1
Student loan interest rates freeze has momentum – Obama just needs to get GOP on board with
how to cover the cost
Fram, 4-25
Alan, 2012, Senate Dems ready bill freezing student loan costs, http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20120425/BUSINESS/204250319/SenateDems-ready-bill-freezing-student-loan-costs
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats are ready with an election-year bill preventing interest rates
from rising for millions of college students with federal loans. Republicans are already balking at the way
Democrats would cover its $5.9 billion price tag: boosting payroll taxes on the owners of some privately held
firms. Democrats unveiled their bill late Tuesday, a measure that would prevent today's 3.4 percent interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans for lowand middle-income students from doubling automatically on July 1. The interest rate freeze, which would help 7.4 million people, would last for a year.
The congressional maneuvering highlighted the competition between the two parties to appeal
to college voters, who leaned heavily toward Barack Obama during his 2008 run for the White House, and to address the broader financial
pressures facing Americans in an economy still struggling to regain strength. Not willing to cede any ground, Obama's likely GOP rival this time, Mitt
Romney, has also asked Congress to temporarily extend the lower rates. Congressional
Republicans say they too support keeping students' interest rates low. Rank-and-file House
Republicans said they were open to keeping students' interest rates low but opposed the
Democrats' payroll tax increase on company owners. "The proposal they're talking about is a dream world," said Rep. Rob Bishop, RUtah. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., a tea party-supported freshman, would not commit to supporting the overall bill, saying he wanted to study it. Asked if
Romney's endorsement of keeping interest rates low would sway him, Toomey said: "I'm aware of that. We all make our own decisions." House
Democrats said they are writing legislation similar to the Senate Democratic bill.
But public support for a student loan freeze isn’t enough – Obama needs his finite PC to get
agreement in Congress
Bouie, 2011
Jamelle, May 5, Political Capital, http://prospect.org/article/political-capital
Unfortunately, political capital isn't that straightforward. As we saw at the beginning of Obama's
presidency, the mere fact of popularity (or a large congressional majority) doesn't guarantee support
from key members of Congress. For Obama to actually sign legislation to reform the immigration
system, provide money for jobs, or reform corporate taxes, he needs unified support from his party and
support from a non-trivial number of Republicans. Unfortunately, Republicans (and plenty of Democrats) aren't
interested in better immigration laws, fiscal stimulus, or liberal tax reform. Absent substantive leverage -- and not just high approval ratings -- there isn't
much Obama can do to pressure these members (Democrats and Republicans) into supporting his agenda. Indeed, for liberals who want to see Obama
use his political capital, it's worth noting that approval-spikes aren't necessarily related to policy success. George H.W. Bush's major domestic
initiatives came before his massive post-Gulf War approval bump, and his final year in office saw little policy success. George W. Bush was able to
secure No Child Left Behind, the Homeland Security Act, and the Authorization to Use Military Force in the year following 9/11, but the former two
either came with pre-9/11 Democratic support or were Democratic initiatives to begin with. To repeat an oft-made point, when it
comes to domestic policy, the presidency is a limited office with limited resources. Popularity
with the public is a necessary part of presidential success in Congress, but it's far from
sufficient.
Won’t go to Mars – politically impossible
Robertson, 3 [Donald, freelance space industry journalist, trade writer, and technical writer based in San Francisco, “ The Mars train wreck,”
February 24, 2003, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/5/1]
Before it even gets underway, human Mars exploration is headed for a political train wreck. The likelihood of trouble is so great that
advocates for human exploration of the Solar System probably should look elsewhere—toward a return to Earth’s Moon or asteroid mining expeditions.
The problem is life, especially if we find it, but even if we don’t. No matter how carefully humanity explores Mars, we will never be
able to say with certainty that the planet is sterile. That creates immense political problems for anyone planning even one human
flight to Mars, much less attempts to colonize the world. The political reality is that human Mars exploration will be expensive and difficult,
yet it has limited popular appeal. Getting such a mission underway will require the active cooperation of every involved
constituency and the tacit acceptance of most others. Even privately funded missions—which, following Robert Zubrin’s “Mars Direct” ideas,
are at least conceivable—would have to avoid much active opposition. Unfortunately, political opposition is likely to be both active and
powerful. The most surprising opponents may be the group one would expect to most strongly advocate human Mars exploration: the Mars scientists
themselves. I first started thinking about this issue after 2001’s Mars Society Convention near San Francisco. Even at that venue, a number of individuals
expressed serious reservations about Mr. Zubrin’s ideas for unrestrained “living off the land” and the possible impact to native ecosystems. One scientist,
who has actively supported human Mars exploration for many years, argued that it should be done the same way that humanity explores Antarctica. He
argued that scientists must always be prepared to “back out” and leave a pristine natural environment in the event that life is found. There is
little point in discovering life on Mars if we immediately destroy it with terrestrial contamination. Any Martian life should be left alone to pursue its own
destiny. Unfortunately, a “back-out” strategy would drastically increase the financial cost—and thus the political difficulty—of a
human Mars expedition. If explorers could not mine the regolith for local resources, most supplies would have to be delivered from Earth at almost
inconceivable expense. Government funded missions would become much more difficult to approve and privately funded
flights effectively impossible. Worse, by explicitly making colonization unacceptable, such a strategy would remove one of
the strongest motivations for sending human beings to Mars. Scientists are not the only ones who are likely to oppose human Mars
exploration. Since a native ecology is possible, environmentalists may be expected to campaign against any contamination
of the Martian environment, especially if it involves nuclear power. Fear of back contamination of Earth by any Martian pathogens
will motivate many opponents.
Passage key to the economy
Velikov, 4-9
Georgi, 2012, Next economic bubble to burst: student loan crisis, http://www.thehillnews.org/?p=5367
In a recent report, the Federal Reserve announced that the amount of student loan debt had surpassed
credit card debt and auto loans. Currently, the Fed estimated that student loan debt is at almost $1 trillion and might be one of the
reasons responsible for a sluggish economic recovery. A year ago, famous banker John Paulson warned that student
loans might be the next bubble in US economy. This is the first time student loans have exceeded $1
trillion dollars and Paulson says the reason for that is the poor economy. Ever since then, economists have argued for and against Paulson’s opinion.
Some say that student loans will not cause a problem while others say that this is a disaster. Stefan Karaboev, economic analyst at the Center for the
Study for Democracy had examined the issue and argues that student loans might be the next bomb for the U.S. economy. After reading
John Paulson’s warnings, he decided he would take a look at the issue. He is now concerned with the long-term effect that current conditions might lead to.
According to Karaboev, recent graduates have problems finding a job right after college due to the state our economy is in. Furthermore ,
this leads to
less apartment rents and less first homes bought by those students. This new spiral leads to less
consumer spending, a low demand for housing and of course, higher default rates on student
loans. continued…Currently, there is a discussion on student loan interest rates. The government warned that this summer interest rate agreement expires
and some economists predict that the student loan rate might double after that from 3.2 percent to 6.5 percent.
They view this increase as a huge problem that might cause more students to default on their
payments.
2
Despite 2012 budget cuts NASA still will pursue commercial crew
Ferster, 4/19—[Warren Ferster, “Funding Cut Would Delay Private Space Taxis, NASA Deputy Chief Says”
www.space.com/15338-garver-nasa-congress-commercial-crew-funding.html]
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — NASA remains committed to preserving competition in its commercial
crew initiative even if Congress does not provide the full $830 million requested for the effort
in 2012, a senior agency official said. Speaking with reporters Monday (April 16) here at the 28th National Space Symposium, NASA Deputy
Administrator Lori Garver said the agency likely would stretch out rather than change its approach to the
Commercial Crew Program should it not be fully funded next year. Stretching out the program would extend the time during
which NASA is dependent on Russia for crew transport to and from the International Space Station, she said. A number of lawmakers, most recently Sen.
Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, have expressed skepticism that the agency truly needs
as much as it has requested for the Commercial Crew Program. Some have suggested that NASA could save money by reducing the field of competitors
for the job, either by merging elements of the various commercial crew proposals or by simply selecting a winner and making the contract award this
year. On Tuesday (April 17), Mikulski introduced a NASA spending bill that would provide $525 million for commercial crew for 2013 — about $300
million less than the agency is seeking. [Vote Now! The Best Spaceships of All Time] Keeping competition alive NASA hopes to help bring at least two
crew taxi providers into service, and Garver said this is the surest way to keep program costs down. With two providers, she said, NASA expects to spend
less than the roughly $60 million it currently pays the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, for each seat aboard a space station-bound Soyuz capsule.
Congress in 2012 granted $406 million for the Commercial Crew Program, less than half of the $850 million requested by
NASA. As a result, NASA plans to use Space Act Agreements rather than fixed-priced contracts to fund the next phase of the program, which is expected
to yield at least two vehicles capable of ferrying astronauts to and from the space station. Space Act Agreements provide flexibility by enabling NASA to
make payments when certain programmatic milestones are reached. NASA has Space Act Agreements with four aspiring commercial crew providers:
Boeing Space Exploration of Houston, Blue Origin of Seattle, Sierra Nevada Corp. of Sparks, Nev., and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of
Hawthorne, Calif. All but SpaceX intend to launch their vehicles aboard Atlas 5 rockets provided by Denver-based United Launch Alliance (ULA), a
Boeing-Lockheed joint venture. The next phase of the program is expected to get under way later this year. Garver said the Commercial Crew
Program, along with a related effort to develop commercial cargo delivery services to the space station, is
critical to bringing competition to the government launch services business. Currently ULA launches the vast majority of
U.S. government payloads aboard its Delta 4 and Atlas 5 rockets, whose prices have risen steeply in recent years due in part to rising propulsion costs
related to the retirement of the space shuttle last summer.
Any 2013 budget decrease kills the program
Klotz, 2/15—[Irene Klotz, “NASA Commercial Crew Official Warns Another Deep Cut Could Kill the Program”
www.spacenews.com/policy/120215-nasa-commercial-cut-kill-program.html]
If Congress halves President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget request for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program like
it did last year, it may not be worth pursuing the program since the vehicles might not be ready in time to
support the international space station, Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA headquarters, said Feb.
14 at an industry briefing here. The United States has committed to funding the space station through 2020. While NASA hopes that commitment will be
extended, there is no guarantee. NASA requested $850 million for its Commercial Crew Program for 2012 but Congress
approved only $406 million, prompting NASA to overhaul its acquisition strategy for an effort aiming to fund initial development of at least
two privately owned crew taxis. If a similar cut is made to NASA’s $830 million Commercial Crew request for 2013, “I
would say it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to do this program,” McAlister told reporters. “We couldn’t get there.” NASA is
asking Congress to provide $830 million for Commercial Crew in 2013, a level agency officials say is needed to
keep the program on track to conduct its first crewed flights in 2017.
Commercial crew key to the ISS
Space Travel 3/15 [“Boeing Completes PDR of Commercial Crew Space Transportation Vehicle”, http://www.spacetravel.com/reports/Boeing_Completes_PDR_of_Commercial_Crew_Space_Transportation_Vehicle_999.html]
Boeing successfully completed a Preliminary Design Review (PDR) of the company's integrated Commercial Crew Space
Transportation system, which includes the Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 spacecraft, on March 12. The integrated system will
provide the United States with the capability to transport people and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS), the
Bigelow Space Complex and other destinations in low Earth orbit. The system PDR, which included the CST-100 spacecraft, launch
vehicle and ground system, evaluated technical adequacy, progress and risk resolution of the design and test approach. "The progress made by the
Commercial Crew team has been outstanding. It is clear that this team has the discipline and the right design, test and safety approaches and processes
to ensure a safe, reliable and affordable transportation system by the middle of the decade," said John Mulholland, vice president and program manager,
Boeing Commercial Programs. "Boeing is leveraging not only the enduring spaceflight capabilities resulting from our 50-year heritage supporting human
spaceflight, but also our contemporary expertise and experience, to achieve milestones toward the future of human spaceflight such as this PDR,"
Mulholland added. The PDR included representatives from Boeing, NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and independent consultants. They
examined all milestones accomplished in the development of the integrated system design since the Delta System Definition review that was conducted
in May 2011, under NASA's Commercial Crew Development Space Act Agreement. Boeing has scheduled additional tests to be performed in 2012,
including a launch abort engine hot fire test series, which was successfully completed on March 9, parachute drop tests in April, a landing air bag test
series in May, a forward heat shield jettison test in June, and an attitude control engine hot fire test in June, to gather additional data on key functional
elements of the spacecraft design. The Boeing Commercial Crew program includes the design, manufacture, test and evaluation, and demonstration of
the CST-100 spacecraft, launch vehicle and mission operations - all part of Boeing's Commercial Crew Transportation System - for NASA's Commercial
Crew Development program. This system will provide crewed flights to the ISS and also support Bigelow Aerospace's orbital space
complex. The
program is based on Boeing's experience and innovation of over 50 years of human spaceflight and
nearly 100 years of commercial aviation.
ISS key to colonization
Giuseppe Lippi, professor and surgeon at Verona, 2-26-2008, “Abolishing the Law of Gravity,” Canadian
Medical Association Journal, http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/178/5/598
As the International Space Station moves us closer to the possibility of colonizing space, it is
becoming increasingly important to understand the effects of altered gravity on mammalian
reproductive physiology. There is evidence that hypo- and hyper-gravity induce changes in male
and female reproductive processes.2 Findings from studies using a variety of experimental conditions to
simulate hypogravity raise questions about whether reproduction is possible when gravity is
reduced. Studies using the Holton hindlimb suspension model, which provides a practical way to simulate the major physiologic effects of
hypogravity, are providing evidence that hypogravity might exert pronounced effects on male reproductive
processes and reduce the rate of implantation during early pregnancy in rats. Moreover, the
cardiovascular deconditioning, bone demineralization and decrease in red blood cell
concentration associated with hypogravity might affect the ability of female rats to sustain their pregnancies.
Similar findings from experiments during space flights raise questions about whether early
pregnancy can be sustained in humans when gravity is reduced.2 Additional research is needed
ISS solves disease
NASA 8 (NASA, “The Next Forty Years”, Created in 2001, modified in 2008,
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/about/history/jsc40/jsc40_pg20.html)
The assembled space station will provide the first laboratory complex where gravity, a fundamental
force on Earth, can be controlled for extended periods. This control of gravity opens up an unimaginable world where almost everything grows
differently than on Earth. For example, purer protein crystals can be grown in space than on Earth. By analyzing crystals
grown on the space station, scientists may be able to develop medicines that target particular disease-causing proteins. Such crystals for
research into cancer, diabetes, emphysema and immune disorders grown on the space shuttle
have already shown promise. New drugs to fight influenza and post-surgery inflammation are
already in clinical trials, and future research will benefit from the extended exposure to
weightlessness available on the station. Many of the changes in the human body that result from space flight mimic those seen on
Earth as a result of aging. These changes include bone and muscle loss, sleep disorders and hypertension. Better understanding of the causes of these
changes may lead to the development of countermeasures against bone loss, muscle atrophy, balance
disorders and other symptoms common in an aging population.
Disease causes extinction
Yu 2009 [5/22, Victoria, Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science, "Human extinction: the uncertainty of our fate",
http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/spring-2009/human-extinction-the-uncertainty-of-our-fate]
A pandemic will kill off all humans. In the past, humans have indeed fallen victim to viruses. Perhaps the best-known case was the
bubonic plague that killed up to one third of the European population in the mid-14th century (7). While vaccines have
been developed for the plague and some other infectious diseases, new viral strains are constantly emerging — a process that
maintains the possibility of a pandemic-facilitated human extinction. Some surveyed students mentioned AIDS as a potential
pandemic-causing virus. It is true that scientists have been unable thus far to find a sustainable cure for AIDS , mainly due to
HIV’s rapid and constant evolution. Specifically, two factors account for the virus’s abnormally high mutation rate: 1. HIV’s use of reverse transcriptase,
which does not have a proof-reading mechanism, and 2. the lack of an error-correction mechanism in HIV DNA polymerase (8). Luckily, though, there
are certain characteristics of HIV that make it a poor candidate for a large-scale global infection: HIV can lie dormant in the human body for years
without manifesting itself, and AIDS itself does not kill directly, but rather through the weakening of the immune system. However, for more easily
transmitted viruses such as influenza, the evolution of new strains could prove far more consequential. The
simultaneous occurrence of antigenic drift (point mutations that lead to new strains) and antigenic shift (the
inter-species transfer of disease) in the influenza virus could produce a new version of influenza for which
scientists may not immediately find a cure. Since influenza can spread quickly, this lag time could potentially lead to a
“global influenza pandemic,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (9). The most recent scare of this variety came in
1918 when bird flu managed to kill over 50 million people around the world in what is sometimes referred to as
the Spanish flu pandemic. Perhaps even more frightening is the fact that only 25 mutations were required to convert the
original viral strain — which could only infect birds — into a human-viable strain (10).
3
Imagining global threats deprives us of our political agency—we bow down to supposed experts
and inevitabilities and ignore the consequences of local choices
Grondin 07 David Grondin Lecturer School of Political Studies Faculty of Social Sciences University of Ottawa The US Religion of Technology
in the Weaponization of Outer Space A Case for Technological Atheism and Resisting Space War Paper to be presented at ISA Convention 2007
Technocracy relies on centralized, expert knowledge. Critics of technocratic society like Theodore Roszak (1969) say that in a technocratic society, to
make sense of life’s complexity, citizens will tend to defer to experts, to those who “know better” (Roszak, 1969: 7). During the Cold War, it was believed
by supporters and critics alike that technocracy was above ideology, “that technocracy was a form of governing that moved beyond the ideological divide
of the Cold War” and that “[t]echnocratic rule was simply the rational mode of governance for complex societies” (Dean, 2002: 103). Technocratic society
is society sleeping, it is a depoliticized society and it is said to be a programmed society. Under the pressures of capitalist liberalism, the industrial and
postindustrial societies dreamed of technocratic control, of greater management, efficiency, stability, and rationality. But societies are made of
individuals and groups that are diversified and which highlight the human and social dimensions that technocracy seeks to control and make disappear.
With technocratic thinking, as one finds in the US national security state, a balanced governementality of security and economy makes sure that the
demands of the welfare state, military preparedness, economic efficiency, and national security imperatives are met (Dean, 2002: 103). This was another
development associated with the national security state apparatus, which introduced a new governmentality of the technologies of security and economy.
Jodi Dean advances that “[c]ompliance with the efficient plans of expert planners had little in common with the mythologies of frontier freedom and
creative individuality that had long been part of America’s self-understanding and were crucial to the image it used to differentiate itself from
communism during the Cold War. If technocracy was post-ideological, this was part of the problem: it had purchased bland efficiency and security at the
cost of the American adventure, of freedom and meaning” (Dean, 2002: 103). A technocratic society, such as that represented by
the US national security state, functions in such a way that many issues that are political in
substance will go unchallenged because it will be stressed that they only need to be assessed by the
administrative systems which will treat them in the most efficient way possible. In these cases, political questions become
technical ones. This is what Jenny Edkins has described as the “depoliticization or technologization in politics” (Edkins, 1999: xi-xii). This is why Andrew
Feenberg asserts that it is in the rhetoric more than in the practices that one will find a technocratic society. For instance, this is how the US government
sold the Vietnam War as quick-fix problem that American ingenuity could solve by bombing villages in South Vietnam for the inhabitants to reject
communism (Feenberg, 1999: 4). As is well-known, some of the harshest critiques of the ideological dimensions of technocracy came from the critical
theorists of the Frankfurt school who rightly exposed how technocracy renders governing as technology and “where the technological
achievements justify themselves”, of which the American space program is one fine example (Dean, 2002: 104). The
idea is not to stress that with regard to outer Space, we fall prey to the perils of technocracy asdescribed by Herbert Marcuse’s
work on the one-dimensional society where people are controlled, disciplined, and transformed into docile and conformist individuals by a social matrix
governing their life. This is where technology becomes ideology as part of technocratic rule and where instrumental rationality takes away possibilities of
resistance or critical thought. This happens in such a way that people are “disciplined into acquiescence so great that they were unable to contest the Cold
War politics that threatened global survival” (Dean, 2002: 105). This was the case with the Cold War logic of terror resulting from nuclear deterrence.
Within this national security state governmental regime, technocracy has become “criminal” in the sense that it “asserts, in the name of progress and
reason, that the unthinkable may become thinkable and the intolerable tolerable” (Theodore Roszak, quoted in Virilio, 1976: 24). In effect, the constant
preparedness for war, deeply entranched in the US governmentality, normalizes the threat construction process and transforms it in a technological
process, as if it were a social technique applying rationality and efficiency to design the best ways to cope with these “objective” threats. Imagining
threats therefore deprives imagination of it subjectivity and human imagination is
dehumanized, systematized, and deformed to a point that everything in the realm of reason, of reality, of progress and
knowledge leads to madness (Rozsak, 1969 [1974]: 12). This is why it is not the materialization of a threat that creates fear but its
imagination. Virilio was thus so right when he wrote that “[f]rom the laser beam illuminating the objective the elites’ police to the laser beam
destructing missiles in a star war, there is only a step, ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’, a great leap for its loss” (Virilio, 1996 [1984]:
177). This is Marcuse’s concept of mystification in action, as ideology is being embodied in the process of production itself, it is able to sell as rational
irrationalities in action. This allows technocratic rule to legitimize actions and ideas that would be ruled out as irrational if people were able to take a step
back and analyze them before complying to its rule. The success of technocracy has relied upon this mystification derived from the ideology of
technocracy where you depoliticize the mass public through the enforcement of the rational and logical functioning of the technocratic order.11 This is
how Cold War US civil defense programs were sold to the public. There is no doubt that during the Cold War, Americans were leveraged by their state
leaders (and the rest of the world); they were never protected from risks of nuclear war. The home bunkers and civil defense measures were lures and
inappropriate defenses. That is why “[p]eople have to take things into their own hands, politicize the
processes of decision-making, and stop allowing scientific and technocratic imperatives to
organize all social life” (Dean, 2002: 108). The Frankfurt School’s critique of technology as ideology describes how technology imposes a
system of domination and Foucault’s critique of technocratic rationality works in the same way where a systemic domination subjugates subjects and
knowledge. Both Marcuse and Foucault rightly held that technologies are forms of power that will build and shape life and environments. However, both
positions leave us with an impossibility for human subjects to act against the system, i.e. the technologies, with an overall strategy (Feenberg, 1999: 8).
What needs to be from a theorist/activist standpoint is to explore the possibilities of resistance that are open to us as human subjects, in the public
sphere especially. It means we must strive to demystify the technologies with arguments that may sound anti-technological but which are political
reflections on the consequences of technologies and active resistance to the dominant technical institutions of our societies, of the US society of security
in this case. This constructivist view of technology thus calls for a reconceptualised politics of technology.
The logic of space colonization creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of the destruction of the earth –
the alternative endorses solving these on a local level first
Williams 10 – M.S. in Physics and is a physics faculty member at Santa Rose Junior College (1/1/2010, Lynda, “Irrational Dreams of Space
Colonization”, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 22:4–8, http://www.scientainment.com/lwilliams_peacereview.pdf) MGM
According to scientific theory, the destruction of Earth is a certainty. About five billion years from now, when our sun exhausts
its nuclear fuel, it will expand in size and envelope the inner planets, including Earth, and burn them into oblivion. So yes, we are doomed, but we
have five billion years, plus or minus a few hundred million, to plan our extraterrestrial escape. The need to colonize the
moon or Mars to guarantee our survival is not pressing. There are also real risks due to collisions with asteroids
and comets, although none are of immediate threat and do not necessitate extraterrestrial colonization. There
are many Earth-based technological strategies that can be developed in time to mediate such astronomical
threats, such as gravitational tugboats that drag the objects out of range. The solar system could also potentially
be exposed to galactic sources of highenergy gamma ray bursts that could fry all life on Earth; any moon or Mars base
would face a similar fate. Thus, human-based colonies on the moon or Mars would not protect us from any of these
astronomical threats in the near future. Life on Earth is more urgently threatened by the destruction of the
biosphere and its life-sustaining habitat due to environmental catastrophes such as climate change, ocean acidification,
disruption of the food chain, bio-warfare, nuclear war, nuclear winter, and myriads of other manmade doomsday
possibilities. If we accept these threats as inevitabilities on par with real astronomical dangers and divert our
natural, intellectual, political, and technological resources from solving these problems into escaping them, will we be
playing into a self-fulfilling prophesy of our own planetary doom? Seeking spacebased solutions to our earthly
problems may actually exacerbate the planetary threats we face. This is the core of the ethical dilemma posed by space
colonization: should we put our resources into developing human colonies on other worlds to survive natural and manmade catastrophes, or should we
focus all of our energies on solving and mitigating the problems that create these threats on Earth?
A need of a global world order leads to the globalization of violence, wherein human
relationships become disconnect from the personal in which true relations lie
Nayar, University of Warwick Law Professor, 2001
(Jayan, “A People's Tribunal Against the Crime of Silence? - The Politics of Judgement and an Agenda for People's Law,” Law, Social Justice and Global
Development, p. 620, December 14, http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/lgd/2001_2/nayar/, Date accessed: 7-12-06)
My questioning is not of intent, or of commitment, or of the sincerity of those who advocate world-order transformations. Rather, my questionings relate
to a perspective on "implications." Here, there is a very different, and more subtle, sort of globalized world-order that we need to consider--the
globalization of violence, wherein human relationships become disconnected from the personal and are instead
conjoined into distant and distanced chains of violence, an alienation of human and human. And by the nature of this new
world-ordering, as the web of implication in relational violence is increasingly extended, so too, the vision of violence itself
becomes blurred and the voice, muted. Through this implication into violence, therefore, the order(ing) of emancipatory imagination is reinforced. What
we cannot see, after all, we cannot speak; what we refuse to see, we dare not speak.
Global ordering necessitates endless war
Dallmayr, 04 (Fred, PhD, Professor, Department of Government and International Studies, Notre Dame,
Constellations Volume 11, No 1, 2004 The Underside of Modernity: Adorno, Heidegger, and Dussel).
