
organized as joint stock companies chartered by the colonizing state and in which the crown invested both its prestige and its capital.
Colonial territory was conquered and defended by soldiers and sailors paid either by the
colonizing state or the local colonial state. Plantations and mines were often directly owned by
the local colonial state. Trading monopolies and tax privileges granted by the colonizing state
to the local colonial state were used to attract capital investment. Indeed, conceptual distinctions between
public and private economic activity which seem so clear today were much less clear in the heyday of colonialism.
The unspun truth about the “winning” of the western frontiers of the United States and Canada make for even poorer libertarian dramas.
Notwithstanding all the hardy pioneers in their covered wagons, the
western frontier of the United States was really
“won” by the U.S. Army and the construction of the railroads which were capitalized by
enormous Federal land grants.[5] Similarly, the western frontier of Canada was “won” by cash grants, subsidies, loans, and
the guarantee of bond issues by the Canadian government to finance the construction of the railroads.
A better historical analogy for establishing permanent human communities in space is actually provided by one of the greatest civil
engineering project of this century−−the construction of the Panama Canal. As would be true with any very large space development project,
constructing the Panama Canal required that tough new engineering and science problems had to be overcome in an unforgiving
environment, a labor force had to be imported and supported, and sufficient capital had to be invested despite the fact that private investors
could not or would not provide the financing necessary to complete the task. After twenty years of failed efforts by private French firms to dig
a canal across the isthmus of Panama and the failure of a private American firm to dig a canal through Nicaragua, it was the United States
government that successfully completed the construction of the Panama Canal.[6] Financing by the United States government and
management by U.S. Army engineers succeeded where the private sector failed. Engineering problems more difficult than those which were
encountered in constructing the Suez Canal were solved, yellow fever and malaria were effectively controlled, a new sovereign nation−state
was created, and world commerce was facilitated.[7] Not bad for government work.
Very large space development projects should be understood as massive public
works projects constructed to provide the environmental and economic
requirements for permanent human settlement beyond Earth. If these new human
settlements are to attract and keep the kind of people needed, then they will have to be livable
communities. Making them livable will provide plenty of scope for private firms to profit from
the provision of goods and services. But private firms will not do the heavy lifting
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necessary to finance the construction of the very large space project within
which and around which such a livable community may grow.
6. Perm do the counterplan—have the private sector build the tech and the USFG own
the settlement. ‘Commercial’ doesn’t mean ‘private’ – ownership is the key variable.
OECD, 5 – Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (“Space 2030 Tackling Society’s Challenges
http://www.space-library.com/0505OECD_Space2030-2_2To1.pdf)
As the case studies in the third phase of the project demonstrated, one major difficulty at the conceptual level, when considering the status of
operating agencies, is that the definitions of some key terms such as “commercial” or “private” are often not clear, and may vary from
the term “commercial” may have meanings ranging from government
enterprise to private-sector activity.
country to country. For instance,
A government enterprise could be said to operate on a commercial basis if it generates most of its revenue from the sale of goods or services
to the general public. This applied, for instance, to a company like the automobile manufacturer Renault when it was wholly owned by the
French government and competed with private-sector firms. A government enterprise that sells goods and services to final consumers as a
public monopoly can also be said to operate on a commercial basis, although the profit motive may be missing. A government enterprise may
operate on a partially commercial basis if it derives part of its revenue from the sale of goods to the general public and receives at the same
time public funds to complete its budget.22
By contrast, privatisation implies the transfer of ownership of assets from the government to
a private company, which can address either a business and consumer market or a government market. In the former case, the
entrepreneur assumes the business risks of the activity. However, questions arise regarding the status of companies that operate under an
anchor tenancy contract or are the main or even the sole provider of critical products to governments. In such cases, the client may end up
bearing the risk, even if nominally it is supposed to be borne by the supplier.23
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2AC—Mars Prize CP
Mars Prize fails and links to politics.
Whittington 11 — Mark R. Whittington, 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, 2011 (“Newt Gingrich's
Space Policy -- Politically Dubious, Practically Unworkable,” Yahoo! News, November 12th, Available Online at
http://news.yahoo.com/newt-gingrichs-space-policy-politically-dubious-practically-unworkable-221100532.html,
Accessed 04-28-2012)
Would a moon and/or Mars prize work?
it would not, for a couple of reasons. First, someone, probably Congress, would have to put up the
prize money. That would be $20 billion for the Mars Prize and some lesser number-perhaps $5 billion-for the
moon prize. Just a few moments of thought would lead to the realization of how unlikely
Congress would appropriate that amount of money all at once for a space prize competition. It
has starved the Centennial Challenges, NASA's space technology competitions, since they started.
The Centennial Challenges cost is in the millions, not billions. Second, private companies
would still be faced with the prospect of raising funds in the private market, a dubious
prospect at best even with a government financed purse in the offing.
Likely
Links to dip cap—asks for intl funds for space
No solvency—won’t generate enough revenue:
A. It’s too risky for companies to invest—in the context of the counterplan.
Fox News 11 — Fox News, 2011 (“Advertising Could Pay for a Mission to Mars, Scientist Says,” Byline Alec Liu and
Jeremy A. Kaplan, January 17th, Available Online at http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/01/17/advertising-paymission-mars-scientist-says/?test=faces, Accessed 04-28-2012)
Welcome to the manned mission to Mars -- brought to you with limited interruptions by Bud Light.
It's not so crazy, actually: One of the biggest obstacle to a potential space mission is finding the almost $150 billion dollars needed to develop
the program. And tagging a future spaceship with the word “Drinkability” may seem ridiculous, but it's exactly what Rhawn Joseph has
proposed in the latest issue of the Journal of Cosmology.
“With clever marketing and advertising and the subsequent increase in public interest, between $30 billion to $90 billion can be raised
through corporate sponsorships, and an additional $1 billion a year through individual sponsorships,” wrote Joseph, a scientist with the
Brain Research Laboratory in California.
Just as Tang became associated in the public's eye with space travel in the 70s and 80s, Joseph
suggests selling the naming
rights to Mars landing craft, the Mars Colony, the spaceship itself and more. Television broadcasting rights alone would
bring in $30 billion, and that doesn't include the sale of real estate and mineral rights on Mars.
“Other than paying for one of the greatest achievements of all time and the technological revolution that would result, is it worth $145 billion
in expenditures, over a 10-year period, to conquer an entire planet and to lay claim to the vast wealth which may lay beneath the surface?” he
wonders rhetorically.
the dozen or so companies
were hesitant to speculate about their potential involvement.
Two straight years of intense worldwide scrutiny seems like the opportunity of a lifetime, yet
FoxNews.com contacted
Greyhound spokesman admitted that the company would consider the idea if it were mutually beneficial
when the time comes -- but for now, it's simply too early to say. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel echoed these
sentiments, noting that the "biggest and most important challenge is serving our customers here on Earth."
