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West Coast 2011October Update

West Coast – October 2011 Policy Update


Table Of Contents

West Coast – October 2011 Policy Update..............................................................................................1Table Of Contents................................................................................................................................2

Asteroid Deflection Neg (20)...................................................................................................................4We Have Already Detected Asteroids..................................................................................................5SQ Solves Asteroid Detection..............................................................................................................6Asteroid Detection Will Improve Now.................................................................................................7No Asteroid Strikes – AT: Big Strikes...................................................................................................8No Asteroid Strikes – AT: Apophis......................................................................................................9No Impact To Asteroid Strikes...........................................................................................................10Asteroid Impact Evidence Is Biased...................................................................................................11Asteroid Deflection Is Impossible......................................................................................................12AT: Long-Period Comets...................................................................................................................13US Won’t Use Nukes On Asteroids....................................................................................................14Other Countries Won’t Use Nukes On Asteroids...............................................................................15AT: Nuclear Accidents Advantage.....................................................................................................16Nuclear Standoff Option Good..........................................................................................................17Alt-Causes To Try Or Die....................................................................................................................18Try Or Die Logic Is Bad.......................................................................................................................19EU Can Do Asteroid Programs...........................................................................................................20Asteroid Exploration Is Unpopular.....................................................................................................21Space Weapons DA Links...................................................................................................................22War Outweighs Asteroids..................................................................................................................23Space Weaponization Critique Links..................................................................................................24

Nationalism Critique..............................................................................................................................25Nationalism Critique 1NC 1/2............................................................................................................26Nationalism Critique 1NC 2/2............................................................................................................27Representations of Space Links.........................................................................................................28Unilateralism Links.............................................................................................................................29Aerospace Industry Links...................................................................................................................30Asteroids Links...................................................................................................................................31Colonization Links..............................................................................................................................32Military Links.....................................................................................................................................33Technology Link.................................................................................................................................34Exceptionalism Impacts.....................................................................................................................35Deconstructing Nationalism Solves...................................................................................................36The Alternative Solves The Kritik Impacts..........................................................................................37Individual Rejection is Key.................................................................................................................38Epistemology Is Key...........................................................................................................................39Representations Framework Is Key...................................................................................................40AT: Perm Do Both..............................................................................................................................41AT: Multilateralism Link Turn.............................................................................................................42AT: Realism Inevitable.......................................................................................................................43AT: Realism Good..............................................................................................................................44AT: Overview Effect...........................................................................................................................45


Nationalism Critique Answers................................................................................................................46Permutation Do Both.........................................................................................................................47Our Epistemology is Correct..............................................................................................................48Deterrence Prevents Conflict.............................................................................................................49Leadership in Space is Good..............................................................................................................50Leadership in Space is Key to Motivating Policy................................................................................51Countries Will Choose Not to Cooperate...........................................................................................52Realism Inevitable.............................................................................................................................53Exploitation of Space is Good............................................................................................................54US Approach to Space is Ethical.........................................................................................................55Space Frontierism is Good.................................................................................................................56


Asteroid Deflection Neg


We Have Already Detected Asteroids

We can already detect large asteroidsS.P. Worden, US Space Com, 10-24-2002, “Military Perspectives on the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Threat,” http://www.noao.edu/meetings/mitigation/media/arlington.extended.pdfFinally, just about everyone knows of the “dinosaur killer” asteroids. These are objects, a few kilometers across, that strike on time scales of tens of millions of years. While the prospect of such strikes grabs people’s attention and make great catastrophe movies , too much focus on these events has , in my opinion,

been counterproductive. Most l eaders in the United States or elsewhere believe there are more pressing problems than something that may only happen every 50-100 million years. I advocate we focus our energies on the smaller, more immediate threa ts . This is not to say we do not worry about the large threats. However, I’m reasonably confidant we will find almost all large objects within a decade or less. If we find any that seem to be on a near-term collision course–which I believe unlikely–we can deal with the problem then.

We can already track small objects – no hits comingRTT News, 6-7-2011, “Asteroid On The Way,” p. npBut the probability of an object that size colliding with Earth is extremely low and it is estimated that large impacts occur only once every 100 million years. It is widely believed that the last major asteroid impact on Earth took place some 65 million years ago, with many scientists believing that the collision resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs. But there have been some damaging NEO strikes in more recent history. On June 30, 1908, a small asteroid (about 50 meters in diameters) exploded mid-air over Tunguska, Siberia, and devastated more than half a million acres of forest. Asteroid flybys are common occurrences but they usually go unnoticed because of the small size of the objects, according to Lindley Johnson, program executive of the Near-Earth Object Observations program at NASA headquarters in Washington. However, the upcoming flyby of the asteroid 2005 YU55, which is on the list of potentially dangerous asteroids, on November 8, 2011, has received much attention. 2005

YU55, which is about 400 meters in diameter, was discovered on December 28, 2005, by Robert McMillan of the Spacewatch program.

Risk is almost nil and civil defense solves – their odds cards are biased and don’t assume mitigation Michael Rozeff, Finance Prof 2-21-2007, “Asteroid Risk Mitigation, Anyone?” http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff139.html The space fliers and explorers of the ASE pass themselves off as experts on the risks of a catastrophe arriving from outer space; but they are far more likely to be biased observers and commentators than scientists who have no space axe to grind. Robert Roy Britt writes for Live Science. In an article posted two years ago, he pointed out many pertinent facts. At that time, he gave the lifetime odds (over one's entire life) of an asteroid hit as 1 in 200,000 or perhaps as little as 1 in 500,000. Death by lightning has odds of 1 in 84,000, by legal execution 1 in 59,000, by air travel 1 in 20,000, by fire 1 in 1,100, by falling down 1 in 246, and by suicide 1 in 121. He pointed out that there are those who have held to asteroid death odds of 1 in 50,000, however, until more asteroids are catalogued and their movements accounted for. Even at 1 in 50,000, the risk is very low. Famine, disease, and war are the biggest killers on the planet and occur constantly. Two of these are preventable, and one can be ameliorated.The ASE is making noises about an asteroid 140 meters long called Apophis. Astronomers say that it has a chance of striking the earth on April 13, 2036. This will be a Palm Sunday. The odds noised about in the recent spate of articles are 1 in 45,000 that it hits the earth. It's supposed to miss us by 20,000 miles. If it does hit, the damage could be large, depending on many factors. If it landed in the Pacific Ocean, a likely target, it would create 50-foot tidal waves lasting an hour. The odds of being killed are far lower, as Britt notes, and they vary depending upon where one lives. In the worst eventuality that Apophis hit the earth, the area of impact would by the time it headed for earth be pinpointed. People could then evacuate that area, and the death toll could be greatly reduced. The stated odds do not take human action into account.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff139.html

http://www.noao.edu/meetings/mitigation/media/arlington.extended.pdf


SQ Solves Asteroid Detection

NASA is already tracking NEO’sMatthew Dearing, MA Physics, 4-12-2011, “Protecting the planet requires heroes, money, and citizen scientists,” Dynamic Patterns Research, http://research.dynamicpatterns.com/2011/04/12/protecting-the-planet-requires-heroes-money-and-citizen-scientists/The hunting and tracking of NEOs are certainly already in progress by NASA. Their mandated goal is to identify 90% of all NEOs with diameters larger than 1 km by 2020. Of course, it’s difficult to accurately determine what number to take 90% of to know if the goal has ever been reached. But, the current statistics on known NEOs is updated by NASA on their Discovery Statistics page. As of April 11, 2011, the total count of all near-earth objects of all sizes has reached 7,890 and kilometer-sized “large” NEOs at 824. Major observatories from around the world are participating in the ongoing hunt for NEOs and partner with NASA on their observations. One of the early programs was developed at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory called The Spacewatch Project. Just over twenty years ago they discovered the first NEO with automated observing technology, and they have booked many other important “firsts” in this growing field. Several years ago, but now closed to the public since 2006, Spacewatch hosted a citizen science program where registered volunteers could visually review digital images of the night sky to try to identify fast moving objects appearing in consecutive CCD views. With 43 discoveries of new objects in two years from 52 volunteer reviewers, this program was a great example of connecting scientists with interested participates to collaboratively accomplish something very important to the rest of humanity.

Detection and mitigation measures are sufficient to check extinction in the status quoInternational Academy of Astronautics, 2009, “Dealing with the Threat to Earth,” http://iaaweb.org/iaa/Scientific%20Activity/Study%20Groups/SG%20Commission%203/sg35/sg35finalreport.pdfAs discussed earlier, few NEAs >2 km remain undiscovered, so the chances of such an event are probably <1-in-100,000 during the next century. The warning time would almost certainly be long, in the case of an

NEA, but with current technology telescopes might be only months in the case of a comet. With years or decades of advance warning, a technological mission might be mounted to deflect an NEA so that it would miss the Earth (and also possibly a comet should new technologies enable similar warning times for them). Moving such a massive NEA would be very challenging. In any case, given sufficient warning, many immediate fatalities could be avoided by evacuating ground zero and longer-term casualties could be minimized by storing food supplies to survive the agricultural catastrophe. Susceptible infrastructure (transportation, communications, medical services) could be strengthened in the years before impact. However, no preparation for mitigation is warranted for such a rare possibility until a specific impact prediction is made and certified. The only advance preparations that might make sense would be at the margins of disaster planning developed for other, “all-hazards” purposes: considering such an NEA apocalypse might foster "out-of-the-box" thinking about how to define the outer envelope of disaster contingencies, and thus prove serendipitously useful as humankind faces an uncertain future.

Current detection efforts solve NEOsMassimiliano Vasile and Camilla Colombo, PhDs Aerospace at Glasgow, 2011, “Optimal Impact Strategies for Asteroid Deflection,” http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1104/1104.4670.pdfThe European Space Agency in particular is now assessing the feasibility of the Don Quijote mission1, due to launch in the first half of next decade, which is intended to impact a spacecraft with a high relative velocity onto an asteroid and measure its deflection. Should this mission fly, this would be the first technological demonstration of our capability to deviate an asteroid if needed. Prevention strategies against a potential hazardous object in collision route with the Earth usually consider a change in momentum of the asteroid, with a consequent variation in the semi-major axis which results in an increase of the Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance (MOID), between the Earth and the object. Several different strategies have been considered to achieve this goal; among them the simplest one is the kinetic impact. In fact, as will be shown in this paper, effective kinetic impacts resulting in a variation of the MOID even of thousand of kilometers seem to be already achievable with the current launch technology with a relatively small spacecraft, provided that the time difference between the momentum change and the potential Earth impact is large enough.


Asteroid Detection Will Improve Now

Detection is improving nowGregg Easterbrook, Ed. Atlantic, Fellow @ Brookings, June 2008, “The Sky is Falling,” http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/asteroidsAll known space rocks have been discovered using telescopes designed for traditional “soda straw” astronomy—that is, focusing on a small patch of sky. Now the Air Force is funding the first research installation designed to conduct panoramic scans of the sky, a telescope complex called Pan-STARRS, being built by the University of Hawaii. By continuously

panning the entire sky, Pan-STARRS should be able to spot many near-Earth objects that so far have gone undetected. The telescope also will have substantially better resolving power and sensitivity than existing survey instruments, enabling it to find small space rocks that have gone undetected because of their faintness. The Pan-STARRS project has no military utility, so why is the Air Force the sponsor? One speculation is that Pan-STARRS is the Air Force’s foot in the door for the Earth-defense mission. If the Air Force won funding to build high-tech devices to fire at asteroids, this would be a major milestone in its goal of an expanded space presence. But space rocks are a natural hazard, not a military threat, and an Air Force Earth-protection initiative, however gallant, would probably cause intense international opposition. Imagine how other governments would react if the Pentagon announced, “Don’t worry about those explosions in space—we’re protecting you.”

Tech advances solve – their impacts are thousands of years offRichard L. Park, PhD, Pres. American Physical Society, 1994, “The Lesson of Grand Forks: Can a Defense against Asteroids be Sustained?” in Hazards Due to Comets and Asteroids ed. Tom GherelsGiven the frequency of past collisions, major impact is unlikely to occur in the next century. On the other

hand, all of modern technology is squeezed into the present century, and the pace of technological advance is accelerating. It would be presumptuous to suppose that defenses devised today will be of more than historical interest to our scientific heirs a century from now, or a millennium, or a thousand millennia, when the rock finally comes. Discussion of mitigation may serve one public purpose. It is important that devastation not be accepted as inevitable, otherwise society might prefer not to know when it is coming. An asteroid interception workshop hosted by NASA in 1992 (Canavan et al. 1993) concluded that available technology can deal effectively with a threatening asteroid, given waiting time on the order of several years. That conclusion validates the view that current efforts should concentrate on detection and orbit determination.

NASA solvesJames Green, PhD Space Physics @ Iowa, 11-8-2007, “Near-Earth Objects,” http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_house_hearings&docid=f:38057.pdfNASA has an NEO contingency notification plan to be utilized in the very un likely event an object is detected with significant probability of impacting the Earth. The plan establishes procedures between the detection sites, the Minor Planet Cen ter, the NASA NEO Program Office at JPL, and NASA Headquarters to first quickly verify and validate the data and orbit on the object of interest, and then up-channel confirmed information in a timely manner to the NASA Administrator. These procedures were first exercised with the discovery of the object now known as Apophis, which was found in December 2004 in a hazardous orbit but determined to not have a significant

probability of impacting the Earth in the near-term. NASA will con tinue to refine this internal contingency plan, and begin work with other U.S. Gov ernment agencies and institutions when directed.


No Asteroid Strikes – AT: Big Strikes

Big asteroids don’t exist anymore – they collided billions of years agoMatthew Dearing, MA Physics, 4-12-2011, “Protecting the planet requires heroes, money, and citizen scientists,” Dynamic Patterns Research, http://research.dynamicpatterns.com/2011/04/12/protecting-the-planet-requires-heroes-money-and-citizen-scientists/Although the movies might make planetary defense seem unreasonable, we must make very clear again that that NEOs the size of Texas on a collision course for Earth are just not present in our Solar System anymore. In the billions of years of our planetary existence, these relics have been devoured by the planets, in particular Jupiter, and their immediate individual impact effects on their collision buddies have settled long ago. In addition, these sorts of enormous objects 1/10 the size of the Moon, if they did exist, would appear rather bright in the night sky, even when still at a safe distance. So, a focused amateur astronomer or one of the several NEO scanning programs in operation today would presumably detect it before it was way too late.

Low risk of large asteroid collision –latest NASA data provesJohn Matson, 10-3-2011, “Fewer Big Asteroids Close In On Earth,” Scientific American, http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=fewer-big-asteroids-close-in-on-ear-11-10-03In a time of budget woes and falling satellites, it's nice to get a little good news from NASA. A NASA orbiter has found that there are fewer big asteroids passing close to our planet than we thought. Specifically, there are only about 20,500 near-Earth asteroids larger than 100 meters. That sounds like a lot, but previous estimates were about 75 percent higher. The new, lower figures come from the WISE spacecraft, which surveyed the skies with an infrared camera. WISE only spotted a few hundred nearby asteroids, but that was enough to extrapolate how many are out there. The findings will appear in the Astrophysical Journal. [Amy Mainzer et al, NEOWISE Observations of Near-Earth Objects: Preliminary Results] If a 100-meter asteroid hit Earth, it would be equivalent to exploding an 80-megaton H-bomb. A larger asteroid could stir up huge tsunami waves if it hit the ocean. Luckily no known asteroids pose a real threat to Earth.