Themes and insights of this kind are carried forward in Die Geschichte des Seyns, a series of texts dating from the onset of
World War II. Politically, the texts are still more nonconformist and rebellious than preceding writings—an aspect largely
attributable to their grim context. Central to the volume is again the critique of Machenschaft defined as a mode
of being that “pushes everything into the mold of ‘makeability’.” As before, Machenschaft is
intimately linked with the glorification of power (Macht), and the latter is anchored ultimately in “will” to
power and in “unconditional subjectivity” (a chief trait of modern metaphysics). To effectuate its rule, power relies on
violence (Gewalt) as its chief instrument. When violence or brutality becomes predominant, matters are starkly
simplified: everything is geared toward the “unconditional annihilation (Vernichtung) of opposing
forces by unconditional means.” The unleashing of brutal violence carries in its train the
“devastation” (Verwüstung) of everything with the result that a “desert” (Wüste) spreads where
nothing can grow any longer—especially not thoughtfulness and care for being. A particularly
vivid and harrowing sign of this devastation is the hankering for warfare—a warfare that, due
to the totalizing ambitions of Machenschaft, now turns into “total war” (totaler Krieg). Given the
steadily widening range of modern technology and weaponry, Heidegger adds somberly, the
relentless struggle for power and more power necessarily leads to “unbounded or limitless wars
(grenzenlose Kriege) furthering the empowerment of power.” Unsurprisingly, such wars ultimately take
the form of “world wars” in the service of a globally unleashed Machenschaft.16
Politicizing our personal relations to criticize world ordering allows us to recognize our
position as global civilizers, which is the first step towards critical emancipation. Evaluating the
violence here is a necessary precondition to dealing with violence out there.
Nayar 99, (Jayan, Law Student at the University of Warwick, Re-Framing International Law for the 21st Century: Orders of Inhumanity, 9
Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems 599, Fall 1999)
So, back to the question: to what extent, for this, "our world," do we contemplate change when "we" imagine transformed
"world-orders?" In addition to the familiar culprits of violent orderings, such as government, financial institutions,
transnational corporations, the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO (as significant culprits they indeed are), do we, in our
contemplations of violent orders, vision our locations within corporate "educational" institutions as "professional
academics" and "researchers," our locations within corporate NGOs as "professional activists," our locations within "thinktanks" and "research organizations" as "professional policy-formulators," and whatever other locations of elite "expertise"
we have been "trained" to possess, as ordered sites, complicit and parasitic, within a violent "world-order"? Do we see in
our critiques of world-orderings, out there, the orderings we find, right here, in our bodies, minds, relationships,
expectations, fears and hopes? Would we be willing to see "our (ordered) world" dismantled in order that other worlds,
wherein our "privileges" become extinguished, may flourish? These concerns are, then, I believe, the real complexities of
judgment and action. Consideration should be given, not only to those of the political-structural, so often honed
in on, but also to the [*628] issue of the political-personal, which ultimately is the "unit" of
"worlds" and of "orders." If "globalization," as a recent obsession of intellectual minds, has
contributed anything to an understanding of the ways of the "world," I suggest, it is that we
cannot escape "our" implication within the violence of "world (mis)orders."
IV. A WORLD FOR TRANSFORMATION: TWO POEMS
Despite the fixation of the beneficiaries of ordered worlds, even the ordered "critic," with the prescribed
languages, visions and possibilities of human socialities, other realities of humanity
nevertheless persist. Notwithstanding the globalization of social concern and the transnationalization of
professionalized critique and reformatory action, struggles against violence remain energized, persistent and located. They
are waged through the bodies of lives lived in experiential locations against real instruments of terror, functioning within
embodied sites of violence. Non-information and non-representation of the existence of such struggles, and non-learning
of the wisdoms thus generated do not negate their truths or the vibrancy of their socialities. n51
"We" are participants in ordered worlds, not merely observers. The choice is whether we wish
to recognize our own locations of ordered violence and participate in the struggle to resist their
orderings, or whether we wish merely to observe violence in far-off worlds in order that our
interventionary participation "out there" never destabilizes the ground upon which we stand. I
suggest that we betray the spirit of transformatory struggle, despite all our expressions of support
and even actions of professionalized expertise, if our own locations, within which are ordered
and from which we ourselves order, remain unscrutinized.
4
The United States federal government should

pass the Mars Prize Bill as advocated by Robert Zubrin

create The Human Mission to Mars Corporation and grant it an exclusive mandate and
licensing rights with the goal of raising funds for the Mars Prize program

grant sole marketing, licensing, and fund-raising authority to THMMC and pass
legislation to protect these efforts.
The prize fund would incentivize development of Mars-mission flight systems
Zubrin 12 – (2/1/12, Robert, PhD, 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, “The Mars Prize,” http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289775/mars-prize-robert-zubrin?pg=1)
In the context of current realities, here is how the concept would work. Starting immediately, 10 percent of NASA’s budget
would be put aside yearly to accumulate a prize fund. There would be at least two prizes: a $5 billion prize to develop
and demonstrate a heavy-lift booster capable of lifting at least 100 tons to low Earth orbit, and a $10 billion prize for the first human mission to Mars. In
addition, the winners of these prizes would be given contracts for the purchase by NASA of an additional five copies of their flight systems at a recurring
cost of 20 percent of the respective prize per copy.
So to start with, NASA would save a good deal of money by having a heavy-lift booster developed for $5 billion, less than a third of the $18 billion it
currently plans to spend over the next six years on its Space Launch System — which would deliver only 75 tons to orbit and which is unlikely to ever be
completed in any case, as it is being developed in isolation from any payloads or missions that might use it. The nation would have heavy-lift capability —
a matter of considerable military utility — and the competitor would be in the black, operating the single most important flight system needed to reach
Mars. The team could then move forward to reach the Red Planet, recouping much more than its remaining
development costs by raking in the $10 billion prize, after which it could expand its business base by selling to
NASA repeat copies of its Mars-mission flight system, thereby allowing the agency to engage in a sustained and
economical program of human exploration of the Red Planet. The total cost of the program, including both prizes and all the
recurring missions, would be $30 billion. Spent over 20 years (ten until the first Mars mission, plus ten more years for the five follow-ons), this would
amount to less than 10 percent of NASA’s budget.
Creating a private organization to fund the program solves.
Joseph 10 – (Rhawn, PhD, Journal of Cosmology, 2010, Vol 12, 4068-4080, “Marketing Mars: Financing the Human Mission to
Mars,” http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars110.html)
It is estimated that the conquest of Mars and the establishment of a colony on the surface of the Red Planet could cost up to $150 billion dollars over 10
years (Day 2004, Zubrin 1996). The benefits of making humans a two-planet species and the technological innovations and revolution a human Mission
to Mars would engender, would be unparalleled, with humanity the ultimate beneficiary.
Many in the scientific and corporate community believe a Human Mission to Mars and the establishment of a permanent Mars' base, will be feasible only
if led by a public enterprise independent of the U.S. government. As detailed in this proposal, the $150 billion can be raised by "The
Human Mission to Mars Corporation," (a hypothetical entity) if given an exclusive mandate and exclusive
licensing rights by the U.S. Congress and other participating nations.
Our objective: The Greatest Adventure in the History of Humanity." Our goal: The Conquest of Space. Our battle cry: "Onward to Mars."
Of course, battle cries will not get us to Mars. It will take money. Those funds can be easily raised through advertising and clever
marketing, the selling of exclusive broadcast and all media rights, the licensing and selling of Mission to Mars-related
merchandise, paid commercial endorsements by astronauts, paid corporate sponsorships (The Human Mission to Mars is sponsored by...), individual
sponsorships, the selling of Mars real estate and mineral rights, and the auctioning of naming rights to corporations who will bid against
one another to have the Mars Landing Crafts and Mars' Colonies and Base Camps named after their companies (e.g. the Google Mars Express, the
Microsoft Mars Lander) with bidding starting at $10 billion dollars.
2. ESTIMATED COSTS
Most estimates envision a Mars' mission with expenditures of less than $25 billion. For example, in 2002, the European Space Agency (ESA) proposed a
joint mission with Russia which would cost $20 billion. This was a two spacecraft proposal, one carrying a six-person crew and the other the supplies.
The mission would take about 440 days to complete with three astronauts visiting the surface of the planet for two months. Russia originally envisioned
a manned Mars mission by 2015 (New Scientist, July, 2002).
In 2007, NASA chief administrator, Michael Griffin suggested a human mission to Mars could cost as little as $11 billion. However, NASA's vague goal
would be to put humans on Mars after the year 2035 (AFP Sep 24, 2007). NASA's current five-year budget is around $86 billion and the $11 billion
estimate for a Human Mission to the Red Planet may be unrealistic.
Thus, it is possible that a two year round trip journey to Mars could be accomplished with expenditures of around $20 billion whereas a more ambitious
mission involving the establishment of a permanent Mars' base would cost considerably more.
According to NASA, a single space shuttle cost around 1.6 billion dollars. Estimates are that the entire space shuttle program, since the program became
operational in 1981, has cost $145 billion, with much of those costs having accrued in the first 10 years. Therefore, it could be estimated that a Mission to
Mars and the establishment and maintenance of a permanent colony, with space craft journeying to and from the Red Planet, could cost around $145
billion over a 10 year period.
3. RELATIVE COSTS: CONQUEST OF SPACE VS WAR ON EARTH
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? To put this into
perspective, consider the costs and benefits of the U.S. war against Iraq which commenced in 2003. In 7 years, and as of September 2010, the U.S. has
spent nearly 1 trillion dollars on the war in Iraq.
According to an analysis and statistics provided by The Brookings Institution's Iraq Index and the U.S. Congressional Research Service, as of September
2010, the United States has spent and approved the spending of over $900 billion to fight the war in Iraq. Whereas NASA has estimated it could cost $11
billion to fund a human mission to Mars, the U.S. government has lost and cannot account for nearly $10 billion allocated for the Iraq War and has
wasted and mismanaged another $10 billion according to Congressional hearings held in February of 2007. In addition, the U.S. government paid KBR,
a former subdivision of Halliburton, over $20 billion to supply the U.S. military in Iraq with food, fuel, and housing which is the same amount the ESA
and Russia estimate could pay for a mission to Mars.
The contrasts are stark: $145 billion to conquer an entire planet, vs a trillion dollars to fight a war which many believe was unnecessary and
accomplished nothing of substance.
With U.S. Congressional approval, the mandate of The Human Mission to Mars Corporation (THMMC), would
raise approximately $150 billion to make the conquest and colonization of Mars a reality by the end of the next
decade. How this can be accomplished will now be explained.
5
U.S. committed to talks with Iran – diplomacy is working
Olson, April 19
Laicie, senior policy analyst @ Center for Arms Control and Non Proliferation, Modest progress and an open door with Iran, http://thehill.com/blogs/congressblog/foreign-policy/222523-modest-progress-and-an-open-door-with-iran
A new round of talks with Iran has ended with modest progress -- particularly compared to
previous futile attempts. The United States and its allies have agreed to meet again with Iran in Baghdad,
May 23, ensuring that the diplomatic process will continue. In the meantime, pressure will continue
to build on Iran. With even stronger US and European Union sanctions set to come into force this summer, and
the burden of current sanctions still weighing heavily on Tehran, the incentive to compromise
could be greater than ever. In a promising turn of events, reports indicate that Iran demonstrated a willingness to stick to the subject of its
nuclear program and did not insist on counterproductive preconditions, as it has in the past. "If there is goodwill, one can pass through this process very
easily and we are ready to resolve all issues very quickly and simply," Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in an interview Monday. But it is unclear
what “goodwill” will be forthcoming. The six world powers will expect to see meaningful Iranian confidence building measures before agreeing to ease
sanctions. At the conclusion of talks in Istanbul, President Obama remarked that, “Now, the clock is ticking and I’ve been very clear to Iran and to our
negotiating partners that we’re not going to have these talks just drag out in a stalling process.” But it is important to keep in mind that diplomacy
does not happen in a day. In order to reach agreement, the two sides will need to remain
committed to dialogue and undergo extensive bargaining. There are some indications that the parties see hope on the
horizon. European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton remarked after the talks that, “We want now to move to a sustained process of serious
dialogue, where we can take urgent practical steps to build confidence and lead on to compliance by Iran with all its international obligations.” She went on to
say that the group would be guided by a “step-by-step approach and reciprocity.” This positive attitude has not always been the case after talks with Iran, and
gives some indication that the international community may be willing to reward Iran if it moves to alleviate the concerns surrounding its nuclear program.
Importantly, there is time for this negotiating process to continue. Experts continue to assess that even under the most
optimal circumstances, it would take at least a year for Iran to produce a testable nuclear weapon, and considerably longer to develop the means to deliver it.
Even more, US and European intelligence officials have stated their belief that, though Iran may be working toward some form of nuclear capability, there is
no evidence that they have made the decision to build a nuclear weapon. It is important to remember that diplomacy takes time, and in the case of Iran, plenty
of time still remains. The steps taken by the US and its allies to pursue a diplomatic solution are laudable .
The international community should be given the space to press forward and seek a final agreement. This is the best way to deal with the unwanted potential
for a nuclear Iran.
Diplomatic efforts are a key part of space policy
Rose, 10
[Frank, State Department – Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation,
remarks at the 5th annual national space forum, September 20, http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=34974]
In implementing the National Space Policy, State leads diplomatic efforts to ensure U.S. leadership at the
United Nations and other space-related fora. State also coordinates U.S. Government efforts to reassure allies
of U.S. commitments to collective self-defense and to identify areas for mutually beneficial cooperation. These
efforts complement the Administration's efforts to augment U.S. capabilities by leveraging existing and planned space capabilities of allies
and space partners.
Diplomatic capital is finite – issues trade off
Schaeffer, 2k
[Brett, Fellow in the Center for International Trade at Heritage Foundation, The Greening of U.S. Foreign Policy, page 46]
Diplomacy is the first option in addressing potential threats to U.S. national interests and expressing U.S.
concerns and priorities to foreign nations. The daily conduct of diplomacy through U.S. missions and
representatives is essential in articulating U.S. interests and eliciting cooperation and support for those
interests abroad. Because diplomatic currency is finite—clearly, foreign countries and officials cannot be
expected to endlessly support and promote U.S. concerns —it is critically important that the United States
focus its diplomatic efforts on issues of paramount importance to the nation.
Israel will strike Iran before the election if the U.S. doesn’t keep the pressure on – preventing
the collapse of negotiations is the key internal link to preventing an Israeli strike
Cooke, March 11
AJ, Asset Strategies International, son of a hostage in Iran during the hostage crisis, The Problem with Persia, http://www.assetstrategies.com/Persia
Israel, on the other hand, faces a dilemma about whether or not to conduct a crippling military strike on Iran, but not for the
obvious reasons given in most news outlets. While they have a legitimate fear of the Iranians crossing the “red line,” the point at which a
nuclear program would be impossible to stop, the most reliable intelligence indicates that this line will not be crossed before the end of the year. At the
same time, if no action is taken by November, they risk dealing with a lame duck president who ,
suddenly unencumbered by obligations to his Jewish base,
could proceed to completely drop the ball on Iran. While it is
difficult to conceive that the leader of the Free World would allow the world’s #1 exporter of
terrorism to go nuclear, this option is clearly within the realm of reason. The decision, then, is
not about attacking Iran out of necessity before year’s end and risking American scorn. Instead, the decision
is about attacking Iran before Election Day to force a reluctant American President to intervene
on Israel’s behalf out of consideration to his poll numbers and campaign coffers. Given the obvious risks of
attack, and the likelihood of any administration emerging from the November elections on their side (at least in public), it is likely the Israelis will cool
their heels. Until then, however, they are also likely to continue to put pressure on the President by using the only bargaining chip they have … a first
strike. Still, as Charles Krauthammer recently noted in the Washington Post, the Obama administration has restarted
negotiations with the Iranian government. They are unlikely to result in any progress whatsoever. However, they may effectively
cripple any push towards an Israeli strike. The Israelis wouldn’t dare attempt military action
during peace negotiations, no matter how superficial those negotiations might be.
That’s bad
Ivashov 07 (Leonid Ivashov, analyst at the Strategic Culture Foundation, 4/21/2007, "Iran: the Threat of a Nuclear War,"
http://www.megachip.info/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=3871)
What might cause the force major event of the required scale? Everything seems
to indicate that Israel will be
sacrificed. Its involvement in a war with Iran - especially in a nuclear war - is bound to trigger a
global catastrophe. The statehoods of Israel and Iran are based on the countries' official religions. A military conflict between
Israel and Iran will immediately evolve into a International one, a conflict between Judaism
and Islam. Due to the presence of numerous Jewish and Muslim populations in the developed countries, this would make a global
bloodbath inevitable. All of the active forces of most of the countries of the world would end up
fighting, with almost no room for neutrality left. Judging by the increasingly massive acquisitions of the residential housing for the Israeli citizens,
especially in Russia and Ukraine , a lot of people already have an idea of what the future holds. However, it is hard to imagine a quiet
heaven where one might hide from the coming doom. Forecasts of the territorial distribution of
the fighting, the quantities and the efficiency of the armaments involved, the profound
character of the underlying roots of the conflict and the severity of the International strife all
leave no doubt that this clash will be in all respects much more nightmarish than WWII.
1Maybe they really mean what they say.
2Or maybe they just want to keep Tehran off-balance
3Maybe they want to distract everyone from their continued expansion of West Bank settlements and other
brutalities against Palestinians.
4Maybe 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.
5Maybe it's several of these things at once, depending on who's talking. Who knows?
1NC Solvency
Colonization impossible – tech, radiation, lack of atmosphere, water, and energy all prove
Williams 10 – Physics professor Santa Rosa
Lynda, Spring, “Irrational Dreams of Space Colonization” Peace Review, a Journal of Social Justice;
http://www.scientainment.com/lwilliams_peacereview.pdf
What do the prospects of colonies or bases on the Moon and Mars offer? Both the Moon and Mars host extreme environments that
are uninhabitable to humans without very sophisticated technological life supporting systems beyond any
that are feasible now or will be available in the near future. Both bodies are subjected to deadly levels of solar
radiation and are void of atmospheres that could sustain oxygen-based life forms such as humans. Terraforming either body is not feasible with current technologies or within any reasonable time frames so any
colony or base would be restricted to living in space capsules or trailer park like structures
which could not support a sufficient number of humans to perpetuate and sustain the species in
any long term manner.
Although evidence of water has been discovered on both bodies, it exists in a form that is trapped in minerals, which
would require huge amounts of energy to access. Water can be converted into fuel either as hydrogen or oxygen, which
would eliminate the need to transport vast amounts of fuel from Earth. However, according to Britain's leading spaceflight expert, Professor Colin
Pillinger, "You would need to heat up a lot of lunar soil to 200C to get yourself a glass of water ." The
promise of helium as an energy source on the moon to is mostly hype. Helium-3 could be used in the production of nuclear fusion energy, a process we
have yet to prove viable or efficient on Earth. Mining helium would require digging dozens of meters into the lunar surface and processing hundreds of
thousands of tons of soil to produce 1 ton of helium-3. (25 tons of helium-3 is required to power the US for 1 year.) Fusion also requires the very rare
element tritium, which does not exist naturally on the Moon, Mars or on Earth in abundances needed to facilitate nuclear fusion energy production.
There are no current means for generating the energy on the Moon to extract the helium-3 to produce the promised endless source of energy from
helium-3 on the Moon. Similar energy problems exist for using solar power on the Moon, which has the additional problem of being sunlit two weeks a
month and dark for the other two weeks.
Mars Colonization impossible
Discovery 11, "How a mission to Mars could kill you", 7/18, http://news.discovery.com/space/mission-to-mars-health-risks-110718.html When
NASA's 30-year Space Shuttle Program ends on Thursday as Atlantis touches down for the last time, space-watchers will be looking toward our next step
into space.
We've already 'done' the moon, but Mars still beckons like some interplanetary Brigadoon; visible through the eyes of clever little rovers and orbiters, but
just beyond the reach of human footsteps. Despite several decades of research and development, a long-duration voyage to Mars is still on the drawing
board. Putting aside the enormous financial costs of an interplanetary mission, there are still major engineering and physiological hurdles to overcome.
background cosmic rays from extragalactic sources and extreme radiation events from
the sun make space travel too hazardous for an estimated six months there and six months return. "The estimate now is you would exceed
Radiation The combined effects of
acceptable levels of fatal cancer," said Francis Cucinotta, chief scientist for NASA's space radiation program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"That's just cancer. We also worry about effects of radiation on the heart and the central nervous system." Cucinotta says these estimates do take into
account protective shielding around a crew vehicle, probably some form of polyethylene plastic. Lead shields actually create secondary radiation when
struck by cosmic rays, while water, perhaps the best form of protection, would have to be several meters thick to get enough protection. ("Houston calling
Water Balloon 1, do you copy?") Lead and water, in any case, are very heavy for the quantities that would be required, making them an expensive
shielding to launch. Solution: Pick astronauts that have never smoked, never been around smokers, and have a built-in genetic resistance to radiation
damage. "We didn't know about this (ability) five or ten years ago, we should have an answer in another ten or 15 years," Cucinotta said. Genetic
protection plus a special shielded shelter may do the trick. Bodies Without Gravity Let us count the ways that the human body falls apart without gravity:
Bone loss of one percent per month. 2) Fainting spells (women more than men) after re-entering a
gravitational field. 3) Cognitive problems including Alzheimer's-like symptoms. 4) Weakness and lack of
cardiovascular fitness. 5) Muscle atrophy. All of these medical conditions would make it tough for the crew to build a shelter when they
1)
land on the Red Planet, for example. "What happens if they land on Mars and try to lift an object that's fairly or reasonably heavy, they could herniate
their discs," said Alan Hargens, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of California San Diego who studies the effects of gravity on astronauts. "One
of the main issues is that when they arrive at Mars, there's nobody there to take care of them. If they have some
issue due to de-conditioning in that six month period, they'll definitely have a problem." Solution: Lots of time on a
treadmill while in microgravity conditions and some kind of artificial gravity may help, but not eliminate the risk. The crew needs either a small unit
inside the ship or a vehicle design that rotates around a central pivot point (think 2001: A Space Odyssey). Hargens said a rotating arm of one-kilometer
diameter will produce the equivalent of the gravity felt on the Earth at sea-level. Smaller centrifuges have produced nausea among astronauts, according
to Hargens, and take up a lot of space inside a cramped vehicle. Another possibility is a special compression suit that forces body fluids into the legs, and
helps maintain fitness. Cabin Fever Put six or seven people in a confined space for 18 months, send them to a place nobody's been before, with no way to escape, is
likely to produce stress, tension and perhaps even severe psychiatric problems, according to NASA’s 2009 Human Research Program report. Based on studies in
Antarctica and other isolated environments underwater, the report cited the risk of "increased human performance errors due to sleep loss, fatigue, work
overload, and circadian desynchronization; and, increased errors due to poor team cohesion and performance, inadequate selection/team composition,
inadequate training, and poor psychosocial adaptation." Cosmonaut squabbles aboard the Russian Mir space station brought one mission home ahead of
time, while NASA has also reported crew disputes among its astronauts. Solution: pick the astronauts very carefully ahead of time. NASA is also looking
at special voice and facial movement monitors to diagnose early signs of stress before they turn into a big fight. An on-board counselor (a la Star Trek’s
Deanna Troi) may help as well, but who counsels the counselor? Food Only vegetarians will be allowed on a Mars trip, since meat can't be preserved in space.
Food provides a natural morale boost for the crew, and proper nutrition wards off oxidative damage to the astronauts' bodies. However, studies show
that radiation can damage the vitamins in food supplies, and the loss of even one vitamin in the food chain could cause serious health effects over a long
trip. Little is known about the long-term effects of radiation on food supplies, since International Space Station (ISS) crews have been partially sheltered
by Earth's magnetosphere. It's expected that the crew will have to grow its own food in some kind of greenhouse, something researchers already do at the
South Pole during winter-over. Hardware/Propulsion At closest approach, Mars is about 35 million miles from Earth, but that figure increases six-fold depending on
the alignment of the two planets' orbits. Some experts say the answer to all the medical, radiation, food and psychological issues is to get there faster. Former
astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz is developing an electric-nuclear plasma-powered rocket (called the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket, or
"VASIMR") to cut the trip to 39 days. President Obama mentioned the new propulsion system during a recent trip to Cape Canaveral. But the Mars
Society's founder, Robert Zubrin, is highly critical of this plan, saying we already have the rocket technology needed to mount a Mars expedition. Zubrin
also went on the record to call VASIMR a "hoax." "The insistence that we need a faster propulsion system just allows politicians to postpone a Mars
mission," said Zubrin, author of the recently re-released book "The Case for Mars." Zubrin proposes a three-stage, 18-month round-trip Mars expedition
that will send a crew habitat ahead of time, as well as devices to produce fuel for the return trip.
Mars trip would have to be one way means won’t be sustainable, if they came back it would
cause super diseases which are an existential risk
DiGregorio No Date [probably 2000-2] professional science and aerospace writer since 1988 founder of the International
Committee Against Mars Sample Return (ICAMSR)
[“ PUTATIVE MARTIAN LIFE NO THREAT TO EARTH? ” http://www.icamsr.org and author of Mars: The Living Planet. ] ZM
Another key issue raised in the Antaeus Report is not even mentioned by Zubrin. Organisms taken from
their natural
environment and placed in a completely foreign environment not only out-competed indigenous organisms but also flourish.
What if this scenario also happens with any organisms brought back from Mars? Surely, the possibility has to be considered. That
is why we have a planetary protection program in the first place. Dr. Zubrin accepts the notion of planetary exchange of debris,
but uses this to conclude that Earth has already been inoculated against germs from Mars. Is this really a rational
theory? Where is the supporting evidence to make a case to abandon planetary protection? Who is to say that such interplanetary infections
have not been the cause of unexplained extinction’s of species on Earth in the past? Was disease also a culprit in the extinction of the
dinosaurs. Many scientists now think so. The K-2 impact event 65 million years ago did not kill off the dinosaurs,
they lived on another 2 million years. Also, Dr. Ross McPhee of the American Museum of Natural History has now postulated that a
species crossing hyperdisease killed off the Pleistocene mammal’s 13,000 years ago. Are we so sure that interplanetary
infection was not a cause? Dr.'s Chandra Wickramasinghe and Fred Hoyle from Cardiff University in England have correlated cometary tail debris with
outbreaks of influenza on Earth. Shouldn’t we look into this sort of information more closely before returning samples
from comets or planets considered to be possible habitats? The horrific truth about microbes is that all they need
is to find Earth-life to be a good source of food, and to have the capacity to harvest it. H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" had a favorable
outcome, but Wells' invaders were not microorganisms, although his story ends with Earth microbes killing off the Aliens. Even if Zubrin's
assumptions are considered reasonable by some, his argument does not hold against different reasonable
assumptions. When the entire biosphere hangs in the balance, it is adventuristic in the extreme to bring Martian
life here, or send astronauts to Mars before we know the capabilities of any organisms that might exist there. Sure, there is a chance it would do no
harm; but that is not the point. Unless you can rule out the chance that it might do harm, you should not embark on such a
course before making absolutely certain.