A
Microsoft had no comment, and other companies such as Amtrak, Facebook, Google, Apple,
Verizon Wireless, and Tesla Motors either declined to commit or did not immediately
respond. But there's a big difference between naming Wrigley Field and branding a
spaceship, explained Brian Collins, the former chief creative officer of the branding division within Ogilvy & Mather and now the
creative director and designer of private firm Collins. What happens if something goes wrong?
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aren’t harnessing baseball players to explosives to send them to another planet,” he joked.
The risk is serious, though, Collins notes, and a possible reason for hesitation among
businesses. Sure, the connection to space travel has positive connotations, but it's also a
risk.
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China crisis thumps the disad.
News Tribune 4/30 — The News Tribune, 2012 (“U.S. sends diplomat to China to quell crisis,” Byline Steven Lee
Myers and Jane Perlez, April 30th, Available Online at http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/04/30/2125701/us-sendsdiplomat-to-china-to.html, Accessed 04-30-2012)
The Obama administration scrambled Sunday to contain a burgeoning diplomatic crisis
between the United States and China, dispatching a senior diplomat to Beijing to discuss the fate of a
blind dissident who fled house arrest last week.
Amid intense secrecy, including a nearly blanket refusal to comment, the administration sought to negotiate over the safety of the dissident,
Chen Guangcheng, who is apparently in U.S. hands in Beijing – though it remained unclear late Sunday whether he was in the embassy, in a
diplomatic residence or somewhere else.
an assistant secretary of state, arrived in Beijing on Sunday to meet with Chinese officials
concerning Chen’s case, and to try to keep the matter from undermining the administration’s long
effort to improve economic and security relations with China, senior officials and diplomats in Washington
Kurt M. Campbell,
and Beijing said.
A senior American official said that China’s leadership met Sunday to work out their response to Chen’s escape before scheduled meetings
this week with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. Clinton is scheduled to leave
Washington for China tonight, assuming the trip proceeds.
“They’re trying to figure out what they’re going to tell Hillary Clinton,” the official said of the Chinese leaders, speaking on condition of
anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivity surrounding the case. “We’d like to know as much as we can before she leaves.”
The administration’s effort to contain the crisis underscored the fraught political challenge
facing President Barack Obama, at home and abroad.
“This is the greatest test in bilateral relations in years, probably going back to ’89,” said Christopher
K. Johnson, until recently a senior China analyst at the CIA, referring to the year of the brutal crackdown on student protests in Tiananmen
Square.
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Their evidence is worthless—quotes from Israeli officials are meaningless.
Walt 12 — Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Rene Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard University, 2012
(“Israel's not going to attack Iran – yet,” Stephen Walt’s Foreign Policy Blog, January 30th, Available Online at
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/30/Israel%27s_not_going_to_attack_Iran_yet, Accessed 04-24-2012)
Having written a fair bit about the pros and cons (mostly the latter) of a war with Iran, I feel compelled to offer a brief comment on Ronan
Bergman's alarmist article in yesterday's New York Times Magazine. I say this even though I think the article was
essentially worthless. It's a vivid and readable piece of reportage, but it doesn't provide readers with new
or interesting information and it tells you almost nothing about the likelihood of an Israeli
strike on Iran.
the article is essentially a reprise of Jeffrey Goldberg's September 2010 Atlantic Monthly article
The research method is identical: a reporter interviews a lot of big-shots in the
Israeli security establishment, writes down what they say, and concludes that that Israel is
very likely to attack. Bergman doesn't present new evidence or arguments, pro or con;
it's just an updated version of the same old story.
First off,
on the same subject.
the central flaw in this approach is that there is no way of knowing if the testimony
of these various officials reflects their true beliefs or not. There are lots of obvious reasons
why Israeli officials might want to exaggerate their willingness to use force against Iran, and this
simple fact makes it unwise to take their testimony at face value. Maybe they really mean what
Second,
they say. Or maybe they just want to keep Tehran off-balance Maybe they want to distract everyone from their continued expansion of West
Bank settlements and other brutalities against Palestinians. Maybe they want to encourage Europe to support tougher economic sanctions
against Iran, and they know that occasional saber-rattling helps makes sanctions look like an attractive alternative. Maybe it's several of
these things at once, depending on who's talking. Who knows?
By the way, I'm not accusing the officials that Bergman interviewed of doing anything wrong. I don't expect top officials of any country to tell
the truth all the time, and I'm neither surprised nor upset when foreign officials try to manipulate fears of war in order to advance what they
it is impossible to tell if they mean what they are saying or
not, which is why an article based on interviews of this kind just isn't very informative.
They might be telling the truth, or they might be lying, and nobody knows for sure.
see as their interests. My point is that
Neither Israel nor the U.S. will attack Iran—their evidence is wrong.
Karon 11 — Tony Karon, Senior Editor and World Affairs Commentator at Time.com, holds a degree in Economic
History from the University of Cape Town, 2011 (“A moratorium for military action but not for settlements,” The National,
January 3rd, Available Online at http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/news-comment/a-moratorium-formilitary-action-but-not-for-settlements?pageCount=0, Accessed 01-03-2011)
Republicans in Congress berate the US president Barack Obama for failing to respond adequately to this "crisis". Those in the US military
the
recent news that Iran's nuclear programme is not the immediate peril that some suggest
comes from an impeccably hawkish source: Israel's deputy prime minister, the former general Moshe
and intelligence establishments who push back with a more realistic picture of Iran's capabilities are often painted as appeasers. But
Yaalon, who advocates military action to stop Iran getting hold of the bomb. Iran had encountered difficulties in its nuclear efforts, Mr
Yaalon told Israeli radio last week, and would not pass any point of no return for the next three years, adding, "Iran does not currently have
the ability to make a nuclear bomb on its own".
Contrast that with the suggestion in a widely-read article by pro-Israel commentator Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic
Monthly last spring - based on interviews with some 50 top Israeli officials - that Israel would bomb Iran before the
coming summer if the Obama administration had failed to force Tehran to abandon its nuclear programme by the end of 2010.
That deadline has passed with no change in Iran's posture, but here is one of Israel's most
senior security officials publicly extending the "deadline" by another three years.
The conspiracy-minded may be tempted to see Mr Yaalon's remarks as a rope-a-dope trick to lull the Iranians into a false sense of
complacency over Israel's intentions so as to give it an edge of surprise in the coming air raid. Then again, there's always been a certain
elasticity in the deadlines Israel has cited over Iran's nuclear programme. A US diplomatic cable in 2005 released by WikiLeaks quoted an
Israeli government official as warning US officials to take Israeli time-lines on Iranian capabilities with a pinch of salt. The cable quotes a
senior Israeli foreign ministry official as noting wryly that his government, in 1993, had "predicted that Iran would possess an atomic bomb
by 1998 at the latest".
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A second cable covering a 2009 meeting in which an Israeli general warns that Iran will be able to build its first weapon by 2012, a US official
observes: "It is unclear if the Israelis firmly believe this or are using worst-case estimates to raise greater urgency from the United States."