Chance of collision is very low – long timeframe and response timeDavid Morrison, et. al. NASA Astrobiology, 2002, “Dealing with the Impact Hazard,” http://www.lpi.usra.edu/books/AsteroidsIII/pdf/3043.pdfAt first, there was considerable skepticism toward proposals for a comprehensive survey to identify any potential impactor decades in advance. Perhaps influenced by their experience with antimissile concepts, many members of the U.S. and Russian defense communities proposed various schemes for shooting down incoming asteroids with only a few days, or even a few

hours, of warning [e.g., papers from a Los Alamos workshop collected by Canavan et al. (1993)]. However, there is no warning system in

place or likely to be built that would focus on such a short-term threat. Almost any asteroid that is on an impact trajectory will repeatedly pass close to Earth on previous orbits, with multiple opportunities for detection. An optical survey system has negligible probability of finding an object on its final plunge to Earth, relative to discovery on some previous close pass. The Spaceguard Survey, discussed in detail later in this chapter, is just such a comprehensive optical search, with nearly continuous coverage of the space around Earth to distances of ~108 km. Already, we have found and calculated accurate orbits for more than half of the thousand-odd NEAs larger than 1 km. None of these poses any impact threat on the timescale of a human lifetime. On the other hand, it is still

impossible to say anything about the orbits of the undiscovered ones. This Spaceguard Survey approach also has limited use against long-period comets. Fortunately, these comets constitute a rather small fraction of the total impact threat, and we generally omit them from consideration in this chapter.


No Asteroid Strikes – AT: Apophis

Apophis won’t hit earth – newest dataJohn Johnson, 10-7-2009, “2036 asteroid strike,” LA Times, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-asteroid8-2009oct08,0,3012588.storyDoomsday in 2036 just got a lot less likely. After recalculating the trajectory of the asteroid Apophis,

scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge have determined that the odds of it hitting the Earth that

year are only four in a million. "We've all but ruled out" a collision in 2036, said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near-Earth Object office at JPL. Previously, the odds had been calculated at one in 45,000, Chesley said. While that doesn't sound like a very big danger, Apophis has been the greatest worry since 2004 for scientists who track threats from space. At that time, it appeared the asteroid had a 2.7% chance of hitting the Earth in 2029.

Apophis path has been redefined, no chance of impact.Dwayne Brown and DC Angle, NASA Scientists, 10-7-2009, “NASA Refines Asteroid Apophis' Path Toward Earth”, NASA, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/oct/HQ_09-232_Apophis_Update.htmlPASADENA, Calif. -- Using updated information, NASA scientists have recalculated the path of a large asteroid. The

refined path indicates a significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in 2036. The Apophis asteroid is approximately the size of two-and-a-half football fields. The new data were documented by near-Earth object scientists Steve Chesley and Paul Chodas at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. They will present their updated findings at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences in Puerto Rico on Oct. 8. "Apophis has been one of those celestial bodies that has captured the public's interest since it was discovered in 2004," said Chesley. "Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped

from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million."

Later orbits don’t cause impact eitherDwayne Brown and DC Angle, NASA Scientists, 10-7-2009, “NASA Refines Asteroid Apophis' Path Toward Earth”, NASA, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/oct/HQ_09-232_Apophis_Update.htmlAmong the findings is another close encounter by the asteroid with Earth in 2068 with chance of impact currently at approximately

three-in-a-million. As with earlier orbital estimates where Earth impacts in 2029 and 2036 could not initially be ruled out due to the

need for additional data, it is expected that the 2068 encounter will diminish in probability as more information about Apophis is acquired. Initially, Apophis was thought to have a 2.7 percent chance of impacting Earth in 2029. Additional observations of the asteriod ruled out any possibility of an impact in 2029. However, the asteroid is expected to make a record-setting -- but harmless -- close approach to Earth on Friday, April 13, 2029, when it comes no closer than 18,300 miles above Earth's surface. "The refined orbital determination further reinforces that Apophis is an asteroid we can look to as an opportunity for exciting science and not something that should be feared," said Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL. "The public can follow along as we continue to study Apophis and other near-Earth objects by visiting us on our AsteroidWatch Web site and by following us on the @AsteroidWatch Twitter feed."


No Impact To Asteroid Strikes

No NEO impact, and the ones that “could happen any day” have literally no impactBenny Peiser, social anthropologist @ Liverpool, 2003, “Great Impact Debates,” Encore, http://www.astrobio.net/debate/396/encoreAlan Harris: There are two problems with this concept. First, "all the troublesome objects" at present is zero, and is likely to remain so. We don't expect to find any asteroids on a collision course with the Earth . If we did find one, "mining it out of existence" would be a vastly greater enterprise than simply deflecting it off of a collision course. There is a common misconception of the utility of space resources. With present technology, it makes no sense to go into space for resources to bring back to Earth. The only sensible utility of mining asteroids is for resources to be used in space -- that is, to reduce the amount of mass that must be thrown up into space against the Earth's gravity. We might contemplate mining the offending asteroid to gain fuel to deflect it, or for mass to run a mass

driver, but not to bring stuff back home. How many times in recorded history has a significant asteroid or comet impact occurred? You mentioned the event in China where 10,000 people may have been killed by asteroids. Is that the most deadly asteroid event

that has occurred for humans? Benny Peiser: We have no idea how many significant impacts have occurred during the last 10,000 years. While we have a number of historical records that appear to refer to cosmic impacts, many of these accounts are too ambiguous to give us any reliable information. This predicament is also true for the various reports regarding the alleged impact disaster in China during the 15th century. Clark Chapman: A paper was published about half-a-dozen years ago that interpreted ancient Chinese records in terms of meteoroid impacts. I found essentially all of the instances in that paper to be *in*credible. A case of stones raining down on an army violated one of the most characteristic aspects of meteoroid falls: all the stones were interpreted to have been about the same size. Instead, real debris from outer space -- whether broken up in outer space or in an atmospheric explosion -- forms a "power-law size distribution." There are a few big objects, and increasing numbers of small objects at ever-smaller sizes. Eyewitness reports in modern society are notoriously unreliable, and reports from different cultures in ages long past are even more so. Presumably these historical accounts refer to something, but I doubt that most (or any) of them have much to do with impacts. Benny Peiser: Unless you can verify the existence of an unambiguously dated impact crater, historical records and eyewitness accounts are regarded as insufficient evidence for an impact. We even find it difficult to believe the descriptions of

experienced astronomers, such Leon Stuart, who claimed to have observed -- and indeed photographed -- a lunar impact in 1953. This is a real dilemma since only around 5 percent of terrestrial impacts produce a hypervelocity impact crater. For every crater-producing multi-megaton

impact, we can expect about 10 atmospheric or oceanic impacts that fail to produce a "smoking gun." In other words, the vast majority of small asteroids striking the Earth explode in the atmosphere. In rare cases, as happened in Tunguska, atmospheric impacts can cause considerable destruction on the Earth's surface without leaving any compelling fingerprints (like an impact crater). It is striking, nevertheless, that significantly more terrestrial impact craters

exist that date to the Holocene (the last 10,000 years) than we have historical impact reports for. It seems the vast majority of historical impacts went unnoticed. Another possibility is that impact reports were censored by religious authorities who were concerned about the demoralizing implications of these "divine interventions."

Small impacts don’t kill anyoneInt’l Academy of Astronautics, 2009, “Dealing with the Threat to Earth,” http://iaaweb.org/iaa/Scientific%20Activity/Study%20Groups/SG%20Commission%203/sg35/sg35finalreport.pdfOnce-in-a-Century Mini-Tunguska Atmospheric Explosion Consider a 30-40 m office-building-sized object striking at 100 times the speed of a jetliner. It would explode ~15 km above ground, releasing the energy of ~100 Hiroshima-scale bombs. Some researchers consider that such an event would be spectacular to witness but would not have lethal consequences. Our review of the literature suggests, however, that weak structures might be damaged or destroyed by the overpressure of the blast wave out to 20 km. The death toll might be hundreds; although casualties would be far higher in a densely populated place, they would much more likely be zero (i.e., if the impact were in the ocean or in a desolate location). Such an event is likely to occur before or during our grandchildren's lifetimes, although most likely over the ocean rather than land. Even with the proposed augmented Spaceguard Survey, it is unlikely that such a small object would be discovered in advance; impact would occur without warning. Since it could occur literally anywhere, there are no location-specific kinds of advance measures that could or should be taken, other than educating people (perhaps especially military forces that might otherwise mistake the event as an intentional attack) about the possibilities for such atmospheric explosions. In the lucky circumstance that the object is discovered years in advance, a relatively modest space mission could deflect such a small body, preventing impact (see ref. 65).


Asteroid Impact Evidence Is Biased

Aff authors are doomsayer propagandistsJames Bennett, Prof @ GMU, 2010, The Chicken Littles of Big Science, p. npElite journals, conscious of the need to attract attention and stay relevant, cutting edge, and avoid the curse of stodginess, are prone to publish gross exaggeration and findings of dubious merit. When lawmakers and grant-givers take their cues from these journals, as they do, those tax dollars ostensibly devoted to the pursuit of pure science and the application of scientific research are diverted down unprofitable, even impossible channels. The charlatans make names for themselves, projects of questionable merit grow fat on the public purse, and the disconnect between what is real and what subsidy-seekers tell us is real gets ever wider. 65 The matter, or manipulation, of odds in regards to a collision between a space rock and Earth would do Jimmy the Greek proud. As Michael B. Gerrard writes in Risk Analysis in an article assessing the relative

allocation of public funds to hazardous waste site cleanup and protection against killer comets and asteroids, “Asteroids and comets are… the ultimate example of a low-probability/high-consequence event: no one in recorded human history is confirmed to have ever died from one.” Gerrard writes that “several billion people” will die as the result of an impact “at some time in the coming half million years,” although that half-million year time-frame is considerably shorter than the generally accepted extinction-event period. 66 The expected deaths from a collision with an asteroid of, say, one kilometer or more

in diameter are so huge that by jacking up the tiny possibility of such an event even a little bit the annual death rate of this never-beforeexperienced disaster exceeds deaths in plane crashes, earthquakes, and other actual real live dangers. Death rates from outlandish or unusual causes are fairly steady across the years. About 120 Americans die in airplane crashes annually, and about 90 more die of lightning strikes. Perhaps five might die in garage-door opener accidents. The total number of deaths in any given year by asteroid or meteor impact is zero — holding constant since the dawn of recorded time

Err Neg – Aff authors exaggerateJames Bennett, Prof @ GMU, 2010, The Chicken Littles of Big Science, p. npWe should here acknowledge, without necessarily casting aspersions on any of the papers discussed in this chapter, the tendency of scientific journals to publish sexy articles. (Sexy, at least, by the decidedly unsexy standards of scientific journals.) Writing in the Public Library of Science, Neal S. Young of the National Institutes of Health, John P.A. Ioannidis of the Biomedical Research Institute in Greece, and Omar Al-Ubaydli of George Mason University applied what economists call the “winner’s curse” of auction theory to scientific publishing. Just as the winner in, say, an auction of oil drilling rights is the firm that has made the highest estimation — often overestimation — of a reserve’s size and capacity, so those papers that are selected for publication in the elite journals of science are often those with the most “extreme, spectacular results.” 63 These papers may make headlines in the mainstream press, which leads to greater political pressure to fund projects and programs

congruent with these extreme findings. As The Economist put it in an article presenting the argument of Young, Ioannidis, and Al-Ubaydli, “Hundreds of thousands of scientific researchers are hired, promoted and funded according not only to how much work they produce, but also where it gets published.” Column inches in journals such as Nature and Science are coveted; authors understand full well that studies with spectacular results are more likely to be published than are those that will not lead to a wire story. The problem, though, is that these flashy papers with dramatic results often “turn out to be false.” 64 In a 2005 paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Ioannidis found that “of the 49 most-cited papers on the effectiveness of medical interventions, published in highly visible journals in 1990–2004… a quarter of the randomised trials and five of six nonrandomised studies had already been contradicted or found to have been exaggerated by 2005.” Thus, those who pay the price of the winner’s curse in scientific research are those, whether sick patients or beggared taxpayers, who are forced to either submit to or fund specious science, medical or otherwise. The trio of authors call the implications of this finding “dire,” pointing to a 2008 158 6 The Chicken Littles of Big Science; or, Here Come the Killer Asteroids! paper in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that “almost all trials” of anti-depressant medicines that had had positive results had been published, while almost all trials of anti-depressants that had come up with negative results “remained either unpublished or were published with the results presented so that they would appear ‘positive.’” Young, Ioannidis, and Al-Ubaydli conclude that “science is hard work with limited rewards and only occasional successes. Its interest and importance should speak for themselves, without hyperbole.”


Asteroid Deflection Is Impossible

Detection fails --- no international coordinationRussell L. Schweichart, Chair of B612 Foundation, 2008, “Asteroid Threats,” http://www.space-explorers.org/ATACGR.pdfAs previously pointed out, humankind now possesses the technology to provide the first two essential elements necessary to protect the planet from asteroid impacts. Early impact warning is already underway for the largest objects of concern and new telescopes will soon increase the capability to provide impact warning for more numerous smaller objects of concern. Asteroid deflection capability, while not yet proven, is possible with current spaceflight technology and is being actively investigated by several of the world’s space agencies. The missing third element is the readiness and determination of the international community to take concerted action in response to a perceived threat to the planet. An adequate global action program must include deflection criteria

and campaign plans which, can be implemented rapidly and with little debate by the international community. In the absence of an agreed-upon decision-making process, we may lose the opportunity to act against a NEO in time, leaving evacuation and disaster management as our only response to a pending impact. A single such missed opportunity will add painful fault-finding to the devastating physical effects of an impact. The international community should begin work now on forging its warning, technology, and decision-making capacities into an effective shield against a future collision.