Colonization causes another space race and increases debris
Williams 10 (Linda, Physics Instructor, Santa Rosa Junior College, Spring, Peace Review Journal of Social Justice, “Irrational Dreams of Space
Colonization”, http://www.scientainment.com/lwilliams_peacereview.pdf)
The technological hurdles prohibiting practical space colonization of the Moon and Mars in the near future are stratospherically high. The environmental and
political consequences of pursuing these lofty dreams are even higher. There are no international laws governing the Moon or the protection of the space
environment. The Moon Treaty, created in 1979 by the United Nations, declares that the Moon shall be developed to benefit all nations and that no military bases
could be placed on the moon or on any celestial body, and bans altering the environment of celestial bodies. To date, no space faring nation has ratified this treaty,
meaning, the moon, and all celestial bodies, including Mars and asteroids are up for the taking. If a nation did place a military base on the moon, they could
potentially control all launches from Earth. The Moon is the ultimate military high ground. How should we, as a species, control the exploration, exploitation and
control of the Moon and other celestial bodies if we can not even agree on a legal regime to protect and share its resources? Since the space race began 50 years
ago with the launch of Sputnik, the space environment around Earth has become overcrowded with satellites and
space debris, so much so, that circum-terrestrial space has become a dangerous place with an increasing
risk of collision and destruction. Thousands of pieces of space junk created from launches orbit the Earth in the same orbit as satellites, putting
them at risk of collision. Every time a rocket is launched, debris from the rocket stages are put into orbital space. In 2009 there was a disastrous collision between
an Iridium satellite and a piece of space junk that destroyed the satellite. In 2007 China blew up one of its defunct satellites to demonstrate its antiballistic missile
capabilities, increasing the debris field by 15%. There are no international laws prohibiting anti-satellite actions. Indeed, if the space debris problem
continues to grow unfettered or if there is war in space, space will become too trashed for launches to take place without risk.
Every year, since the mid 1980s, a treaty has been introduced into the UN for a Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS), with all parties
including Russia and China voting for it except for the US. How can we hope to pursue a peaceful and environmentally sound route of space exploration
without international laws in place that protect space and Earth environments and guarantee that the space race to the moon and beyond does not foster
a war over space resources? destruction. The private development of space is growing at a flurried rate. Competitions such as the X-Prize for companies to
reach orbit and the Google Prize to land a robot on the Moon has launched space wanderlust in citizens throughout the country who dream of traveling to space.
The reality is that there are few protections for the environment and the passengers of these flights of fancy. The FAA, which regulates space launches, is under a
Congressional mandate to foster the industry. It is difficult if not impossible to have objective regulation of an industry when it enjoys government incentives to
profit. We have much to determine on planet Earth before we launch willy nilly into another race into space and
a potential environmental disaster and arms race in outer space .
Space debris leads to US-Russia war
Lewis 4 – Postdoctoral Fellow in the Advanced Methods of Cooperative Study Program
Jeffrey, Worked In the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Center for Defense Information, What if Space Were Weaponized?
July, http://www.cdi.org/PDFs/scenarios.pdf
This is the second of two scenarios that consider how U.S. space weapons might create incentives for America’s opponents to behave in dangerous ways. The
previous scenario looked at the systemic risk of accidents that could arise from keeping nuclear weapons on high alert to guard against a space weapons attack. This
section focuses on the risk that a single accident in space, such as a piece of space debris striking a Russian early-warning satellite, might be the
catalyst for an accidental nuclear war. As we have noted in an earlier section, the United States canceled its own ASAT program in the 1980s over
concerns that the deployment of these weapons might be deeply destabilizing. For all the talk about a “new relationship” between the United States and Russia,
both sides retain thousands of nuclear forces on alert and configured to fight a nuclear war. When briefed about the size and status of U.S. nuclear forces, President
George W. Bush reportedly asked “What do we need all these weapons for?”43
The answer, as it was during the Cold War, is that the forces remain on alert to
conduct a number of possible contingencies, including a nuclear strike against Russia. This fact, of course, is not lost on the Rus- sian leadership, which has been
increasing its reliance on nuclear weapons to compensate for the country’s declining military might. In the mid-1990s, Russia dropped its pledge to refrain from the
“first use” of nuclear weapons and conducted a series of exercises in which Russian nuclear forces prepared to use nuclear weapons to repel a NATO invasion. In
October 2003, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov reiter- ated that Moscow might use nuclear weapons “preemptively” in any number of contingencies,
including a NATO attack.44 So, it remains business as usual with U.S. and Russian nuclear forces. And business as usual includes the occasional false alarm of a
nuclear attack. There have been several of these incidents over the years. In September 1983, as a relatively new Soviet early-warning satellite moved into position
to monitor U.S. missile fields in North Dakota, the sun lined up in just such a way as to fool the Russian satellite into reporting that half a dozen U.S. missiles had
been launched at the Soviet Union. Perhaps mindful that a brand new satel- lite might malfunction, the officer in charge of the command center that monitored data
from the early-warning satellites refused to pass the alert to his superiors. He reportedly explained his caution by saying: “When people start a war, they don’t start
it with only five missiles. You can do little damage with just five missiles.”45 In January 1995, Norwegian scientists launched a sounding rocket on a trajectory
similar to one that a U.S. Trident missile might take if it were launched to blind Russian radars with a high26 What if Space Were Weaponized? altitude nuclear
detonation. The incident was apparently serious enough that, the next day, Russian President Boris Yeltsin stated that he had activated his “nuclear football” – a
device that allows the Russian president to communicate with his military advisors and review his options for launching his arsenal. In this case, the Russian earlywarning satellites could clearly see that no attack was under way and the crisis passed without incident.46 In both cases, Russian observers were confi- dent that
what appeared to be a “small” attack was not a fragmentary picture of a much larger one. In the case of the Norwegian sounding rocket, space-based sensors played
a crucial role in assuring the Russian leadership that it was not under attack. The Russian command sys- tem, however, is no longer able to provide such reliable,
early warning. The dissolution of the Soviet Union cost Moscow several radar stations in newly independent states, creating “attack corridors” through which
Moscow could not see an attack launched by U.S. nuclear submarines.47 Further, Russia’s constellation of early-warn- ing satellites has been allowed to decline –
only one or two of the six satellites remain operational, leaving Russia with early warning for only six hours a day. Russia is attempting to reconstitute its
constellation of early-warning satellites, with several launches planned in the next few years. But Russia will still have limited warning and will depend
heavily on its space-based systems to provide warning of an American attack.48 As the previous section explained, the Pentagon is contemplating military
missions in space that will improve U.S. ability to cripple Russian nuclear forces in a crisis before they can execute an attack on the United States. Anti-satellite
weapons, in this scenario, would blind Russian reconnaissance and warning satellites and knock out communications satellites. Such strikes might be the prelude to
a full-scale attack, or a limited ef- fort, as attempted in a war game at Schriever Air Force Base, to conduct “early deterrence strikes” to signal U.S. resolve and
control escalation.49 By 2010, the United States may, in fact, have an arsenal of ASATs (perhaps even on orbit 24/7) ready to conduct these kinds of missions – to
coerce opponents and, if necessary, support preemptive attacks. Moscow would certainly have to worry that these ASATs could be used in conjunction with other
space-enabled systems – for example, long-range strike systems that could attack targets in less than 90 minutes – to disable Russia’s nuclear deterrent before the
Rus- sian leadership understood what was going on. What would happen if a piece of space debris were to disable a Russian earlywarning satellite under these conditions? Could the Russian military distinguish between an accident in space and the first phase of a U.S. attack? Most
Russian early-warning satellites are in elliptical Molniya orbits (a few are in GEO) and thus difficult to attack from the ground or air. At a minimum, Moscow
would probably have some tactical warn- ing of such a suspicious launch, but given the sorry state of Russia’s warning, optical imaging and signals intelligence
satellites there is reason to ask the question. Further, the advent of U.S. on-orbit ASATs, as now envisioned50 could make both the more difficult orbital plane and
any warning systems moot. The unpleasant truth is that the Russians likely would have to make a judgment call. No state has the ability to definitively determine the cause of the satellite’s failure. Even the United States does not maintain (nor is it likely to have in place by 2010) a sophisticated space surveillance
system that would allow it to distin- guish between a satellite malfunction, a debris strike or a deliberate attack – and Russian space surveillance capabilities are
much more limited by comparison. Even the risk assessments for col- lision with debris are speculative, particularly for the unique orbits in which Russian earlywarning satellites operate. During peacetime, it is easy to imagine that the Russians would conclude that the loss of a satellite was either a malfunction or a debris
strike. But how confident could U.S. planners be that the Russians would be so calm if the accident in space occurred in tandem with a second false alarm, or
occurred during the middle of a crisis? What might happen if the debris strike occurred shortly after a false alarm showing a missile launch? False alarms
are appallingly common – according to information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense
Command (NORAD) experienced 1,172 “moderately serious” false alarms between 1977 and 1983 – an average of almost three false alarms per week.
Comparable information is not available about the Russian system, but there is no reason to believe that it is any more reliable.51 Assessing the likelihood
of these sorts of co- incidences is difficult because Russia has never provided data about the frequency or duration of false alarms; nor indicated how seriously
early- warning data is taken by Russian leaders. More- over, there is no reliable estimate of the debris risk for Russian satellites in highly elliptical orbits.52 The
important point, however, is that such a coincidence would only appear suspicious if the United States were in the business of disabling satellites – in other words,
there is much less risk if Washington does not develop ASATs. The loss of an early-warning satellite could look rather ominous if it occurred during a period of
major tension in the relationship. While NATO no longer sees Russia as much of a threat, the same cannot be said of the converse. Despite the warm talk, Russian
leaders remain wary of NATO expansion, particularly the effect expansion may have on the Baltic port of Kaliningrad. Although part of Russia, Kaliningrad is
separated from the rest of Russia by Lithuania and Poland. Russia has already complained about its decreasing lack of access to the port, particularly the
uncooperative attitude of the Lithuanian govern- ment.53
News reports suggest that an edgy Russia may have moved tactical nuclear weapons into the
enclave.54 If the Lithuanian government were to close access to Kaliningrad in a fit of pique, this would trigger a major crisis between NATO and Russia. Under
these circumstances, the loss of an early-warning satellite would be extremely suspicious. It is any military’s nature during a crisis to interpret events in their
worst-case light. For ex- ample, consider the coincidences that occurred in early September 1956, during the extraordinarily tense period in international relations
marked by the Suez Crisis and Hungarian uprising.55 On one evening the White House received messages indicating: 1. the Turkish Air Force had gone on alert
in response to unidentified aircraft penetrating its airspace; 2. one hundred Soviet MiG-15s were flying over Syria; 3. a British Canberra bomber had been shot
down over Syria, most likely by a MiG; and 4. The Russian fleet was moving through the Dardanelles. Gen. Andrew Accidental Nuclear War Scenarios
27 28
What if Space Were Weaponized? Goodpaster was reported to have worried that the confluence of events “might trigger off ... the NATO operations plan”
that called for a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. Yet, all of these reports were false. The “jets” over Turkey were a flock of swans; the Soviet MiGs over Syria
were a smaller, routine escort returning the president from a state visit to Moscow; the bomber crashed due to mechanical difficulties; and the Soviet fleet was
beginning long-scheduled exercises. In an important sense, these were not “coincidences” but rather different manifestations of a common failure – human error
resulting from extreme tension of an international crisis. As one author noted, “The detection and misinterpretation of these events, against the context of world
tensions from Hungary and Suez, was the first major example of how the size and complexity of worldwide electronic warning systems could, at certain critical
times, create momentum of its own.” Perhaps most worrisome, the United States might be blithely unaware of the degree to which the Russians were
concerned about its actions and inadvertently escalate a crisis. During the early 1980s, the Soviet Union suffered a major “war scare” during which
time its leadership concluded that bilateral relations were rapidly declining. This war scare was driven in part by the rhetoric of the Reagan administration, fortified
by the selective reading of intelligence. During this period, NATO conducted a major command post exercise, Able Archer, that caused some elements of the
Soviet military to raise their alert status. American officials were stunned to learn, after the fact, that the Kremlin had been acutely nervous about an American first
strike during this period.56 All of these incidents have a common theme – that confidence is often the difference between war and peace. In times of crisis,
false alarms can have a momentum of their own. As in the second scenario in this monograph, the lesson is that commanders
rely on the steady flow of reliable information. When that information flow is disrupted – whether by a deliberate attack or an
accident – confidence collapses and the result is panic and escalation. Introducing ASAT weapons into this mix is all the
more dangerous, because such weapons target the elements of the command system that keep leaders aware, informed and
in control. As a result, the mere presence of such weapons is corrosive to the confidence that allows national nuclear forces
to operate safely.
This access existential risk calculus
Bostrom 2
Nick, PhD, Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 9, March 2002, http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html
A much greater existential risk emerged with the build-up of nuclear arsenals in the US and the USSR. An all-out nuclear war
was a possibility with both a substantial probability and with consequences that might have been persistent enough to qualify as global and
terminal. There was a real worry among those best acquainted with the information available at the time that a nuclear Armageddon would occur
and that it might annihilate our species or permanently destroy human civilization.[4] Russia and the US retain large nuclear arsenals
that could be used in a future confrontation, either accidentally or deliberately. There is also a risk that other states may one day build up large
nuclear arsenals. Note however that a smaller nuclear exchange, between India and Pakistan for instance, is not an existential risk, since it would not
destroy or thwart humankind’s potential permanently. Such a war might however be a local terminal risk for the cities most likely to be targeted.
Unfortunately, we shall see that nuclear Armageddon and comet or asteroid strikes are mere preludes to the existential risks that we will encounter in the 21st
century.
Existential Risk
Dramatizing impacts as existential threats replaces risk assessment with worst case thinking.
Furedi 10 — Frank Furedi, Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury, 2010 (“Fear is key
to irresponsibility,” The Australian, October 9th, Available Online at
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/fear-is-key-to-irresponsibility/story-e6frg6zo1225935797740, Accessed 10-18-2010)
In the 21st century the optimistic belief in humanity's potential for subduing the unknown and to become
master of its fate has given way to the belief that we are too powerless to deal with the perils confronting us.
We live in an era where problems associated with uncertainty and risk are amplified and,
through our imagination, mutate swiftly into existential threats. Consequently, it is rare that
unexpected natural events are treated as just that. Rather, they are swiftly dramatized and
transformed into a threat to human survival. The clearest expression of this tendency is the dramatization of weather
forecasting. Once upon a time the television weather forecasts were those boring moments when you got up to get a snack. But with the invention of
concepts such as ``extreme weather'', routine events such as storms, smog or unexpected snowfalls have acquired compelling entertainment qualities.
This is a world where a relatively ordinary, technical, information-technology problem such as the so-called
millennium bug was interpreted as a threat of apocalyptic proportions, and where a flu epidemic takes on the
dramatic weight of the plot of a Hollywood disaster movie. Recently, when the World Health Organisation warned
that the human species was threatened by the swine flu, it became evident that it was cultural prejudice rather
than sober risk assessment that influenced much of present-day official thinking. In recent times European culture has
become confused about the meaning of uncertainty and risk. Contemporary Western cultural attitudes towards
uncertainty, chance and risk are far more pessimistic and confused than they were through most of the modern
era. Only rarely is uncertainty perceived as an opportunity to take responsibility for our destiny. Invariably uncertainty is represented as
a marker for danger and change is often regarded with dread. Frequently, worst-case thinking displaces any
genuine risk-assessment process. Risk assessment is based on an attempt to calculate the probability of
different outcomes. Worst-case thinking -- these days known as precautionary thinking -- is based on an act of
imagination. It imagines the worst-case scenario and demands that we take action on that basis.
This causes serial policy failure.
Schneier 10 — Bruce Schneier, internationally renowned security technologist who was described by The
Economist as a “Security Guru,” currently works as the Chief Security Technology Officer for BT—a global
telecommunications services company, holds an M.A. in Computer Science from American University, 2010
(“Worst-case thinking makes us nuts, not safe,” CNN, May 12th, Available Online at
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/05/12/schneier.worst.case.thinking/, Accessed 10-18-2010)
At a security conference recently, the moderator asked the panel of distinguished cybersecurity leaders what their nightmare scenario was. The answers
were the predictable array of large-scale attacks: against our communications infrastructure, against the power grid, against the financial system, in
combination with a physical attack. I didn't get to give my answer until the afternoon, which was: "My nightmare scenario is that people keep talking
about their nightmare scenarios." There's a certain blindness that comes from worst-case thinking. An extension of the
precautionary principle, it involves imagining the worst possible outcome and then acting as if it were a certainty. It substitutes
imagination for thinking, speculation for risk analysis and fear for reason. It fosters powerlessness and
vulnerability and magnifies social paralysis. And it makes us more vulnerable to the effects of terrorism. Worst-case thinking
means generally bad decision making for several reasons. First, it's only half of the cost-benefit equation. Every
decision has costs and benefits, risks and rewards. By speculating about what can possibly go wrong, and then acting as if that is likely to
happen, worst-case thinking focuses only on the extreme but improbable risks and does a poor job at assessing outcomes. Second, it's based on
flawed logic. It begs the question by assuming that a proponent of an action must prove that the nightmare
scenario is impossible. Third, it can be used to support any position or its opposite. If we build a nuclear power plant, it
could melt down. If we don't build it, we will run short of power and society will collapse into anarchy. If we allow flights near Iceland's volcanic ash,
planes will crash and people will die. If we don't, organs won't arrive in time for transplant operations and people will die. If we don't invade Iraq,
Saddam Hussein might use the nuclear weapons he might have. If we do, we might destabilize the Middle East, leading to widespread violence and
death. Of course, not all fears are equal. Those that we tend to exaggerate are more easily justified by worst-case thinking.
So terrorism fears trump privacy fears, and almost everything else; technology is hard to understand and therefore scary; nuclear weapons are worse
than conventional weapons; our children need to be protected at all costs; and annihilating the planet is bad. Basically, any fear that would make a good
movie plot is amenable to worst-case thinking.
Short-term existential risks outweigh and turn the aff – they destroy our ability to colonize
space
Baum 10 – visiting scholar at Columbia University's Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, PhD candidate in Geography, and focuses on
risk analysis (2/12/2010, Seth, “Is Humanity Doomed? Insights from Astrobiology”, Sustainability Journal,
http://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v2y2010i2p591-603d7141.html) MGM
The fact that the universe will remain habitable for much longer than Earth will means that, if we care about long-term sustainability, then it is extremely
important for us to colonize space [38]. Colonizing space will permit us to take advantage of all that the rest of the universe has to offer [39]. But this
does not mean that we should focus our current efforts on space colonization. The reason for this is simple: Earth will
remain habitable for another billion years or so. While a billion years is quite small compared to the universe’s
lifetime, it is quite large compared to the amount of time it probably takes to colonize space, especially given
our current rapid rates of technological change. If we are to colonize space before the world ends, then we have plenty
of time to do it—as long as nothing really bad happens first. These “really bad” things can be any global catastrophe
so large that it would permanently eliminate our capacity to colonize space before the world ends. Several
phenomena may be so catastrophic, including nuclear warfare, pandemic outbreaks, ecological collapse, disruptive
technology, and of course impact from a large asteroid. Risks of these events have been called global catastrophic risks or
existential risks [40]. I will use the term existential risk here because it is our existence that is ultimately at stake. These risks are far more
imminent than the end of the world. Therefore, if we care about long-term sustainability, then we should focus our
efforts on avoiding these catastrophes, i.e., on reducing existential risk, so that future generations can colonize space. A
focus on existential risk reduction will in some cases require a shift of focus for those working on sustainability. Much contemporary sustainability work
helps to reduce existential risk, but some of it is more effective than others, and some other effective opportunities go overlooked. Sustainability work
focused on more local concerns may not make much difference to the broader course of civilization— although much caution is warranted here, because,
as sustainability researchers know well, local changes can often have universal consequences. Nonetheless, those who care about long-term
sustainability should seek out opportunities to reduce existential risk with an eye towards eventual space
colonization.
Privilege short-timeframe impacts:
A) Intervening actors—the longer the timeframe the more likely other agents are to solve their
impact
B) Impact access—short timeframe impacts can turn long timeframe ones, but not the other
way around—by the time the later event has occurred our shorter timeframe impact will
already be irreversible
C)Probability—Long timeframes decrease it—the more distant the prediction, the more likely it
is to be wrong
POSNER 2004 (Richard, US Court of Appeals judge and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Catastrophe: Risk and
Response 17)
A compelling reason for not giving a great deal of thought to the remote future is the difficulty, often the
impossibility, of making accurate predictions beyond a few years. People in the year 1000 could have had only the vaguest
conception of what the world would be like in the year 2004, and we can have only the vaguest conception of what it will be like in the year 3000, let
alone the year 1,000,000. We have better predictive methods than people in 1000 did, but on the other had the rate of technological change
is higher now than it was then. Lacking the requisite foreknowledge we can’t know what we should be doing now
to forestall the disasters that are possible, maybe even likely, on that timescale.
D) Conditional probability—short-timeframe existential risks effectively decrease the
probability of long-timeframe ones—we can only die once
BOSTROM 2011 (Nick, Prof. of Philosophy at Oxford, The Concept of Existential Risk (Draft), http://www.existentialrisk.com/concept.html)
Finally, when considering existential-risk probabilities, we must recognize that one existential catastrophe can preempt another. If a
meteor wipes us out next year, the existential risk from future machine superintelligence drops to zero. The sum
of all-things-considered probabilities of disjoint (mutually exclusive) existential risks cannot exceed 100%. Yet conditional
probabilities of disjoint existential risks (conditional, that is to say, on no other existential disaster occurring preemptively) could well add up to more
than 100%. For example, some pessimist might coherently assign an 80% probability to humanity being
destroyed by machine superintelligence, and a 70% conditional probability to humanity being destroyed by
nanotechnological warfare given that humanity is not destroyed by machine superintelligence. However, if the
unconditional (all-things-considered) probability of our being eradicated by superintelligence is 80%, then the
unconditional probability of our being eradicated by nanotech war must be no greater than 20%, since we can
only be eradicated once.
Impact Defense
Nuclear war can and will happen – Tepperman’s analysis is flawed
Scoblic 9 Peter, Executive Editor of the New Republic ("Deterred From Logic on Nukes," 9/1/09, http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-plank/deterredlogic-nukes, accessed 2/7/12)
In the latest issue of Newsweek, Jonathan
Tepperman has a very confused piece arguing that nuclear disarmament is a
bad idea because “[t]he bomb may actually make us safer.” Taking a stand against Washington’s allegedly overwhelming “nuclear phobia,” he writes,
“Knowing the truth about nukes would have a profound impact on government policy.” I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone suggest that they know “the
truth” about nuclear weapons, but I’m quite certain that Tepperman hasn’t found it. The thrust of the article is that nuclear-armed
states won’t fight each other because “all states are rational on some basic level” and because the “iron logic of deterrence and
mutual assured destruction is so compelling.” In other words, they won’t wage even a conventional war out of fear that it’ll go nuclear and destroy them
in the process. This, of course, assumes that states are monolithic actors and that rationality precludes catastrophe,
both of which are silly propositions, as Tepperman himself inadvertently shows when he cites the Cuban
missile crisis as evidence for his thesis. During the crisis, he writes, “Both sides stepped back from the brink when they recognized that a
war would have meant curtains for everyone.” The first problem with this argument is that the Cuban missile crisis wouldn’t have happened at all if
nuclear weapons hadn’t existed. So, unless Tepperman wants to argue that the crisis posed no danger whatsoever (a very high bar to clear), nuclear
weapons clearly did not serve us well in that instance. Second, while both sides may have behaved rationally in pulling back from the brink, the point is
that neither wanted to approach the brink in the first place. The lesson of the crisis is that human beings, acting in what they
perceive to be a rational manner, can produce outcomes that are wildly out of step with their self-interest. After
all, Khrushchev was perfectly sane when he ordered missiles placed in Cuba, but his actions had unintended
consequences. And if rationality can produce unintended outcomes, then Tepperman is wrong in suggesting
that MAD is foolproof: The Cuban missile crisis could have ended very differently. That certainly seems to be the case when you consider all the
near-misses that occurred during those 13 days. Contra Tepperman’s assumptions, the Cuban missile crisis showed that, even when they try to behave
rationally, states are not always in control of their own behavior. For example, as the crisis neared its climax, Air Force officers in California launched an
ICBM over the Pacific in a pre-scheduled test--not the sort of thing one (rationally) wants to do during a nuclear stand-off and certainly not something
President Kennedy approved. What’s more, the following day, a Soviet officer in Cuba shot down an American reconnaissance flight in direct
contradiction of Khrushchev’s orders, further escalating the conflict. Worst of all, during the crisis the Soviets had dozens of tactical nuclear weapons on
the island--i.e., nukes meant for battlefield use--and for a time their field commanders had pre-delegated authority to use them in the event of a U.S.
attack. (For more on this, see here.) In fact, Castro had told Khrushchev that, if the Americans attacked, he should use the nuclear weapons even though
he recognized that Cuba would likely be destroyed in retaliation. This contradicts Tepperman’s assertion that “even the craziest tin-pot dictator is forced
to accept that war with a nuclear state is unwinnable and therefore not worth the effort.”
Bennett and Nordstrom don’t take into account terrorism or non-state actors
Economic decline causes global war – need for resources and terrorism
Royal 10 – Director of CTR
Jedediah, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction – U.S. Department of Defense, “Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of
Economic Crises”, Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, Ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215
Less intuitive is how periods of economic
decline may increase the likelihood of
conflict.
external
Political science literature has
contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic,
dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that
rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as
economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin. 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Feaver, 1995). Alternatively,
even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately, Pollins
(1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes
and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future
expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade
if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items
such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to
those resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves
so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However,
by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess
(2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write: The
linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal
conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts
self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89) Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the
likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions.
Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. "Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing unpopularity
arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to
create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995). and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that
economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the
tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more
susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods
of weak
economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in
the use of force. In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of
economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels.5 This
implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more
attention.