The assessments offered by Israeli leaders to American officials over the past two decades have certainly been heavy on unfounded alarmism.
"The best estimates at this time place Iran between three and five years away from possessing the prerequisites required for the independent
production of nuclear weapons," the current Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote in 1995. Nor was such scare-mongering
confined to his Likud party. Ehud Barak, leader of the Labour party and then foreign minister, warned members of the UN Security Council
in February 1996 that Iran would have nuclear weapons within eight years. The then prime minister Shimon Peres in April 1996 put the
timeline at just four years.
And when those deadlines were passed with no sign of Iranian nukes, Israeli leaders simply updated their time-lines. In February 2009, Mr
Netanyahu told a US Congressional delegation that Iran is "one to two years away" from nuclear weapons capability; in June of the same
year Mr Barak told US legislators that the world had "between 6 and 18 months" to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
And so, as 2011 dawns with no sign of an Iranian nuclear arsenal, Mr Yaalon steps forward to extend the deadline and concede that Iran will
not be able to build nuclear weapons for at least another three years. What has prompted this sudden outburst of sobriety?
Americans have often heard the message that Israel will be forced to plunge the Middle East into a disastrous war if the US doesn't force Iran
to heel. Americans are routinely told that Israel sees Iran as a reincarnation of Nazi Germany, seeking the means to annihilate the Jewish
state. But that message carries great risks for Israel's own leaders.
Washington remains unlikely to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran over its nuclear
programme. The US defence secretary Robert Gates has long argued that the potentially catastrophic
risks of such action outweigh the gains, which are temporary at best. Therein lies the problem: Israel's voters have been
told, to quote Mr Netanyahu in 2006, that "it's 1938 and Iran is Germany". So they'll expect their leaders to act if Washington doesn't. After
all, the very idea of Israel is that Jews can't depend on others to save them from annihilation, so if its citizens believe that Iran is a
reincarnation of Auschwitz, they will demand action.
Alarmist Israeli rhetoric may be designed to press Washington, but it potentially paints Israel's own leaders into a corner. They, too, know
that Iran is not the threat painted in the more apocalyptic rhetoric. A little over a year ago, Mr Barak said publicly that "Iran does not
constitute an existential threat against Israel," adding that "Israel is strong, I don't see anyone who could pose an existential threat."
Then again, Mr Barak had made clear to Goldberg that he believed that the greatest danger was that alarm at the idea of an Iranian nuclear
weapon would prompt Israel's best and brightest to emigrate. If Israeli voters believe, as Goldberg suggests, that a "point of no return" was
passed with the New Year and there are no air strikes in the spring, they may begin to doubt their government's ability to protect them.
But now some
in the Israeli leadership are resetting the clock. While Mr Obama failed to convince the Israelis
may be signing up, unprompted, to a moratorium
on bombing Iran for the next three years.
to extend their moratorium on settlement construction, they
No Israeli attack.
CSM 4/2 — Christian Science Monitor, 2012 (“Why Israel is even less likely to strike Iran now,” Byline Dan Murphy,
April 2nd, Available Online at http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print/489042, Accessed 04-242012)
All the recent data points in the "will they, won't they" speculation about an Israeli strike on Iran point to
this: The already slim odds have gotten slimmer.
Sure, a long piece in Foreign Policy this month, sourced entirely to unnamed US officials, makes the case that Israel has extensive influence
in Azerbaijan, which could make a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran easier.
But that story appears to be but one salvo in a broader Obama administration strategy to signal through the press that it doesn't want Israel
to strike Iran's nuclear program, even as it seeks to assure Israel that it is committed to its defense.
At every turn, the US has hemmed Israel in (probably the reason so many "anonymous" officials fed the Azerbaijan
story to FP). They have made it clear that they will truly be on their own if they attack unilaterally
(read: You won't force us into a war of your own choosing).
John Bolton, the hawkish former US ambassador to the UN, characterized the story as an intentional Obama effort to undermine Israel.
"Clearly, this is an administration-orchestrated leak.... it's just unprecedented to reveal this kind of information about one of your own
allies,” he told Fox.
Mr. Bolton is wrong about the "unprecedented" part; the US has frequently acted to hem in close allies, like Britain or France, when it
deemed their military activities a threat to its interests, as the Eisenhower administration did against the joint Israeli-French-British
invasion of Egypt during the Suez Crisis in 1956.
But he's certainly right that the Obama administration is worried about the damage to US interests that could be done by a solo Israeli attack
on Iran.
In that context, it's hard not to see the Foreign Policy piece as anything other than an Obama administration attempt to stave off an Israeli
attack through highlighting growing Israeli ties with the country. (Israel has certainly been seeking warm relations with Azerbaijan; in
February, Israel said it had signed a $1.6 billion deal to provide drones and missile defense systems to the country.)
No carte blanche for Israel in Azerbaijan
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The piece didn't say that Israel has been given bases of its own in Azerbaijan, or that it has been given carte blanche to use Azeri bases when
it sees fit. The piece's central claim is that "four senior diplomats and military intelligence officers say that the United States has concluded
that Israel has recently been granted access to airbases on Iran's northern border. To do what, exactly, is not clear."
The FP story led to immediate denials from Azeri officials. An Azeri defense spokesmen told a press conference on Friday that Israel will not
be allowed to use the country's territory to attack Iran and said that unspecified press reports were designed to increase tensions between
Iran and Azerbaijan.
That makes sense. While Iran's conventional military is puny compared to the US military, it dwarfs Azerbaijan's. Iran is a major trading
partner for the country, and has a variety of means at its disposal to make life difficult for its northern neighbor in retaliation for an attack.
The story generated plenty of heavy breathing in the press. The Sydney Morning Herald says: "Unlikely alliance between Israel and
Azerbaijan raises heat over Iran." Haaretz writes: "Azerbaijan granted Israel access to air bases on Iran border." A headline in this paper asks
"Did US just torpedo Israeli deal for a base in Azerbaijan?"
Another leak
The FP story is far from the first emanating from unnamed US officials that appear designed to push Israel farther away from war. On March
19, The New York Times reported that the US military had just finished a secret war game to test the repercussions of an Israeli attack, and
concluded that the chances were high that the US would end up drawn into a broader regional war that would leave hundreds of Americans
dead.
"The results of the war game were particularly troubling to Gen. James N. Mattis, who commands all American forces in the Middle East,
Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, according to officials who either participated in the Central Command exercise or who were briefed on the
results," the Times wrote. "When the exercise had concluded earlier this month, according to the officials, General Mattis told aides that an
Israeli first strike would be likely to have dire consequences across the region and for United States forces there."
The message was clear: The
US is highly unlikely to support an Israeli strike.
Amir Oren, writing in Haaretz, concludes that that war-game, coupled with renewed American promises to fund Israel's Iron Dome missile
defense system (mostly deployed with great success against the unsophisticated rockets fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip), guarantees that
Israel won't attack Iran until the spring of next year, at the earliest.