Lack of international action means deflection fails – US is inadequate on their own, also answers their solvency deficitsInt’l Academy of Astronautics, 2009, “Dealing with the Threat to Earth,” http://iaaweb.org/iaa/Scientific%20Activity/Study%20Groups/SG%20Commission%203/sg35/sg35finalreport.pdfThe threat posed by a pending asteroid impact is inherently international in scope. While the physical extent

of an impact could range from local to regional to global, the entire world would be engaged in the unfolding drama from the announcement of a potential collision through either the successful mitigation or the disastrous consequences of

impact. Fortunately, the resources of the global community would also be available to respond to the challenge. Effectively harnessing and applying these resources, however, will require unprecedented cooperation and organization. Without adequate planning and preparation before an event is underway, the challenge may overwhelm even the most enthusiastic international proponents of a coordinated response. There is an international community of astronomers participating in surveys of the asteroid population. But beyond that,

technologies to prepare, respond, and recover from asteroid impacts can also be drawn from throughout the world. Budget resources and talent are limited within individual nations, even in countries making significant contributions today, such as the United States. Pooling and leveraging funds and talent through wider cooperation in commonly agreed upon priority areas and more effective use of resources can substantially improve the posture of future responses. Many nations approach technological solutions differently and offer specialized

areas of competence that, when shared widely, can illuminate issues and help other nations develop effective responses. Considering and accounting for cultural differences and sensitivities in dealing with mass evacuations, establishment of relocation centers, and eventual remediation add perspective that, when applied early in the planning cycle, can save time, money, and more importantly, lives, if a call for action is necessary.


AT: Long-Period Comets

LPC distinction is stupid – no comet threatNear-Earth Object Science Definition Team, 8-22-2003, “Study to Determine the Feasibility of Extending the Search,” http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/neoreport030825.pdfThe relative constancy of the long-period comet discovery rate over the past 300 years , the results from the

Sekanina and Yeomans (1984) analysis, the Marsden (1992) type analysis and the above reality check all suggest that the threat of long-period comets is only about 1% the threat from NEAs . Levison et al. (2002) note that as comets evolve inward from the Oort cloud, the vast majority of them must physically disrupt rather than fade into dormant comets; otherwise, vast numbers of dormant long-period comets would have been discovered by current NEO surveys. This

conclusion would strengthen the case against there being a significant number of dormant long-period or Halley-type comets that annually slip past the Earth unnoticed. While Earth impacts by long-period comets are relatively rare when compared to the NEA impact flux, the present number of Earth-crossing asteroids drops very steeply for asteroids larger than 2 kilometers in diameter, more steeply than the flux of cometary nuclei (Weissman and Lowry 2003). Hence, it is possible, perhaps even likely, that long-period comets provide most of the large craters on the Moon (diameter > 60 km) and most of the extinction level large impacts on Earth (Shoemaker et al., 1990). The conclusion is that, while a newly discovered Earth-threatening, long-period comet would have a relatively short warning time, the impact threat of these objects is only about 1% the threat from NEAs. More generally, the threat from all long-period or short-period comets, whether active or dormant, is about 1% the threat from the NEA population. The limited amount of resources available for near-Earth object searches would be better spent on finding Earththreatening NEAs with the knowledge that these types of surveys will, in any case, find many of the Earth-crossing, long-period comets as well. Finally, it has been argued that we currently enjoy a relatively low cometary flux into the inner solar system and that some future comet shower, perhaps due to a passing star in the Oort cloud or a perturbation of our Oort cloud by the material in the galactic plane, could greatly increase this flux . The time scale for an increased cometary flux of this type is far longer than one hundred years so that current NEO searches can afford to concentrate their efforts on the more dangerous NEAs.

Impossible to detect LPC’s – and we’ve already catalogued all the NEO’sNational Research Council, 2010, “Defending Planet Earth,” http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12842Long-Period Comet Impacts Stokes et al. (2003) provide considerable description of the threat represented by long-period comets, and there is no need to repeat all of their arguments here. In brief, they find that the comet hazard constitutes only a tiny fraction (on the order of <1 percent) of the total risk to life on Earth by impacting NEOs (prior to the Spaceguard Survey) and that producing a complete catalog of hazardous long-period comets is far beyond the abilities of any proposed survey. For these reasons, they suggested that limited resources would be better utilized in finding and cataloging Earth-threatening near-Earth asteroids and short-period comets. With the completion of the Spaceguard Survey (that is, the detection of 90 percent of NEOs greater than 1 kilometer in diameter), long-period comets will no longer be a negligible fraction of the remaining statistical risk, and with the completion of the

George E. Brown, Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey (for the detection of 90 percent of NEOs greater than 140 meters in diameter), long-period comets may dominate the remaining unknown impact threat. Furthermore, these comets present a difficult

challenge, as they are large objects, and there will be only a short warning time (months to a very few years maximum)

before impact. Thus mitigation options are very limited, as noted in Chapter 5.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/neoreport030825.pdf


US Won’t Use Nukes On Asteroids

Nuclear weapons aren’t the first optionDavid Shiga, 09-23-2009, “Asteroid Attack: putting Earth’s defenses to the test,” http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327271.300-asteroid-attack-putting-earths-defences-to-the-test.html?full=trueRealistically, though, the nuclear option would not be on the table in the first place: the nuclear-tipped missiles

sitting patiently in silos around the world are not designed to track and home in on an asteroid or even survive for more than a few minutes in space. Instead, we would simply have to brace ourselves for the impact.

We won’t use nuclear weaponsBrian C. Thompson, 01-30-2008, “Apocalypse by asteroid inevitable; cut loose,” http://www.yaledailynews.com/opinion/staff-columns/2008/01/30/apocalypse-by-asteroid-inevitable-cut-loose/Instead of using nuclear weapons, a variety of other methods afford us a bit of flexibility. I am not the first to propose that we send a really heavy spaceship to smash into the asteroid, changing its course

ever so slightly. Or, as former astronauts Edward T. Lu and Stanley Love suggest, we could send a spaceship to orbit near the asteroid and create a secondary gravitational pull to redirect the asteroid. Finally, we could mount a giant solar sail on the asteroid and use solar pressure to redirect the object’s course.

Nuclear roles in deflection will be phased out by 2020 – and they wont be used before then.Russell L. Schweickart, Apollo astronaut, Chariman of B612 foundation, and Thomas Graham, Special Representative of the President of Arms Control, Chaires Thorium Power Ltd, March 2008, “NASA's Flimsy Argument for Nuclear Weapons”, Scientific American, “http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nasas-flimsy-argument-for-nuclear-weapons&page=2”As NASA continues to find big NEOs, the calculations of risk change accordingly. A decade ago, before astronomers began to systematically locate NEOs larger than 400 meters in diameter, they estimated that we faced a statistical risk of being struck by such an object once every 100,000 years. But now that researchers have identified and are tracking about 37 percent of these NEOs, the frequency of being hit by one of the remaining large objects has dropped to once in 160,000 years. Unless NASA finds a large NEO on an immediate collision course by 2020 (a very unlikely event), the frequency of a collision with one of the 80 still undiscovered objects (2 percent of 4,000) will drop to once every five million years. Thus, the probability that nuclear explosives might be needed to deflect an NEO is extremely small. And even this minuscule probability will diminish to the vanishing point as researchers improve nonnuclear interception technologies. After 2020 the need to keep nuclear devices on standby to defend against an NEO virtually disappears. As a result, the decision to move toward the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons can be made strictly on the basis of human threats to global security. Extraterrestrial dangers need not be considered.


Other Countries Won’t Use Nukes On Asteroids

Nuclear deflection is already illegal under international law – no one will do itLee Valentine, Director of the Space Studies Institute, May 2002, “A Space Roadmap: Mine the Sky, Defend the Earth, Settle the Universe”, Hobby Space, “http://www.hobbyspace.com/AAdmin/archive/Articles/Guests/atwgBriefingLeeValentine.html”Deflection technology is not the sole purview of the Defense Department, most particularly since their preferred solution appears to be the use of nuclear explosives. The political realities of this are that deployment of such explosives is now illegal under international law and there is widespread popular feeling in the advanced countries that such techniques should be a last resort. Should a threatening object be discovered tomorrow to impact in a few weeks time, civil defense would be the only option. Other options exist like mass drivers and solar thermal rockets and solar sails, things that improve deep space transportation and transportation to geostationary orbit and things that are specifically mentioned in the NRC report evaluating NASA's satellite solar power effort. Mass drivers, indeed, may turn out to be the best option for moving some asteroids. Development and testing of mass drivers, advanced solar sails, and other advanced propulsion technologies for the purpose of NEO deflection is something that NASA should have on the front burner.

International opinion ensures that nukes would be a last resort now.Russell L. Schweickart, Apollo astronaut, Chariman of B612 foundation, 3-19-2007, “Independent Analysis of Alternatives that could be employed to divert a NEO on a likely collision course with Earth,” Space Ref, “http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=23661”The other obvious considerations of the nuclear option are the international legal prohibitions and the world-wide public concern with most things nuclear and especially weapons. The challenge of obtaining widespread international agreement that a nuclear explosion should be used in deflecting a NEO will be daunting, to understate it. Nevertheless, if the world is unable to come to agreement in time to utilize a non-nuclear deflection method the final option, due to its greater total impulse capability, will be nuclear. The ultimate alternative to using a nuclear device for diverting a NEO is "taking the hit". This is an ominous choice given the psychological and physical implications of mass evacuations, refugees, destruction of infrastructure and the like. This reality should put strong emphasis on the world dealing early with the challenge of making timely NEO deflection decisions.

Lots of non-nuclear deflection tech exists – it would only be a last resortRussell L. Schweickart, Apollo astronaut, Chariman of B612 foundation, 3-19-2007, “Independent Analysis of Alternatives that could be employed to divert a NEO on a likely collision course with Earth,” Space Ref, “http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=23661”# There are three current NEO deflection concepts which I consider in this analysis to be essentially ready for development, testing and deployment if needed; the gravity tractor, the kinetic impactor, and nuclear explosion, in ascending order of total impulse available. I therefore limit this analysis to these available options. # 98% of the

pragmatic NEO threat can be diverted by the use of the gravity tractor and kinetic impactor concepts. I.e. 98% of the realistic threat posed by NEO impacts will require no more total impulse for diversion than is available using the combination of kinetic impactor and gravity tractor. # The use of the sufficient capability of the kinetic impactor/gravity tractor combination is highly valued not simply because the nuclear explosion capability is excessive but because the precision of the resulting deflection provides full assurance to a concerned world public that the deflection has been successful and has not resulted in the possibility of a near-term return of the NEO. # The statistical probability of having to resort to the use of nuclear explosives to divert a threatening NEO in the next 100 years is approximately 1 in 1000. Stated differently,

the frequency at which a NEO requiring the use of nuclear explosives for diversion would otherwise impact the Earth is

approximately 1 in 100,000 years. Nevertheless it is available should such an improbable need arise. # The characteristics of the gravity tractor and kinetic impactor are such that they nicely compensate for each others' limitations. Most importantly the combined use of the kinetic impact/gravity tractor provides not only the capability to divert over 98% of the threat but also the ability to state with confidence that a NEO once deflected will not be left on a trajectory with a near term return impact.


AT: Nuclear Accidents Advantage

No risk of nuclear accidents – policymakers check and history provesMichael Quinlan, Consulting Senior Fellow for South Asia International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2009, “Thinking About Nuclear Weapons,” p. npSimilar considerations apply to the hypothesis of nuclear war being mistakenly triggered by false alarm. Critics again point to the fact, as it is understood, of numerous occasions when initial steps in alert sequences for US nuclear forces were embarked

upon, or at least called for, by indicators mistaken or misconstrued. In none of these Instances, it Is accepted,

did matters get at all near to nuclear launch—extraordinary good fortune again. critics have suggested. But the rival and more logical inference from hundreds of events stretching over sixty years of experience presents Itself once more: that the probability of initial misinterpretation leading far towards mistaken launch is remote. Precisely because any nuclear-weapon possessor recognizes the vast gravity of any launch, release sequences have many steps, and human decision is repeatedly interposed as well as capping the sequences. To convey that because a first step was prompted the world somehow came close to accidental nuclear war is wild hyperbole, rather like asserting, when a tennis champion has lost his opening service game, that

he was nearly beaten in straight sets. History anyway scarcely offers any ready example of major war started by accident even before the nuclear revolution imposed an order-of-magn itude increaw In caution. It was occasionally conjectured that nuclear war might be triggered by the real but accidental or unauthorized launch of a

strategic nuclear-weapon delivery system in the direction of a potennal adversay)’. No such launch is known to have occurred

In over sixty years. The probability of it is thcrcfore very low. But even if it did happen, the further hypothesis of its initiating a general nuclear exchange is far-fetched. It fails to consider the real situation of decision-niakers, as pages 6—4 have brought out. The notion that cosmic holocaust might be mistakenly precipitated In

this way belongs to science fiction.

No accidents – policymaker would never push the buttonMichael Quinlan, Consulting Senior Fellow for South Asia International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2009, “Thinking About Nuclear Weapons,” p. npWhatever the nwrit of those proposals (it Is not explored here), It is hard to regard this particular apprehension as having any real-life credibility. The flight time of a ballistic missile would not exceed about thirty minutes, and that of a cruise missile a few hours, before arrival on target made its character—

conventional or nuclear—unmistakable. No government will need, and no non- lunatic government could wish, to take within so short a span of time a step as enormous and irrevocable as the execution of a nuclear strike on the basis of early-warning Information alone without knowing the true nature of the incoming attack. The speculation tends moreover to be expressed without reference either to any realistic political or conflict-related context thought to render the episode plausible, or to the manifest interest of the launching country, should there be any risk of doubt, in ensuring—by explicit

communication if necessary—that there was no misinterpretation of its conventionally armed launch. It may he

oblected to this analysis that in the cold war the two opposing supcrpowcrs had concepts of launch-on-warning. That seems to be true, at least in the sense that successive US administrations declined to rule out such an option and indeed included In their contingency plans Lxth this and the possibility of launch- under-attack (that is launch after some strikes had been suffered and while the sequence of them was evidently continuing). The Soviet Union was not likely to have had more relaxed practices. But the colossal gravity of activating any such arrangements must always have been recognized. It could have been contemplated only in circumstances where the entire political context made a pre-emptive attack by the adversary plainly a serious and imminent possibility. and where niowover the available information unmistakably mdi- cated that a massive assault with hundreds or thousands of missiles was on the way. That was a scenario wholly unlike that implicit in the supposition that a conventional missile attack might he briefly mIstaken for a nuclear one.


Nuclear Standoff Option Good

Nuclear standoff is 100 times more effective than alternativesNASA, March 2007, “Near-Earth Object Survey,” Report To Congress, http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/171331main_NEO_report_march07.pdfThe study team assessed a series of approaches that could be used to divert a NEO potentially on a collision course with

Earth. Nuclear explosives, as well as non-nuclear options, were assessed. • Nuclear standoff explosions are assessed to be 10-100 times more effective than the non-nuclear alternatives analyzed in this study. Other techniques involving the surface or subsurface use of nuclear explosives may be more efficient, but they run an increased risk of fracturing the target NEO. They also carry higher development and operations risks.

Only a nuclear standoff blast can divert an asteroid (potentially hazardous object)NASA, March 2007, “Near-Earth Object Survey,” Report To Congress, http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/171331main_NEO_report_march07.pdfIn the impulsive category, the use of a nuclear device was found to be the most effective means to deflect a PHO. Because of the large amount of energy delivered, nuclear devices would require the least amount of detailed information about the threatening object, reducing the need for detailed characterization. While detonation of a nuclear device on or below the surface of a threatening object was found to be 10-100 times more efficient than detonating a nuclear device above the surface, the standoff detonation would be less likely to fragment the target. A nuclear standoff mission could be designed knowing only the orbit and approximate mass of the threat, and missions could be carried out incrementally to reach the required amount of deflection. Additional information about the object’s mass and physical properties would perhaps increase the effectiveness, but likely would not be required to accomplish the goal. It should be noted that because of restrictions found in Article IV of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, use of a nuclear device would likely require prior international coordination. The study team also examined conventional explosives, but found they were ineffective against most threats.