Ball is the only one refusing to acknowledge the most recent studies – any nuclear exchange
would cause a devastating nuclear winter
King 9 Peter, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies ("Undermining Proliferation: Nuclear Winter and Nuclear Renunciation," October 2009,
http://sydney.edu.au/arts/peace_conflict/docs/pk_undermining%20_prolif.pdf)
Of course “operationally
deployed” warheads are the most dangerous kind, especially those assigned or able to be launched on warning
alone, until drastically reduced, will continue to pose catastrophic risks for
humankind, not least of nuclear winter. 13 On this subject alarms were first sounded in the early 1980s (most prominently by Carl Sagan
and Jonathan Schell) that after a largescale nuclear war a global freeze would ensue from the millions of tons of soot
injected into the stratosphere as cities and forests burned. 14 These alarms prompted mainly an avalanche of willful
scepticism, much of it plausibly orchestrated by Des Ball of the Australian National University, who remains,
apparently, unrepentant in denial. But we now know that the real situation is even more dire than was supposed 20
years ago. Using the advanced modelling techniques developed to forecast climate change, American and
Russian teams of independent researchers have come up with the persuasive conclusion that even a “small”
nuclear exchange (unforgivable euphemism)-for instance between fledgling nuclear states India and Pakistan—involving “only a
hundred weapons in total but targeted mainly on (highly inflammable as well as populous) cities--would create a disastrous climatic
effect. Up to a billion deaths globally have been forecast from food crop devastation in this scenario, a stunningly larger casualty figure than the few
tens of millions of “prompt deaths” forecast for the “combatant populations”. And a “large” nuclear war in which the two big nuclear powers
shot off most of their deployed arsenals would put human survival—at least social survival--at risk from global freezing,
independently of all the other dire but more familiar effects. 16
rather than hard evidence of attack. Their numbers
Warming causes extinction -- scientific consensus – feedback loops make adaptation impossible
Morgan, 2009 [Dennis Ray, Professor of Current Affairs @ Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, South Korea, “World on fire: two scenarios of
the destruction of human civilization and possible extinction of the human race”, Futures, Volume 41, Issue 10, December 2009, Pages 683-693,
ScienceDirect]
As horrifying as the scenario of human extinction by sudden, fast-burning nuclear fire may seem, the one consolation is that
this future can be avoided within a relatively short period of time if responsible world leaders change Cold War thinking to move
away from aggressive wars over natural resources and towards the eventual dismantlement of most if not all nuclear weapons. On the other hand,
another scenario of human extinction by fire is one that may not so easily be reversed within a short period of time
because it is not a fast-burning fire; rather, a slow burning fire is gradually heating up the planet as industrial civilization progresses and develops
globally. This gradual process and course is long-lasting; thus it cannot easily be changed, even if responsible world leaders change their thinking about
‘‘progress’’ and industrial development based on the burning of fossil fuels. The way that global warming will impact humanity in the future has often
been depicted through the analogy of the proverbial frog in a pot of water who does not realize that the temperature of the water is gradually rising.
Instead of trying to escape, the frog tries to adjust to the gradual temperature change; finally, the heat of the water sneaks up on it until it is debilitated.
Though it finally realizes its predicament and attempts to escape, it is too late; its feeble attempt is to no avail— and the frog dies. Whether this fable can
actually be applied to frogs in heated water or not is irrelevant; it still serves as a comparable scenario of how the slow burning fire of global
warming may eventually lead to a runaway condition and take humanity by surprise. Unfortunately, by the
time the politicians finally all agree with the scientific consensus that global warming is indeed human caused,
its development could be too advanced to arrest; the poor frog has become too weak and enfeebled to get himself out of hot water. The
Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by the WorldMeteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations
Environmental Programme to ‘‘assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic
information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of humaninduced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and
mitigation.’’[16]. Since then, it has given assessments and reports every six or seven years. Thus far, it has given four assessments.13 With all prior
assessments came attacks fromsome parts of the scientific community, especially by industry scientists, to attempt to prove that the theory had no basis
in planetary history and present-day reality; nevertheless, as more andmore research continually provided concrete and empirical evidence to confirm
the global warming hypothesis, that it is indeed human-caused, mostly due to the burning of fossil fuels, the scientific consensus grew stronger that
global warming is verifiable . As a matter of fact, according to Bill McKibben [17], 12 years of ‘‘impressive scientific
research’’ strongly confirms the 1995 report ‘‘that humans had grown so large in numbers and especially in appetite for energy that they
were now damaging the most basic of the earth’s systems—the balance between incoming and outgoing solar energy’’; ‘‘. . . their
human induced
findings have essentially been complementary to the 1995 report – a constant strengthening of the simple basic truth that humans were burning too
a stronger scientific consensus that
the slow burn is ‘‘very likely’’ human caused, but it also finds that the ‘‘amount of carbon in the atmosphere is now
increasing at a faster rate even than before’’ and the temperature increases would be ‘‘considerably higher than they have been so far were it not
for the blanket of soot and other pollution that is temporarily helping to cool the planet.’’ [17]. Furthermore, almost ‘‘everything frozen on
earth is melting. Heavy rainfalls are becoming more common since the air is warmer and therefore holds more water than cold air, and ‘cold days,
cold nights and frost have become less frequent, while hot days, hot nights, and heat waves have become more frequent.’’ [17]. Unless drastic
action is taken soon, the average global temperature is predicted to rise about 5 degrees this century, but it
could rise as much as 8 degrees. As has already been evidenced in recent years, the rise in global temperature is melting the
Arctic sheets. This runaway polar melting will inflict great damage upon coastal areas, which could be much
much fossil fuel.’’ [17]. Indeed, 12 years later, the 2007 report not only confirms global warming, with
greater than what has been previously forecasted. However, what is missing in the IPCC report, as dire as it may seem, is sufficient
emphasis on the less likely but still plausible worst case scenarios, which could prove to have the most devastating, catastrophic consequences for the
long-term future of human civilization. In other words, the IPCC report places too much emphasis on a linear progression that does not take sufficient
account of the dynamics of systems theory, which leads to a fundamentally different premise regarding the relationship between industrial civilization
and nature. As a matter of fact, as early as the 1950s, Hannah Arendt [18] observed this radical shift of emphasis in the human-nature relationship,
which starkly contrasts with previous times because the very distinction between nature and man as ‘‘Homo faber’’ has become blurred, as man no longer
merely takes from nature what is needed for fabrication; instead, he now acts into nature to augment and transform natural processes, which are then
directed into the evolution of human civilization itself such that we become a part of the very processes that we make. The more human civilization
becomes an integral part of this dynamic system, the more difficult it becomes to extricate ourselves from it. As Arendt pointed out, this dynamism is
dangerous because of its unpredictability. Acting into nature to transform natural processes brings about an . . . endless new change of happenings whose
eventual outcome the actor is entirely incapable of knowing or controlling beforehand. The moment we started natural processes of our own - and the
splitting of the atom is precisely such a man-made natural process -we not only increased our power over nature, or became more aggressive in our
dealings with the given forces of the earth, but for the first time have taken nature into the human world as such and obliterated the defensive boundaries
between natural elements and the human artifice by which all previous civilizations were hedged in’’ [18]. So, in as much as we act into nature, we carry
our own unpredictability into our world; thus, Nature can no longer be thought of as having absolute or iron-clad laws. We no longer know what the laws
of nature are because the unpredictability of Nature increases in proportion to the degree by which industrial civilization injects its own processes into it;
through selfcreated, dynamic, transformative processes, we carry human unpredictability into the future with a precarious recklessness that may indeed
end in human catastrophe or extinction, for elemental forces that we have yet to understand may be unleashed upon us by the very environment that we
experiment with. Nature may yet have her revenge and the last word, as the Earth and its delicate ecosystems, environment, and
atmosphere reach a tipping point, which could turn out to be a point of no return . This is exactly the conclusion reached
by the scientist, inventor, and author, James Lovelock. The creator of the wellknown yet controversial Gaia Theory, Lovelock has recently written that it
may be already too late for humanity to change course since climate centers around the world, . . . which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a
hospital, have reported the Earth’s physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last
as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth’s family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are
in grave danger. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her
condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will
suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.
Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds
to the 40 per cent of the Earth’s surface we have depleted to feed ourselves. . . . Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern
hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This ‘global dimming’ is transient and could disappear in a
few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a
fool’s climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few
breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable. [19] Moreover,
Lovelock states that the task of trying to correct our course is hopelessly impossible, for we are not in charge. It
is foolish and arrogant to think that we can regulate the atmosphere, oceans and land surface in order to
maintain the conditions right for life. It is as impossible as trying to regulate your own temperature and the composition of your blood, for
those with ‘‘failing kidneys know the never-ending daily difficulty of adjusting water, salt and protein intake. The technological fix of dialysis helps, but is
no replacement for living healthy kidneys’’ [19]. Lovelock concludes his analysis on the fate of human civilization and Gaia by saying that we will do ‘‘our
best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source
of emissions. The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate’’ [19]. Lovelock’s forecast for climate change is based
on a systems dynamics analysis of the interaction between humancreated processes and natural processes. It is a multidimensional model that
appropriately reflects the dynamism of industrial civilization responsible for climate change. For one thing, it takes into account positive
feedback loops that lead to ‘‘runaway’’ conditions . This mode of analysis is consistent
with recent research on how ecosystems
suddenly disappear. A 2001 article in Nature, based on a scientific study by an international consortium, reported that changes in ecosystems are not just
gradual but are often sudden and catastrophic [20]. Thus, a scientific consensus is emerging (after repeated studies of ecological change) that ‘‘stressed
ecosystems, given the right nudge, are capable of slipping rapidly from a seemingly steady state to something entirely different,’’ according to Stephen
Carpenter, a limnologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (who is also a co-author of the report). Carpenter continues, ‘‘We realize that there is a
common pattern we’re seeing in ecosystems around the world, . . . Gradual changes in vulnerability accumulate and eventually you get a shock to the
system - a flood or a drought - and, boom, you’re over into another regime. It becomes a self-sustaining collapse.’’ [20]. If ecosystems are in fact minimodels of the system of the Earth, as Lovelock maintains, then we can expect the same kind of behavior. As Jonathon Foley, a UW-Madison climatologist
and another co-author of the Nature report, puts it, ‘‘Nature isn’t linear. Sometimes you can push on a system and push on a system and, finally, you
have the straw that breaks the camel’s back.’’ Also, once the ‘‘flip’’ occurs, as Foley maintains, then the catastrophic change is ‘‘irreversible.’’ [20]. When
we expand this analysis of ecosystems to the Earth itself, it’s frightening. What could be the final push on a stressed system that could ‘‘break the camel’s
back?’’ Recently, another factor has been discovered in some areas of the arctic regions, which will surely compound the problem of global ‘‘heating’’ (as
Lovelock calls it) in unpredictable and perhaps catastrophic ways. This disturbing development, also reported in Nature, concerns the permafrost that
has locked up who knows how many tons of the greenhouse gasses, methane and carbon dioxide. Scientists are particularly worried about permafrost
because, as it thaws, it releases these gases into the atmosphere, thus, contributing and accelerating global heating. It is a vicious positive feedback loop
that compounds the prognosis of global warming in ways that could very well prove to be the tipping point of no return. Seth Borenstein of the
Associated Press describes
this disturbing positive feedback loop of permafrost greenhouse gasses, as when
warming ‘‘. already under way thaws permafrost, soil that has been continuously frozen for thousands of years.
Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat
on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost and so on.’’ [21]. The significance and
severity of this problem cannot be understated since scientists have discovered that ‘‘the amount of carbon trapped in this type of permafrost called
‘‘yedoma’’ is much more prevalent than originally thought and may be 100 times [my emphasis] the amount of carbon released into the air each year by
the burning of fossil fuels’’ [21]. Of course, it won’t come out all at once, at least by time as we commonly reckon it, but in terms of geological time, the
‘‘several decades’’ that scientists say it will probably take to come out can just as well be considered ‘‘all at once.’’ Surely, within the next 100 years, much
of the world we live in will be quite hot and may be unlivable, as Lovelock has predicted. Professor Ted Schuur, a professor of ecosystem ecology at the
University of Florida and co-author of the study that appeared in Science, describes it as a ‘‘slow motion time bomb.’’ [21]. Permafrost under lakes will be
released as methane while that which is under dry ground will be released as carbon dioxide. Scientists aren’t sure which is worse. Whereas methane is a
much more powerful agent to trap heat, it only lasts for about 10 years before it dissipates into carbon dioxide or other chemicals. The less powerful heat-
trapping agent, carbon dioxide, lasts for 100 years [21]. Both of the greenhouse gasses present in permafrost represent a global dilemma and challenge
that compounds the effects of global warming and runaway climate change. The scary thing about it, as one researcher put it, is that there are ‘‘lots of
mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tend to shut it off’’ [21].14 In an accompanying AP article, Katey Walters of the
University of Alaska at Fairbanks describes the effects as ‘‘huge’’ and, unless we have a ‘‘major cooling,’’ - unstoppable [22]. Also, there’s so much more
that has not even been discovered yet, she writes: ‘‘It’s coming out a lot and there’s a lot more to come out.’’ [22]. 4. Is it the end of human
civilization and possible extinction of humankind? What Jonathon Schell wrote concerning death by the fire of
nuclear holocaust also applies to the slow burning death of global warming: Once we learn that a holocaust
might lead to extinction, we have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else
will ever get another chance. Therefore, although, scientifically speaking, there is all the difference in the world between the mere possibility that a
holocaust will bring about extinction and the certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we have no choice but to address the issue of nuclear weapons
as though we knew for a certainty that their use would put an end to our species [23].15 When we consider that beyond the horror of nuclear war,
another horror is set into motion to interact with the subsequent nuclear winter to produce a poisonous and super heated planet, the chances of human
survival seem even smaller. Who knows, even if some small remnant does manage to survive, what the poisonous environmental conditions would have
on human evolution in the future. A remnant of mutated, sub-human creatures might survive such harsh conditions, but
for all purposes, human
civilization has been destroyed, and the question concerning human extinction becomes
moot. Thus, we have no other choice but to consider the finality of it all, as Schell does: ‘‘Death lies at the core of
each person’s private existence, but part of death’s meaning is to be found in the fact that it occurs in a biological and social world that survives.’’ [23].16
But what if the world itself were to perish, Schell asks. Would not it bring about a sort of ‘‘second death’’ – the death of the species – a possibility that the
vast majority of the human race is in denial about? Talbot writes in the review of Schell’s book that it is not only the ‘‘death of the species,
not just of the earth’s population on doomsday, but of countless unborn generations. They would be spared literal death but would
nonetheless be victims . . .’’ [23]. That is the ‘‘second death’’ of humanity – the horrifying, unthinkable prospect that there are no prospects – that there
will be no future. In the second chapter of Schell’s book, he writes that since we have not made a positive decision to exterminate ourselves but instead
have ‘‘chosen to live on the edge of extinction, periodically lunging toward the abyss only to draw back at the last second, our situation is one of
uncertainty and nervous insecurity rather than of absolute hopelessness.’’ [23].17 In other words, the fate of the Earth and its inhabitants has not yet
been determined. Yet time is not on our side. Will we relinquish the fire and our use of it to dominate the Earth and each other, or will we continue
to gamble with our future at this game of Russian roulette while time increasingly stacks the cards
against our chances of survival?
Even a conventional war will escalate and go nuclear – it’s human nature
Rulon 11 Charles L, Emeritus, Life & Health Sciences, Long Beach City College ("C Rulon: Is a Nuclear War Inevitable?" 4/16/11,
http://www.philosophylounge.com/nuclear-war-inevitable/)
Throughout recorded history humans have used war as the ultimate arbiter for acquiring, defending and expanding—some 14,000 major and mi-nor
wars; over one bil­lion people killed. “War is one of the constants of history and has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3,411 years
of recorded history only 268 have seen no war.” —Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History (1968) But 65 years ago a quantum jump in warfare took
place—the atomic bomb. Soon the nuclear genie was out of the bottle. More and more countries were eventually able to build or acquire nuclear
weapons. North Korea and Pakistan. Soon Iran? There is even a nuclear black market that attracts terrorist groups. Yet, a full-scale nuclear war
would destroy civilization and threaten life itself. Even a “limited” nuclear war could escalate into a full-scale
one, as could a conventional war among the superpowers. At some point, if civilization is to flourish, loyalty to 200 individual nation-states
must be enlarged to include a new over-rid-ing loyalty to humanity as a whole. But, can we do this? Does our brain carry within it the potential to
peacefully resolve fundamental conflicts? According to historian Will Durant, history isn’t encouraging: “Some conflicts are too funda-mental to be
resolved by negotiation; and during the prolonged ne-gotiations (if history may be our guide) subversion would go on. . . Such interludes of widespread
peace are un­natural and exceptional; they will soon be ended by changes in the distribution of military power.” —Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of
History (1968) The world’s political and military leaders, we would hope, know that a nuclear war would be catastrophic. But our brain—a brain that
evolved from an ape brain—is
prone to nationalistic pride, dis-trusting those who are different, and obeying
charismatic authority figures (even monoma­niacal insane ones). It’s prone to conforming to the behavior of the masses like good sheep, even
displaying ideological fervor. Now mix in grotesque global economic disparities. Add overpopulation pressures,
resource shortages, local ecological collapses and global climate destabilization. Stir in willful ignorance, stu-pi-dity, relentless
greed, fear, selfish-ness, indiffer-ence, lust for power, primal religious conflicts, entrenched racism, and
virulent xenophobia. Sprinkle on more fear, plus our brain’s tendency for simplistic solutions and paranoid emotional
respon-ses. Whip it all together and shove it into history’s oven of nightmares. Yes, our political and military leaders must know that a
nuclear war would be catastrophic, but. . . . Nobel Prize-winning philosopher Arthur Koestler observes in the book, Brain, Mind and
Behavior: “The trouble with our species is not an overdose of self-asserting aggression but an excess of self-transcending devotion, which manifests itself
in blind obedience and loyalty to the king, country, or cause…One of the central features of the hu-man predica-ment is this
overwhelming capacity and need for identifi-cation with a social group and/or system of beliefs, which is
indifferent to reason, indifferent to self-interest, and even to the claim of self-preser-vation.” Emeritus physics professor Mark
Perakh, author of the book, Unintelligent Design, adds his resigned rage: “Most probably the 21st century will see devastating wars and enormous
explosions of barbarism. Humans as a species are the most stupid of all animals. There is hardly anything more stupid than a war, but humans seem to
be unable to live without it. The struggle between reason and obscurantism… is just a footnote to the idiocy of wars that humanity sinks into with an
inevitable regularity.” Our existential dilemma The detonation of even a small fraction of our nuclear weapons could likely
result in the greatest catastrophe in human history, one that could unravel much of civilization as we know it and
even push us to the brink of
extinction. Thus, our policies of nuclear deterrence must never fail. Never! Never! No failure. Ever! Yet, year after year the roulette wheel
of human conflicts continues to spin and the minute hand on the doomsday clock ticks closer to midnight. Is a
nuclear war inevitable? Well, one formidable obstacle to lasting peace is the mili-tary-industrial complex, itself. All military organizations are trained to
fight, to kill. Also, they must have actual or potential enemies in order to justify their budgets. Hence they are designed to be very in-effective at
negotiation and compromise, critically important skills we need on this planet today. Somehow we must catch onto this and recognize that one of the
greatest con-flicts in the world today is between the mili­taries of the world and the human species. “U.S. weapons manufacturers actively pro­mote the
sale of their products to foreign nations irrespective of human rights abuses, type of government, or aggressive actions against neighboring states.”
“…Members of Congress see military spend­ing as a big public works job program­—and a source of juicy pork for their states and districts.” —The
Defense Monitor & Center for Defense Information bulletins For the first time in human history the fate of our entire species is in the
hands of a very few decision makers. Do their evolved brains really have what it takes to survive at so dangerous a juncture, to not, sooner
or later, make the fatal decision?
K Card
Any planet you colonize also gets destroyed by those rays
Williams 10 – M.S. in Physics and is a physics faculty member at Santa Rose Junior College (1/1/2010, Lynda, “Irrational Dreams of Space
Colonization”, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 22:4–8, http://www.scientainment.com/lwilliams_peacereview.pdf) MGM
According to scientific theory, the destruction of Earth is a certainty. About five billion years from now, when our sun exhausts
its nuclear fuel, it will expand in size and envelope the inner planets, including Earth, and burn them into oblivion. So yes, we are doomed, but we
have five billion years, plus or minus a few hundred million, to plan our extraterrestrial escape. The need to colonize the
moon or Mars to guarantee our survival is not pressing. There are also real risks due to collisions with asteroids
and comets, although none are of immediate threat and do not necessitate extraterrestrial colonization. There
are many Earth-based technological strategies that can be developed in time to mediate such astronomical
threats, such as gravitational tugboats that drag the objects out of range. The solar system could also potentially
be exposed to galactic sources of highenergy gamma ray bursts that could fry all life on Earth; any moon or Mars base would
face a similar fate. Thus, human-based colonies on the moon or Mars would not protect us from any of these astronomical threats in the near future. Life
on Earth is more urgently threatened by the destruction of the biosphere and its life-sustaining habitat due to environmental catastrophes such as
climate change, ocean acidification, disruption of the food chain, bio-warfare, nuclear war, nuclear winter, and myriads of other manmade doomsday
possibilities. If we accept these threats as inevitabilities on par with real astronomical dangers and divert our natural, intellectual, political, and
technological resources from solving these problems into escaping them, will we be playing into a self-fulfilling prophesy of our own planetary doom?
Seeking spacebased solutions to our earthly problems may actually exacerbate the planetary threats we face. This is the core of the ethical dilemma posed
by space colonization: should we put our resources into developing human colonies on other worlds to survive natural and manmade catastrophes, or
should we focus all of our energies on solving and mitigating the problems that create these threats on Earth?
AT: Perm Both
Perm links to politics
2 disads to government action that turn case and function as independent solvency takeouts
even if we don’t go for the CP
a.) Bureaucracy Disad – ineffective management dooms solvency
Schmidt, Chairman of the Interlune-Interarms Initiative Inc., 3 (11/6/3, Hon. Harrison H. Schmitt, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE,
TECHNOLOGY AND SPACE OF THE SENATE COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE,
www.space4pece.net/moon/schmitt110603.doc, JMP)
If Government were to lead a return to deep space, the NASA of today is probably not the agency to undertake a
significant new program to return humans to deep space, particularly the Moon and then to Mars. NASA today lacks
the critical mass of youthful energy and imagination required for work in deep space. It also has become too bureaucratic
and too risk-adverse. Either a new agency would need to be created to implement such a program or NASA would need to be totally restructured
using the lessons of what has worked and has not worked since it was created 45 years ago. Of particular importance would be the need for most of the
agency to be made up of engineers and technicians in their 20s and managers in their 30s, the re-institution of design engineering activities in parallel
with those of contractors, and the streamlining of management responsibility. The existing NASA also would need to undergo a major restructuring and
streamlining of its program management, risk management, and financial management structures. Such total restructuring would be necessary to recreate the competence and discipline necessary to operate successfully in the much higher risk and more complex deep space environment relative to
that in near-earth orbit.
b.) Commitment Disad – plan will not be sustained
Schmidt, Chairman of the Interlune-Interarms Initiative Inc., 3 (11/6/3, Hon. Harrison H. Schmitt, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE,
TECHNOLOGY AND SPACE OF THE SENATE COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE,
www.space4pece.net/moon/schmitt110603.doc, JMP)
It is doubtful that the United States or any government will initiate or sustain a return of humans to the Moon
absent a comparable set of circumstances as those facing the Congress and Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy,
and Johnson in the late 1950s and throughout 1960s. Huge unfunded "entitlement" liabilities and a lack of
sustained media and therefore public interest will prevent the long-term commitment of resources and
attention that such an effort requires. Even if tax-based funding commitments could be guaranteed, it is not a
foregone conclusion that the competent and disciplined management system necessary to work in deep space
would be created and sustained.
Government-funded space exploration violates the Constitution
Bonta, 5
[Steve, “Space Exploration Should Be Funded by the Private Sector,” Space Exploration, contributing writer to
the New American, JPL]
The general public seems to accept the argument that the federal government and its tax dollars
are the key to scientific progress. However, it is unconstitutional for the government to use tax
dollars for scientific study that has no national security purpose. In the case of space exploration,
the government has had some success but has wasted billions of dollars on unsuccessful
missions and malfunctioning equipment.
D-Rule.
Levinson, 2000
[Daryl, Associate Prof. – UVA Law School, University of Chicago Law Review, “Making Government Pay:
Markets, Politics, and the Allocation of Constitutional Costs” Spring, 67 U. Chi. L. Rev. 345 L/N]
Extending a majority rule analysis of optimal deterrence to constitutional torts requires some explanation, for
we do not usually think of violations of constitutional rights in terms of cost-benefit analysis and efficiency.
Quite the opposite, constitutional rights are most commonly conceived as deontological side-constraints that
trump even utility-maximizing government action. 69 Alternatively, constitutional rights might be understood
as serving rule-utilitarian purposes. If the disutility to victims of constitutional violations often exceeds the
social benefits derived from the rights-violating activity, or if rights violations create long-term costs that
outweigh short-term social benefits, then constitutional rights can be justified as tending to maximize global
utility, even though this requires local utility-decreasing steps . Both the deontological and rule-utilitarian
descriptions imply that the optimal level of constitutional violations is zero; that is, society would be better off,
by whatever measure, if constitutional rights were never violated.
Links to net benefit – doesn’t provide any political cover if USFG does the plan as well
Carberry et al. 2010 (C.A., Executive Director Explore Mars, Artemis Westenberg, President Explore Mars,
Blake Ortner, Project Leader ISRU Leader, October-November 2010, “The Mars Prize and Private Missions to
the Red Planet”, http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars139.html)
If the United States is going to lead a mission to Mars in the upcoming decades, it will almost certainly be
achieved through the use of at least some elements of the new commercial model. However, we have now
reached an era where the major question is not whether the private sector has the capacity to get a human
mission done, but whether a traditional government program will be able to build enough political momentum
to maintain a strong and steady program over more than a decade.