"Israelis
may be the world champions of chutzpah, but even biting the hand that feeds you has
its limits when the bitten hand is liable to hit back ," he writes. "When [Israeli Defense Minister
Ehud] Barak thanked the Obama administration 'for helping strengthen Israel's security,' he was
abandoning the pretension to act against Iran without permission before the US
presidential elections in November."
The US spent $204 million on Israel's Iron Dome system in fiscal year 2011, and last week the Pentagon indicated that more money should
be provided in the current budget year, a plan that has bipartisan support in Congress. The Pentagon says the system successfully shot down
80 percent of rockets recently fired from Gaza. The continued US commitment to Israel's defense can be seen as the carrot in this scenario.
Why the US is worried about an Israeli strike
Gary Sick, who coordinated the White House response to the Iran hostage crisis in 1979-80 and who served on the National Security
Councils of presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan, made the case for why the US is worried about unilateral Israeli action in an opinion piece
Friday. He says it could lead to the collapse of the sanctions regime that President Bush and President Obama have constructed against Iran,
and leave the US on the hook for the aggression in the eyes of much of the world.
Whether the US gave the green light or not, "for Iran and just about everyone else, the fact that most of the Israeli aircraft and bombs were
made in the US would be all they needed to know," Sick writes. "On that first morning, the UN Security Council would convene in emergency
session to consider a resolution denouncing the Israeli raid. If the United States vetoed the resolution, that would remove any lingering
doubt of U.S. complicity.
"Perhaps more significant, however, would be European support of the resolution. This would signal the beginning of the collapse of the
sanctions coalition against Iran that had been so laboriously assembled over the past several years. Both the Europeans and the Americans
had operated on the tacit belief that crippling sanctions were an alternative to war. With the outbreak of war, that assumption would no
longer be valid."
Everything is tea-leaf reading at the moment. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many on the country's
right insist that Iran is a major threat to the Jewish state's existence, and fear can push people to do surprising things. But the leaves
are almost overwhelmingly telling us no war soon.
Woodward Academy
2011-2012
AT: Student Loans
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File Title
Obama will veto.
U.S. Election News 4/28 — U.S. Election News, 2012 (“White House Say Obama Will Veto Student loan Bill by
Republicans,” Byline Alexandra Taylor, April 28th, Available Online at http://uselectionnews.org/polls-2012-white-housesay-obama-will-veto-student-loan-bill-by-republicans/858321/, Accessed 04-28-2012)
The fierce political battle on the student loans is not over yet. The White House has on Friday
threatened to veto a bill to prevent the interest rates from doubling from July 1 on a special kind of
student loan as the bill proposed by the Republicans pays for it by cutting funds from the health
care bill proposed by Obama.
Their PC key evidence is out of context and about immigration and tax increases.
The disad is not an opportunity cost to the plan – a rational policy maker controls both
impacts
No link—a human mission can be done in NASA’s human spaceflight budget.
Zubrin 11 [July 1, 2011, Ira Flatow interview with Robert Zubrin, “Is Settling Mars Inevitable, Or An Impossibility?”
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/01/137555244/is-settling-mars-inevitable-or-an-impossibility]
I think we could do a humans to Mars program within NASA's existing budget.
NASA's currently getting 19 billion a year. That is the same amount, in inflation-adjusted dollars, as
NASA's average budget was from '61 to '73, when we flew astronauts to the moon starting
from zero space capability at the beginning of the program.
ZUBRIN:
we simply have to spend NASA's budget better. I think the Obama administration, in, you know,
canceling Bush's moon push without replacing it with anything and just doing a disorganized
set of random programs, have done NASA an extreme disservice.
I think
They're going to be spending three billion a year refurbishing the shuttle launch pads after the
shuttle stops flying. That's pointless. They're going to be spending billions on researching
orbital propellant depots to refuel interplanetary spacecraft that don't exist.
They're going to be spending billions researching a new electric thruster that's no better than
the ones we already have while not developing the power source needed to drive either.
The way NASA can accomplish things, if it's given focus, it has
enough money.
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2011-2012
AT: Loans Solve Economy
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File Title
Loans don’t solve the economy
CSM 4/24 — Christian Science Monitor, 2012 (“Student debt: How big a risk does it pose to the economy?,” Byline
Mark Trumbull, April 24th, Available Online at http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print/500136,
Accessed 04-28-2012)
Surging student-loan debt has become a burden on the US economy – and President Obama is warning of a "tremendous blow" that could
occur for millions of students in the form of an interest-rate hike in July.
So how big is this issue? Does student debt represent a brewing crisis?
Student loans pose a significant financial challenge for America, some economists say, but in a way that's different from the big buildup in
mortgage debt that ended in a housing bust and deep recession.
"It's
not a bubble that will burst," says Chris Christopher, an economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Mass. "People
still need to go to college.... The [financial] returns of education are still very vast."
Yet the debts resulting from college are a high and rising burden that now totals more than $1 trillion, by one official estimate. For a
graduate, the burden can be like paying a second rent check each month. And the job market is still in poor shape, meaning that many grads
face the loan payments while unemployed or underemployed.
The result is additional weakness in the economy. "People are delaying marriage," postponing having children, and taking a pass on home
purchases, Mr. Christopher says. "They're living with their parents. They're not spending as much as they otherwise would have."
The problem is big enough that it's putting pressure on the US government – the nation's major provider of college loans and financial aid –
to provide some sort of relief.
In an appearance at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill on Tuesday, Mr. Obama proposed that one major step should be to keep
interest rates on federal college loans from jumping on July 1, when a government-orchestrated discount is set to expire.
More than 7.4 million students would see their interest rate on federally subsidized loans double if Congress fails to act, the White House
says, with the rate climbing from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent.
"Stopping this from happening should be a no-brainer," Obama said. "The Stafford loans we're talking about, they're named after a
Republican senator.... This shouldn't be a partisan issue."
Mitt Romney, the expected Republican presidential nominee, said he also supports preventing the July interest-rate boost, but so far it is
unclear how Republicans in Congress will address the issue.
Although the problem is large, the $1 trillion in student loans is only about one-tenth the
scale of America's home mortgage debts. And fewer than 10 percent of recent graduates are
defaulting on their federal loans, finance experts say. That means this isn't the kind of issue that's
likely to cause a new recession or cause a fiscal crisis for the federal government.
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2011-2012
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AT: CCrew
Commercial crew—is being cut
Clark
4/23 (Stephen, Spaceflight Now, “Congress wary
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1204/24commercialcrew/)
of
fully
funding
commercial
crew”,
Senate and House budget bills would cut up to 40 percent from NASA's requested budget to pay
for new commercial spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station and end U.S. reliance on Russia for crew
transportation. The Senate's appropriations subcommittee for NASA marked up a spending plan
with $525 million allocated for commercial crew. The House's budget calls for the program to
receive $500 million in fiscal year 2013, which begins Oct. 1.