Nuclear deflection is key to larger NEO’s.Russell L. Schweickart, Apollo astronaut, Chariman of B612 foundation, 3-16-2007, “The Sky is Falling, Really.”, New York Times, “http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0DEED71E31F935A25750C0A9619C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all”Another problem with the report was that, while it outlined other possibilities, it estimated that using a nuclear-armed missile to divert an asteroid would be ''10 to 100 times more effective'' than non-nuclear approaches. It is possible

that in some cases -- such as an asteroid greater than a third of a mile across -- the nuclear option might be necessary. But for the overwhelming majority of potential deflection cases, using a nuclear warhead would be like a golfer swinging away with his driver to sink a three-foot putt; the bigger bang is not always better.


Alt-Causes To Try Or Die

A. SupervolcanoesRobert Roy Britt, senior writer, 2005, “Super volcanoes will chill the world someday”, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7129908/The eruption of a super volcano "sooner or later" will chill the planet and threaten human civilization ,

British scientists warned Tuesday. And now the bad news: There's not much anyone can do about it. Several volcanoes around the world are capable of gigantic eruptions unlike anything witnessed in recorded history, based

on geologic evidence of past events, the scientists said. Such eruptions would dwarf those of Mount St. Helens, Krakatoa, Pinatubo and anything else going back dozens of millennia. "Super eruptions are up to hundreds of times

larger than these," said Stephen Self of Britain's Open University. "An area the size of North America can be devastated, and pronounced deterioration of global climate would be expected for a few years following the eruption," Self said. "They could result in the devastation of world agriculture, severe disruption of food supplies, and mass starvation. These effects could be sufficiently severe to threaten the fabric of civilization

B. Sun deathJason G. Matheny, Health Policy @ Johns Hopkins, 2007, “Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction,” Risk Analysis, 27.5, http://jgmatheny.org/matheny_extinction_risk.htmAs for astronomical risks, to escape our sun's death, humanity will eventually need to relocate. If we survive the next century, we are likely to build self-sufficient colonies in space. We would be motivated by self-interest to do so, as asteroids, moons, and planets have valuable resources to mine, and the technological requirements for colonization are not beyond imagination (Kargel, 1994 ; Lewis, 1996 ).

C. EntropyJason G. Matheny, Health Policy @ Johns Hopkins, 2007, “Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction,” Risk Analysis, 27.5, http://jgmatheny.org/matheny_extinction_risk.htmGiven the (probably) improbable position we find ourselves in, as a species with both the technological potential and the motivation to delay extinction, it would be imprudent to trust another species will evolve and possess the same. Moreover, it would take many millions of years for such a species to evolve. During that time, Earth will be exposed to astronomical risks, and entropy will have consumed resources that could otherwise have supported sentient life (Bostrom, 2003).

http://jgmatheny.org/matheny_extinction_risk.htm

http://jgmatheny.org/matheny_extinction_risk.htm


Try Or Die Logic Is Bad

Proves “any risk” logic would make all decisionmaking impossible. It’s also a DA to the affDavid Meskill, PhD Harvard, 12-9-2009, “The ‘One Percent Doctrine’,” http://davidmeskill.blogspot.com/2009/12/one-percent-doctrine-and-environmental.htmlTom Friedman's piece today in the Times on the environment (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/opinion/09friedman.html?_r=1) is one of the flimsiest pieces by a major columnist that I can remember ever reading. He applies Cheney's "one percent doctrine" (which is similar to the environmentalists' "precautionary principle") to the risk of environmental armageddon. But this doctrine is both intellectually incoherent and practically irrelevant . It is intellectually incoherent because it cannot be applied consistently in a world with many potential disaster scenarios. In addition to the global-warming risk, there's also the asteroid-hitting-the-earth risk, the terrorists-with-nuclear-weapons risk (Cheney's original scenario), the super-duper-pandemic risk, etc. Since each of these risks, on the "one percent doctrine," would deserve all of our attention, we cannot address all of them simultaneously. That is, even within the one-percent mentality, we'd have to begin prioritizing, making choices and trade-offs. But why then should we only make these trade-offs between responses to disaster scenarios? Why not also choose between them and other, much more cotidien, things we value? Why treat the unlikely but cataclysmic event as somehow fundamentally different, something that cannot be integrated into all the other calculations we make? And in fact, this is how we behave all the time. We get into our cars in order to buy a cup of coffee, even though there's some chance we will be killed on the way to the coffee shop. We are constantly risking death, if slightly, in order to pursue the things we value. Any creature that adopted the "precautionary principle" would sit at home - no, not even there, since there is some chance the building might collapse. That creature would neither be able to act, nor not act, since it would nowhere discover perfect safety. Friedman's approach reminds me somehow of Pascal's wager - quasi-religious faith masquerading as rational deliberation (as Hans Albert has pointed out, Pascal's wager itself doesn't add up: there may be a God, in fact, but it may turn out that He dislikes, and even damns, people who believe in him because they've calculated it's in their best interest to do so). As my friend James points out, it's striking how descriptions of the environmental risk always describe the situation as if it were five to midnight. It must be near midnight, since otherwise there would be no need to act. But it can never be five *past* midnight, since then acting would be pointless and we might as well party like it was 2099. Many religious movements - for example the early Jesus movement - have exhibited precisely this combination of traits: the looming apocalypse, with the time (just barely) to take action.


EU Can Do Asteroid Programs

EU solves asteroidsG. Drolshagen, et al, European Space Agency, 2010, “The NearEarth Object Segment of the European Space Situational Awareness Program,” Cosmic Research, v. 48, no. 5, http://www.springerlink.com/content/0h0753l6w1vn2766/fulltext.pdfEXISTING EUROPEAN FACILITIES FOR SSA–NEO The European SSA–NEO system will be based initially on existing facilities and capabilities. Later, dedicated sensors and instruments will be added. Europe has many optical telescopes, located within or outside Europe, and several radars which are suitable for NEO observations. These facilities were originally built for other purposes. For example, the ESA’s Optical Ground Station was built for optical communications with satellites, but it was regularly and successfully used for space debris and more recently for asteroid observations. Numerous national research telescopes exist at various locations and have different apertures. Some of these telescopes can be used on a regular or occasional basis for NEO observations. Many amateur telescopes which could make valuable contributions to this field also should not be forgotten. Existing European radar facilities were mainly built for military purposes, but some of them can be used on special occasions for NEO observations, as it took place in the past for space debris observations (e.g., the German FGAN and the French GRAVES systems).

Unique European expertise on asteroids – NeoDys and databasesG. Drolshagen, ESA, 2010, “The NearEarth Object,” Cosmic Research, v. 48, no. 5, http://www.springerlink.com/content/0h0753l6w1vn2766/fulltext.pdf A unique European NEO asset is the Near Earth Objects–Dynamic Site (NeoDys). The NeoDys system was

established in 1998 and is continuously improved [5]. It is a duplicate system whose elements are located at the Universities of Pisa

(Italy) and Valladolid (Spain). Based on astrometric measurements obtained worldwide and collected centrally by the MPC, NeoDys computes NEO orbits and predicts their further motion. It then computes impact risks for NEOs on a regular basis (everyday updates). NeoDys keeps a risk list, and it contains a database with information on all known asteroids and NEOs. The NeoDys website also contains a link to European Asteroid Research Node (EARN) which is a database of physical properties of NEOs [6]. EARN was developed by DLR in Berlin and is updated on a regular basis. Other existing European structures include the Spaceguard facility [7] and the Planetary Database [8]. Spaceguard is an association aimed at the protection of the Earth environment against the bombardment of objects of the Solar System. It maintains a priority list of NEO which require additional observations. The Planetary Database was originally developed as a source of information on nonspherical gravitational fields of the Solar System’s bodies. It can serve as kernel of a wider database for all NEO information.

EU can solve asteroids – plenty of space resourcesFlight International, 6-14-2011, “Making Space Headline to Come,” p. npThe civilian-use GMES system is intended to enhance understanding of the sea, air, land and atmospheric environment, as a basis for policy making, and the data generated would also be available for private use. The EC wants to see GMES fully operational by 2014. A third priority is the establishment of an independent, European space situational awareness (SSA) system. This would be a single radar installation somewhere in Europe supplemented by 20 optical telescopes at four sites equally spaced near the equator, to track the orbiting debris that poses a risk to satellites and other spacecraft. The system, complementing similar observation carried out by the USA and possibly at some point

including some space-based telescopes, would also in principle provide some guide to so-called near-Earth objects: meteors and

asteroids that could, if they struck the Earth, cause immeasurable damage. The system would be expensive - ESA's SSA programme office foresees an initial five-year development phase starting in 2012 or 2013 with a E600-700 million budget - but looks like a good investment. Orbiting debris and solar radiation are two space-based hazards that the Commission estimates causes around E332 million

($480 million) of damage to European assets annually. The EC has also identified continued European participation in space exploration as a policy priority. As the Commission paper points out - and as programmes ranging from ISS participation to

detailed pictures of Mars currently being beamed home by ESA's Mars Express planetary orbiter amply support - "Europe is a partner that is known for its competence and reliability in this sector, but it is not making the most of its potential because its actions are too piecemeal". Thus, the Commission hopes to give momentum to Europe's role in four aspects of international co-operation: development of critical technologies (life-support systems, for example), scientific exploitation of the ISS, access to space (through Europe's indigenous launch capabilities) and the establishment of an international forum to allow the EU to co-ordinate Europe's space activities.


Asteroid Exploration Is Unpopular

No political will for asteroid deflection programsMatthew Dearing, MA Physics, 4-12-2011, “Protecting the planet requires heroes, money, and citizen scientists,” Dynamic Patterns Research, http://research.dynamicpatterns.com/2011/04/12/protecting-the-planet-requires-heroes-money-and-citizen-scientists/There are many issues that NASA must juggle with here, including political, financial, and scientific. Who is willing to risk one’s political capital to champion the destruction of once-in-an-epoch giant fireballs in the sky, albeit one that can destroy our civilization as we know it? How much of taxpayer dollars can be appropriated to a once-in-an-epoch event, albeit one that can destroy our civilization as we know it? And, with deflection technology really already at hand, how professionally interesting is it to track and monitor orbiting rocks, since a Nobel Prize doesn’t target too many rocks these days? The bottom line is that the political will and the money are not available from the United States federal government, so the financing of advancing technology–well in

advance of pending doom–is not really an option right now, and will likely continue to not be an option for some time. Methods of averting potentially impacting objects have already been proposed, and should be reasonable to implement without too much of a technological leap, if any, although the funding factor will always be an application killer. In fact, according the the task force’s minutes, NASA should stay out of the direct defensive activities, and leave that to those who know how to defend, like the Air Force. Of course, the United States is already over-criticized for being the police force of the world, so why should it now have to be the defender of the planet and of all civilization?

Pushing asteroid programs costs political capital – policymakers think it’s not worth itMatthew Dearing, MA Physics, 4-12-2011, “Protecting the planet requires heroes, money, and citizen scientists,” Dynamic Patterns Research, http://research.dynamicpatterns.com/2011/04/12/protecting-the-planet-requires-heroes-money-and-citizen-scientists/Many of us while growing up and listening to our bedtime stories learned to not freak out and run screaming through the streets if we thought that the “sky is falling.” As little chickens, we were taught at an early age that it was best to be brave, calm, and rational, else be considered a crazed lunatic. This childhood behavioral bias infiltrated adulthood in the relationship between professional astronomers, policy-makers and national budget-number crunchers. When a scientist expresses probabilistic concerns about the impending doom of our planet from

a cataclysmic change of a major impact event, say, in the next 100, 1,000, or 10,000 years, it requires just too much risk of political capital and tax-payer dollars to divert significant budget resources to something that might only be a concern for our uber-great grandchildren.

Policymakers don’t want to pay for asteroidsMatthew Dearing, MA Physics, 4-12-2011, “Protecting the planet requires heroes, money, and citizen scientists,” Dynamic Patterns Research, http://research.dynamicpatterns.com/2011/04/12/protecting-the-planet-requires-heroes-money-and-citizen-scientists/Combating Earth-bound asteroids, or “near-earth objects” (NEOs), is an unsolved problem, and one that citizen scientists largely ignore because it’s assumed that this issue must be only approached via the domain that

has access to the massive amounts of taxpayer dollars and the international collaborations between those nations who can

liberally spend all of that money. It’s this requirement of essentially unlimited funds that is the sticking point to making serious progress on defending against an event that may, or may not, happen in the upcoming budget cycle.


Space Weapons DA Links

Asteroid deflection technology can be used for weaponizaiton – it’s inherently dual useCarl Sagan, Super famous Astrophysics PhD, 1997, Pale Blue Dot, p. npThe foregoing are examples of inadvertence. But there’s another kind of peril: We are sometimes told that this or that invention would of course not be misused. No sane person would be so reckless. This is the “only a madman” argument. Whenever I hear it (and it’s often trotted out in such debates), I remind myself that madmen really exist. Sometimes they achieve the highest levels of political power in modern industrial nations. This is the century of Hitler and Stalin, tyrants who posed the gravest dangers not just to the rest of the human family, but to their own people as well. In the winter and spring of 1945, Hitler ordered Germany to be destroyed—even “what the people need for elementary survival”—because the surviving Germans had “betrayed” him, and at any rate were “inferior” to those who had already died. If Hitler had had nuclear weapons, the threat of a counterstrike by Allied nuclear weapons, had there been any, is unlikely to have dissuaded him. It might have encouraged him. Can we humans be trusted with civilization-threatening technologies? If the chance is almost one in a thousand that much of the human population will be killed by an impact in the next century, isn’t it more likely that asteroid deflection technology will get into the wrong hands in another century—some misanthropic sociopath like a Hitler or a Stalin eager to kill everybody, a megalomaniac lusting after “greatness” and “glory,” a victim of ethnic violence bent on revenge, someone in the grip of unusually severe testosterone poisoning, some religious fanatic hastening the Day of Judgment, or just technicians incompetent or insufficiently vigilant in handling the controls and safeguards? Such people exist. The risks seem far worse than the benefits, the cure worse than the disease. The cloud of near-Earth asteroids through which the Earth plows may constitute a modern Camarine marsh.

Asteroid deflection is inherently dual useCarl Sagan, Super famous Astrophysics PhD, 1997, Pale Blue Dot, p. npThe problem, Steven Ostro of JPL and I have suggested, is that if you can reliably deflect a threatening worldlet so it does not collide with the Earth, you can also reliably deflect a harmless worldlet so it does collide with the Earth. Suppose you had a full inventory, with orbits, of the estimated 300,000 near-Earth asteroids larger than 100 meters—each of them large enough, on impacting the Earth, to have serious consequences. Then, it

turns out, you also have a list of huge numbers of inoffensive asteroids whose orbits could be altered with nuclear warheads so they quickly collide with the Earth.