This is not to say that an entirely private program is better than the traditional approach or a public-private
hybrid version. On the contrary, the hybrid method is probably the path that stands the best chance of mission
success, but it is also subject to far more political turbulence concerning funding and the overall balance and
focus of the program. In order to alleviate some of this turbulence, there must be more unity between the
traditional and the "new space" companies. NASA and the established aerospace community should not fear or
dismiss these new approaches to space exploration. The new space companies, and their advocates, need to
recognize that there is strong value in how the traditional space community approaches mission design. Both
need to think about new and efficient methods of designing missions, whether by reducing launch costs or
embracing technologies like in situ resource utilization.
Even if the United States government does decide to embrace a true hybrid version or aim for Mars in a more
traditional fashion, government should still create an environment that could stimulate a major private effort.
If a Virgle-like consortium or a group of billionaires start seriously considering the feasibility of a private
mission, that would be a good time to create major tax incentives or a tax-free prize as suggested. While NASA
should play a substantial role in space exploration in the next few decades, finding ways to empower the private
sector to also play a substantial role in exploration should be considered a vital goal of United States space
policy.
Solvency Wall
2 solvency take-outs to the plan that function as unique solvency planks of the CP – access to
international business efforts and avoidance of other administrations striking down the plan
Joseph 10 – (Rhawn, PhD, Journal of Cosmology, 2010, Vol 12, 4068-4080, “Marketing Mars: Financing the Human Mission to
Mars,” http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars110.html)
10. CONCLUSIONS: ONWARD TO MARS
A succession of Presidents and NASA administrators
have voiced interest in a human mission to Mars. However, they
if a serious 20-year or 30-year plan were to emerge, it
would have to survive for decades through multiple NASA and U.S. government administrations to ultimately succeed. Success
is not just unlikely, but will be too late, as the ESA, China, Russia, Japan, and other nations are already planning on
making it to Mars in the next two decades. The United States of America, the American people, and American business will be the big losers.
The Human Mission to Mars must commence now, and it must be an international effort. The conquest of Mars and the
establishment of a colony on the surface of the Red Planet could cost 150 billion dollars over 10 years. These funds can be easily raised if
the U.S. Congress and other participating nations, grants and enacts legislation to give sole marketing, licensing, and
fund-raising authority to an independent corporation (such as the hypothetical Human Mission to Mars Corporation) which
initiates and supervises the marketing, merchandizing, sponsorship, broadcasting, and licensing initiatives detailed in this article. The
have also proposed vague, fanciful dates so many decades into the future. Even
United States Congress and all participating nations must also enact legislation and pass laws to protect these fund-raising efforts and those who
sponsor, donate to, and partner with THMMC to make a Human Mission to Mars a reality.
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.
It is estimated that $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 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.
These prizes work empirically – X-Prizes, Google Lunar X- Prize prove
Carberry et al. 2010 (C.A., Executive Director Explore Mars, Artemis Westenberg, President Explore Mars, Blake Ortner, Project Leader
ISRU Leader, October-November 2010, “The Mars Prize and Private Missions to the Red Planet”, http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars139.html)
Gingrich did not actively promote the Mars Prize concept for over a decade, but he also did not abandon a prize based Mars exploration program
altogether. In an April 2007 speech, Gingrich proposed a $20 billion prize again which would be tax free. He noted that being tax free is extremely
important because Americans do not like paying taxes. He claimed that a tax free $20 billion prize would be psychologically more attractive than a $40
billion prize with taxes. As with the Gingrich-Zubrin concept of 1994, the first team to get to Mars and return safely would win the prize. (Gingrich 2008)
It is not surprising that former Speaker Gingrich revived the Mars Prize concept. Two years after the Mars Prize bill was proposed (and essentially died),
Peter Diamandis and a group of other visionaries founded the X-Prize which offered a $10 million prize to the first non-
government team to successfully launch a human occupied spacecraft into space twice within a two week
period. Eight years later this prize was won by Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne, which had been financed by Microsoft co-founded, Paul Allen.
In addition, over $100 million was invested in this contest by the various competing teams; $25 million was invested by
Paul Allen alone (Brekke 2004).
While this achievement represented only a tiny fraction of the complexity and cost of what a Mars mission would entail, it represented a paradigm shift
in what was possible and what individuals and corporations may be willing to invest in. At that moment, a Mars Prize did not appear to be nearly as
farfetched. It also inspired the next step for the X-Prize Foundation with the announcement in 2007 of the $30
million Google Lunar X-Prize (Diamandis 2008).
Plenty of private investors are interested and even NASA research director thinks the first Mars
missions will be commercial – means CP is a pre-requisite to the plan
Thomson 3/8/12 (Ian, “NASA: The Future of Space is Public/Private Partnerships,” The Register,
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/08/nasa_private_space_nasa/)
The future of space exploration is going to be dependent on a mix of public and private money, and it's
likely that the first Mars
colonization missions will be commercial operations.
Dr. S. Pete Worden, director at NASA Ames Research Center, told The Register that the agency was firmly enmeshing
itself with the private sector, citing cooperation on the Dragon capsule being developed by Elon Musk's SpaceX team as a good example. NASA
developed a heat shield material called PICA (Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator), capable of withstanding 1850 degrees Celsius (3360 degrees
Fahrenheit), and gave it to SpaceX, who manufactured it.
"Governments can develop new technology and do some of the exciting early exploration but in the long run it's the private sector that finds ways to
make profit, finds ways to expand humanity. That's really our tack," he explained.
This kind of cooperation has a long history, he pointed out. The age of discovery that led to the European colonization of the New World was funded by
governments and royalty, while the process of getting out there, subduing the locals who were living there at the time and colonizing places, was a largely
private operation.
"Most of private individuals I've talked to about interest in settling on Mars, including Elon Musk, talk about in the next few decades
they think the private sector will fund settlement missions - whether to the Moon, Mars, or asteroids. As a government laboratory
our job is to develop to enable those kinds of things by developing technology and early exploration, and we hope the private sector will find a way to do
something like that," he said.
Settling would involve one-way missions to Mars, something the private sector could do but NASA could not he said. While he personally supported the
idea of one-way trips, when NASA sends people out of the gravity well it plans to bring them back afterwards.
Musk is not the only technologist with an itch to get into orbit; it's a feature of many firms in Silicon Valley. A lot of techies like science
fiction and now technical companies have the kind of budget to try and turn those ideas into science fact.
Take Tiffany Montague, who has the most interesting business card in Silicon Valley. Ms Montague, a former US Air Force high-altitude pilot, has the
official job title of Intergalactic Federation King Almighty and Commander of the Universe and is in charge of coordinating Google's operation of
all things orbital and beyond.
"Larry and Sergey are space enthusiasts, with and open-minded and optimistic view of the future," she told The Register. "Space is like any other
engineering problem, and if Google can’t solve it we’ll incentivize it."
The Google Lunar X Prize is offering $20m to any group that can safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, and move it at least 500
meters while sending back video, images, and data to Earth. The second team to manage it gets $5m, and there's $4m in bonus prizes if the robot can
move at night, travel more than 5km, land next to a previous landing site or, crucially, find water. So far 26 teams are competing.
Google's also got a team of engineers to work on the Google Moon and Mars mapping projects, and as new data comes in it will be added to the software.
It's also working on technology that it can sell to NASA and other space companies.
"We see an emerging market," she said. "Not everything we do is tied to immediate revenue; we take a long-range view of the world. That said, we hope
in the very long run that they will make money too."
The eventual goal is to have space accessible for all. Montague, who twice applied for the astronaut program herself, is keen to escape the gravity well.
However, if the ease of space travel doesn't move fast enough, she told El Reg she was personally looking into cryogenics as an option instead. ®
We solve every internal link to the aff –
a) all their advantages based off getting to Mars – commercial sector is efficient and driven –
will get us a Mars base.
b) STEM and Frontier – evidence says it will “inspire children to become invested in science” –
doesn’t matter if the federal government is doing it – says it will quote “inspire children to
pursue careers in science.”
Solves frontier
Worden, 2004 [Simon, Brigadier General (USAF, Retired), a Fellow in the office of Senator Sam Brownback on detail from the University of
Arizona where he is a Research Professor of Astronomy, was Director of Transformation at the Space and Missiles Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force
Base. As the staff officer for initiatives in the first Bush administration's National Space Council, he spearheaded efforts to revitalize our civil space
exploration and earth monitoring programs, has written or co-authored more than 150 technical papers in astrophysics, space science and strategic
studies, was scientific co-investigator for two NASA space lab missions, Marshall Institute, “Private Sector Opportunities and the President’s Space
Exploration Vision” 4-7, http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/230.pdf]
Let me suggest a radical concept just as food for thought. Right now we don’t know how to get to Mars in any affordable manner.
The discussions about exploring Mars with people is where these ridiculously large numbers of $1 trillion or more come from. However, we
could
probably send people one way affordably to Mars. I don’t mean on suicide missions, I mean to live there. The government is
not ever going to do that . I can’t imagine a debate in Congress about the Government sending people one way to Mars without bringing them
back even occurring, let alone succeeding. However, the U.S. government could find suitable locations for bases and put in place communications and
navigation infrastructure. We’re already starting with this. The international satellites that are now orbiting Mars are linked by common communications
protocols. More could easily be done in this communications infrastructure area. A 100-ton payload private launch vehicle may cost $200 million. There
is a pretty good chance there are caves on Mars, as we know there was running water at some point. If the U.S. government had already
found ideal locations and if the life-supporting infrastructure were already sent and were operating to produce
oxygen, water and so forth, there would be a reasonable possibility for people to live there on Mars indefinitely.
I suspect that there would not be a dearth of volunteers to go on a private expedition and I suspect also that some people
would be willing to finance that. The thrill of being the first settler on Mars is pretty high. I would go and some of the
time, my wife would probably send me. She would say, “Write if you find work.” These are the kind of missions for which private
sector investment would be more in line with the traditional American views of how to do things. Funding
space exploration and colonization with private investment is probably a lot more affordable for taxpayers, although
this type of exploration is much different than what people thought about a decade or so ago.
Empirics
Leahy 6 (Bart, National Space Society “Space Access: The Private Investment vs. Public Funding Debate”
http://www.space.com/2401-space-access-private-investment-public-funding-debate.html kdej)
Orbital spaceflight is not the only place where the new entrepreneurs have set their sights . SpaceX's President
Elon Musk indicated that he eventually wants to send people to the Moon and Mars. Space Adventures, famous for
sending Dennis Tito and two other space tourists to the International Space Station, is planning to sell a flight around the Moon for $100 million by
2010. Meanwhile, in another part of ISDC, space law lecturers were discussing the best way to secure private property
rights on lunar resources when a private landing happens. To settle that argument, lawyer Bill White suggested that someone
should "just do it." And Peter Diamandis suggested that Mars itself could and would be settled by private citizens
before NASA. He believes space enthusiasts should "give up on government." Virgin Galactic's Wil Whitehorn indicated that
"It [the private sector] can't get hooked on government money."
NASA agrees
Jacob 2011 (Jijo, International Business Times, “Mars for sale! NASA draws up plan to 'colonize' red planet with corporate help”, 2-11,
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/111476/20110211/nasa-mars-colonization-red-planet-mission-space-one-way-corporate-sponsorship.htm)
Researchers at NASA have drawn up a plan to make the greatest adventure in the history of the human race
possible - sending a human mission to the red planet and, hold your breath, colonize it!
And the daring act of "selling" and carving up the red planet will be made possible with the help of corporate
bigwigs who will paint the space ships in their logo colors.
NASA scientists have said in a research paper that corporate financing is the right way to support a $160-billion project to
take human beings to Mars and start a colony there, according to space.com.
Joel Levine, a senior research scientist at NASA Langley Research Center, calls is a "revolutionary business proposal" as it removes budgetary
bottlenecks that have diluted the Mars mission's focus over the years.
And there is more music to the ear: The researchers say the project will generate as many as 500,000 jobs in the U.S. over 10 years in aerospace and
manufacturing sectors.
The researchers discussed the plan in the book, "The Human Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet," which was published in December.
Corporates could dole out funds for the project in lieu of broadcast rights, merchandize license and various
other means of sponsorship.
"Perhaps even selling the mineral and land rights on Mars could generate money."
Levine says they have made a comprehensive plan. The plan covers "every aspect of a journey to the Red Planet
— the design of the spacecrafts, medical health and psychological issues, the establishment of a Mars base, colonization, and a revolutionary business
proposal to overcome the major budgetary obstacles which have prevented the U.S. from sending astronauts to Mars," Levine is quoted in the article.
AT: Perm CP
Permutation is severance – CP doesn’t MANDATE the affirmative – provides INCENTIVES to do
the plan
The CP is both functionally and textually competitive
‘Its’ shows ownership
Glossary of English Grammar Terms, 2005
(http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/possessive-pronoun.html)
Mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs are the possessive pronouns used to substitute a noun and to show
possession or ownership.
EG. This is your disk and that's mine. (Mine substitutes the word disk and shows that it belongs to me.)
NASA commercial programs is distinct from what they do
Berger, 11 - Houston Chronicle's space, weather and science reporter. (“NASA still being torn between
commercial space and its own rockets,” Houston Chronicle Blog, 2/14,
http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2011/02/nasa-still-being-torn-between-commercial-space-and-its-ownrockets/
The president’s budget for NASA released today (see fact sheet) is similar to the Senate compromise last year,
but contains some key differences.
Notably the issues remain how much to spend on a heavy lift rocket and launch vehicle, and how much to
invest in private-sector initiatives, such as SpaceX, which two months ago became the first commercial entity to
launch a spacecraft into orbit and subsequently recover it upon its return to Earth.
As has been the case for some time, NASA is being asked to straddle a fence and support both commercial
access to low-Earth orbit and build its own fleet of new space vehicles. In this budget environment, however,
there’s just not enough money to do both.
Under last year’s Senate compromise, for 2012, NASA would spend $400 million to foster private development
of commercial crew services to orbit, and $4.05 billion on a launch rocket and crew vehicle.
In the President’s proposed budget, NASA would spend $850 million on commercial crew services, but just
$2.8 billion on a new NASA rocket and crew vehicle.
Substantially means aff cannot be probabilistic – CP has built in probability
Words and Phrases 1964 (40 W&P 759) (this edition of W&P is out of print; the page number no longer
matches up to the current edition and I was unable to find the card in the new edition. However, this card is
also available on google books, Judicial and statutory definitions of words and phrases, Volume 8, p. 7329)
The words “outward, open, actual, visible, substantial, and exclusive,” in connection with a change of possession, mean substantially the same
thing. They mean not concealed; not hidden; exposed to view; free from concealment, dissimulation, reserve, or disguise; in full existence;
denoting that which not merely can be, but is opposed to potential, apparent, constructive, and imaginary; veritable;
genuine; certain; absolute; real at present time, as a matter of fact, not merely nominal; opposed to form; actually existing; true; not
including admitting, or pertaining to any others; undivided; sole; opposed to inclusive. Bass v. Pease, 79 Ill. App. 308, 318.
CP mandates the development of tech for Mars and gives to NASA, that’s the 1NC evidence, it
doesn’t directly mandate human settlement
Exploration definition
Logsdon, 9 – professor of political science at George Washington, former director of the Space Policy Institute (John, “Fifty Years of Human
Spaceflight Why Is There Still a Controversy?,” http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20100025875_2010028362.pdf)
Exploration as a Compelling Rationale
Many believe that the only sustainable rationale for a government-funded program of human spaceflight is to take the lead in exploring the solar system
beyond low Earth orbit.20 The MIT white paper provides an insightful definition of exploration:
Exploration is a human activity, undertaken by certain cultures at certain times for particular reasons. It has components of national interest, scientific
research, and technical innovation, but is defined by none of them. We define exploration as an expansion of the realm of human experience, bringing
people into new places, situations, and environments, expanding and redefining what it means to be human. What is the role of Earth in human life? Is
human life fundamentally tied to the earth, or could it survive without the planet?
Human presence, and its attendant risk, turns a spaceflight into a story that is compelling to large numbers of people. Exploration also has a moral
dimension because it is in effect a cultural conversation on the nature and meaning of human life. Exploration by this definition can only be
accomplished by direct human presence and may be deemed worthy of the risk of human life.21
In the wake of the 2003 Columbia accident that took the lives of seven astronauts and the report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board that
criticized the absence of a compelling mission for human spaceflight as “a failure of national leadership,”22 the United States, in January 2004,
adopted a new policy to guide its human spaceflight activities. The policy directed NASA to “implement a sustained and affordable
human and robotic program to explore the solar system and beyond” and to “extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human
return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations.”23 This policy seems totally
consistent with the definition of exploration provided in the MIT white paper. The issue is whether such a policy and its
implementation, focusing on human exploration beyond Earth orbit, can provide an adequate and sustainable justification for a continuing program of
government-sponsored spaceflight that will make contributions that will outweigh the costs and risks involved to the “primary objectives” of national
pride and prestige, and also to some of the several “secondary objectives.”
This is not normal means – Choi 11 says this has never been done before by NASA – means err
neg on this question
Severance is a voting issue – moving target shifts the focus of the debate from the plan – reject
the team to deter them
CP only funds the mission if its successful
Zimmerman 04 (Robert Zimmerman, is an award-winning space historian, writing articles and books on issues
of science, history, technology, and culture “Congress Impedes NASA Prizes”
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nasa-04zt.html //Donnie)
Under the agency's old way of doing business, officials decided what they wanted built, asked private companies to bid on building it,
then awarded a contract to the lowest acceptable bidder - who often was located in an important Congressional district.
Then, whether the project succeeded or not, NASA would pay out monies to the winning bidder, based on that bidder's predicted construction cost.
For example, Lockheed Martin won the billion-dollar-plus contract to build the X-33 in 1996 on the basis of its radical engineering concept. The
company then attempted to build it, pocketing $1.2 billion in fees. When the program was canceled due to engineering problems with the X-33's
composite fuel tanks, no one expected Lockheed to give the money back.
The Centennial Challenge Awards would follow a new paradigm, following the X Prize mode and hoping to repeat the success of
SpaceShipOne, the winner of the $10 million purse and the first privately funded craft to carry a human occupant in a sub-orbital spaceflight.
Winners will be determined by actual achievements, not proposals, said Brant Sponberg, NASA's award program manager at the Nov.
15 meeting as he outlined NASA's initial roadmap for the program.
Sponberg explained to an audience of private commercial space developers - including Peter Diamandis of the X Prize Foundation and David Gump of
t/Space - prize competitors will have to produce some results first before NASA will fork out any cash.
NB – CP Avoids Tradeoffs
CP avoids all the competing needs offense
Easterbrook 04 (By Gregg Easterbrook (Easterbrook is a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the new book The Progress
Paradox) Monday, Jan. 26, 2004, “Why We Shouldn't Go to Mars,” http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,993172-2,00.html)
Space-exploration proponents deride as lack of vision the mention of technical barriers or the insistence that needs on Earth come first. Not so. The
former is rationality, the latter the setting of priorities. If Mars proponents want to raise $600 billion privately and stage their
own expedition, more power to them; many of the great expeditions of the past were privately mounted. If Mars proponents
expect taxpayers to foot their bill, then they must make their case against the many other competing needs for
money. And against the needs for health care, education, poverty reduction, reinforcement of the military and reduction of the federal deficit, the case
for vast expenditures to go to Mars using current technology is very weak.
CP avoids cost overruns
Zubrin 12 – (2/1/12, Robert, PhD, 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, “The Mars Prize,” http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289775/mars-prize-robert-zubrin?pg=1)
This is a novel approach to human space exploration, which up till now has been entirely run by government. It
has a number of remarkable advantages. In the first place, this approach renders cost overruns impossible. Not a penny will be
spent unless the desired results are achieved, and not a penny more will be spent beyond the award sum agreed
upon at the start. Success or failure with this approach depends solely upon the ingenuity of the American people and the workings of the freeenterprise system, not upon political wrangling. The tactic not only guarantees economical results, but it also promotes quick and smart results. When
people have their own money at stake, it’s a lot easier to find and settle on practical, no-nonsense solutions to engineering problems than is ever the case
in the complex and endless deliberations of a government bureaucracy.
2nc mca good
Counter-interp: we get ____ condo advocacies, even if its arbitrary it is limiting, it is logical and limited
Ideological and negative flex: our ground is reactionary and they’re always more specific and familiar, we can’t
avoid strategic pitfalls without the flexibility to find the best position and test the aff
Education: policy makers can default to the status quo and decide they don’t want to do anything at all, this
outweighs, absent grounding debate in modeling policy we become insular and self referential which prevents
our education from being portable.
The point of debate is to test many hypothetical actions and see how they interact, we model academia, not
policy, which means we give you the best education.
Critical thinking: a harder 2ac is better and when we have to think more about the number of arguments and
interactions, that outweighs because it applies outside of debate.
Neg flex – the job of the neg is to assault the aff from as many angles as possible – there’s no definition of
substantial and anything could be development of space – conditionality is the only equalizer
Education – condo increases ideological flex – the real world forces the aff to defend against the left and the
right – condo is key to those advocacy skills and this is the only way to get that type of education
Logic – a rational policymaker wouldn’t stick the neg with the CP if the status quo was a better option
Research – conditionality is a gateway issue – not everyone becomes policymakers but research is a portable
skill no matter we become
New affs – fairness scenarios are marginal – there’s no difference between one and two CPs but facing a new aff
without conditionality would be devastating
Defense:
Perms check – they’re blippy arguments that take a long time to answer
2nr solves – we’re only going for one which means the 2AR can leverage offense – solves their judge kick
arguments
Skew inevitable – I am faster than jding but you shouldn’t vote me down for it
Reject the argument not the team
Argument responsibility is bad: we should be able to change our minds and be flexible, “argument
responsibility” causes the ideological inflexibility that causes policy disasters like the most recent congress
And, no offense, the aff is conditional they specified/didn’t specify their agent, that’s bad because it denies
politics and cp ground/spikes out of link ground for politics.
2NC Solvency Proper
Frame – solvency yes/no
Williams
-extreme environments – atmospheric problems, solar radiation, lack of oxygen
-no terraforming
-no water (200 degrees) to get glass of water
-even if (space capsule)
-Discovery – cosmic rays/bone melting/de-conditioning (initial group)
Tech – we can`t sustain life or terraform – life support, waste support, food production
Woodcock 11 (Gordon R. Woodcock, Published over 100 Space Exploration books, On the NASA Advisory Board, Executive Vice President of the
National Space Society, “NSS Roadmap: Technological Barriers to Space Settlement”, http://www.nss.org/settlement/roadmap/technological.html,
4/24/2011)
No Closed-Loop Life Support System The third issue facing development of a spacefaring civilization is life support. Permanent
outposts or settlements can't afford to import life support supplies or equipment over the long term. The
current technology is adequate for the space station. It provides partial recycling of water and oxygen, using "physico-chemical"
technology. It uses chemical absorbers and reactors, and physical processes such as distillation and reverse osmosis, to recycle water and scrub CO2 from
air. Oxygen is reclaimed by water electrolysis and CO2 reduction. Hydrogen and carbon from these processes are waste products, not recycled. There
is no food production, and no recycling of wastes or garbage; these are returned to Earth. For the International
Space Station, the crew and operations resupply requirement is about 10 kg per person per day. The ISS will typically have a crew of four;
in 90 days it needs 900 kg per person; 3600 kg for the crew. This is easily within shuttle capabilities, even the capabilities
of a crew and cargo vehicle flying on an ELV. There is little motivation to do better. A Mars proto-settlement of
1,000 people is a lot different. Such a settlement is not feasible with this state of technology. Consider 1000 people, 365
days, at about 10 kg/day. This figures to 3.65 million kg (about 8 million lb) per year. Even at reduced launch cost of $1,000/lb, the delivery cost to Mars
is at least $5,000/lb. The annual cost therefore is $40 billion just for life support. No government or consortium of
governments will put up with such high cost, and it is out of the question for the private sector. Bioregenerative
technology is needed. This technology is also highly applicable to cleaning up our environment here on Earth. A permanent outpost needs a
closed micro-ecology or something close to it. This means full recycling of all life support supplies, including waste and garbage. Periods of "no
opportunity" for Mars resupply last almost two years; transit times are six months or more. Not only is the cost
infeasible for ISS-level technology, the masses to be transported are outrageous. In a bioregenerative system, water and
oxygen are recycled by semi-natural means, such as composting or oxidation of organic wastes, and
condensation of water. CO2 is taken up by plants, and oxygen generated by photosynthesis. Plants produce food, and some may be ornamental
or needed to make the micro-ecology stable. Food production is by "farming" — hydroponics. Animal protein production is feasible in larger outposts.
Wastes are completely recycled. Nothing is thrown away. The life support and food production system must have long-term
ecological stability. Such a closed-cycle technology is very poorly understood; Biosphere II showed how little
we really know. Unfortunately, NASA is investing almost zero in this. A few years ago, NASA invested modestly. However, in
today's political climate, these investments are seen as applicable only to non-approved programs and are strongly discouraged. It is likely that
developing bioregenerative life support technology to a point of confident use, i.e., where space settlers could depend on it,
will take longer to solve than the high cost of space transportation, perhaps much longer.
Reproduction – can`t occur in space
All space babies are sterile, ending the human race.
The Week Magazine 11 (2-17-11“ Why humans will never colonize space ” http://theweek.com/article/index/212267/why-humans-will-nevercolonize-space)
Why couldn't humans colonize space? Because
any child conceived and born in space is likely to be born sterile.
Scientists at NASA say that the high levels of radiation in space would kill any female fetus' lifetime supply of eggs,
while males in the womb would likely become sterile. The child could also suffer "mental and physical defects"
from exposure to harmful radiation.
Solar wind
Fox 10; (Stuart Fox, reporting for Popular Science via Discovery News; “Bad News for Terraformers: Periodic Bursts Of Solar Radiation Destroy The
Martian Atmosphere” 3/16/10; http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2010-03/sorry-terraformers-periodic-bursts-solar-radiation-destroymartian-atmosphere)
Unfortunately for anyone looking to terraform Mars, a new study shows that powerful waves of solar wind
periodically strip the Red Planet of its atmosphere. Scientists had known for years that Mars has atmosphere troubles, but only by
analyzing new data from he Mars Express spacecraft were they able to identify the special double solar waves as the specific cause. Double solar waves
are a rare phenomenon that result when the Sun emits waves of differing speeds. If a fast wave follows a slow wave, the fast wave crashes into the back of
the slow one, rolling them both up into a super-charged double wave. Scientists were able to correlate Martian atmosphere loss, as measured by the the
Mars Express spacecraft, with records of double radiation waves in 2007 and 2008 taken by the Advanced Composition Explorer spacecraft. According
to the study, one third of Martian atmosphere loss occurs during these waves, which are only present 15 percent of
the time. Unlike Earth, Mars lacks a magnetic field that deflects waves of solar radiation. Without that
protection, the waves simply strip the atmosphere right off the planet. However, at the poles, Mars does have the remnants of a
magnetic field, protecting the ice caps from these bursts. Only comet strikes and the occasional melting of dry ice from the poles provide Mars with any
atmosphere at all. To make Mars habitable would require some sort of giant underground alien air generator.