Dev more tech solves
Space X vehicles solve.
USA Today 4/26 (“SpaceX’s mission: Pick up where NASA left off”, http://tucsoncitizen.com/usa-todaynews/2012/04/26/spacexs-mission-pick-up-where-nasa-left-off/)
SpaceX had yet to launch a rocket successfully. Today, the company is on the verge of a historic
attempt to send the first private spacecraft to the International Space Station. SpaceX founder Elon
Musk’s goals to dramatically lower launch costs and eventually send people to Mars remain
ambitious for a company that has reached orbit only four times — the last time nearly 17 months ago. But many believe a
successful launch from Cape Canaveral, targeted now for May 7, and docking at the ISS would
represent a paradigm shift in spaceflight operations and validate Musk’s conviction
that a small, entrepreneurial company could upset the status quo. “They’re coming in and
saying we can do this better, we can do this cheaper, and we’re going to make a go
of it,” said Jim Muncy, a space-policy analyst whose clients include SpaceX. “It is absolutely the quintessential American business story.”
Less than four years ago,
Riding on Musk’s vision Musk’s wealth, vision and partnership with NASA have propelled SpaceX’s rise, from its birth in 2003 through a
series of failed launches. He started the company after making millions from the 2002 sale of the Internet payment service PayPal, which he
co-founded. Interested in flying a science experiment to Mars, Musk explored buying U.S. and Russian rockets but was shocked at the
prices. “If
you look at the space industry, the one constant over the last 50 years is the cost of
launch — it hasn’t changed,” said Chris Quilty, an equity analyst at Raymond James in St. Petersburg, Fla., citing a cost of
about $10,000 to launch 1 kilogram to orbit. Musk, 31 at the time, decided he could do better, and committed
$100 million of his fortune to the cause. Starting from scratch, Musk sought to mass-produce rockets
using more modern technology and relatively simple, modular designs. The company’s small Falcon 1
rocket would test the liquid-fueled engines that would power both stages of a larger Falcon 9 rocket. Several Falcon 9 boosters could be
grouped to create a heavy-lift rocket.
“It
was a fresh, new, bold approach to a traditional, archaic
aerospace industry,” said Space Florida President Frank DiBello, who then led a space venture capital firm.
Visitors to SpaceX’s
Hawthorne, Calif., headquarters in a former Boeing 747 fuselage factory see Silicon Valley culture being applied to spaceflight. Musk
occupies a cubicle on the factory floor. Vehicle designers and builders work side by side, in a structure less hierarchical than at traditional
aerospace contractors like the Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. And the company’s workforce is noted for the large number of 20somethings in its engineering corps. There’s no bigger difference than Musk himself, whose business track record and outsize personality
lend the company a swagger unusual in the industry. In addition to being CEO, he takes pride in being “chief designer” of SpaceX’s vehicles,
Musk credits
NASA with helping SpaceX get where it is today. The space agency in 2006 selected SpaceX as
one of two partners to develop commercial cargo resupply services to the station and has paid
SpaceX $381 million to date to advance its cargo capability, with another $15 million due if this
month’s planned flight is a success. At the end of 2008, not long after SpaceX’s first successful Falcon 1 launch, NASA
awarded the company a $1.6 billion contract to haul cargo to the space station, providing the relatively
new company an anchor customer for years. A successful Dragon visit to the space
station would set the stage for SpaceX to start executing its $1.6 billion resupply
contract. But many challenges remain for the company to achieve its longer-term ambitions. SpaceX’s ability to
sustain lower costs depends on a high volume of launches that may not materialize.
which he says is no vanity title. “There’s nobody that knows more about the rocket than I do,” he said. Credit to NASA
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Quarantines solve disease – Empirically proven
Altman, et. al. 5 [Lawrence, reporter for The New York Times, Jeff Bailey, reporter for the New York Times in
Chicago, "CDC Proposes New RUles in Effort to Prevent Disease Outbreak", section A; column 1, National Desk, p. 22
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9802E7DF1631F930A15752C1A9639C8B63]
Federal officials yesterday proposed the first significant changes in quarantine rules in 25 years in an effort to broaden the definition of
reportable illnesses, to centralize their reporting to the federal government and to require the airline and shipping industries to keep
people subjected to
quarantines to allow for administrative due process and give health officials explicit authority
to offer vaccination, drugs and other appropriate means of prevention on a voluntary basis to
those in quarantine. The proposals could cost the beleaguered airline industry hundreds of millions of dollars, officials of the
passenger manifests electronically for 60 days. The proposals would also clarify the appeals process for
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The officials are inviting public comment on the proposals, which are to be published in the
Federal Register on Nov. 30, they told reporters in a telephone news conference. The proposals are part of a broader Bush administration
to improve the response to current and potential communicable disease threats that may
arise anywhere in the world. If adopted, the new regulations ''will allow the C.D.C. to move more swiftly'' when it needs to
plan
control outbreaks, said Dr. Martin Cetron, who directs the agency's division of global migration and quarantine. The outbreak of severe acute
respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 underscored how fast a disease could spread through the world and the need to modernize and
strengthen quarantine measures by pointing out gaps in health workers' ability to respond quickly and effectively, Dr. Cetron said. As the
C.D.C. joined with cooperative airlines to meet flights and later collect information about passengers who had contact with others who
developed SARS, the epidemiologists had to compile and process by hand data collected from flight manifests, customs declarations and
other sources. But manifests contained only the name and seat number; customs declarations were illegible, and when readable, the names
did not match those on the manifests. 'The time required to track passengers was routinely longer than the incubation period,'' which was
two to 10 days for SARS, Dr. Cetron said. ''That was really quite shocking,'' Dr. Cetron said. One proposed change would require airline and
ship manifests to be kept electronically for 60 days and made available to the C.D.C. within 12 hours when ill passengers arrive on
international and domestic flights. The proposed changes include provisions for maintaining confidentiality and privacy of health
The outbreak of SARS was stopped in part because of quarantines imposed in some
affected countries. Quarantine restricts the movement of a healthy person exposed to
someone who has a communicable disease. The quarantine period is determined by the usual
length of time that passes from exposure to an infectious agent to the onset of illness. An
executive order of the president limits quarantine to nine diseases: cholera, diphtheria, infectious
tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola, SARS and influenza caused by new strains that could
cause a pandemic.
information.