Scenario isn’t nuts, people is crazyCarl Sagan, Super famous Astrophysics PhD, 1997, Pale Blue Dot, p. npBut now imagine a totalitarian state not overrun by enemy troops, but one thriving and self-confident. Imagine a tradition in which orders are obeyed without question. Imagine that those involved in the operation are supplied a cover story: The asteroid is about to impact the Earth, and it is their job to deflect it—but in order not to worry people

needlessly, the operation must be performed in secret. In a military setting with a command hierarchy firmly in place, compartmentalization of knowledge, general secrecy, and a cover story, can we be confident that even apocalyptic orders would be disobeyed? Are we really sure that in the next decades and centuries and millennia, nothing like this might happen? How sure are we?It’s no use saying that all technologies can be used for good or for ill. That is certainly true, but when the “ill” achieves a sufficiently apocalyptic scale, we may have to set limits on which technologies may be developed. (In a way we do this all the time, because we can’t afford to develop all technologies. Some are favored and some are not.) Or

constraints may have to be levied by the community of nations on madmen and autarchs and fanaticism.


War Outweighs Asteroids

Nuclear war outweighs asteroids due to both probability and magnitudeJames Bennett, Econ Prof @ GMU, 2010, The Doomsday Lobby, p. 155Given that there “is no known incident of a major crater-forming impact in recorded human history,” argues P.R. Weissman of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and since “the credibility of the impact hazard” is justifiably low with the

public and governmental decision-makers, we ought to defer the development of a defensive system until such time as technological advances permit us to do so at a reasonable cost.55 There is also, he points out — at the risk of being called

chauvinist, no doubt, by the more feverish Earth-savers — the “pragmatic and/or parochial” fact that the United States accounts for 6.4 percent of the total land mass of the Earth, and only 1.9 percent of the total area, including water.56 Thus anything short of a civilization-ending asteroid would be exceedingly unlikely to hit the U.S. By contrast, such threats as infectious diseases and nuclear war present a more real and immediate danger to Americans, and to earthlings in general. Perhaps money would be better spent addressing those matters?

Nuclear war outweighs asteroid collision—civilian infrastructure would be targeted which makes recovery less likelyJames Bennett, Econ Prof @ GMU, 2010, The Doomsday Lobby, p. 155For a near-impossible scenario, an awful lot of laser ink has gone into studies of the consequences of an impact. Let’s face it: The topic is sexy. The effects of an Earth-space rock collision with energies below 10 Megatons would be “negligible,” write Owen B. Toon, Kevin Zahnle, and David Morrison of the NASA Ames Research Center,

Richard P. Turco of UCLA, and Curt Covey of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in Reviews of Geophysics. Impacts measuring between 10 Megatons and 10 to the 4th power Megatons — say, comets and asteroids with diameters of less than 400 meters and 650 meters, respectively — would be equivalent “to many natural disasters of recent history.” In other words, death-dealing but manageable in a global sense. Those with an energy range in the 10 to the 5th–6th power

Megatons are “transitional” — the fires, earthquakes, and tsunamis would unleash devastation, though the authors do not believe a “global catastrophe” would occur at less than an energy level of 10 to the 6th power Megatons . They do admit to “considerable uncertainty,” noting that previous estimates may have overstated the damage at certain levels of impact, though they say, with great wisdom, that “it

is to be hoped that no large-scale terrestrial experiments occur to shed light on our theoretical oversights.”59 They can say that again. The impact upon the Earth of an object of more than 400 meters in diameter crashing into an ocean would be a tsunami, an enormous wave

created by the impact of the asteroid or comet upon the ocean floor, which could cause massive numbers of deaths due to drowning, though it would be highly unlikely to cause extinction of the human species. A wall of water — a wave over 60 meters high — would sweep over the impacted ocean’s coasts. The huge and widespread fires would claim uncounted lives, too, and the “opacity of the smoke generated by the fires” would contribute to the sharply reduced level of sunlight upon the Earth. The consequences of an impact with an energy of 10 to the 7th power Megatons could be K–T like, as 100-meters-high tsunamis swamp coastal zones, fires rage around the world, and “Light levels may drop so low from the smoke, dust, and sulfate as to make vision impossible.”60 Photosynthesis, too, becomes impossible, and food supplies disappear. Dwellers in sea and on land perish of fire, starvation, or flood. In the aftermath, survivors would compete with rodents for the available food. (As paleontologists Peter M. Sheehan and Dale A. Russell note, “In the short term domestic

cats might play a useful role in protecting food supplies.”61 Humans , they believe, would survive such a catastrophe, though in greatly

reduced numbers and for millennia they would be vegetarians practicing subsistence agriculture. No doubt, that sounds appealing to some of the greener readers.) If an impact with a smaller body is sometimes compared to the aftermath of a nuclear war, the fact that in a war the civilian infrastructure is specifically targeted means that it is “much more likely that society could cope with the problems following a small impact better than it could adjust to the problems following a nuclear war,” according to Toon, Zahnle, et al.62 Interestingly, the authors say that acid rain — very much a fashionable environmental cause in the 1980s, though it has since receded before global warming — would not be a widespread problem, although the rain may well be acidified due to the nitric oxide resulting from impact-induced shock waves.


Space Weaponization Critique Links

Asteroid exploration is inextricably linked with the narrative of weaponization – the aff will be coopted in favor of imperialist controlFelicity Mellor, Lecturer in Science Communication at Imperial College London, 2007, Colliding Worlds: Asteroid Research and the Legitimization of War in Space, Social Studies of Science 37: 499, http://sss.sagepub.com/content/37/4/499.full.pdfSince the late 1980s, a small group of astronomers and planetary scientists has repeatedly warned of the threat of an asteroid impacting with Earth and causing global destruction. They

foretell a large impact causing global fires, the failure of the world’s agriculture and the end of human civilization. But, these scientists assure us, we live at a unique

moment in history when we have the technological means to avert disaster. They call for support for dedicated astronomical surveys of near-Earth objects to provide early warning of an impactor and they have regularly met with defence

scientists to discuss new technologies to deflect any incoming asteroids. The scientists who have promoted the asteroid impact threat have done so by invoking narratives of technological salvation – stories which, like the

Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), promise security through a superweapon in space. The asteroid impact threat can therefore be located within the broader cultural history of fantasies about security and power, which, Bruce

Franklin (1988) has argued, is inextricably linked to the century-old idea that a new superweapon could deliver world peace. Howard McCurdy (1997: 78–82), in his study of the ways in which the US space programme was shaped by popular culture,

has suggested that the promotion of the impact threat can be seen as the completion of Cold War fantasies, which had used a politics of fear to justify space exploration. McCurdy highlights the alignment between the promotion of the impact threat and works of fiction. In this paper, I consider the reconceptualization of asteroid science that this alignment entailed. It is beyond the scope of this paper to give a complete history of

the science of planetary impacts. My focus is on how a group of scientists moved from seeing impacts as significant events in Earth history to seeing them as threatening events in the human future – a move from historical to futurological narratives. Nor is

there space to give a full account of the empirical developments that were used to support the construal of asteroids as a threat. Rather, I wish to make the case that these empirical developments were given meaning within a specific narrative context which drew civilian astronomers into contact with defence scientists, especially those working on SDI. A number of studies (for example, McDougall, 1985; Forman, 1987; Kevles, 1990; DeVorkin, 1992; Leslie, 1993; Dennis, 1994) have revealed the ways in which US research programmes and nominally-civilian scientific institutions originated in military

programmes.1 One aim of this paper is to demonstrate how the boundary between civilian and military science is blurred not just

institutionally, but also at a fundamental conceptual level.

Even supposedly benign asteroids research can be hijacked for space militarizationFelicity Mellor, Lecturer in Science Communication at Imperial College London, 2007, Colliding Worlds: Asteroid Research and the Legitimization of War in Space, Social Studies of Science 37: 499, http://sss.sagepub.com/content/37/4/499.full.pdfThe civilian scientists discussed here followed different working practices and traded in different forms of expertise than did the defence scientists. They were typically astronomers or planetary scientists who worked for NASA or on NASA-funded research

programmes at universities and private institutes. They saw themselves as distinct from the defence scientists who were typically physicists and engineers working on new weapons systems or other technologies of national security at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories or at armed

services institutions. 2 Yet the two groups came to share an interest in asteroids and with that a set of assumptions about the nature of human society, the role of technology and our place in outer space . As they came into contact, their differing backgrounds meant they disagreed over a number of issues, yet both sides pursued the collaboration despite the tensions. Many studies of the interaction between military and civilian science have focused on sources of funding and shared technologies.3 Important as these are, they fail to capture fully the dynamic between the two

communities. In particular, a cynical picture of scientists simply pursuing sources of funding on any terms cannot reveal the far-reaching ways in which civilian research can become entrenched in particular patterns of thinking which are supportive of militaristic programmes. For military/civilian collaborations to be sustained, civilian scientists need to share with their counterparts in the defence sector an understanding of the overall trajectory of their research. For

shared technologies to be developed, they need first to be imagined. Military/civilian interactions are therefore predicated on, and mediated

through, a shared technoscientific imaginary. Despite expressing concerns about the motives and methods of the weapons scientists, the civilian scientists

who promoted the asteroid impact threat drew on narratives that configured a human role in space in a similar way to SDI. These narratives helped make asteroids conceivable as a threat, yet they also served to make acceptable, and even necessary, the idea of space-based weaponry. Despite their disagreements, at the level of their shared narratives the discourses of the civilian and defence scientists were mutually supportive.


Nationalism Critique


Nationalism Critique 1NC 1/2

The method of the affirmative is informed by nationalism and American exceptionalismLinda Billings, Professor @ George Washington University in Media and Public Affairs, 2007, “Societal Impact of Space Flight,” p. 483The rhetoric of space advocacy exalts those enduring American values of pioneering, progress, enterprise, freedom, and rugged individualism, and it advances the cause of capitalist democracy. Helving into the language or rhetoric of spaceflight is a productive way of exploring the meanings and motives that are embedded in and conveyed by the ideology and advocacy of spaceflight—the cultural narrative of pioneering the space frontier. According to rhetorical critic Thomas Less], rhetorical analysis can shed some light on . . . |T|he processes of communication that underpin decision making in free societies . . . .Judgments on matters of public policy take their cues from rhetoric, and so an understanding of any society s rhetoric will tell us a lot about its ideas , beliefs, laws, customs and assumptions—especially how and why such social features came into being.

This prevents any globalized solution – only a new vision of shared humanity can solveRogers Smith, Professor of Political Science at University of Pennsylvania and PhD Harvard University, 2003, “Stories Of Peoplehood, The Politics and Morals of Political Membership”, p. 166It is certainly important to oppose such evolutionary doctrines by all intellectually credible means. But many have already been widely discredited; and today it may well prove salutary, even indispensable, to heighten awareness of human identity as shared membership in a species engaged in an ages-long process of adapting to often dangerous and unforgiving natural and man-made environments.20 When we see ourselves in the light of general evolutionary patterns, we become aware that it is gen uinely possible for a species such as ourselves to suffer massive setbacks or even to become extinct if we pursue certain dangerous courses of ac tion. That outcome does not seem to be in any human's interest. And when we reflect on the state of our species today, we see or should see at least five major challenges to our collective survival, much less our collective nourishing, that are in some respects truly unprecedented. These are all challenges of our own making, however, and so they can all be met through suitably cooperative human efforts.

The alternative is to reject the affirmative’s representations of nationalism in favor of a cosmopolitan ethic.


Nationalism Critique 1NC 2/2

A change in public dialogue successfully transforms space politicsLinda Billings, Professor @ George Washington University in Media and Public Affairs, 2006, “To the Moon, Mars, and Beyond: Culture, Law and Ethics in Space-Faring Societies,” Personal Website, http://lindabillings.org/lb_papers/space_law_ethics_culture.pdfThe bad news is that the loudest voices in the public dialogue on our future in space sound like advocates of frontier-style exploitation. NASA and the broader space community have not seriously considered questions of space law, ethics, and culture as they relate to extending human presence into space. Nor have they seriously considered whether legal and ethical issues relating to future space exploration should be addressed in public dialogue or debated only among experts. The space community’s preferred mode of communication about science and technology is one-way, expert to non-expert (that is, the cognitive deficit model). A mode that can accommodate public participation – two-way, dialogic, between experts and non-experts – would better serve the public interest.

Prefer our evidence – theirs begins from the assumption that national interest is the prior concernUlrich Beck, Professor for Sociology at the University of Munich, and Natan Szaider, Professor at The Academic College of Tel Aviv Yaffo, 2006, “Unpacking cosmopolitanism for the social sciences: a research agenda” The British Journal of Sociology, 5.1, pg. 82These premises also structure empirical research, for example, in the choice of statistical indicators, which are almost always exclusively national. A refutation of methodological nationalism from a strictly empirical viewpoint is therefore difficult, indeed, almost impossible, because so many statistical categories and research procedures are based on it. It is therefore of historical importance for the future development of the social sciences that this methodological nationalism, as well as the related categories of perception and disciplinary organization, be theoretically, empirically, and organizationally re-assessed and reformed.

The initial framing of the 1ac should be the focus of the debate and prevents permutation solvencyRoland Blieker, Senior Lecturer and Co-Director @ Rotary Centre of International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution, 2001, “The Zen of International Relations,” pg. 38-39The prime objective of this essay is to challenge prevalent IR stories. The most effective way of doing so, the chapter argues, is not to critique but to forget them, to tell new stories that are not constrained by the boundaries of established and objectified IR narratives. Such an approach diverges from many critical engagements with world politics. Most challenges against dominant IR stories have been advanced in the form of critiques. While critiquing orthodox IR stories remains an important ask, it is not sufficient. Exploring the origins of problems, in this case discourse of power politics and their positivist framing of the political practice, cannot overcome all the existing theoretical and practical dilemmas. By articulating critique in relation to arguments advanced by orthodox IR theory, the impact of critical voices remains confined within the larger discursive boundaries that have been established through the initial framing of debates.


Representations of Space Links

The affirmative’s approach to space is based on an exceptionalist narrativeLinda Billings, Professor @ George Washington University in Media and Public Affairs, 2007, “Societal Impact of Space Flight,” p. 483The ideas of frontier pioneering, continual progress, manifest destiny, free enterprise, and rugged individualism have been prominent in the American national narrative, which has constructed and maintained an ideology of "Americanism"—what it means to be American, and what America is meant to be and do. In exploring the history of U.S. spaceflight, it is useful to consider how U.S. space advocacy movements and initiatives have interpreted and deployed the values and beliefs sustained by this national narrative. The aim here is to illuminate the role and function of ideology and advocacy in the history of spaceflight by examining the rhetoric of spaceflight advocacy.