EXT – Ev Indict – Digreggorio
Cross-apply the Digreggorio card from the 1NC – it also indicts their ONLY author – Zubrin is
unqualified: just because he has a PhD doesn’t mean he can talk about anything. His foundation
lack scientific basing and data – they ignore core scientific issues
Bell 5 – (Jeffery, former space scientist, 11/24/05, “The Dream Palace of the Space Cadets”, http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-05zzb.html)
Unfortunately, the
new generation of organizations like the Space Frontier Foundation and the Mars Society and even the staid National Space
something that the old L-5 Society and Space Studies Institute had: technical sophistication. Just
look at Bob Zubrin's vision of Mars colonization. Nowhere in Zubrin's books is there the kind of detailed
engineering design for Mars colonies that the O'Neillians produced for their L-5 colonies. The problems of sustaining human life on Mars
are dismissed after superficial discussions devoid of any hard numbers. And there are obvious problems with colonizing Mars. The
first one is that it gets incredibly cold there - probably down to -130C on winter nights. Every robot Mars probe has
used small slugs of Pu-238 to keep its batteries from freezing at night. And there is air on Mars - not enough to
breathe, but enough to conduct heat. The Martian regolith will not be the perfect insulator that the Moon's is. Thermal control on Mars
will not be simply a matter of adding layers of aluminum foil to reflect the sun. Bases and rovers will need to be insulated and
heated. And how do you keep a human in a spacesuit warm in this climate? And Mars has permafrost - at least in
some places and those places are the ones to colonize. How do we keep the heat leaking out from our habitat or
farm greenhouse into the ground from heating up the ice and melting or subliming it away? This is a severe
problem in permafrost areas of the Earth - how bad will it be on Mars? Zubrin even proposes underground
habitats. These will be in direct contact with the cold subsoil or bedrock which will suck heat out at a rapid rate.
If Gerard O'Neill was still alive and advocating Mars colonies, he would be doing some basic thermal transfer calculations to see how
bad the Martian cold problem really is. He would be figuring out how big a fission reactor to send along to keep
the colony warm and how often its core will need to be replenished by fresh U-235 from Earth. He would even have a
rough number for the amount of Pu-238 everyone will have to carry in their spacesuit backpacks. Bob Zubrin is perfectly competent to do these
calculations since he has a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering. But you never see this kind of hard engineering
analysis from the Mars Society. Instead, we get propaganda stunts like the Devon Island "Mars Base" which is only manned during the
peak of the Arctic summer when the climate is tropical compared with that of Mars. Another thing you never see from the Mars Society is a
realistic discussion of what would happen to the human body in the low Martian gravity. Zubrin has discussed at length
the need for artificial spin gravity on the 6 month trip to Mars. But he assumes that the problem ends once the astronauts land on Mars.
The problem of bone loss in a 0.38g field on Mars for ~18 months is completely ignored. When I read Zubrin's book The Case
For Mars, I was so intrigued by this surprising omission that I consulted a friend who is a space medic at JSC. He tells me that this issue was once discussed
at a conference of medical doctors who had actually worked with the long-term residents of Mir and ISS.
NONE of these experts thought that humans could adapt permanently to Mars gravity! Why don't the Zubrinistas discuss
Society mostly lack
these issues? They will have to be solved before anyone lives permanently on Mars (or even for the ~18 months which is the minimum useful stay time as fixed by orbital
mechanics). It's not too early to think about them. But at
the Mars Society web site, you don't find any study groups of scientists
and engineers and grad students actually working out the technology we will need to colonize Mars. Instead
you find - a MARS COLONIZATION SONG CONTEST!!
Ext – Disease - Digregorio
Extend the 1NC digregorio evidence – indicates plan will bring back potentially existentially
threatening superdiseases from mars – this turns case because the plan will become extremely
unpopular: _________
Here`s more evidence:
Crosby 09 - Professor Emeritus of History, Geography, and American Studies The University of Texas at
Austin
Alfred, “Micro-organisms and extraterrestrial travel”,
http://www.springerlink.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/content/n4058g11046w23t6/fulltext.pdf
Extraterrestrial colonists of future generations will innocently cultivate new strains of
pathogens (germs) in their remote colonies, innocently export them via freighters and ferries. At
the next colonies visited the new micro-organisms will celebrate their travels with virgin soil
epidemics, i.e., epidemics among people who have never experienced the infection before or within a full
generation. The occasional contacts between the colonies and between the colonies and Earth will enable
insular pathogens to migrate. This has happened in the 14th century when the Black Death followed the Silk
Road, brand new by paleoanthropologys standards, east and west across Eurasia to China and Europe, and
even to Iceland. It happened again when Columbus brought the Old and New Worlds into contact,
triggering the worse demographic disaster of all human history.
Martian microbes will infect humans
Netea et al. 10—all 4 have PhD’s in medicine or biology (Mihai G. Netea, Ph.D.1,2, Frank L. van de Veerdonk, Ph.D.1,2, Marc Strous, Ph.D.2,3, and Jos W.M. van
der Meer, Ph.D., Journal of Cosmology, 2010, Vol 12, 3846-3854. JournalofCosmology.com, October-November, 2010, Infection Risk of a Human Mission to Mars,
http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars129.html, RBatra)
However, a
pathogenic potential of Martian microbes cannot be excluded either. Even if they were not capable of
directly invading the host and causing infection, Martian microbes could still have pathogenic potential by
secreting toxins that could indirectly harm the astronauts (e.g. through wounds, contaminated food). Examples of powerful microbial toxins
secreted by terrestrial bacteria indeed abound, e.g. clostridial toxins (Lebrun, et al., 2009). Still, one has to recognize that the majority of such toxins of terrestrial bacteria are
proteins, which in turn are recognized by specific cellular receptors, again requiring a history of previous interaction between the pathogenic agent and the host. Would such
putative toxins of Martian microbes also be proteins, would they have similar biochemistry, would they even be made of the same aminoacids? Although it
is possible
microbes from Earth could be transported to Mars (and vice
versa) thereby providing opportunities for horizontal gene transfer and thus giving Martian microbes humaninfective properties (Joseph and Wickramasinghe 2010), at present there is no hard evidence to substantiate these theories. Thus, these are all questions that
cannot be answered at present. Still, how minimal the chance that there may be pathogenic microorganisms on Mars, one cannot completely rule it out (Rummel
that through mechanisms know as panspermia (Joseph and Schild 2010a,b) that
et al. 2010).
Space colonization will unrecognizably mutate humanity – the result is literal dehumanization
which outweighs and is a d-rule
Crosby 09 - Professor Emeritus of History, Geography, and American Studies The University of Texas at Austin
Alfred, “Micro-organisms and extraterrestrial travel”, http://www.springerlink.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/content/n4058g11046w23t6/fulltext.pdf
Space travel and colonization will alter the size, shape, strengths and functions of the bodies that we have inherited from our
hunter-gatherer ancestors. The first humans on Mars, Europa, etc., will be adult technicians of one kind and another. They will yearn for recognition and
promotion, not for propagation. They will be succeeded by real settlers, male and female, of similar ambitions, but who will also want to build families.
These people will produce the first human babies not born on Earth. Different colonies will differ radically in environment (in radiation and gravity, for
instance), thus stimulating mutation. For example, what would the pregnancy of a 60-kg woman be like on Mars, where she would weight about 20 kg
due to different gravity? What would her baby be like – if it survived? My guess is that after, say, a thousand or so years of extraterrestrial propagation,
distinctively Martian physical and functional differentiation will be appearing. Ten or twenty generations after
that, Earthlings and Martians may be different enough to qualify as separate species. And, of course, there will be
another humanoid species in the colony on Europa, another on Titan, etc. Terrestrial Homo sapiens will have cousins, a situation we have not known
since the demise of the last Neanderthal. The challenge to our self-image and therefore to our ethics and
behaviors will be as great as it was in the years following 1492 when Columbus and his successors had to decide
whether to consider American Indians as fellow human beings or not.
EXT Debris space race
Colonization causes another space race and increases debris
Williams 10 (Linda, Physics Instructor, Santa Rosa Junior College, Spring, Peace Review Journal of Social Justice, “Irrational Dreams of Space
Colonization”, http://www.scientainment.com/lwilliams_peacereview.pdf)
The technological hurdles prohibiting practical space colonization of the Moon and Mars in the near future are stratospherically high. The environmental and
political consequences of pursuing these lofty dreams are even higher. There are no international laws governing the Moon or the protection of the space
environment. The Moon Treaty, created in 1979 by the United Nations, declares that the Moon shall be developed to benefit all nations and that no military bases
could be placed on the moon or on any celestial body, and bans altering the environment of celestial bodies. To date, no space faring nation has ratified this treaty,
meaning, the moon, and all celestial bodies, including Mars and asteroids are up for the taking. If a nation did place a military base on the moon, they could
potentially control all launches from Earth. The Moon is the ultimate military high ground. How should we, as a species, control the exploration, exploitation and
control of the Moon and other celestial bodies if we can not even agree on a legal regime to protect and share its resources? Since the space race began 50 years
ago with the launch of Sputnik, the space environment around Earth has become overcrowded with satellites and
space debris, so much so, that circum-terrestrial space has become a dangerous place with an increasing
risk of collision and destruction. Thousands of pieces of space junk created from launches orbit the Earth in the same orbit as satellites, putting
them at risk of collision. Every time a rocket is launched, debris from the rocket stages are put into orbital space. In 2009 there was a disastrous collision between
an Iridium satellite and a piece of space junk that destroyed the satellite. In 2007 China blew up one of its defunct satellites to demonstrate its antiballistic missile
capabilities, increasing the debris field by 15%. There are no international laws prohibiting anti-satellite actions. Indeed, if the space debris problem
continues to grow unfettered or if there is war in space, space will become too trashed for launches to take place without risk.
Every year, since the mid 1980s, a treaty has been introduced into the UN for a Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS), with all parties
including Russia and China voting for it except for the US. How can we hope to pursue a peaceful and environmentally sound route of space exploration
without international laws in place that protect space and Earth environments and guarantee that the space race to the moon and beyond does not foster
a war over space resources? destruction. The private development of space is growing at a flurried rate. Competitions such as the X-Prize for companies to
reach orbit and the Google Prize to land a robot on the Moon has launched space wanderlust in citizens throughout the country who dream of traveling to space.
The reality is that there are few protections for the environment and the passengers of these flights of fancy. The FAA, which regulates space launches, is under a
Congressional mandate to foster the industry. It is difficult if not impossible to have objective regulation of an industry when it enjoys government incentives to
profit. We have much to determine on planet Earth before we launch willy nilly into another race into space and
a potential environmental disaster and arms race in outer space .
Space debris leads to US-Russia war
Lewis 4 – Postdoctoral Fellow in the Advanced Methods of Cooperative Study Program
Jeffrey, Worked In the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Center for Defense Information, What if Space Were Weaponized?
July, http://www.cdi.org/PDFs/scenarios.pdf
This is the second of two scenarios that consider how U.S. space weapons might create incentives for America’s opponents to behave in dangerous ways. The
previous scenario looked at the systemic risk of accidents that could arise from keeping nuclear weapons on high alert to guard against a space weapons attack. This
section focuses on the risk that a single accident in space, such as a piece of space debris striking a Russian early-warning satellite, might be the
catalyst for an accidental nuclear war. As we have noted in an earlier section, the United States canceled its own ASAT program in the 1980s over
concerns that the deployment of these weapons might be deeply destabilizing. For all the talk about a “new relationship” between the United States and Russia,
both sides retain thousands of nuclear forces on alert and configured to fight a nuclear war. When briefed about the size and status of U.S. nuclear forces, President
George W. Bush reportedly asked “What do we need all these weapons for?”43
The answer, as it was during the Cold War, is that the forces remain on alert to
conduct a number of possible contingencies, including a nuclear strike against Russia. This fact, of course, is not lost on the Rus- sian leadership, which has been
increasing its reliance on nuclear weapons to compensate for the country’s declining military might. In the mid-1990s, Russia dropped its pledge to refrain from the
“first use” of nuclear weapons and conducted a series of exercises in which Russian nuclear forces prepared to use nuclear weapons to repel a NATO invasion. In
October 2003, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov reiter- ated that Moscow might use nuclear weapons “preemptively” in any number of contingencies,
including a NATO attack.44 So, it remains business as usual with U.S. and Russian nuclear forces. And business as usual includes the occasional false alarm of a
nuclear attack. There have been several of these incidents over the years. In September 1983, as a relatively new Soviet early-warning satellite moved into position
to monitor U.S. missile fields in North Dakota, the sun lined up in just such a way as to fool the Russian satellite into reporting that half a dozen U.S. missiles had
been launched at the Soviet Union. Perhaps mindful that a brand new satel- lite might malfunction, the officer in charge of the command center that monitored data
from the early-warning satellites refused to pass the alert to his superiors. He reportedly explained his caution by saying: “When people start a war, they don’t start
it with only five missiles. You can do little damage with just five missiles.”45 In January 1995, Norwegian scientists launched a sounding rocket on a trajectory
similar to one that a U.S. Trident missile might take if it were launched to blind Russian radars with a high26 What if Space Were Weaponized? altitude nuclear
detonation. The incident was apparently serious enough that, the next day, Russian President Boris Yeltsin stated that he had activated his “nuclear football” – a
device that allows the Russian president to communicate with his military advisors and review his options for launching his arsenal. In this case, the Russian earlywarning satellites could clearly see that no attack was under way and the crisis passed without incident.46 In both cases, Russian observers were confi- dent that
what appeared to be a “small” attack was not a fragmentary picture of a much larger one. In the case of the Norwegian sounding rocket, space-based sensors played
a crucial role in assuring the Russian leadership that it was not under attack. The Russian command sys- tem, however, is no longer able to provide such reliable,
early warning. The dissolution of the Soviet Union cost Moscow several radar stations in newly independent states, creating “attack corridors” through which
Moscow could not see an attack launched by U.S. nuclear submarines.47 Further, Russia’s constellation of early-warn- ing satellites has been allowed to decline –
only one or two of the six satellites remain operational, leaving Russia with early warning for only six hours a day. Russia is attempting to reconstitute its
constellation of early-warning satellites, with several launches planned in the next few years. But Russia will still have limited warning and will depend
heavily on its space-based systems to provide warning of an American attack.48 As the previous section explained, the Pentagon is contemplating military
missions in space that will improve U.S. ability to cripple Russian nuclear forces in a crisis before they can execute an attack on the United States. Anti-satellite
weapons, in this scenario, would blind Russian reconnaissance and warning satellites and knock out communications satellites. Such strikes might be the prelude to
a full-scale attack, or a limited ef- fort, as attempted in a war game at Schriever Air Force Base, to conduct “early deterrence strikes” to signal U.S. resolve and
control escalation.49 By 2010, the United States may, in fact, have an arsenal of ASATs (perhaps even on orbit 24/7) ready to conduct these kinds of missions – to
coerce opponents and, if necessary, support preemptive attacks. Moscow would certainly have to worry that these ASATs could be used in conjunction with other
space-enabled systems – for example, long-range strike systems that could attack targets in less than 90 minutes – to disable Russia’s nuclear deterrent before the
Rus- sian leadership understood what was going on. What would happen if a piece of space debris were to disable a Russian earlywarning satellite under these conditions? Could the Russian military distinguish between an accident in space and the first phase of a U.S. attack? Most
Russian early-warning satellites are in elliptical Molniya orbits (a few are in GEO) and thus difficult to attack from the ground or air. At a minimum, Moscow
would probably have some tactical warn- ing of such a suspicious launch, but given the sorry state of Russia’s warning, optical imaging and signals intelligence
satellites there is reason to ask the question. Further, the advent of U.S. on-orbit ASATs, as now envisioned50 could make both the more difficult orbital plane and
any warning systems moot. The unpleasant truth is that the Russians likely would have to make a judgment call. No state has the ability to definitively determine the cause of the satellite’s failure. Even the United States does not maintain (nor is it likely to have in place by 2010) a sophisticated space surveillance
system that would allow it to distin- guish between a satellite malfunction, a debris strike or a deliberate attack – and Russian space surveillance capabilities are
much more limited by comparison. Even the risk assessments for col- lision with debris are speculative, particularly for the unique orbits in which Russian earlywarning satellites operate. During peacetime, it is easy to imagine that the Russians would conclude that the loss of a satellite was either a malfunction or a debris
strike. But how confident could U.S. planners be that the Russians would be so calm if the accident in space occurred in tandem with a second false alarm, or
occurred during the middle of a crisis? What might happen if the debris strike occurred shortly after a false alarm showing a missile launch? False alarms
are appallingly common – according to information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense
Command (NORAD) experienced 1,172 “moderately serious” false alarms between 1977 and 1983 – an average of almost three false alarms per week.
Comparable information is not available about the Russian system, but there is no reason to believe that it is any more reliable.51 Assessing the likelihood
of these sorts of co- incidences is difficult because Russia has never provided data about the frequency or duration of false alarms; nor indicated how seriously
early- warning data is taken by Russian leaders. More- over, there is no reliable estimate of the debris risk for Russian satellites in highly elliptical orbits.52 The
important point, however, is that such a coincidence would only appear suspicious if the United States were in the business of disabling satellites – in other words,
there is much less risk if Washington does not develop ASATs. The loss of an early-warning satellite could look rather ominous if it occurred during a period of
major tension in the relationship. While NATO no longer sees Russia as much of a threat, the same cannot be said of the converse. Despite the warm talk, Russian
leaders remain wary of NATO expansion, particularly the effect expansion may have on the Baltic port of Kaliningrad. Although part of Russia, Kaliningrad is
separated from the rest of Russia by Lithuania and Poland. Russia has already complained about its decreasing lack of access to the port, particularly the
uncooperative attitude of the Lithuanian govern- ment.53
News reports suggest that an edgy Russia may have moved tactical nuclear weapons into the
enclave.54 If the Lithuanian government were to close access to Kaliningrad in a fit of pique, this would trigger a major crisis between NATO and Russia. Under
these circumstances, the loss of an early-warning satellite would be extremely suspicious. It is any military’s nature during a crisis to interpret events in their
worst-case light. For ex- ample, consider the coincidences that occurred in early September 1956, during the extraordinarily tense period in international relations
marked by the Suez Crisis and Hungarian uprising.55 On one evening the White House received messages indicating: 1. the Turkish Air Force had gone on alert
in response to unidentified aircraft penetrating its airspace; 2. one hundred Soviet MiG-15s were flying over Syria; 3. a British Canberra bomber had been shot
down over Syria, most likely by a MiG; and 4. The Russian fleet was moving through the Dardanelles. Gen. Andrew Accidental Nuclear War Scenarios
27 28
What if Space Were Weaponized? Goodpaster was reported to have worried that the confluence of events “might trigger off ... the NATO operations plan”
that called for a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. Yet, all of these reports were false. The “jets” over Turkey were a flock of swans; the Soviet MiGs over Syria
were a smaller, routine escort returning the president from a state visit to Moscow; the bomber crashed due to mechanical difficulties; and the Soviet fleet was
beginning long-scheduled exercises. In an important sense, these were not “coincidences” but rather different manifestations of a common failure – human error
resulting from extreme tension of an international crisis. As one author noted, “The detection and misinterpretation of these events, against the context of world
tensions from Hungary and Suez, was the first major example of how the size and complexity of worldwide electronic warning systems could, at certain critical
times, create momentum of its own.” Perhaps most worrisome, the United States might be blithely unaware of the degree to which the Russians were
concerned about its actions and inadvertently escalate a crisis. During the early 1980s, the Soviet Union suffered a major “war scare” during which
time its leadership concluded that bilateral relations were rapidly declining. This war scare was driven in part by the rhetoric of the Reagan administration, fortified
by the selective reading of intelligence. During this period, NATO conducted a major command post exercise, Able Archer, that caused some elements of the
Soviet military to raise their alert status. American officials were stunned to learn, after the fact, that the Kremlin had been acutely nervous about an American first
strike during this period.56 All of these incidents have a common theme – that confidence is often the difference between war and peace. In times of crisis,
false alarms can have a momentum of their own. As in the second scenario in this monograph, the lesson is that commanders
rely on the steady flow of reliable information. When that information flow is disrupted – whether by a deliberate attack or an
accident – confidence collapses and the result is panic and escalation. Introducing ASAT weapons into this mix is all the
more dangerous, because such weapons target the elements of the command system that keep leaders aware, informed and
in control. As a result, the mere presence of such weapons is corrosive to the confidence that allows national nuclear forces
to operate safely.
This access existential risk calculus
Bostrom 2
Nick, PhD, Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 9, March 2002, http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html
A much greater existential risk emerged with the build-up of nuclear arsenals in the US and the USSR. An all-out nuclear war
was a possibility with both a substantial probability and with consequences that might have been persistent enough to qualify as global and
terminal. There was a real worry among those best acquainted with the information available at the time that a nuclear Armageddon would occur
and that it might annihilate our species or permanently destroy human civilization.[4] Russia and the US retain large nuclear arsenals
that could be used in a future confrontation, either accidentally or deliberately. There is also a risk that other states may one day build up large
nuclear arsenals. Note however that a smaller nuclear exchange, between India and Pakistan for instance, is not an existential risk, since it would not
destroy or thwart humankind’s potential permanently. Such a war might however be a local terminal risk for the cities most likely to be targeted.
Unfortunately, we shall see that nuclear Armageddon and comet or asteroid strikes are mere preludes to the existential risks that we will encounter in the 21st
century.
a) debris means no launches
William 10 – MS in Physics
Lynda Williams, M.S. in Physics and a physics faculty member at Santa Rose Junior College, Irrational Dreams of Space Colonization”, Spring 2010,
Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 22.1, Spring
Since the space race began 50 years ago with the launch of Sputnik, the space environment around Earth has become overcrowded with satellites
and space debris, so much so, that circumterrestrial
space has become a dangerous place with an increasing risk of collision and destruction.
Thousands of pieces of space junk created from launches orbit the Earth in the same orbit as satellites, putting them at risk of collision. Every
time a
rocket is launched, debris from the rocket stages are put into orbital space. In 2009 there was a disastrous collision between an
Iridium satellite and a piece of space junk that destroyed the satellite. In 2007 China blew up one of its defunct satellites to demonstrate its antiballistic missile
capabilities, increasing the debris field by 15%. There are no international laws prohibiting anti-satellite actions. Every year, since the mid 1980s, a treaty has
been introduced into the UN for a Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS), with all parties including Russia and China voting for it except for
the US. How can we hope to pursue a peaceful and environmentally sound route of space exploration without international laws in place that protect space and
Earth environments and guarantee that the space race to the moon and beyond does not foster a war over space resources? Indeed, if the space debris
problem continues to grow unfettered or if there is war in space, space will become too trashed for launches to take place
without risk of destruction.
And, b) even the perception of a debris cloud massively increases launch costs – makes space access
impossible – turns the case
Broad 7 – Pulitzer Prize winning science writer
William Broad, “Orbiting Junk, Once a Nuisance, Is Now a Threat,” 2-2007, NYT, Proquest
In an interview, Mr. Kessler called the worst-case scenario an exaggeration. “It’s been overdone,” he said of the syndrome. Still,
he
warned of an economic barrier to space exploration that could arise. To fight debris, he said, designers will
have to give spacecraft more and more shielding, struggling to protect the craft from destruction and making
them heavier and more costly in the process. At some point, he said, perhaps centuries from now, the costs will outweigh
the benefits. “It gets more and more expensive,” he said. “Sooner or later it gets too expensive to do business
in space.”