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2011-2012
2AC—AT: Fear Critique
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3. Turn—fear representations are key to motivate colonization—we have to replace an
unconscious fear of space with a conscious fear of staying on the planet
Engdahl 6—Lifeboat Foundation Scientific Advisory Board member, degree from the University of California at Santa
Barbara, graduate studies at Portland State University [October, 2006, Sylvia Engdahl, “Achieving Human Commitment
to Space Colonization: Is Fear the Answer?” http://lifeboat.com/ex/fear.and.space]
I have come to believe that people are never going to support a sufficient space
effort for positive reasons, or even to prevent a distant prospect of extinction. We wouldn’t have gotten to the
moon without the immediate fear of the Soviets, and we haven’t gotten far since without fear
as a motive. Over the past thirty-five years I have watched one space advocacy organization
after another fail to gain significant public support despite great enthusiasm on the part of its
founders and activists. There have been dozens of them, and for the most part their efforts, like my own, have proved
to be mere “preaching to the converted.” They have won few if any new converts from among the apathetic majority.
Recently, however,
the Lifeboat Foundation has the answer. It is not a “space advocacy” organization despite its
advocacy of self-sufficient colonies. It focuses on threats of extinction and on multiple ways of combating
them, thus appealing to a far wider assortment of people than space enthusiasts. Its
emphasis is on potential near-term threats. Many of its supporters believe in the imminent coming of the Singularity,
And so I think perhaps
which personally I do not because I don’t believe machine intelligence will surpass the as-yet-incomprehensible powers of the human mind.
differences of opinion
insurance purposes.
But
on this issue
don’t affect the need to establish ourselves off-world for
fear may be the only impetus strong enough to produce
public support for a large-scale space effort. I have long suspected that it is fear, rather than apathy,
that has been holding the majority back — not conscious fear, but the stirring of an
unconscious recognition that the universe is very much vaster, and more scary, than most
people like to think. Pascal’s famous statement, “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me,” is the earliest formal
There is another reason why I’m convinced that
expression of a human reaction that is widespread, though seldom acknowledged. But in Pascal’s time and long after, humans were insulated
from the universe by a gulf assumed by most to be unbridgeable. Space was an abstraction, a topic studied by astronomers that was in no
With Apollo 8’s voyage to the moon in 1968, the public was suddenly
jolted into awareness that our access to space is real.
way connected to people’s lives.
Much is said about the positive effect of the photos of Earth obtained by Apollo 8, which for the first time showed our planet as a globe, a
fragile refuge amid barren surroundings, and thereby launched the environmental movement. The concomitant negative impact — spread of
gut-level knowledge that space is an actual place containing little that’s familiar to us and perhaps much that we’d rather not meet — is not
spoken of. But it may be no less significant.
Could this be one of the reasons why interest in space died so soon after the first moon
landing, resulting in the cancellation of the last few planned Apollo missions? Is it the cause
of the rise of belief in UFO contacts, and could the experience of being abducted by aliens
(which in most cases is neither faked nor a manifestation of mental illness, but a perception that emerges in a form indistinguishable from
be an unconsciously-formed metaphor for the unknown terrors that may await us in
space? Is the decline of positive space imagery in science fiction movies and corresponding
rise of fantasy and disaster films a sign that space is less appealing to the public, and
nameless evils are more frightening, when the universe is open to humans than it was when it could be classed with the
memory)
never-never land?
it is. This would explain much that has been puzzling to space enthusiasts, who have long sought an answer to what
Expansion into the new ecological niche
of space is clearly a new stage of human evolution, yet after brief acknowledgement at the
time of the first moon landings, our society as a whole has been blind to this … or perhaps not. Perhaps
Very probably,
happened to the vision that offered such promise and evaporated so suddenly.
underneath people know it all too well.
Even space advocates often feel no urgency about bringing off-world settlements into
existence; they dream of them as symbols of a hopeful future, but like almost everyone else, they may be
reluctant to take the plunge. Only a small minority of adventurers really enjoy the thought of being on the cutting edge of a major step in
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human evolution, for who knows where that may lead? At the time of Columbus, many thought venturesome ships would fall off the edge of
the world, a prospect they viewed with great dismay; others (according to legend), knowing the world extended beyond their maps, marked
the edges with the warning “Here Be Dragons”. Figuratively speaking, most people of our time may feel the same way about space
exploration.
the only way to overcome unconscious fear may be to replace it with
conscious fear — fear not of the “dragons” whose nature we cannot imagine, but of the disastrous
scenarios we can imagine all too clearly. Paradoxically, fear may be the answer both to why
we haven’t progressed in space and how we can motivate a push outward. For the
danger we face is real. One way or another, whether or not terrorists employ dangerous
technologies or asteroids strike Earth, to remain confined to our home forever would
mean our extinction. And we don’t have forever to make up our minds about it; as has often been
pointed out, we have only a narrow window of opportunity in which the resources for getting
started will remain available.
If this is true, then
if the public must be motivated by fear to bring about commitment to
space colonization, then so be it. Even in the conclusion of The Far Side of Evil, written at the height of my optimism
about Apollo, I acknowledged that fear can be the saving grace that leads a world to develop space
technology. And after all, as David Tamm has said in his master’s thesis on the potential benefits of space development by European
nations, “Luckily, preparing for the worst actually carries the great good fortune of being the best
means of furthering our common humanity.”
Therefore,
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2011-2012
AT: You Ignore Current Problems
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File Title
Emphasizing existential risks doesn’t mean ignoring current problems—their argument
is a reduction ad absurdum.
Matheny 7—Research Associate at the Future of Human Institute at Oxford University, Ph.D. Candidate in Applied
Economics at Johns Hopkins University, holds a Master’s in Public Health from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at
Johns Hopkins University and an M.B.A. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University [2007, Jason G. Matheny,
“Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction,” Risk Analysis, Volume 27, Issue 5, October, Available Online at
http://jgmatheny.org/matheny_extinction_risk.htm, Accessed 07-04-2011]
It might be feared that consideration of extinction risks would lead to a reductio ad
absurdum: we ought to invest all our resources in asteroid defense or nuclear disarmament,
instead of AIDS, pollution, world hunger, or other problems we face today. On the contrary,
programs that create a healthy and content global population are likely to reduce the
probability of global war or catastrophic terrorism. They should thus be seen as an essential
part of a portfolio of risk-reducing projects.
*** 1AR
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2011-2012
AT: Radiation—Solar Flares
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File Title
No risk of pathogens—3 reasons (sterile environment, pathogen adaptation, empirics
from Martian meteorites)
Zubrin 10—an astronautical engineer and author, is president of Pioneer Astronautics, a research and development
firm, and president of the Mars Society, a space advocacy group [Editor: Joel Levin is the Principal Investigator of the
Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey (ARES) of Mars; is Senior Research Scientist in the Science Directorate at the
NASA Langley Research Center and has a BS in physics, an MS in aeronomy and planetary atmospheres, and a Ph.D. in
atmospheric science. Editor: Robert Zubrin is an astronautical engineer and author, is president of Pioneer Astronautics,
a research and development firm, and president of the Mars Society, a space advocacy group. Editor: Paul Davies is a
theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and author, a College Professor at Arizona State University, and Director
of BEYOND. Author: Zubrin, “Human Mars Exploration: The Time Is Now,” Chapter One, Colonizing Mars The Human
Mission to the Red Planet, Cosmology Science Publishers, ISBN-10: 0982955235, Publication Date: December 3, 2010, pg.