The affirmative treats space as the new frontierLinda Billings, Professor @ George Washington University in Media and Public Affairs, 2007, “Societal Impact of Space Flight,” p. 483Social norms can be constructed. perpetuated, and resisted—and ideologies can be propagated—"through ritualized communication practices." 'When advocates speak of advancing scientific and technological progress by exploring and exploiting the space frontier, they are performing ritual incantations of a national myth, repeating a cultural narrative that affirms what America and Americans are like and are meant to do. For the purposes of this analysis, communication is a ritual, culture is communication, and communication is culture. Standard definitions of ideology and advocacy are operational here. An ideology in .1 belief system (personal, political, social, cultural). Advocacy is the act of arguing in favor of a cause, idea, or policy.


Unilateralism Links

The affirmative’s unilateral action is counterproductiveLinda Billings, Professor @ George Washington University in Media and Public Affairs, 2006, “To the Moon, Mars, and Beyond: Culture, Law and Ethics in Space-Faring Societies,” Personal Website, http://lindabillings.org/lb_papers/space_law_ethics_culture.pdfFacing an opportunity to envision a new, 21st century era of spacefaring, the aerospace community has chosen to go back to the future, leaning on outdated – and, arguably, dangerous – rhetoric of frontier conquest and manifest destiny to justify mining the Moon and creating human colonies in space. Should the U.S. space program go retro, favoring unilateral decision making, advocating exploitation, and sidestepping international law when it appears to be in the way? Taking this direction would not be productive. Today China, Europe, India, Japan, and Russia have their own space launch capabilities, including human space flight capability in China and Russia. China may land people on the Moon before NASA astronauts can get back there, and Russia is getting back into the game, too.

The affirmative’s call for space leadership is rooted in nationalismHeather Crooks, MA from the USAF, 2009, “Transatlantic Relations: The Role of Nationalism in Multinational Space Cooperation,” http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA501117&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdfThe U.S.’s unilateralism and nationalism are evident in these principles. Along these lines, the following goals set forth by the space policy also have a nationalistic flavor in terms of both attitude and self-determination: Strengthen the nation’s space leadership and ensure that space capabilities are available in time to further U.S. national security, homeland security, and foreign policy objectives; enable unhindered U.S. operations in and through space to defend our interests there ; enable a dynamic, globally competitive domestic commercial space sector in order to promote innovation, strengthen U.S. leadership, and protect national, homeland, and economic security; and enable a robust science and technology base supporting national security, homeland security, and civil space activities.

Focusing on the state as the starting point for impact assessment is nationalisticUlrich Beck, Professor for Sociology at the University of Munich, and Natan Szaider, Professor at The Academic College of Tel Aviv Yaffo, 2006, “Unpacking cosmopolitanism for the social sciences: a research agenda” The British Journal of Sociology, 5.1, http://www.promusica.se/Library/Electronic%20texts/Beck_Sznaider2006.pdfIn fact, not using the adjective ‘national’ as a universal language does not falsify but might sometimes even prove methodological nationalism. That is the case when the practice of the argument or the research presupposes that the unit of analysis is the national society or the national state or the combination of both. The concept of methodological nationalism is not a concept of methodology but of the sociology of sociology or the sociology of social theory .

http://www.promusica.se/Library/Electronic%20texts/Beck_Sznaider2006.pdf


http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA501117&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf



Aerospace Industry Links

The affirmative’s desire to build up the Aerospace industry is done in the name of nationalismDavid Webb, Faculty of Information & Technology @ Leeds Metropolitan University, 3-2006, “Space Weapons – Dream, Nightmare or Reality?” Presented at the 47th Annual International Studies Association, pg. 7Certainly the aerospace and defence industry is a major beneficiary in the effort to achieve “full spectrum dominance” have been at the forefront of the development of a philosophy of security through strength and a role for the US as a global police force through technological superiority. This also fits well with some US right wing political views concerning the destiny of America to police the world the American people’s trust in technology to eventually find solutions to seemingly insoluble problems.

The affirmative’s reliance on American aerospace is exceptionalistDavid Webb, Faculty of Information & Technology @ Leeds Metropolitan University, 3-2006, “Space Weapons – Dream, Nightmare or Reality?” Presented at the 47th Annual International Studies Association, pg. 7The increasing reliance on industry to support military activities has meant that high technology projects in Universities are often linked to military programmes. Students and groups such as the Scientists for Global Responsibility in the UK and the Union of Concerned Scientists in the US actively campaign on issues such as the ethical use of science and engineering and continue to lobby politicians but there has been little positive response from Government. Therefore, there is little choice for those wanting to follow a career in engineering or science but to become an integral part of the ‘military industrial complex’ and contribute to the development of lucrative military projects. Now must be the time for scientists, engineers and politicians to seriously consider what might constitute a workable ethical policy on space.

Their blind faith in the American aerospace industry is based purely on national prideDavid Webb, Faculty of Information & Technology @ Leeds Metropolitan University, 3-2006, “Space Weapons – Dream, Nightmare or Reality?” Presented at the 47th Annual International Studies Association, pg. 7A truly secure future can only be guaranteed if space remains weapon free and the increasing development of military related space systems is limited (or ideally reversed) and rigorously monitored and controlled. There is a significant role for the technologically able nations here. The world is seeing the warnings and suffering the consequences of ill-planned technological growth. Global warming is beginning to be taken seriously by the major energy and resource consumers. Urgent action is needed to prevent global disaster. Technological growth that ignores environmental consequences usually results in human misery and suffering and the leading nations must take the lead even if personal or national pride has to be sacrificed to guarantee future global survival.


Asteroids Links

Doomsday asteroids are a cultural production that fit within an apocalyptic ideology of U.S.-as-saviorFelicity Mellor, Lecturer in Science @ Imperial College, 2007, “Colliding Worlds: Asteroid Research and the Legitimization of War in Space”, Social Studies of Science, p. 512Despite their disagreements over technical details and funding priorities, both civilian and defence scientists appealed to narratives of technological salvation. In his study of the superweapon in the American imagination , Bruce Franklin (1988) has shown how a century-long tradition of futurewar fiction shaped an apocalyptic ideology in which American technological genius was to put an end to all war and fulfil America’s manifest destiny. Franklin argues that this cultural fantasizing has been materially significant in producing actual superweapons and developing defence policy. As David Seed (1999) has also shown, SDI was made imaginable, and was explicitly defended, by science fiction writers. The impact-threat scientists took this cultural fantasizing a step further as they attempted to establish the reality of that threat.

The narrative of the 1ac inevitably ends in exceptionalismFelicity Mellor, Lecturer in Science @ Imperial College, 2007, “Colliding Worlds: Asteroid Research and the Legitimization of War in Space”, Social Studies of Science, p. 512The asteroid impact threat was thus articulated within a narrative context that was closely aligned to science fiction and was shared by both civilian scientists and defence experts. As Veronica Hollinger (2000: 216–17) has noted, traditional science fiction is driven by an Aristotelian plot characterized by ‘a valorisation of the logic of cause and effect’. Impact narratives conformed to this traditional narrative logic: asteroids and scientists act by causing a series of events to unfold, from the approach of an asteroid and recognition of the threat through attempts at technological mitigation to resolution in salvation. These narratives configured asteroids as acting agents in human affairs and brought to asteroid science a structure in which human agents (and their technological proxies) solve the problem posed in the narrative and in so doing achieve closure. Allusions to impact narratives implied a direction and human-centredness to events that, once the narratives had been evoked, could not easily be suppressed.

Even if their claims are true, their representations legitimate nationalismFelicity Mellor, Lecturer in Science @ Imperial College, 2007, “Colliding Worlds: Asteroid Research and the Legitimization of War in Space”, Social Studies of Science, p. 512The asteroid impact threat offered a scientifically validated enemy onto which could be projected the fears on which a militaristic culture depends. Far from providing a replacement outlet for weapons technologies, the promotion of the asteroid impact threat helped make the idea of war in space more acceptable and helped justify the continued development of spacebased weaponry. Arguably, with the Clementine and Deep Impact missions, the asteroid impact threat even facilitated the testing of SDI-style systems. The asteroid impact threat legitimized a way of talking, and thinking, that was founded on fear of the unknown and the assumption that advanced technology could usher in a safer era. In so doing, it resonated with the politics of fear and the technologies of permanent war that are now at the centre of US defence policy.


Colonization Links

Space exploration re-creates manifest destinyAsif A. Siddiqi, assistant professor of history at Fordham University and member of advisory board at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, 6-2010, “Competing Technologies, National(ist) Narratives, and Universal Claims: Toward a Global History of Space Exploration” Technology and Culture, 51.2, http://etc.technologyandculture.net/2010/06/siddiqi/Space exploration’s link with national identity partly overlapped with its claims to a larger idea that appealed to a global, even universal, vision of humanity. Counterintuitively, these ideas emerged from ideas deeply embedded in national contexts . Roger Launius has noted that nations have historically justified space exploration by appealing to one (or a combination) of five different rationales: human destiny, geopolitics, national security, economic competitiveness, and scientific discovery.15 The latter four stem from national and nationalist requirements; the first, human destiny, appeals to the idea of survival of the species. In the American context, this universal rationale of human destiny combines older traditions of technological utopianism and an updated version of “manifest destiny.”

Extending humanity into space only reasserts nationalistic dichotomies – a prior questioning of American exceptionalism is vital to avert space conflict and enforce equalityDavid Sims, Anti-ITAR Advocate, 5-4-2010, “Space Settlement, American Exceptionalism and the Fear Behind the ITAR,” Habitation Intention, http://www.habitationintention.com/2010/05/space-settlement-american.htmlAt its heart, that's what space settlement, as with any scientific challenge, is, an attempt to further and protect the four freedoms . If we stay on Earth, our resources will dwindle. The chaos generated by lack of water will be orders of magnitude greater then the struggle over oil. We will increasingly live in fear as nations seek to invade each other for the necessities of life, not even what is required for human comfort, we will go to war over survival. The freedom to speech and religion will be threatened as dictators rise in a draining Earth. However, we can't blast off into space, not as a united species. Very few countries have space programs or even the technical expertise to begin one. Still more nations do not have the resources to feed their people. As O'Neill pointed out, the United States has an obligation to ensure that 3rd world countries can enjoy the freedom granted by becoming a space faring nation. However, since the poorer nations do not have the capacity to utilize space, the age of space colonization will bring with it the same challenges and dilemmas, in regards to foreign policy, that faced the United States before it's involvement with World War Two.

Representations of American benefit from colonization entrench nationalismDavid Sims, Anti-ITAR Advocate, 5-4-2010, “Space Settlement, American Exceptionalism and the Fear Behind the ITAR,” Habitation Intention, http://www.habitationintention.com/2010/05/space-settlement-american.htmlThus, the long term goal of the acquisition and use of the resources in space is an attempt to protect freedom because it is an attempt to ensure these basic needs are met. Anything that slows down progress towards the goal of becoming a space faring species is a threat to freedom. American selfishness is one of those roadblocks.


Military Links

US extension of militarism into space is driven by nationalism – undercuts international cooperationRob Chambers, M.S., Strategic Intelligence, Joint Military Intelligence College, Major in the USAF, 2009, “China’s Space Program: A New Tool for PRC ‘soft power’ in International Relations,” Naval Postgraduate School, http://edocs.nps.edu/npspubs/scholarly/theses/2009/Mar/09Mar_Chambers.pdfHow exactly will Washington “deny ” other people using space? If one buys the argument that a rogue nation will attack one of our satellites, does that mean a nuclear retaliatory strike? And why is the United States the only country with a “right” to conduct activities in space? With China looking at its own GPS-like Beidou constellation, Yaogan remote-sensing satellites, Shentong and Fenghuo military communication satellites, does Beijing also have to right to “deny” the use of space if someone tries to interfere with its constellation? If not, Washington is assuming special privileges only for itself. This unilateral approach smacks of a schoolyard bully who insists on getting his own way without having to answer to anyone else, and cuts dangerously deep into America’s soft power. Is this really the approach that Washington—the world’s leading democracy— wants to take? Does this not make the previously stated principles of “peaceful purposes” mere fluff and leave us seeming to be hypocritical?

Prefer our evidence – their use of purely military authors is epistemologically flawedJan Pieterse, Professor of Sociology @ University of Illinois (Urbana), 2007, “Political and Economic Brinkmanship”, Review of International Political Economy, 14(3), p. 473That it is a completely hierarchical world onto itself makes it relatively unaccountable. Hence, to quote Rumsfeld, ‘stuff happens’. In part this is the familiar theme of the Praetorian Guard and the shadow state (Stockwell, 1991). It includes a military on the go, a military that seeks career advancement through role expansion, seeks expansion through threat inflation, and in inflated threats finds rationales for ruthless action and is thus subject to feedback from its own echo chambers. Misinformation broadcast by part of the intelligence apparatus blows back to other security circles where it may be taken for real (Johnson, 2000). Inhabiting a hall of mirrors this apparatus operates in a perpetual state of self hypnosis with, since it concerns classified information and covert ops, limited checks on its functioning.

The affirmative’s rhetorically charged approach to space militarization undercuts space cooperationRob Chambers, M.S., Strategic Intelligence, Joint Military Intelligence College, Major in the USAF, 2009, “China’s Space Program: A New Tool for PRC ‘soft power’ in International Relations,” Naval Postgraduate School, pg. 82I think there are more countries than just the United States that also believe “freedom of action in space is important” and also wish to derive “economic prosperity and national security” from space. How could Washington use such innate desires to promote its security in space? My simple recommendation is to drop the emotionally-charged rhetoric of “space dominance,” “space superiority” and “space control.” It is extremely divisive and unnecessary language that drives people away from our side, and presumes that nations will forever willingly accept an inferior posture and subject themselves to whatever Washington decides.


Technology Link

The affirmative’s desire for technological leadership is rooted in nationalismAsif A. Siddiqi, assistant professor of history at Fordham University and member of advisory board at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, 6-2010, “Competing Technologies, National(ist) Narratives, and Universal Claims: Toward a Global History of Space Exploration” Technology and Culture, 51.2, http://etc.technologyandculture.net/2010/06/siddiqi/And, as the European colonial project reached its peak, the discussion over modern technology became inseparable from empire-building; technology, in effect, became a dominant metric of modernity—Michael Adas’s “measure of men.” By the early twentieth century, and especially in the light of experiences during World War I, technology assumed a fundamental role in the projection of national prowess, a role that was now further complicated by the specter of international competition for global dominance—through science, technology, war, and imperial holdings.

Technological progress is tied to national identityAsif A. Siddiqi, assistant professor of history at Fordham University and member of advisory board at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, 6-2010, “Competing Technologies, National(ist) Narratives, and Universal Claims: Toward a Global History of Space Exploration” Technology and Culture, 51.2, http://etc.technologyandculture.net/2010/06/siddiqi/Essential to this tension between the more specific narrative and the universal claim in the case of the space program is the perceived importance of technological prowess in the construction of a national identity. While the notion that scientific prowess is a constitutive element of national identity goes back to at least the seventeenth century, the Enlightenment strongly reinforced this relationship in the European context. By the late nineteenth century, with the fruits of the Industrial Revolution evident and the appearance of a distinct category of technology, many of the rationales used in favor of science were even more persistently applied to technology and its essential role in the enterprise of nation-building.