2NC Risk Calc Ext
Group the risk calculus debate:
Timeframe outweighs, that’s Baum and Williams 10:
 You can only die once – nuclear warfare is an existential risk, it’s not try-or-die for the
aff, it’s try-AND- die
 Status quo solves, the effects of our impacts turn these efforts means there’s a unique
internal link turn to their impact – evidence says we’ll still be alive in a billion years,
rapid technological change allows us to colonize now, but nuclear war would eliminate
that capacity
 No unique offense – extinction is inevitable in the places they colonize, gamma rays fry
life on the moon/mars as well
New tech revolutions will enable space colonization, nuclear catastrophes turn that
Bostrom 5 [Nick – faculty of Philosophy @ Oxford Univ, “Transhumanist Values,” pdf, ZR]
1. What is Transhumanism? Transhumanism is a loosely defined movement that has developed gradually over the past two decades.1 It promotes an
interdisciplinary approach to understanding and evaluating the opportunities for enhancing the human condition and the human
organism opened up by the advancement
of technology. Attention is given to both present technologies, like genetic engineering and
enhancement options
information technology, and anticipated future ones, such as molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. The
being discussed include radical extension of human health-span, eradication of disease, elimination of unnecessary suffering, and augmentation of human intellectual, physical,
include space colonization
and emotional capacities. Other transhumanist themes
and the possibility of creating superintelligent machines, along with other potential developments
that could profoundly alter the human condition. The ambit is not limited to gadgets and medicine, but encompasses also economic, social, institutional designs, cultural development, and psychological
skills and techniques. Transhumanists view human nature as a work-in-progress, a half-baked beginning that we can learn to remold in desirable ways. Current humanity need not be the endpoint of
evolution. Transhumanists hope that by responsible use of science, technology, and other rational means we shall eventually manage to become posthuman, beings with vastly greater capacities than
present human beings have. Some transhumanists take active steps to increase the probability that they personally will survive long enough to become posthuman, for example by choosing a healthy
lifestyle or by making provisions for having themselves cryonically suspended in case of de-animation.2 In contrast to many other ethical outlooks, which in practice often reflect a reactionary attitude to
new technologies, the transhumanist view is guided by an evolving vision to take a more proactive approach to technology policy. This vision, in broad strokes, is to create the opportunity to live much
longer and healthier lives, to enhance our memory and other intellectual faculties, to refine our emotional experiences and increase our subjective sense of well-being, and generally to achieve a greater
degree of control over our own lives. This affirmation of human potential is offered as an alternative to customary injunctions against playing God, messing with nature, tampering with our human essence,
or displaying punishable hubris. Transhumanism does not entail technological optimism. While future technological capabilities carry immense potential for beneficial deployments, they also could be
misused to cause enormous harm, ranging all the way to the extreme possibility 1 (Bostrom et al. 1999; Bostrom 2003) 2 (Ettinger 1964; Hughes 2001) 1 of intelligent life becoming extinct. Other potential
negative outcomes include widening social inequalities or a gradual erosion of the hard-to-quantify assets that we care deeply about but tend to neglect in our daily struggle for material gain, such as
meaningful human relationships and ecological diversity. Such risks must be taken very seriously, as thoughtful transhumanists fully acknowledge.3 Transhumanism has roots in secular humanist
thinking, yet is more radical in that it promotes not only traditional means of improving human nature, such as education and cultural refinement, but also direct application of medicine and technology to
overcome some of our basic biological limits. 2. Human limitations The range of thoughts, feelings, experiences, and activities accessible to human organisms presumably constitute only a tiny part of what
is possible. There is no reason to think that the human mode of being is any more free of limitations imposed by our biological nature than are those of other animals. In much the same way as
Chimpanzees lack the cognitive wherewithal to understand what it is like to be human – the ambitions we humans have, our philosophies, the complexities of human society, or the subtleties of our
relationships with one another, so we humans may lack the capacity to form a realistic intuitive understanding of what it would be like to be a radically enhanced human (a “posthuman”) and of the
thoughts, concerns, aspirations, and social relations that such humans may have. Our own current mode of being, therefore, spans but a minute subspace of what is possible or permitted by the physical
constraints of the universe (see Figure 1). It is not farfetched to suppose that there are parts of this larger space that represent extremely valuable ways of living, relating, feeling, and thinking. Figure 1. We
aint seen nothin’ yet (not drawn to scale). The term “transhuman” denotes transitional beings, or moderately enhanced humans, whose capacities would be somewhere between those of unaugmented
humans and full-blown posthumans. (A transhumanist, by contrast, is simply somebody who accepts transhumanism.) accessible by posthumans accessible by animals accessible by transhumans
accessible by humans The Space of Possible Modes of Being 2 3 (Bostrom 2002) The limitations of the human mode of being are so pervasive and familiar that we often fail to notice them, and to question
them requires manifesting an almost childlike naiveté. Let consider some of the more basic ones. Lifespan. Because of the precarious conditions in which our Pleistocene ancestors lived, the human
lifespan has evolved to be a paltry seven or eight decades. This is, from many perspectives, a rather short period of time. Even tortoises do better than that. We don’t have to use geological or cosmological
comparisons to highlight the meagerness of our allotted time budgets. To get a sense that we might be missing out on something important by our tendency to die early, we only have to bring to mind some
of the worthwhile things that we could have done or attempted to do if we had had more time. For gardeners, educators, scholars, artists, city planners, and those who simply relish observing and
participating in the cultural or political variety shows of life, three scores and ten is often insufficient for seeing even one major project through to completion, let alone for undertaking many such projects
in sequence. Human character development is also cut short by aging and death. Imagine what might have become of a Beethoven or a Goethe if they had still been with us today. Maybe they would have
developed into rigid old grumps interested exclusively in conversing about the achievements of their youth. But maybe, if they had continued to enjoy health and youthful vitality, they would have
continued to grow as men and artists, to reach levels of maturity that we can barely imagine. We certainly cannot rule that out based on what we know today. Therefore, there is at least a serious possibility
of there being something very precious outside the human sphere. This constitutes a reason to pursue the means that will let us go there and find out. Intellectual capacity. We have all had moments when
we wished we were a little smarter. The three-pound, cheese-like thinking machine that we lug around in our skulls can do some neat tricks, but it also has significant shortcomings. Some of these – such
as forgetting to buy milk or failing to attain native fluency in languages you learn as an adult – are obvious and require no elaboration. These shortcomings are inconveniences but hardly fundamental
barriers to human development. Yet there is a more profound sense in the constraints of our intellectual apparatus limit our modes of our mentation. I mentioned the Chimpanzee analogy earlier: just as is
the case for the great apes, our own cognitive makeup may foreclose whole strata of understanding and mental activity. The point here is not about any logical or metaphysical impossibility: we need not
suppose that posthumans would not be Turing computable or that they would have concepts that could not be expressed by any finite sentences in our language, or anything of that sort. The impossibility
that I am referring to is more like the impossibility for us current humans to visualize an 200-dimensional hypersphere or to read, with perfect recollection and understanding, every book in the Library of
Congress. These things are impossible for us because, simply put, we lack the brainpower. In the same way, may lack the ability to intuitively understand what being a posthuman would be like or to grok
the playing field of posthuman concerns. Further, our human brains may cap our ability to discover philosophical and scientific truths. It is possible that failure of philosophical research to arrive at solid,
generally accepted answers to many of the traditional big philosophical questions could 3 be due to the fact that we are not smart enough to be successful in this kind of enquiry. Our cognitive limitations
may be confining us in a Platonic cave, where the best we can do is theorize about “shadows”, that is, representations that are sufficiently oversimplified and dumbed-down to fit inside a human brain.
Bodily functionality. We enhance our natural immune systems by getting vaccinations, and we can imagine further enhancements to our bodies that would protect us from disease or help us shape our
bodies according to our desires (e.g. by letting us control our bodies’ metabolic rate). Such enhancements could improve the quality of our lives. A more radical kind of upgrade might be possible if we
suppose a computational view of the mind. It may then be possible to upload a human mind to a computer, by replicating in silico the detailed computational processes that would normally take place in a
particular human brain.4 Being an upload would have many potential advantages, such as the ability to make back-up copies of oneself (favorably impacting on one’s life-expectancy) and the ability to
transmit oneself as information at the speed of light. Uploads might live either in virtual reality or directly in physical reality by controlling a robot proxy. Sensory modalities, special faculties and
sensibilities. The current human sensory modalities are not the only possible ones, and they are certainly not as highly developed as they could be. Some animals have sonar, magnetic orientation, or
sensors for electricity and vibration; many have a much keener sense of smell, sharper eyesight, etc. The range of possible sensory modalities is not limited to those we find in the animal kingdom. There is
no fundamental block to adding say a capacity to see infrared radiation or to perceive radio signals and perhaps to add some kind of telepathic sense by augmenting our brains with suitably interfaced
radio transmitters. Humans also enjoy a variety of special faculties, such as appreciation of music and a sense of humor, and sensibilities such as the capacity for sexual arousal in response to erotic stimuli.
Again, there is no reason to think that what we have exhausts the range of the possible, and we can certainly imagine higher levels of sensitivity and responsiveness. Mood, energy, and self-control. Despite
our best efforts, we often fail to feel as happy as we would like. Our chronic levels of subjective well-being seem to be largely genetically determined. Life-events have little long-term impact; the crests and
troughs of fortune push us up and bring us down, but there is little long-term effect on self-reported well-being. Lasting joy remains elusive except for those of us who are lucky enough to have been born
with a temperament that plays in a major key. In addition to being at the mercy of a genetically determined setpoint for our levels of well-being, we are limited in regard to energy, will-power, and ability to
shape our own character in accordance with our ideals. Even such “simple” goals as losing weight or quitting smoking prove unattainable to many. Some subset of these kinds of problems might be
necessary rather than contingent upon our current nature. For example, we cannot both have the ability easily to break any habit and the ability to form stable, hard-to-break habits. (In this regard, the
best one can 4 (Drexler 1986; Moravec 1989) 4 hope for may be the ability to easily get rid of habits we didn’t deliberately choose for ourselves in the first place, and perhaps a more versatile habitformation system that would let us choose with more precision when to acquire a habit and how much effort it should cost to break it.) 3. The core transhumanist value: exploring the posthuman realm The
conjecture that there are greater values than we can currently fathom does not imply that values are not defined in terms of our current dispositions. Take, for example, a dispositional theory of value such
as the one described by David Lewis.5 According to Lewis’s theory, something is a value for you if and only if you would want to want it if you were perfectly acquainted with it and you were thinking and
deliberating as clearly as possible about it. On this view, there may be values that we do not currently want, and that we do not even currently want to want, because we may not be perfectly acquainted
with them or because we are not ideal deliberators. Some values pertaining to certain forms of posthuman existence may well be of this sort; they may be values for us now, and they may be so in virtue of
our current dispositions, and yet we may not be able to fully appreciate them with our current limited deliberative capacities and our lack of the receptive faculties required for full acquaintance with them.
This point is important because it shows that the transhumanist view that we ought to explore the realm of posthuman values does not entail that we should forego our current values. The posthuman
values can be our current values, albeit ones that we have not yet clearly comprehended. Transhumanism does not require us to say that we should favor posthuman beings over human beings, but that the
right way of favoring human beings is by enabling us to realize our ideals better and that some of our ideals may well be located outside the space of modes of being that are accessible to us with our current
biological constitution. We can overcome many of our biological limitations. It is possible that there are some limitations that are impossible for us to transcend, not only because of technological
difficulties but on metaphysical grounds. Depending on what our views are about what constitutes personal identity, it could be that certain modes of being, while possible, are not possible for us, because
any being of such a kind would be so different from us that they could not be us. Concerns of this kind are familiar from theological discussions of the afterlife. In Christian theology, some souls will be
allowed by God to go to heaven after their time as corporal creatures is over. Before being admitted to heaven, the souls would undergo a purification process in which they would lose many of their
previous bodily attributes. Skeptics may doubt that the resulting minds would be sufficiently similar to our current minds for it to be possible for them to be the same person. A similar predicament arises
within transhumanism: if the mode of being of a posthuman being is radically different from that of a human being, then we may doubt whether a posthuman being could be the same person as a human
being, even if the posthuman being originated from a human being. We can, however, envision many enhancements that would not make it impossible for the post-transformation someone to be the same
person as the pre-transformation person. A person could obtain quite a bit of increased life expectancy, 5 (Lewis 1989) 5 intelligence, health, memory, and emotional sensitivity, without ceasing to exist in
the process. A person’s intellectual life can be transformed radically by getting an education. A person’s life expectancy can be extended substantially by being unexpectedly cured from a lethal disease. Yet
these developments are not viewed as spelling the end of the original person. In particular, it seems that modifications that add to a person’s capacities can be more substantial than modifications that
subtract, such as brain damage. If most of someone currently is, including her most important memories, activities, and feelings, is preserved, then adding extra capacities on top of that would not easily
cause the person to cease to exist. Preservation of personal identity, especially if this notion is given a narrow construal, is not everything. We can value other things than ourselves, or we might regard it as
satisfactory if some parts or aspects of ourselves survive and flourish, even if that entails giving up some parts of ourselves such that we no longer count as being the same person. Which parts of ourselves
we might be willing to sacrifice may not become clear until we are more fully acquainted with the full meaning of the options. A careful, incremental exploration of the posthuman realm may be
indispensable for acquiring such an understanding, although we may also be able to learn from each other’s experiences and from works of the imagination. Additionally, we may favor future people being
posthuman rather than human, if the posthumans would lead lives more worthwhile than the alternative humans would. Any reasons stemming from such considerations would not depend on the
assumption that we ourselves could become posthuman beings. Transhumanism promotes the quest to develop further so that we can explore hitherto inaccessible realms of value. Technological
enhancement of human organisms is a means that we ought to pursue to this end. There are limits to how much can be achieved by low-tech means such as education, philosophical contemplation, moral
self-scrutiny and other such methods proposed by classical philosophers with perfectionist leanings, including Plato, Aristotle, and Nietzsche, or by means of creating a fairer and better society, as
4. Basic
conditions for realizing the transhumanist project If this is the grand vision, what are the more particular objectives that it translates into when
considered as a guide to policy? What is needed for the realization of the transhumanist dream is that technological
means necessary for venturing into the posthuman space are made available to those who wish to use them,
and that society be organized in such a manner that such explorations can be undertaken without causing
unacceptable damage to the social fabric and without imposing unacceptable existential risks.
envisioned by social reformists such as Marx or Martin Luther King. This is not to denigrate what we can do with the tools we have today. Yet ultimately, transhumanists hope to go further.
Global security. While disasters and setbacks are inevitable in the implementation of the transhumanist project (just as they are if the transhumanist
project is not pursued), there is one kind of catastrophe that must be avoided at any cost: 6 Existential risk – one where an adverse outcome would either
annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential.6 Several recent discussions have argued that the
combined probability of the existential risks is very substantial.7 The relevance of the condition of existential safety to the transhumanist vision is
obvious: if we go extinct or permanently destroy our potential to develop further, then the transhumanist core value will not be realized. Global security
is the most fundamental and nonnegotiable requirement of the transhumanist project.
Privilege Short-Term
Privilege short-timeframe impacts:
A) Intervening actors—the longer the timeframe the more likely other agents are to solve their
impact
B) Impact access—short timeframe impacts can turn long timeframe ones, but not the other
way around—by the time the later event has occurred our shorter timeframe impact will
already be irreversible
C)Probability—Long timeframes decrease it—the more distant the prediction, the more likely it
is to be wrong
POSNER 2004 (Richard, US Court of Appeals judge and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Catastrophe: Risk and
Response 17)
A compelling reason for not giving a great deal of thought to the remote future is the difficulty, often the
impossibility, of making accurate predictions beyond a few years. People in the year 1000 could have had only the vaguest
conception of what the world would be like in the year 2004, and we can have only the vaguest conception of what it will be like in the year 3000, let
alone the year 1,000,000. We have better predictive methods than people in 1000 did, but on the other had the rate of technological change
is higher now than it was then. Lacking the requisite foreknowledge we can’t know what we should be doing now
to forestall the disasters that are possible, maybe even likely, on that timescale.
D) Conditional probability—short-timeframe existential risks effectively decrease the
probability of long-timeframe ones—we can only die once
BOSTROM 2011 (Nick, Prof. of Philosophy at Oxford, The Concept of Existential Risk (Draft), http://www.existentialrisk.com/concept.html)
Finally, when considering existential-risk probabilities, we must recognize that one existential catastrophe can preempt another. If a
meteor wipes us out next year, the existential risk from future machine superintelligence drops to zero. The sum
of all-things-considered probabilities of disjoint (mutually exclusive) existential risks cannot exceed 100%. Yet conditional
probabilities of disjoint existential risks (conditional, that is to say, on no other existential disaster occurring preemptively) could well add up to more
than 100%. For example, some pessimist might coherently assign an 80% probability to humanity being
destroyed by machine superintelligence, and a 70% conditional probability to humanity being destroyed by
nanotechnological warfare given that humanity is not destroyed by machine superintelligence . However, if the
unconditional (all-things-considered) probability of our being eradicated by superintelligence is 80%, then the unconditional probability of our being
eradicated by nanotech war must be no greater than 20%, since we can only be eradicated once.
Existential Risk
Privilege short-timeframe impacts:
A) Intervening actors—the longer the timeframe the more likely other agents are to solve their
impact
B) Impact access—short timeframe impacts can turn long timeframe ones, but not the other
way around—by the time the later event has occurred our shorter timeframe impact will
already be irreversible
C)Probability—Long timeframes decrease it—the more distant the prediction, the more likely it
is to be wrong
POSNER 2004 (Richard, US Court of Appeals judge and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Catastrophe: Risk and
Response 17)
A compelling reason for not giving a great deal of thought to the remote future is the difficulty, often the
impossibility, of making accurate predictions beyond a few years. People in the year 1000 could have had only the vaguest
conception of what the world would be like in the year 2004, and we can have only the vaguest conception of what it will be like in the year 3000, let
alone the year 1,000,000. We have better predictive methods than people in 1000 did, but on the other had the rate of technological change
is higher now than it was then. Lacking the requisite foreknowledge we can’t know what we should be doing now
to forestall the disasters that are possible, maybe even likely, on that timescale.
D) Conditional probability—short-timeframe existential risks effectively decrease the
probability of long-timeframe ones—we can only die once
BOSTROM 2011 (Nick, Prof. of Philosophy at Oxford, The Concept of Existential Risk (Draft), http://www.existentialrisk.com/concept.html)
Finally, when considering existential-risk probabilities, we must recognize that one existential catastrophe can preempt another. If a
meteor wipes us out next year, the existential risk from future machine superintelligence drops to zero. The sum
of all-things-considered probabilities of disjoint (mutually exclusive) existential risks cannot exceed 100%. Yet conditional
probabilities of disjoint existential risks (conditional, that is to say, on no other existential disaster occurring preemptively) could well add up to more
than 100%. For example, some pessimist might coherently assign an 80% probability to humanity being
destroyed by machine superintelligence, and a 70% conditional probability to humanity being destroyed by
nanotechnological warfare given that humanity is not destroyed by machine superintelligence. However, if the
unconditional (all-things-considered) probability of our being eradicated by superintelligence is 80%, then the
unconditional probability of our being eradicated by nanotech war must be no greater than 20%, since we can
only be eradicated once.
***PTX DA
Turns Case
CSM cites an idiot. His argument is that the college credit market is not a bubble because people will always go
to college
1. we all thought everybody was going to keep buying houses, and then everybody defaulted. Our evidence
proves that people would default
Extend the Velikov evidence. Student loan debt is now a bigger crisis than credit card debt and
is already slowing the economic recovery.
Consensus of Economists agree that it’s the next big debt bomb for the economy if we don’t do
something about it.
***COMMERCIAL Crew DA
Overview
DA outweighs and turns case:
A. Timeframe—disease will happen soon, aids made us vulnerable
B. Magnitude—existential—mutliple pieces of aff evidence identify new pathogens as existential
threats
ISS is key to technological innovation for colonization and exploration missions
Hauser and John, 9
[Marty. VP, Washington Operations, Research and Analysis. Mariel. Research analyst at the Space Foundation, Space Foundation, 2009, “The
International Space Station: Decision 2015" http://www.spacefoundation.org/docs/ISS_Decision_2015.pdf]
One of the most broadly recognized objectives of the ISS is articulated on the NASA Exploration Web site: its “use as a test bed for technology
development, demonstration, and problem resolution in the areas of life support, fire safety, power, propulsion, thermal management, etc.”34 The ISS
provides the unique ability to carry out this important task. If the United States intends to undertake long-duration exploration
missions, it is essential that NASA collects empirical data on the maintainability and availability of space
hardware systems. This can only be accomplished with operating experience, and the ISS offers this capability.
NASA has already been able to develop and refine ventilation systems, air filtration systems, water recycling
systems, and oxygen producing systems, to name only a few. When hardware components malfunction, the ISS
crews have demonstrated creativity, collaboration, and teamwork in order to carry out repairs in orbit. This has
led to the development of new repair techniques and has provided valuable lessons on what does and does not work in space.35 The
benefits of having a relatively close “island in space” where systems can be tested are evident in the experience with
the Remote Power Control Mechanism. This component, similar to a circuit breaker, is used frequently in space systems. When this component
malfunctioned, NASA was able to study the problem and create an improved version. Thousands of replacements were shipped to the ISS and installed.
Had this problem occurred on a vehicle destined for the Moon or Mars, studying the problem, creating replacements, and carrying out repairs would
have been much more difficult, if not impossible.36 Research on humans in space is at least as vital as research on space
hardware. The ISS offers the only option for research on the effect of long-duration spaceflight on humans.
Second, plan is key to breakthroughs in life support systems for staffed spaceflight missions
Clement and Bukley, 6
[Gilles.Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Angie. Ohio University, Athens. “Biotechnology in Space.” Space
Technology Library, 2006, Volume 18. http://www.springerlink.com/content/w1414504161u8t48/]
With the increased availability of research opportunities on the ISS and the new hardware developed, further investigation of these processes will
clarify how cells behave in microgravity. A better understanding of how the cells in the physiological systems, such as muscle,
bone, balance, and cardio- vascular, sense and respond to microgravity would have immediate relevance for the
[staffed] space program. Potential research topics would not be limited to areas that have already been
explored, but could come in other areas, including the adaptive responses of cells in microgravity to factors
such as: (a) radiation; (b) induced phenotypic and genotypic changes; (c) effect of the space environment on
replicating cells; (d) and the effect of microgravity on plant cells and tissues, on microorganisms that cause
disease or that will be used for waste treatment on long-duration flights, and on cells (e.g., osteoblasts) that
may not proliferate in bioreactors as they are currently designed (Unworth and Lelkes 1998). As mentioned above, the key areas in which
perturbations of cell structure and function in microgravity are observed are components of nuclear architecture, cytoarchitecture, and the extracellular matrix. It is becoming increasingly evident that the
organization of genes and regulatory proteins within the nucleus, the organization of nucleic acids and signaling proteins in the cytoplasm and cytoskeleton, and the organization of regulatory
macromolecules within the extracellular matrix contribute to the physiologically responsive fidelity of gene expression. Consequently, the functional interrelationships between cell structure and gene
expression within the three-dimensional context of cell and tissue organization can be rigorously and systematically studied under microgravity and regular Earth- gravity conditions. The corollary is that
microgravity can provide valuable insight into structure-function interrelationships that connect control of gene expression to cell and tissue architecture (National Research Council 1998).
ISS key to cutting edge technology testing and life support technologies
Chow 11 (Denise Chow (staff writer), Space, April 7, 2011, “Space Station Crucial for Going to Mars, NASA
Chief Says”, accessed August 31, 2011, http://www.space.com/11335-nasa-mars-exploration-spacestation.html)
WASHINGTON – NASA is on track to send humans to Mars, the space agency's chief said Wednesday (April 6).
Addressing an auditorium full of scientists, industry members, educators and former astronauts, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said the agency
committed to a future manned mission to Mars, and that the International Space Station is a vital test bed for getting there. "The International Space
Station is the centerpiece for our human exploration and our spaceflight endeavors in the coming decade," Bolden said. "I like to say it's our anchor for
the future of human exploration. The station is our start to the journey outward." Bolden delivered the keynote address at the International Space Station
and Mars Conference, a two-day event held here at George Washington University. The conference was presented by Explore Mars, an organization that
promotes scientific and technological innovation in support of Mars exploration. The conference aimed to discuss how the International Space Station
can be used as a research asset and test facility in preparation for future human exploration of our solar system neighbor. [Best (and Worst) Mars
Landings of All Time] The International Space Station is the largest human-built structure ever constructed in space, and is the product of cooperation
between five different space agencies representing 15 countries. Constructon of the $100 billion orbiting lab began in 1998. NASA completed its parts of
the space station last month, with Russia's Federal Space Agency planning to add at least one more large laboratory module sometime next year. NASA
and its partners plan to keep the space station operating through at least 2020. "Over the next 10 years, we'll continue to collaborate with
other nations to live and work together in space, and perform cutting edge research and technology
demonstrations that are critical to our eventual exploration into deep space with humans," Bolden said. "The
ISS is the most realistic analog we have to test life support and other technologies, ensuring they function in space, and
most importantly, that they are reliable." In addition to the scientific and technological lessons the space station might offer, the orbiting lab also
represents an ongoing successful cooperation between different nations toward broad and unifying goals, Bolden said. And this collaboration will likely
act as an important precedent for future missions to Mars, NASA's chief said. "Any mission to Mars is likely to be a global effort," Bolden said. "The ISS is
a blend of goals among the participating space agencies, and it is truly beautiful in that regard alone." With the agency's space shuttle program set to
come to a close later this year, NASA has set lofty goals to visit an asteroid in 2015 and Mars sometime in the 2030s.[Giant Leaps: Top Milestones of
Human Spaceflight] Bolden described the years ahead as an incremental journey to the Red Planet, and claimed that the stepping stones of the program
could serve as inspiration for a whole new generation. As he spoke about his vision for the future, the former astronaut's voice welled with emotion. "I
know my granddaughters will be witnessing humans arriving at Mars," Bolden said. "Like the President, I believe such a journey is possible in my
lifetime. But what I know today is that we have an amazing engineering resource in space right now – the International Space Station. And we're moving
out on the innovation and technological breakthroughs that are required to get us to our neighboring planet."
ISS key to international science cooperation
Lempinen 11 (Edward W. Lempinen, senior writer
At the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “AAAS CEO Leshner, At World Science Forum,
Urges Improved Global S&T Collaboration”, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 11/21/11,
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2011/1121wsf_opening_plenary.shtml)
BUDAPEST, Hungary—With the global scientific enterprise confronted by budget pressures and human
challenges, nations must work to align their science values and standards to improve
international collaboration, AAAS Chief Executive Officer Alan I. Leshner said at the opening of the 2011 World Science Forum.
Speaking from the ornate Ceremonial Hall at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS), Leshner urged an audience of some 500 world science and
science policy leaders to “bring the full resources of a global scientific community, functioning in a truly global way, to bear” on issues ranging from
health and energy to disaster-response and economic development. “The only way to do that,” Leshner said, “is to strengthen or
bolster the
coherence and compatibility of science communities across the world so the various
national communities can work together easily and with great confidence. “This will work best if we can find
a way to align the policies that surround the ways to conduct science, including finding ways that foster easy collaboration and the mobility of both
people and money. We also need to be sure that ethical values and standards within scientific communities are consistent around the world.” Leshner,
who also serves as executive publisher of the journal Science, was among a select group to address the Forum’s opening session. He joined Hungarian
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán; HAS President József Pálinkás; UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova; Nobel laureate Yuan Tseh Lee, president of the
International Council for Science (ICSU); and Dominique Ristori, director-general of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. United Nations
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sent video remarks, as did Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov aboard the International Space Station. The international
cast of the opening session underscored the importance that each of the speakers placed on forging new networks and advancing science diplomacy.