Kindle]
Recently some people have raised the issue of possible back-contamination
as a reason to shun human (or robotic sample return) missions to Mars. Such fears have no basis
in science. The surface of Mars is too cold for liquid water, is exposed to near vacuum, ultra
violet, and cosmic radiation, and contains an antiseptic mixture of peroxides that have
eliminated any trace of organic material. It is thus as sterile an environment as one could ask
for. Furthermore, pathogens are specifically adapted to their hosts. Thus, while there may be
life on Mars deep underground, it is quite unlikely that these could be pathogenic to
terrestrial plants or animals, as there are no similar macrofauna or macroflora to support a
pathogenic life cycle in Martian subsurface groundwater. In any case, the Earth currently receives
about 500 kg of Martian meteoritic ejecta per year. The trauma that this material has gone
through during its ejection from Mars, interplanetary cruise, and re-entry at Earth is
insufficient to have sterilized it, as has been demonstrated experimentally and in space
studies on the viability of microorganisms following ejection and reentry (Burchell et al. 2004; Burchella
et al. 2001; Horneck et al. 1994, 1995, 2001, Horneck et al. 1993; Mastrapaa et al. 2001; Nicholson et al. 2000). So if there is the
Red Death on Mars, we’ve already got it. Those concerned with public health would do much better to address their
4.3. Back Contamination:
attentions to Africa.
Shielding solves solar flare radiation
Zubrin 11—formerly a senior astronautical engineer at Lockheed Martin, chairman of the executive committee of the
National Space Society, President of Pioneer Astronautics, a space-exploration research and development firm, and
president of the Mars Society, a space advocacy group [Robert Zubrin, “5: KILLING THE DRAGONS, AVOIDING THE
SIRENS,” Chapter 5, The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must, Simon & Schuster, Inc.,
ISBN-10: 145160811X, Publication Date: June 28, 2011, pg. Kindle]
Solar flares are composed of floods of protons that burst forth from the Sun at irregular and
unpredictable intervals on the order of once per year. The amount of radiation dose a solar flare would deliver to a
completely unshielded astronaut can be hundreds of rem in the course of several hours, which as we have seen would be enough to cause
the particles composing solar flares individually each have
energies of about one million volts, and can be stopped relatively easily by a modest amount
of shielding. For example, if we look at the three largest solar flares recorded in history, those of
February 1956, November 1960, and August 1972, we find that the dose they would have delivered to an
astronaut protected only by the hull of an interplanetary spacecraft like our hab (which with its hull,
radiation sickness or even death. However,
furniture, miscellaneous engineering systems, fittings, and other objects has about 5 grams per square centimeter of mass spread around its
would have averaged about 38 rem, while if the astronaut had gone
into an onboard pantry storm shelter (where the Mars Direct hab has about 35 grams per
square centimeter of shielding see Figure 5.1) he could have been shielded by stacked provisions
reducing the dose to about 8 rem.18,19,20 If he had been sitting in the hab on Mars during an
event representing the average of these flares, he would have taken about 10 rem if outside
periphery to shield its occupants)
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the shelter, or 3 rem within the shelter. (The Mars surface doses are much lower because the planet’s atmosphere and
surface shields out most of the flare.)
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2011-2012
AT: Constitution
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File Title
No impact—Constitution is flexible.
Litchwick 11 — Dahlia Lithwick, journalist covering courts and the law for Slate, 2011 (“Read It and Weep,” Slate,
January
4th,
Available
Online
at
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2011/01/read_it_and_weep.single.html, Accessed 0430-2012)
This newfound attention to the relationship between Congress and the Constitution is thrilling and long overdue. Progressives, as Greg
Sargent points out, are wrong to scoff at it. This is an opportunity to engage in a reasoned discussion of what the Constitution does and does
not do. It's an opportunity to point out that no matter how many times you read the document on the House floor, cite it in your bill, or how
many copies you can stuff into your breast pocket without looking fat,
the Constitution is always going to raise
more questions than it answers
and confound more readers than it comforts. And that isn't because any one
American is too stupid to understand the Constitution. It's because the Constitution wasn't written to reflect the views of any one American.
The problem with the Tea Party's new Constitution fetish is that it's hopelessly selective. As Robert Parry
notes, the folks who will be reading the Constitution aloud this week can't read the parts permitting slavery or prohibiting cruel and unusual
punishment using only their inside voices, while shouting their support for the 10th Amendment. They don't get to support Madison and
renounce Jefferson, then claim to be restoring the vision of "the Framers." Either the Founders got it right the first time they calibrated the
balance of power between the federal government and the states, or they got it so wrong that we need to pass a "Repeal Amendment" to fix it.
And unless Tea Party Republicans are willing to stand proud and announce that they adore and revere the whole Constitution as written,
except for the First, 14, 16th, and 17th amendments, which totally blow, they should admit right now that they are in the same conundrum as
everyone else: This
document no more commands the specific policies they espouse than
it commands the specific policies their opponents support.
The fact that the Constitution is sufficiently open-ended to infuriate
is part of its enduring genius. The Framers were no more interested in
binding future Americans to a set of divinely inspired commandments than any of us would
wish to be bound by them. As Justice Stephen Breyer explains in his recent book, Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's
View, Americans cannot be controlled by the "dead hands" of one moment frozen in
time. The Constitution created a framework, not a Ouija board, precisely because the
Framers understood that the prospect of a nation ruled for centuries by dead prophets would
be the very opposite of freedom.
This should all have been good news.
all Americans almost equally
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1AR—Won’t Generate Enough Revenue
***B. Can’t sell property rights—violates OST and links to dip cap
Cooper 3 (Lawrence A. Cooper is the Deputy Chief, DIA Forward Element - US Cyber Command at United States
Department of Defense, a Space Policy & Requirements Offficer at United States Department of Defense, Sr Principal
Analyst, Space & Intelligence Programs at Kepler Research Inc, and Program Management Analyst at ANSER Inc,
“Encouraging space exploration through a new application of space property rights”, Space Policy, Issue 19 pgs 111-118,
2003,
pg
online
@
http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/science_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6V5248DXTN421&_cdi=5774&_us
er=99318&_pii=S026596460300016X&_origin=&_coverDate=05%2F312F2003&_sk=999809997&view=c&wchp=dGLz
VzzzSkWB&md5=dd59b237c98333b085f21058852b7a23&ie=/sdarticle.pdf)
The OST was intended to prevent conflict in space and ensure free access to space for all by prohibiting weapons of mass
destruction and preventing States from exercising territorial sovereignty. No state may claim any part
of space or a celestial body, but no mention is made regarding resources removed from their original place. States are the parties
to the treaty and responsible for activities in space. Therefore, people or organizations may only act under the aegis of a State which bears
international responsibility and liability for those actions; states maintain jurisdiction over their personnel and objects they launch; and
their activities are protected because any exploration as well as use of space is free from interference of other parties.