Resource extraction serves to uphold elite nationalismJill Stuart, Fellow in Global Politics @ London School of Economics, 2009, “Unbundling sovereignty, territory and the state in outer space Two approaches” From Securing Outer Space, pg. 7Notions of cosmopolitan sovereignty could lead us to over-emphasize the significance of the sense of community based on outer space, when in reality the effect of , for example, "common heritage" resources in outer space, or the "transnational" benefits from the space station are actually to the benefit of certain elite segments of world society. In this sense, sovereignty may still become de-linked from the state, but only to be reclaimed by collectives of elites, particularly in outer space where exploitation and exploration is prohibitively expensive and hence naturally excludes the vast majority of actors,


Exceptionalism Impacts

American exceptionalism is founded on racismMichael Fitzgerald, journalist, currently a correspondent for the Jacksonville Business Journal, 2008, “Manifest Destiny: American Imperial Myth, Then & Now,” Left Curve, http://www.leftcurve.org/lc29webpages/manifestdestiny.htmlTacit elements of racism, religious chauvinism and greed operate below the surface. Away with wretched cant No U.S. leader would openly declare, "We ’ re going in there because there is something we want." But there have been exceptions. One was Representative William Duer of New York. During the furor leading up to the Mexican-American War, Duer thundered, "If you wish this plunder, this dismemberment of a sister republic, let us stand forth like conquerors and plainly declare our purposes…. Away with mawkish morality, with this desecration of religion, with this cant about Manifest Destiny, a divine mission, a warrant from the Most High, to civilize, Christianize and democratize our sister republic at the mouth of a cannon!" Racism and religious chauvinism are the primary components of Manifest Destiny, but they obscure the true objective: plunder.

The affirmative’s view of cultures as separate is unethicalRogers Smith, Professor of Political Science at University of Pennsylvania and PhD Harvard University, 2003, “Stories Of Peoplehood, The Politics and Morals of Political Membership”, p. 168If so, then stressing our shared identity as members of an evolving species may serve as a highly credible ethically constitutive story that can challenge particularistic accounts and foster support for novel political arrangements. Many more people may come to feel that it is no longer safe to conduct their political lives absorbed in their traditional communi ties, with disregard for outsiders , without active concern about the issues that affect the whole species and without practical collaborative efforts to confront those issues. That consciousness of shared interests has the potential to promote stronger and much more inclusive senses of trust, as people come to realize that the dangers and challenges they face in common matter more than the differences that will doubtless persist.

Only transnational political arrangements can solve the root cause of the affirmative’s harmsRogers Smith, Professor of Political Science at University of Pennsylvania and PhD Harvard University, 2003, “Stories Of Peoplehood, The Politics and Morals of Political Membership”, p. 169In the years ahead, this ethical sen sibility might foster acceptance of various sorts of transnational political arrangements to deal with problems like exploitative and wildly fluctuat ing international financial and labor markets, destructive environmental and agricultural practices, population control, and the momentous issue of human genetic modifications. These are, after all, problems that appear to need to be dealt with on a near-global scale if they are to be dealt with satisfactorily.


Deconstructing Nationalism Solves

A deconstruction of the nationalistic social sciences is a pre-requisiteUlrich Beck, Professor for Sociology at the University of Munich, and Natan Szaider, Professor at The Academic College of Tel Aviv Yaffo, 2006, “Unpacking cosmopolitanism for the social sciences: a research agenda” The British Journal of Sociology, 5.1, http://www.promusica.se/Library/Electronic%20texts/Beck_Sznaider2006.pdfThis paradigmatic de-construction and re-construction of the social sciences from a national to a cosmopolitan outlook can be understood and methodologically justified as a ‘positive problem shift’ (Lakatos 1970), a broadening of horizons for social science research making visible new realities encouraging new research programmes (Back and Lau 2005 and Beck, Banss and Lau 2003: 1–35). Against the background of cosmopolitan social science, it suddenly becomes obvious that it is neither possible to distinguish clearly between the national and the international, nor, correspondingly, to make a convincing contrast between homogeneous units. National spaces have become de-nationalized, so that the national is no longer national, just as the international is no longer international. New realities are arising: a new mapping of space and time, new co-ordinates for the social and the political are emerging which have to be theoretically and empirically researched and elaborated. This entails a re-examination of the fundamental concepts of ‘modern society’. Household, family, class, social inequality, democracy, power, state, commerce, public, community, justice, law, history, memory and politics must be released from the fetters of methodological nationalism, re-conceptualized, and empirically established within the framework of a new cosmopolitan social and political science. It would be hard to understate the scope of this task. But nevertheless it has to be taken up if the social sciences want to avoid becoming a museum of antiquated ideas.

Reconceptualization of states is the most accurate accountUlrich Beck, Professor for Sociology at the University of Munich, and Natan Szaider, Professor at The Academic College of Tel Aviv Yaffo, 2006, “Unpacking cosmopolitanism for the social sciences: a research agenda” The British Journal of Sociology, 5.1, http://www.promusica.se/Library/Electronic%20texts/Beck_Sznaider2006.pdfOne cannot even understand the re-nationalization or re-ethnification trend in Western or Eastern Europe without a cosmopolitan perspective. In this sense, the social sciences can only respond adequately to the challenge of globalization if they manage to overcome methodological nationalism and to raise empirically and theoretically fundamental questions within specialized fields of research, and thereby elaborate the foundations of a newly formulated cosmopolitan social science.

The alternative overcomes cold war geopoliticsAsif A. Siddiqi, assistant professor of history at Fordham University and member of advisory board at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, 6-2010, “Competing Technologies, National(ist) Narratives, and Universal Claims: Toward a Global History of Space Exploration” Technology and Culture, 51.2, http://etc.technologyandculture.net/2010/06/siddiqi/All of these approaches also reinforce and foster the kind of social history that has become fundamental to most histories of technology but is largely absent in the literature on spaceflight, a lacuna explicable by the fetish for nation-centered cold-war geopolitics as the central organizing framework for most histories of space exploration.






The Alternative Solves The Kritik Impacts

The alternative solves space conflictAsif A. Siddiqi, assistant professor of history at Fordham University and member of advisory board at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, 6-2010, “Competing Technologies, National(ist) Narratives, and Universal Claims: Toward a Global History of Space Exploration” Technology and Culture, 51.2, http://etc.technologyandculture.net/2010/06/siddiqi/My hope is that by deemphasizing ownership and national borders, the invisible connections and transitions of technology transfer and knowledge production will be become clear in an abundantly new way. Such an approach would inform a project encompassing the entire history of modern rocketry and space exploration, from the late nineteenth century to the present, focusing on Europe, America, Russia, and Asia. Most important, a global history of rocketry and space exploration would avoid the pitfalls of the “discursive battles” between nation-centered histories and open up the possibility to revisit older debates in the historiography of space exploration in entirely new ways.

Cosmopolitan sociology effectively overcomes nationalismGerald Delanty, Prof of Sociology at the University of Liverpool, 2006, “The cosmopolitan imagination: critical cosmopolitanism and social theory”, The British Journal of Sociology 57.1, pg. 82Cosmopolitan sociology is a means of making sense of social transformation and therefore entails an unavoidable degree of moral and political evaluation. To this extent, cosmopolitanism is a connecting strand between sociology and political discourse in society and in political theory. It has a critical role to play in opening up discursive spaces of world openness and thus in resisting both globalization and nationalism.

The creation of a cosmopolitan movement shifts global ideologyGerald Delanty, Prof of Sociology at the University of Liverpool, 2006, “The cosmopolitan imagination: critical cosmopolitanism and social theory”, The British Journal of Sociology 57.1, pg. 81The indicators of cosmopolitanism go beyond shifts in identity to wider discursive and cultural transformation. In methodological terms, cosmopolitan indicators are necessarily ones concerning socio-cultural mediation. If the cosmopolitan moment arises in the construction and emergence of new identities or forms of self-understanding, cultural frames and cultural models, then mediation is the key to it.


Individual Rejection is Key

Individual rejection transforms the character of the nationRoberta Coles, Professor of Social Science @ Maryland, 2002, “Manifest Destiny Adapted for 1990s' War Discourse: Mission and Destiny Intertwined,” pg. 83Because Manifest Destiny relies on the chosen nation story for its foundation, it is what Bulman (1991) and Paul Tillich (1933) call a "myth of origin." Such narratives call a people back to a sense of their roots, their reason for being and the responsibilities that attend those purposes. They have the ability to paint an identity and define the important features of a people as they give meaning and motivation to their actions. Because the hero in Manifest Destiny is a nation, rather than an individual, and a nation is composed of individuals, every member of the nation can contribute to (or detract from) its superior character and mission. According to Browne (1991), this speaker-hearer collaboration invites the audience in, saying, “Together we can redeem virtue.” By doing so, a rhetorical community is built, the national identity is redefined or its individual members are reminded of the nation’s superior character, and each member can gain some sense of personal significance from being a part of this nation and contributing to its mission.

The alternative opens up broader questioning of nationalismJill Stuart, Fellow in Global Politics @ London School of Economics, 2009, “Unbundling sovereignty, territory and the state in outer space Two approaches,”pg. 8The reality of space exploration can be seen as another rad ical and unique issue-area in which theoretical approaches to "global" politics must be reconceived. This chapter explores the ways in which outer space poses unique challenges to conceptual and legal approaches to governance.

Intellectual orientation is a pre-requisite to policy decisionsShampa Biswas, Professor of Politics @ Whitman College, 2007, “Empire and Global Public Intellectuals: Reading Edward Said as an International Relations Theorist”, Millennium, 36(1), p. 117This is not simply a matter of scholars working for the state, but indeed a larger question of intellectual orientation. It is not uncommon for IR scholars to feel the need to formulate their scholarly conclusions in terms of its relevance for global politics, where ‘relevance’ is measured entirely in terms of policy wisdom. Edward Said’s searing indictment of US intellectuals – policy-experts and Middle East experts - in the context of the first Gulf War is certainly even more resonant in the contemporary context preceding and following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The space for a critical appraisal of the motivations and conduct of this war has been considerably diminished by the expertise-framed national debate wherein certain kinds of ethical questions irreducible to formulaic ‘for or against’ and ‘costs and benefits’ analysis can simply not be raised. In effect, what Said argues for, and IR scholars need to pay particular heed to, is an understanding of ‘intellectual relevance’ that is larger and more worthwhile, that is about the posing of critical, historical, ethical and perhaps unanswerable questions rather than the offering of recipes and solutions, that is about politics (rather than techno-expertise) in the most fundamental and important senses of the vocation.


Epistemology Is Key

Their evidence is epistemologically flawed because it’s informed by nationalismAsif A. Siddiqi, assistant professor of history at Fordham University and member of advisory board at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, 6-2010, “Competing Technologies, National(ist) Narratives, and Universal Claims: Toward a Global History of Space Exploration” Technology and Culture, 51.2, http://etc.technologyandculture.net/2010/06/siddiqi/On the basis of the belief that better education in Soviet Russia contributed to Sputnik, federal money poured into the American higher education system, making it a key component in the battles of the cold war. These policies—the creation of new government agencies, further increases in state-sponsored R&D, and expansion and restructuring of higher education—had enormous influence on America’s political, social, and cultural trajectory during the cold war.8In the years after Sputnik, space exploration assumed a critical role in the projection of American identity both at home and abroad.

Space literature is entirely founded on nationalismAsif A. Siddiqi, assistant professor of history at Fordham University and member of advisory board at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, 6-2010, “Competing Technologies, National(ist) Narratives, and Universal Claims: Toward a Global History of Space Exploration” Technology and Culture, 51.2, http://etc.technologyandculture.net/2010/06/siddiqi/The rhetoric of politicians, media commentators, and NASA spokespersons helped to mobilize support for one of the most expensive civilian endeavors in the history of the nation, the Apollo Moon landing. Rieger’s comment about Britain and Germany in the early twentieth century, that “playing up technology’s national significance . . . engendered understandings that overcame public resistance to new artifacts and instead highlighted their promise and led . . . laypersons to embrace advances” anticipates the rhetoric surrounding Apollo. Mark E. Byrnes, in his Politics and Space: Image Making by NASA, has traced the effects of NASA’s image-building policy on popular perceptions of the organization as well as broader support for the cause of space travel.10 He argues that NASA primarily used three images—nationalism, romanticism, and pragmatism—to create and consolidate political support across the nation for its major endeavors in space.

This means the permutation doesn’t have a net-benefitAsif A. Siddiqi, assistant professor of history at Fordham University and member of advisory board at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, 6-2010, “Competing Technologies, National(ist) Narratives, and Universal Claims: Toward a Global History of Space Exploration” Technology and Culture, 51.2, http://etc.technologyandculture.net/2010/06/siddiqi/Deconstructing this relationship has become more urgent as a flotilla of non-Western nations are becoming more visible in the endeavor of space exploration, rendering the old cold-war dynamic—both in reality and in memorialization—less effective as an explanatory tool for understanding the process of space exploration. Deterministic explanations from the cold war often rely on simplistic binary and oppositional divisions; although not trivial, these display their limitations as tools to fully explain the complexities of space exploration both during and after the cold war.


Representations Framework Is Key

Representations are a necessary starting pointAsif A. Siddiqi, assistant professor of history at Fordham University and member of advisory board at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, 6-2010, “Competing Technologies, National(ist) Narratives, and Universal Claims: Toward a Global History of Space Exploration” Technology and Culture, 51.2, http://etc.technologyandculture.net/2010/06/siddiqi/It has, in fact, become impossible to think of space exploration without allusion to the halcyon days of the 1960s and equally inconceivable for historians to interpret the act of space travel without the space race hovering over the very language that we use. My goal in this essay is to offer some thoughts on the way in which the relationship between national identity and space exploration has affected our discipline’s approach to the history of spaceflight—in fact, has been fundamental to it. This discussion is intended to be a starting point to revisit both the history and the historiography of space exploration and suggest some new avenues of investigation that move beyond formulations rooted in the cold-war space race.

Their demand for policy-only debate is a new link – only used to justify exceptionalismLee Jones, Lecturer in International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London, 9-2009, “International Relations scholarship and the tyranny of ‘policy relevance’,” Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies Issue 1, pg. 7As an imperative , however, it creates all sorts of distortions that are injurious to academic freedom. It encourages academics to study certain things, in certain ways, with certain outcomes and certain ways of disseminating one’s findings. This ‘encouragement’ is more or less coercive, backed as it is by the allure of large research grants which advance one’s institution and personal career, versus the threat of a fate as an entirely marginal scholar incapable of attracting research funding – a nowadays a standard criteria for academic employment and promotion. Furthermore, those funding ‘policy-relevant’ research already have predefined notions of what is ‘relevant’. This means both that academics risk being drawn into policy-based evidence-making, rather than its much-vaunted opposite, and that academics will tend to be selected by the policy world based on whether they will reflect, endorse and legitimise the overall interests and ideologies that underpin the prevailing order.