Leshner used the occasion to announce that AAAS will in early 2012 introduce a new quarterly publication, Science and Diplomacy, to support a stronger
dialogue between those two fields. The World Science Forum was developed by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, in partnership with UNESCO, ICSU
and AAAS, and was first convened in Budapest in 2003. Since then it has been held biannually in Budapest. The fifth Forum was held 16-19 November,
with the theme “The Changing Landscape of Science: Challenges and Opportunities.” While Forum speakers represented different nations and
organizations, many struck a common theme: In a time of challenge and crisis, scientists and engineers have an obligation to work for solutions that will
benefit all people. Science is not merely the realm of scientists, they said, but a realm where engaging the public—and listening to the public—is critically
important. That places a premium on science education and science communication, Leshner said in an informal meeting with reporters before the
Forum’s opening ceremony. “Given that every issue of modern life has a science and technology component to it, either as a cause or as a cure, it’s
incredibly important that the general public has a fundamental comfort and a fundamental understanding of what is and isn’t science and what areas of
science might be important for their lives,” he said. The reception was sponsored by the Brussels-based communications firm, SciCom—Making Sense of
Science, and was attended by board members from the World Federation of Science Journalists. At the Forum’s opening session, speakers stressed the
power of science and technology to change history by changing people’s lives. Ban saw the impact during his own childhood in Korea. “I studied by
candlelight or kerosene lamp,” he said in his videotaped remarks. “We had no indoor plumbing. We did all of our farming by hand. Science helped to
change that.... But too much of the world remains cut off from scientific advances.” Orbán, in an address that
opened the Forum, described first-hand experience in the transformative power of science. “Especially here in Central Europe, we firmly believe in the
answers you scientists can offer to our problems,” he said. “The reason is very simple. We believe that the Soviet Union and its dictatorial satellite
regimes were by no means defeated by armed fighting. Rather, it was the quick technological changes of the last two or three decades of the 20th century
that did it... “Computers, mobile phones, and their technological extensions have dealt a bigger blow to Central European dictatorships that anyone
would have previously imagined. This is why we believe that scientific findings are useful and have a beneficial effect upon our lives.” In the present,
however, serious budget and economic issues put science and research at risk. It appears likely
that the U.S. government will reduce its funding of research and development as elected
officials work to solve historic budget deficits, Leshner said. “Assuming these problems face other countries,” he said, “it will
be a great challenge to the organization and function of the global scientific community.” Economic problems could compromise
efforts to address global challenges such as climate change and the pressures of a growing
population, speakers said. And that makes international cooperation and collaboration even
more important in research, education, the support of women in science, among other areas.
That, in turn, creates a more critical role than ever before for science diplomacy, they said.
“Present-day science should always bear in view that the only way to defeat crises is through
joint scientific activities and international cooperation,” cosmonaut Volkov said in his transmission from the orbiting
spacecraft. “Our activities on the International Space Station set a pattern for such cooperation,
because a project like this could never have been accomplished by a single state. In the 21st
century, [which is] marked by numerous challenges, science remains the only power capable of
turning our world into a coherent place ruled by principles of solidarity and democracy.” “Science
diplomacy lies at the heart of our project to build a more just and equitable world,” added Bokova. “Scientific research is becoming more collaborative,
with many partnerships, transcending organizational and national borders. The center of gravity is shifting. The past
dominance of... the European Union, Japan, and the United States is giving way to a multipolar
world.” That gives rise to both increasing competition and “healthy cooperation,” she said. The
Forum itself, Pálinkás said in his remarks, represents science diplomacy in action. It is “a science-diplomatic event concerned with global and national
policies in order to link social demands to policy-making,” he said. “It's a reference point for the shapers of science, society, and politics.” The drive to
expand science diplomacy and to discover its applications requires new efforts to create links between the scientific and foreign policy communities.
That’s the chief aim of the AAAS and its Center for Science Diplomacy in developing the new publication.
Key to asteroid deflection
Friedman, 11
[Lou. recently stepped down after 30 years as Executive Director of The Planetary Society. He continues as Director of the Society's LightSail Program
and remains involved in space programs and policy. Before co-founding the Society with Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray, Lou was a Navigation and
Mission Analysis Engineer and Manager of Advanced Projects at JPL (Lou, The Space Review, “Space Power,” 2/14,
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1778/1]
American leadership in space is much more desired that resented—except when it gets used unilaterally, as in the past Administration’s call for “dominance in
cislunar space.” Asian countries (China, Japan, India) are especially interested in lunar landings; Western countries, including the US, much less so. However, cooperating with Asian countries in lunar science and utilization
American
leadership can be extended by leading spacefaring nations into the solar system with robotic and human
expeditions to other worlds. The US can’t do everything alone. Climate monitoring, Earth observation, space weather prediction, and ultimately asteroid
deflection are huge and vital global undertakings that require international participation. That is also true with exploration projects
sending robots and human to other worlds. American leadership in these areas is welcomed and used by other countries, even as they
develop their own national programs. The US government should make more of this and not treat it as an
afterthought—or even worse, prohibit American leadership as the House of Representatives is doing this week by banning any China collaboration or cooperation. (The proposed House continuing resolution for
would be both a sign of American leadership and of practical benefit to US national interests. Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin has been a leader advocating such cooperation. At the same time
fiscal year 2011 prohibits OSTP or NASA funds to be used for anything to do with China.)
Uniqueness Debate
Despite 2012 budget cuts NASA still will pursue commercial crew
Ferster, 4/19—[Warren Ferster, “Funding Cut Would Delay Private Space Taxis, NASA Deputy Chief Says”
www.space.com/15338-garver-nasa-congress-commercial-crew-funding.html]
Garver said the agency likely would stretch out rather than change its approach
Clark evidence cites three different bills that are being discussed, no warrant as to why any of
them would be passed.
Link is only triggered by halving the budget—even if those args are true just puts it on the brink
If Congress halves President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget request for
Commercial crew development on track now but continued funding is key
Ars Technica 3/13 [Dave Klingler, “NASA admin returns to Congress to fight for commercial space”,
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/03/nasa-admin-returns-to-congress-to-fight-for-commercial-space.ars]
CCDev, the transfer of low Earth orbit launches to the private sector, has been labeled an Obama invention, an attempt to privatize space and a possible
threat to the many jobs in the Space Belt states. SLS is now positioned by its Congressional supporters as a backup to CCDev, if CCDev should
happen to fail. Of course, one potential reason for failure is a lack of Congressional funding, and last year, the US House
did its best to make that happen. They dropped NASA's $830M CCDev budget request to $300M. The Senate lawmakers gave NASA nearly what they
asked—the final compromise was $406M, half of what NASA had asked. CCDev slowed, and new American manned launches were
delayed for an extra year to 2017. This year, NASA again requested the same amount, $850 million. Bolden said almost
exactly the same thing: if we cut CCDev again, we pay the Russians $450 million for another year of launch services. So far,
the US is paying more for Russian launch services than it gets from cutting CCDev. But for Congress, there may be a motivation: keep cutting CCDev and
there will be no choice but SLS for space station flights.
Commercial crew on track but the next round of funding is key to the program
Space Politics 3/9 [“A “challenging environment” for commercial crew funding”, http://www.spacepolitics.com/2012/03/09/a-challengingenvironment-for-commercial-crew-funding/]
It was a case of good timing: a day after commercial
crew was a centerpiece of a pair of hearings on the NASA 2013 budget
proposal in the Senate and the House, the Commercial Spaceflight Federation held a forum on the topic on Capitol Hill Thursday morning.
The event gave representatives of four companies a chance to talk about their companies’ efforts, while a key member of Congress offered some qualified
support for the program. “Commercial crew is a high priority for me, and a high priority for the administration,” said Rep. Chaka
Fattah (D-PA), the ranking member of the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, said in brief opening
remarks at the Thursday morning event. However, he warned that it will be “a challenging environment, given the overall fiscal
circumstances relative to NASA” this year, with a final appropriations bill likely to come only after the
November elections. At that point, he said, “it will be an opportunity for the country to think clearly about when it is that we want to have the
capacity, an American capacity,” to send astronauts to the ISS. “The quickest way for us to get there is through
commercial crew, and the worst way to proceed along that line is by undercutting the funding.” Industry representatives echoed the
need for full funding for commercial crew during their presentations and Q&A session that followed. “We need to get
Americans into space on American spacecraft, and the quickest way you can do that is the path we’re on now,” said Mike Leinbach, a former NASA
shuttle launch director who joined United Launch Alliance earlier this year. Progress, he said, will be “fully dependent on
the funding levels going forward”, and getting the requested funding of nearly $830 million in 2013 “would be a
real boost to the system.” “We don’t see any issue of flying crew by the end of 2015, assuming we’re fully
funded,” said Boeing’s Keith Reiley, discussing his company’s CST-100 vehicle concept, “which is why the funding coming out Congress is very
important, not only for us but everybody at the table here.”
Commercial crew funding tenuous now
Clark, 2/7—[Stephen Clark, “NASA poised to make further commercial crew investment”
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1202/07commercialcrew/]
NASA officials said Tuesday they intend to award multiple companies up to $500 million each over the next two years to
maintain private sector competition in the agency's commercial crew program and keep the effort on schedule
to enable the resumption of U.S. human spaceflight by 2017. The agency released an announcement for proposals to industry
Tuesday, starting the third phase of the commercial crew program, which aims to invest in the development of spacecraft and launch vehicles capable of
hauling astronaut crews to the International Space Station. The commercial crew program is the key to ending NASA's reliance
on Russian Soyuz spacecraft for human transportation to and from the space station since the retirement of the
space shuttle. NASA officials expect commercial crew service to begin no later than 2017, based on current
budget projections. Ed Mango, manager of NASA's commercial crew program, said the space agency plans to award Space Act Agreements, or
SAAs, to multiple contractors by August. The agreements will each be worth between $300 million and $500 million, and NASA will make payments as
the companies accomplish predetermined milestones. Brent Jett, NASA's deputy commercial crew program manager, said he is confident the agency will
be able to award at least two companies agreements of that value. Proposals are due March 23, according to the solicitation. "What our overall approach
is during this SAA is we are an investor, a technical investor and an investor bringing money to the table in order to get American industry to get to a
crew demonstration capability," Mango said Tuesday at a forum with members of industry at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The
Commercial Crew integrated Capability, or CCiCap, phase of the program will mature the designs of combined space
transportation systems, which include a spacecraft to carry at least four astronauts and a launch vehicle to
safely dispatch the crews from Earth. The objectives of the CCiCap agreements are to complete the design of the commercial spaceships
and ready the vehicles for construction and certification. "We need an integrated design," Mango said. "I can't emphasize that enough." NASA
planned to issue a commercial crew solicitation in December for fixed-price contracts, but the agency's fiscal year 2012
budget provided for $406 million for the commercial crew program, less than half the funding level
requested by the White House. The smaller budget, coupled with uncertain funding in future years,
compelled NASA officials to revert to Space Act Agreements, which have been used in the first two phases of
the commercial crew program. NASA now has funded Space Act Agreements with Boeing Co., SpaceX, Sierra Nevada Corp. and Blue Origin
worth a combined $316 million. Each company is working on a commercial crew spacecraft, and the agreements run through May. "I can tell you that
since November, the program has had to pivot because of a number of different things," Mango said. "The biggest is uncertainty in the
future of our budget."
Budget problems causes delays in commercial crew, but it will still be pursued
Wall, 4/24—[Mike Wall, MSNBC, “NASA now counting on private space taxis”
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47159206/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.T5gY_46K30Q]
Funding issues
NASA had originally hoped to transition to private astronaut taxis by 2015. However, Congress
gave the agency just $406 million for
commercial crew development in 2012, less than half the $850 million that NASA requested. This budget
shortfall pushed NASA's timeline back two years, and another delay may be in the offing. NASA asked for $830
million for commercial crew in the 2013 budget, but it appears unlikely to get anywhere near that amount. Bills recently approved by
committees in the House and Senate would give just $500 million and $525 million, respectively, to NASA's commercial
crew efforts. "We feel quite strongly that we require as close to $830 million" as possible, Garver said last week, "in order to reduce that
gap of time that we are outsourcing our space transportation of our astronauts to Russia."
Link Debate
1. Politics no link from zubrin proves they would get money from within the NASA budget
The plan forces a tradeoff – NASA budgets are zero-sum
Space Politics 3/3 [“Mars exploration versus commercial crew?”, http://www.spacepolitics.com/2012/03/03/mars-exploration-versuscommercial-crew/]
On Wednesday Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) director John Holdren appeared at a hearing of the Commerce, Justice, and Science
subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. The hearing was held in a location without webcasting capabilities, so there was limited coverage
of the event. Those reports, though, suggest that a battle may be brewing in Congress between preserving the
administration’s requested funding for NASA’s commercial crew program and restoring funding for the
agency’s Mars exploration program. ScienceInsider reported that Holdren himself brought up that connection in his testimony regarding
the decision to terminate NASA’s participation in the joint ExoMars program with the European Space Agency: Holdren said the decision was
one of many “tough choices” in the president’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2013, which begins on 1 October. He said that
NASA realized it needed $450 million more than Congress gave it this year to maintain progress on building a
commercial crew vehicle that would replace the space shuttle in ferrying U.S. astronauts to the international space station. That money,
Holdren said, had to come from somewhere else within NASA’s $17.8 billion budget, which would remain flat under the president’s request.
Holdren, as expected, faced stiff questioning about the Mars program and overall planetary science cuts from two subcommittee members, Reps. John
Culberson (R-TX) and Adam Schiff (D-CA), who have previously been very outspoken in their criticism of the cuts in the 2013 budget proposal. “I think
that what this budget does to planetary science is deplorable,” Culberson said, as quoted by ScienceInsider. The article also notes at the end that the
subcommittee chairman, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), “asked repeatedly if NASA could find ways to reduce the cost of its commercial crew program.” A
separate Space News account goes into more detail on this, with Wolf asking Holdren if the administration had considered consolidating the current
effort, featuring four funded and three unfunded Space Act Agreements, “into a star team in order to eliminate the cost that would be incurred as they
dropped out and to expedite this some”. The subcommittee’s ranking member, Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA), agreed with Wolf, saying “there may be more
to be gained by collaboration amongst some of the commercial crew companies than by pure competition.” The ScienceInsider account suggests that
Holdren is blaming the commercial crew program for the decision to cut funding for Mars
exploration. Yet, the request from the administration for the program in FY2013, approximately $830 million, is nearly the same as the $850
million the administration requested in FY2012 (with similar, if notional, values in the outyears of the budget projection.) And in the Space News
account, he blamed Congress for funding the program at less than half the requested level in FY12. “Congress gave us too little money to keep
commercial crew on a fast track,” he said. With no apparently support for increasing NASA’s overall budget in order to
fund planetary science, any effort to restore funding will have to come at the expense of some other agency
program, Holdren warned. “If you’re going to fix planetary science, you’re going to have to figure out where it will come from,” Holdren told Schiff, as
quoted by ScienceInsider. “And somebody’s ox is going to get gored.” Will it be the commercial crew program’s ox, or someone else’s?
AT: Intrinsicness
Intrinsicness is illegitimate and a voting issue
-moving target- the affirmative gets infinite prep to write the most strategic plan, allowing
revisions after they have heard our strategy is unfair
-moots negative ground- most disads can be resolved through US action- there is no logical
limit
-infinitely regressive- if we read a disad to the intrinsicness argument they can make another to
get out of it
Counter interpretation: the affirmative can make topical intrinsicness arguments- this provides
the best middle ground and maintains resolutional focus. Non topical intrinsicness arguments
are unlimiting and disprove the necessity of the resolution.
AT: Quarantine Solves
This evidence is atrocious, it is defending a Bush policy to get it passed. It also just cites the
SARS outbreak and says if the exact same thing happened again, we could address it
***IMPACT Defense
Nuke War Can Happen
AT: Cooperation
AT: Empirics
A recent lack of world war doesn’t disprove our specific, carded scenarios – Fetweisse doesn’t
even ATTEMPT to give warrants for his silly claims
there have been 13 recent wars and that future wars are possible – their card
Mueller 09 (professor of political science at Ohio State University, [John, Political Science Quarterly, “War Has Almost Ceased to Exist:An
Assessment”, http://tigger.uic.edu/~bvaler/Mueller%20War%20Dead.pdf]
No matter how defined, then, there has been a most notable decline in the frequency of wars over the last years. As Table 1 suggests, between 2002 and
2008, few wars really shattered the 1,000 battle or battle-related death threshold. 37 Beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, violent
flare-ups have exceeded the yearly battle death threshold during the period in Kashmir, Nepal, Colombia,
Burundi, Liberia, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Chad, Somalia, Pakistan and Uganda. Almost all of these have just
barely done so. Indeed, if the yearly threshold were raised to a not-unreasonable 3,000, almost the only war of any kind that has taken place anywhere in
the world since 2001 would be the one in Iraq. Several of these intermittent armed conflicts could potentially rise above the
violence threshold in the future, though outside of Afghanistan, most of these seem to be declining in violence. Ethiopia and Eritrea continue
to glare at each other, and plenty of problems remain in the Middle East, where in 200 and again in 2009, Israel took on a substate
group based in another country, and where the Iraq conflict could have spillover effects. And, of course, new wars could emerge in other
places: concerns about China and the Taiwan issue, for example, are certainly justified, and many in the developed world
advocate the application of warfare as a last resort to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by undesirable
countries. 38 Moreover, there has been “intercommunal” or “substate” violence in countries like Nigeria (and Iraq) that often certainly resembles
warfare, but is removed from consideration here by the definitional requirement that something labeled a “war” must have a government on at least one
side.
Econ war
The last line of their Bennett and Nordstrom evidence concedes the US would be forced to drawdown
militarily in a world of economic decline.
That drawdown causes terrorism. Also, focusing resources inward causes militarization and counterbalancing, making nuclear war inevitable.
Harris and Burrows 9
Mathew, PhD European History @ Cambridge, counselor in the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and Jennifer is a member of the NIC’s Long Range
Analysis Unit “Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial Crisis” http://www.ciaonet.org/journals/twq/v32i2/f_0016178_13952.pdf
Increased Potential for Global Conflict
Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is likely to be the result of a number of intersecting and
interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes, each with ample Revisiting the Future opportunity for unintended consequences,
there is a growing sense of insecurity. Even so, history may be more instructive than ever. While we continue to believe that the Great
Depression is not likely to be repeated, the lessons to be drawn from that period include the harmful effects on fledgling
democracies and multiethnic societies (think Central Europe in 1920s and 1930s) and on the sustainability of multilateral
institutions (think League of Nations in the same period). There is no reason to think that this would not be true in the
twenty-first as much as in the twentieth century. For that reason, the ways in which the potential for greater conflict
could grow would seem to be even more apt in a constantly volatile economic environment as they would be if change would be
steadier. In surveying those risks, the report stressed the likelihood that terrorism and nonproliferation will remain priorities even as resource issues
move up on the international agenda. Terrorism’s appeal will decline if economic growth continues in the Middle East and youth unemployment is
reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025, however, the diffusion of technologies and scientific knowledge will place some of the
world’s most dangerous capabilities within their reach. Terrorist groups in 2025 will likely be a combination of descendants of long established
groups_inheriting organizational structures, command and control processes, and training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks_and
newly emergent collections of the angry and disenfranchised that become self-radicalized, particularly in the absence of
economic outlets that would become narrower in an economic downturn. The most dangerous casualty of any
economically-induced drawdown of U.S. military presence would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Iran’s
acquisition of nuclear weapons is not inevitable, worries about a nuclear-armed Iran could lead states in the region to develop new
security arrangements with external powers, acquire additional weapons, and consider pursuing their own
nuclear ambitions. It is not clear that the type of stable deterrent relationship that existed between the great powers for most of the Cold War
would emerge naturally in the Middle East with a nuclear Iran. Episodes of low intensity conflict and terrorism taking place under a nuclear umbrella
could lead to an unintended escalation and broader conflict if clear red lines between those states involved are not well established.
The close proximity of potential nuclear rivals combined with underdeveloped surveillance capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian
missile systems also will produce inherent difficulties in achieving reliable indications and warning of an impending nuclear attack. The lack
of strategic depth in neighboring states like Israel, short warning and missile flight times, and uncertainty of Iranian intentions
may place more focus on preemption rather than defense, potentially leading to escalating crises. 36 Types of conflict that the
world continues to experience, such as over resources, could reemerge, particularly if protectionism grows and there is a
resort to neo-mercantilist practices. Perceptions of renewed energy scarcity will drive countries to take actions to assure their future
access to energy supplies. In the worst case, this could result in interstate conflicts if government leaders deem assured
access to energy resources, for example, to be essential for maintaining domestic stability and the survival of their regime. Even
actions short of war, however, will have important geopolitical implications. Maritime security concerns are providing a rationale for naval buildups and
modernization efforts, such as China’s and India’s development of blue water naval capabilities. If the fiscal stimulus focus for these
countries indeed turns inward, one of the most obvious funding targets may be military. Buildup of regional
naval capabilities could lead to increased tensions, rivalries, and counterbalancing moves , but it also will create
opportunities for multinational cooperation in protecting critical sea lanes. With water also becoming scarcer in Asia and the Middle
East, cooperation to manage changing water resources is likely to be increasingly difficult both within and
between states in a more dog-eat-dog world.
Economically-related US military withdrawal creates a power vacuum with multiple scenarios
for nuclear war
Friedberg and Schoenfeld 8 [Aaron, Prof. Politics. And IR @ Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School and Visiting Scholar @ Witherspoon
Institute, and Gabriel, Senior Editor of Commentary and Wall Street Journal, “The Dangers of a Diminished America”, 10-28,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455074012352571.html]
Then there
are the dolorous consequences of a potential collapse of the world's financial architecture. For decades now,
Americans have enjoyed the advantages of being at the center of that system. The worldwide use of the dollar, and the
stability of our economy, among other things, made it easier for us to run huge budget deficits, as we counted on foreigners
to pick up the tab by buying dollar-denominated assets as a safe haven. Will this be possible in the future? Meanwhile, traditional foreignpolicy challenges are multiplying. The threat from al Qaeda and Islamic terrorist affiliates has not been extinguished. Iran and
North Korea are continuing on their bellicose paths, while Pakistan and Afghanistan are progressing smartly down
the road to
chaos. Russia's new militancy and China's seemingly relentless rise also give cause for concern. If America now tries to pull
back from the world stage, it will leave a dangerous power vacuum. The stabilizing effects of our presence in
Asia, our continuing commitment to Europe, and our position as defender of last resort for Middle East energy
sources and supply lines could all be placed at risk. In such a scenario there are shades of the 1930s, when global
trade and finance ground nearly to a halt, the peaceful democracies failed to cooperate, and aggressive powers
led by the remorseless fanatics who rose up on the crest of economic disaster exploited their divisions. Today we
run the risk that rogue states may choose to become ever more reckless with their nuclear toys, just at our moment of
maximum vulnerability. The aftershocks of the financial crisis will almost certainly rock our principal strategic competitors even harder than
they will rock us. The dramatic free fall of the Russian stock market has demonstrated the fragility of a state whose economic performance hinges on high
oil prices, now driven down by the global slowdown. China is perhaps even more fragile, its economic growth depending heavily on foreign investment
and access to foreign markets. Both will now be constricted, inflicting economic pain and perhaps even sparking unrest in a country where political
legitimacy rests on progress in the long march to prosperity. None of this is good news if the authoritarian leaders of these countries seek to divert
attention from internal travails with external adventures.
Extinction
Ball is the only one refusing to acknowledge the most recent studies – any nuclear exchange
would cause a devastating nuclear winter—I’ll finnish it
King 9 Peter, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies ("Undermining Proliferation: Nuclear Winter and Nuclear Renunciation," October 2009,
http://sydney.edu.au/arts/peace_conflict/docs/pk_undermining%20_prolif.pdf)
Des Ball of the Australian National University, who remains, apparently, unrepentant in denial. But we now know
that the real situation is even more dire than was supposed 20 years ago. Using the advanced modelling
techniques developed to forecast climate change, American and Russian teams of independent researchers
have come up with the persuasive conclusion that even a “small” nuclear exchange (unforgivable euphemism)-for instance
between fledgling nuclear states India and Pakistan—involving “only a hundred weapons in total but targeted mainly on (highly inflammable
as well as populous) cities--would create a disastrous climatic effect. Up to a billion deaths globally have been forecast from food crop
devastation in this scenario, a stunningly larger casualty figure than the few tens of millions of “prompt deaths” forecast for the “combatant
populations”. And a “large” nuclear war in which the two big nuclear powers shot off most of their deployed arsenals would put
human
survival—at least social survival--at risk from global freezing, independently of all the other dire but more
familiar effects. 16
Nuclear war cause extinction through nuclear winter
CNN News 06 (CNN News citing a report by the Geophusical Union in San Francisco, 12 Dec. 2006. <
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id -2720173&page -1>)
The decline of the Soviet Union may have left many Americans feeling safer from nuclear war, but a disturbing new study argues that an attack by
terrorists sponsored by a small nuclear state could be just as lethal. Nuclear wasteland Scientists say that even a small nuclear war, between
"could generate casualties comparable to
those once predicted for a full -scale nuclear exchange in a superpower conflict," says the report, presented
Monday during the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Furthermore, Americans should not think of
themselves as isolated from potential small -scale, regional nuclear conflicts in such distant areas as the Middle East or Asia. The impact of such an
encounter would be global, probably plunging the planet into a "nuclear winter" and blanketing wide areas of the
world with radioactive fallout. The report, which cautions that there are many uncertainties in its own conclusions, was produced by a team
small countries or carried out by terrorists could have global repercussions. Such an attack
of scientists who have been long active in studying the consequences of nuclear war. The study assumes that weapons used by terrorists, or smaller
states, would be much smaller than those available to the superpowers, probably on the scale of those dropped on Japan during World War II. But the
results would be catastrophic because the weapons would most likely be targeted at major cities. "The current combination of nuclear proliferation,
political instability, and urban demographics forms perhaps the greatest danger to the stability of society since the dawn of humanity," Brian Toon of the
University of Colorado in Boulder told a press conference prior to the presentation. The number of countries known to have nuclear weapons has grown
to eight, but as many as 40 have some fissionable material and could produce bombs fairly quickly, the scientists said, basing their conclusions partly on
studies by the National Academy of Sciences, the Department of Defense, and their own years -long research. Toon said Japan, for example, has enough
nuclear material on hand to produce 20,000 weapons, and "most think they could do it in weeks." Many of the conclusions are based on the
consequences of two nations, each with 50 bombs, delivering their full complement of weapons on each other. That's not a hypothetical figure, they
suggested, because both India and Pakistan are believed to have at least that many weapons. So what would happen if they had at it? About 20 million
persons in that area would die, the scientists concluded. But the weapons would send up such a plume of smoke that the upper atmosphere would
become opaque, blocking out so much solar radiation that temperatures around the world would plummet. "You would have a global
climate change unprecedented in human history," said Alan Robock, associated director of the Center for Environmental
Prediction at Rutgers Cook College and a member of the research team. "It would instantaneously be colder than the little
ice age." There would be shorter growing seasons, less rain, less sun, and starvation around the world.