The intent of
these broad statements is to prevent competition that could lead to war,
but leave more specific
provisions to follow-on treaties. The OST did not define what constituted space nor did it define exactly what was meant to by “use of outer
space…shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries…” although it has been interpreted to mean “equal access”.
Some have argued that OST’s broad definitions allow individual appropriation of space and
celestial bodies because it only specifically prohibits appropriation by states; however, States
are responsible for the actions of individuals, and property claims must occur
through the state’s property laws. Therefore individuals may not claim space or
celestial bodies.
Any revenue stream failure means CP doesn’t solve—here’s the math—worldwide
support key.
Joseph 10 — Ph.D. – Brain Research Laboratory (Rhawn, “Marketing Mars: Financing the Human Mission to Mars
and
the
Colonization
of
the
Red
http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars110.html)
Planet,”
Journal
of
Cosmology,
August,
Volume
The sole mission of The Human Mission to Mars Corporation should be to raise $150 billion to
fund a Human Mission to Mars and the colonization of the Red Planet, and this can be accomplished by initiating and following the detailed
plans discussed in this article.
$10 billion a year can be raised through clever advertising and marketing and the sale of
merchandise. Following a massive advertising campaign which increases public interest, between $30 billion to $90 billion
can be raised through corporate sponsorships, and an additional $1 billion a year through individual
sponsorships. The sale of naming rights would yield an estimated $30 billion. Television broadcasting rights
would bring in an estimated $30 billion. This comes to a total of between $100 billion to $160 billion, and does not
It is estimated that
include other commercial ventures and the sale of real estate and mineral rights.
NASA can't do it. The United States government can't do it. An International effort can.
12,
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SQ solves- current detection and tech sufficient to divert NEOs
Vasile and Colombo 11 (Massimiliano and Camilla, Lecturer Ph.D., Department of Aerospace Engineering; and
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Aerospace Engineering at Glasgow, University, Optimal Impact Strategies for Asteroid
Deflection, http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1104/1104.4670.pdf)
The European Space Agency in particular is now assessing the feasibility of the Don Quijote
mission1, due to launch in the first half of next decade, which is intended to impact a spacecraft with a high relative velocity onto an
asteroid and measure its deflection. Should this mission fly, this would be the first technological demonstration of
our capability to deviate an asteroid if needed. Prevention strategies against a potential hazardous object in collision
route with the Earth usually consider a change in momentum of the asteroid, with a consequent variation in the semi-major axis which
results in an increase of the Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance (MOID), between the Earth and the object. Several different strategies
have been considered to achieve this goal; among them the simplest one is the kinetic impact. In fact, as will be shown in this paper,
effective kinetic impacts resulting in a variation of the MOID even of thousand of kilometers
seem to be already achievable with the current launch technology with a relatively small
spacecraft, provided that the time difference between the momentum change and the
potential Earth impact is large enough.
NASA has effective asteroid response plan.
Green 7 (James, November 8, Dr. Green received his Ph.D. in Space Physics from the University of Iowa in 1979 and
began working in the Magnetospheric Physics Branch at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in 1980. At
Marshall, Dr. Green developed and managed the Space Physics Analysis Network, which provided many scientists, all over
the world, with rapid access to data, other scientists, and specific NASA computer and information resources NEAREARTH OBJECTS (NEOS)-STATUS OF THE SURVEY PROGRAM AND REVIEW OF NASA'S 2007 REPORT TO
CONGRESS,
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgibin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_house_hearings&docid=f:38057.pdf)//DT
NASA has an NEO contingency notification plan to be utilized in the very unlikely event an
object is detected with significant probability of impacting the Earth. The plan establishes
procedures between the detection sites, the Minor Planet Center, the NASA NEO Program
Office at JPL, and NASA Headquarters to first quickly verify and validate the data and orbit
on the object of interest, and then up-channel confirmed information in a timely manner to
the NASA Administrator. These procedures were first exercised with the discovery of the object now known as Apophis, which
was found in December 2004 in a hazardous orbit but determined to not have a significant probability of impacting the Earth in the near-
NASA will continue to refine this internal contingency plan, and begin work with other
U.S. Government agencies and institutions when directed.
term.
Quarantines Solve
Altman, et. al. 5 [Lawrence, reporter for The New York Times, Jeff Bailey, reporter for the New York Times in
Chicago, "CDC Proposes New RUles in Effort to Prevent Disease Outbreak", section A; column 1, National Desk, p. 22
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9802E7DF1631F930A15752C1A9639C8B63]
Federal officials yesterday proposed the first significant changes in quarantine rules in 25 years in an effort to broaden the definition of
reportable illnesses, to centralize their reporting to the federal government and to require the airline and shipping industries to keep
people subjected to
quarantines to allow for administrative due process and give health officials explicit authority
to offer vaccination, drugs and other appropriate means of prevention on a voluntary basis to
those in quarantine. The proposals could cost the beleaguered airline industry hundreds of millions of dollars, officials of the
passenger manifests electronically for 60 days. The proposals would also clarify the appeals process for
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The officials are inviting public comment on the proposals, which are to be published in the
Federal Register on Nov. 30, they told reporters in a telephone news conference. The proposals are part of a broader Bush administration
to improve the response to current and potential communicable disease threats that may
arise anywhere in the world. If adopted, the new regulations ''will allow the C.D.C. to move more swiftly'' when it needs to
plan
control outbreaks, said Dr. Martin Cetron, who directs the agency's division of global migration and quarantine. The outbreak of severe acute
respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 underscored how fast a disease could spread through the world and the need to modernize and
strengthen quarantine measures by pointing out gaps in health workers' ability to respond quickly and effectively, Dr. Cetron said. As the
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C.D.C. joined with cooperative airlines to meet flights and later collect information about passengers who had contact with others who
developed SARS, the epidemiologists had to compile and process by hand data collected from flight manifests, customs declarations and
other sources. But manifests contained only the name and seat number; customs declarations were illegible, and when readable, the names
did not match those on the manifests. 'The time required to track passengers was routinely longer than the incubation period,'' which was
two to 10 days for SARS, Dr. Cetron said. ''That was really quite shocking,'' Dr. Cetron said. One proposed change would require airline and
ship manifests to be kept electronically for 60 days and made available to the C.D.C. within 12 hours when ill passengers arrive on
international and domestic flights. The proposed changes include provisions for maintaining confidentiality and privacy of health
The outbreak of SARS was stopped in part because of quarantines imposed in some
affected countries. Quarantine restricts the movement of a healthy person exposed to
someone who has a communicable disease. The quarantine period is determined by the usual
length of time that passes from exposure to an infectious agent to the onset of illness. An
executive order of the president limits quarantine to nine diseases: cholera, diphtheria, infectious
tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola, SARS and influenza caused by new strains that could
cause a pandemic.
information.