Forcing policy-relevance leads to bad educationLee Jones, Lecturer in International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London, 9-2009, “International Relations scholarship and the tyranny of ‘policy relevance’,” Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies Issue 1, pg. 8Critical theories, by contrast, seek to explain why the system exists in the first place and what could be done to transform it. What unifies Nye, Ikenberry Huntington, Brzezinski and Kissinger (along with the majority of IR scholars) is their problem-solving approach. Naturally, policy-makers want academics to be problemsolvers, since policies seek precisely to – well, solve problems. But this does not necessarily mean that this should be the function of the academy. Indeed, the tyranny of ‘policy relevance’ achieves its most destructive form when it becomes so dominant that it imperils the space the academy is supposed to provide to allow scholars to think about the foundations of prevailing orders in a critical, even hostile, fashion.


AT: Perm Do Both

The affirmative’s nationalistic frame permeates – prevents the escape from nationalismMaria Cook, Department of International and Comparative Labor, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, 2010, “The Advocate’s Dilemma: Framing Migrant Rights in National Settings,” Studies in Social Justice Volume 4, Issue 2, pg. 145I have argued here that given the global occurrence of migration and its links to globalization, it makes sense for migrant advocates to base their campaigns and actions on a “global frame”: human rights and international law and standards applied to migrants. Yet because national legislation, national judicial systems, and national sovereignty still play a central role in determining immigration policy, international human rights law is a limited instrument for use in seeking rights for unauthorized migrants. In most restrictive immigration policy environments, moreover, arguments about economics, security, and law articulated within a national framework tend to prevail. Advocates employing a global frame may find themselves talking past the mass publics they want to influence and unable to counter their opponents effectively. Yet the advocates’ dilemma is that those who tackle these arguments head on may find themselves trapped within a national paradigm and unable to lay the discursive groundwork for a significant shift in the way the public views unauthorized migrants.

If we win a link, it prevents permutation solvencyUlrich Beck, Professor of sociology at Munich's Ludwig-Maximilian University and the London School of Economics, 1-2000, “The cosmopolitan perspective: sociology of the second age of modernity,” British Journal of Sociology 51.1, pg. 72It is certainly not useful to talk about a cosmopolitan society, if the process of cosmopolitanization has begun and is continuing exclusively on an objective level, but is at the same time being (actively) masked by a dominant national project and a national self definition of society – in the political parties, in the government, in the media, in the educational system etc. It follows that it is only meaningful to talk of cosmopolitanization, once this process is not only objectively indicated, but is also reflexively known, commented on and institutionalized. But that in turn means, only through the contrast and conflict between cosmopolitan and national projects does the former become real and effective.

The permutation foot-notes the criticismJames Der Derian, Professor of Political Science @ University of Massachusetts, 1995, “International Theory: Critical Investigations,” p. 374But what happens - as seems to be the case to this observer - when the 'we' fragments, 'realism' takes on prefixes and goes plural, the meaning of meaning itself is up for grabs? A stop-gap solution is to supplement the definitional gambit with a facile gesture. The IR theorist, mindful of a creeping pluralism, will note the 'essentially contested' nature of realism - duly backed up with a footnote to W. B. Gallie or W E. Connolly - and then get down to business as usual, that is, using realism as the best language to reflect a self-same phenomenon. This amounts to an intellectual plea of nolo-contendere: in exchange for not contesting the charge that the meaning of realism is contestable, the IR 'perp' gets off easy, to then turn around and commit worse epistemological crimes.


AT: Multilateralism Link Turn

Their turn is a new link – it says multilateralism is only acceptable if it satisfies US interestsHeather R Crooks, Air Force Captain, 6-2009, “Transatlantic Relations: The role of Nationalism in Multinational Space Cooperation,” http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA501117&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdfAlmost the entire section on international cooperation is based on U.S. national security interests and the promotion of its own systems. The U.S.’s concern for national security is evident throughout the entire document. One principle mentions that the U.S. supports the peaceful use of outer space by all nations; however, the next principle states that the U.S. “rejects any limitations on the fundamental right of the United States to operate in and acquire data from space.” Note that the principle discusses the fundamental right of the United States, not all countries as mentioned in the previous principle.

Traditional conceptions of space cooperation reinforce nationalismJill Stuart, Fellow in Global Politics @ London School of Economics, 2009, “Unbundling sovereignty, territory and the state in outer space Two approaches” From Securing Outer Space, pg. 7The ISS regime was led in its creation by a dominant actor (the US), based on that actor's rational calculations of basic interests. Those interests included sreading the costs of the project, consolidating cooperation amongst the free (i.e. non Soviet-bloc) world, and projecting the US as a leader in space see for example Sadeh 2004; Johnson-Freese 1990). Less powerful states joined the programme for the relative benefits it would provide . The unbundling of sovereignty and territory on the station, outlined above, was a way to preserve strategic interests by keeping the station atomistic (by avoiding political interdependence through blending ownership). The regime itself did not challenge the sovereign decision making abilities of the US, in that it maintained final say in decisions (in the initial IGA, prior to Russia joining; Article 7, IGA 1988).

The affirmative’s representations undercut the multilateral approachRob Chambers, M.S., Strategic Intelligence, Joint Military Intelligence College, Major in the USAF, 2009, “China’s Space Program: A New Tool for PRC ‘soft power’ in International Relations,” Naval Postgraduate School, pg. 82It is time for America to shift permanently away from hegemonic ambitions in space, dismantle the idea of space-based weapons and space control, and instead turn towards promoting space cooperation through peaceful projects that can truly serve mankind and preserve the heritage of space as a sanctuary. 332 We no longer have a monopoly on space technology, and our lead is precariously slipping away in commercial space. If Washington avoids inflammatory rhetoric and demonstrates a sincere willingness to usher in a new era of space cooperation, taking care to build in adequate verification and compliance mechanisms, the rest of the world will follow our lead . For the sake of our own interests and long-term security, sitting on the sidelines is not an option.




AT: Realism Inevitable

Traditional conceptions of IR are non-sense in spaceJill Stuart, Fellow in Global Politics @ London School of Economics, 2009, “Unbundling sovereignty, territory and the state in outer space Two approaches,”pg. 8The different visions of outer space politics that the two theoretical approaches give exemplify how our conceptual frameworks precede our interpretation of events occurring in outer space -that is, analysis of outer space politics is in par dependent on our conceptual frameworks and worldviews developed in regards to wider world politics. Yet I also argue that the unique opportunities and events that outer space makes available to humans, and the unconventional political, legal and cognitive developments those opportunities and events inspire, is also influencing political practice and conceptualizations in wider politics.

The alternative can change outerspace politicsJill Stuart, Fellow in Global Politics @ London School of Economics, 2009, “Unbundling sovereignty, territory and the state in outer space Two approaches,”pg. 8A major exogenous event or technological development could significantly change outer space politics, and indeed something like an asteroid would then also influence world politics more broadly conceived. However, barring such a major event, the relationship between sovereign practice in outer space and our understanding of that sovereignty are likely to continually and dialectically re-constitute each other, as outer space continues to pose unique governance and conceptual challenges. Power political trends, such as indicated by George W. Bush's space control policy, could in fact reinforce realpolitik, although likely still in the context of increased globalization and diversification of actors in world politics.

Their evidence is stuck in cold war social scienceThomas Walker, Professor of Political Science, and Jeffrey Morton, Professor of Law, 2005, “Re-Assessing the "Power of Power Politics" Thesis: Is Realism Still Dominant?,” Int’l Studies Review, 7.2, pg. 122But the times have changed. With the end of the Cold War, the expansion of democracy, and the increasing importance of global trade and international organizations, the world is no longer neatly suited to realist concerns. All these phenomena demand scholarly explanation that realist theory is unable to provide. The discipline's drift away from Cold War concerns regarding power balances and realpolitik is reflected in the shifting theoretical orientations of the field's data-based studies.


AT: Realism Good

Nothing is “inevitable” – enmity and war only exist as a result of identity-difference framingMichael Shapiro, Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii, 2007, “The New Violent Cartography”, Security Dialogue, pg. 291The two primary conceptions driving my analysis require elaboration before I treat that Ford rendering. First, what is a ‘violent cartography’? In my original approach to the concept, I suggested that the bases of violent cartographies are the ‘historically developed, socially embedded interpretations of identity and space’ that constitute the frames within which enmities give rise to war-as-policy (Shapiro, 1997: ix). Violent cartographies are thus constituted as inter-articulations of geographic imaginaries and antagonisms, based on models of identity-difference.

Realism legitimates mass violenceDavid Campbell, Professor of IR, and Michael Dillon, Professor of Philosophy, 1993, “The end of philosophy and the end of international relations,” The Political Subject of Violence, pp. 17-18Violence may be the ultima ratio of politics, but it has never been the only ratio; and in a life that now has to be lived with a proliferating array of devices capable of threatening lethal global consequences it simply cannot be allowed to enjoy the practical, intellectual and moral licence once extended to it in our political discourses . Neither is there anything in the history of the technology of political violence to warrant the claim that the political rationalisation of violence diminishes its sway. Monopolistic control and attempted rational deployment of the legitimate use of force by modern political authorities has helped bring human being to the threshold of planetary survival.

Realism not only fails intellectually but encourages violent knowledge productionDavid Campbell, Professor of IR, and Michael Dillon, Professor of Philosophy, 1993, “The end of philosophy and the end of international relations,” The Political Subject of Violence, pp. 17-18Realist and neo-realist answers not only fail intellectually - in a way that would not matter very much if they did not so impoverish our political imagination - they fail most because they are not good enough practically to match our circumstances. It is not a matter of getting knowledge 'to represent reality truly' (we shall see later how modern reality has become a function of its technologies of representation), but of acquiring 'habits of action for coping with reality';" a reality which always exceeds the realist representation of it, and whose unprecedented finitudes now define the horizon of life in novel ways.


AT: Overview Effect

The overview effect is premised on nationalist exceptionalismJames Dickens, PhD in Sociology, and James Ormrod, PhD in Sociology, 2007, “Towards a Sociology of the Universe,” British Sociological Society, pg. 33Of course not all of those people growing up in late modern societies come to fantasize about space at such an early age like this, and are less single minded in their attempts to control and consume the universe, but we argue that this is nonetheless the way in which some dominant sectors of Western society relate to the universe. It is not only pro-space activists, but many well-to-do businesspeople and celebrities who are lining up to take advantage of new commercial opportunities to explore space as tourists. The promise of power over the whole universe is therefore the latest stage in the escalation of the narcissistic personality.

The overview effect ends in self-worship which reifies nationalismJames Dickens, PhD in Sociology, and James Ormrod, PhD in Sociology, 2007, “Towards a Sociology of the Universe,” British Sociological Society, pg. 33A widespread cosmic narcissism of this kind might appear to have an almost spiritual nature, but the cosmic spirituality we are witnessing here is not about becoming immortal in the purity of the heavens. Rather, it is spirituality taking the form of self-worship; further aggrandizing the atomized, self-seeking, 21st-century individual (see Heelas, 1996). Indeed, the pro-space activists we interviewed are usually opposed to those who would keep outer space uncontaminated, a couple suggesting we need to confront the pre-Copernican idea of a corrupt Earth and ideal ‘Heaven’.

The status quo solves the overview effectChris Speed, Schools of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Edinburgh College of Art, 2010, “Developing a Sense of Place with Locative Media: An “Underview Effect,” http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/leon.2010.43.2.169While the rest of us can hope to experience such an epiphany on a future domestic flight into space, locative media may hold some potential in providing us with a heightened sense of place that connects us to people and the environment around us. At the right pitch of people and geography, our connection to this network may offer us an awareness of place that is big enough to evoke a sense of being on a planet. In interpreting and communicating Rusty Schweickart's space flight experiences, White writes: I saw humanity as an organism and grasped the reality of his [Schweickart's] experience as the "eye" of humanity. I felt that, in writing it down, I was like a "neuron" firing, sending the message down the line to others [20].


Nationalism Critique Answers


Permutation Do Both

Permutation solvesGerald Delanty, Professor of Sociology, 2009, “The Cosmopolitan Imagination,” pg. 72It can be finally remarked that while there is clearly an opposition between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, there is not a fundamental division in that cosmopolitanism does not signify the end of the nation. Cosmopolitanism certainly involves a post-national conception of political community and in methodological terms an alternative to methodological nationalism. However, it should be seen as an orientation within political community and in wider terms the social world and modernity rather than specifically as an alternative to nation-states and nationalism. There is no reason why national identities cannot embody cosmopolitan forms of identity or why nation-states cannot incorporate cosmopolitan principles. Indeed, there are many examples of the mutual implication of national and cosmopolitan projects, identities and forms of political community to reject a purely dichotomous view. The national has never been entirely national, but has always been embroiled with immanent cosmopolitan orientations.

The process of the permutation works to re-conceptualize nationality as cosmopolitanGerald Delanty, Professor of Sociology, 2009, “The Cosmopolitan Imagination,” pg. 73Cosmopolitanism does not arise merely in situations of cultural diversity or taking the perspective of the Other. It is not an identity as such that can be contrasted with national identity or other kinds of identity, except in a restricted sense of the term. In this sense cosmopolitan sociology is not an alterative to all previous kinds of social theory. Critical cosmopolitanism does not take an extreme position in dismissing all that is not cosmopolitanism since cosmopolitanism is a process that comes into play when third cultural orientations are in evidence.

Cosmopolitanism can work in conjunction with nationalismGerald Delanty, Professor of Sociology, 2009, “The Cosmopolitan Imagination,” pg. 73Moreover, as used here, cosmopolitanism does not simply refer to cases or situations that are called by those involved in them cosmopolitan, although this dimension of cosmopolitan self-description is by no means irrelevant; the critical aspect of cosmopolitanism concerns the internal transformation of social and cultural phenomena through self-problematization, self-transcendence and pluralization. It is in the interplay of Self, Other and World that cosmopolitan processes come into play. Without a learning process, that is an internal cognitive transformation, it makes little sense in calling something cosmopolitan. As used here, the term refers to an immanent developmental change in the social world arising out of competing cultural models and modes of cognition. This suggests a processual conception of the social as an emergent reality formed out of re-interpretations of experience.


Our Epistemology is Correct

Our claims are accurateRon Martin, Professor of Geography, “Geography and public policy: the case of the missing agenda,” 2001, Progress in Human Geography 25, 2, http://geography.fullerton.edu/550/public%20policy.pdfAs Harvey (1974) and Leach (1974) bemoaned, in the earlier debate on geography and policy referred to above, the fear is that public policy and other social-problem orientated research simply becomes subservient to the state, and thereby serves to preserve and strengthen the status quo. Few would deny the reality of these problems, but they can also be exaggerated and too easily used as an excuse not to engage in policy research at all. Public policy research does not mean the surrender of intellectual independence and integrity. It does not mean that research becomes subservient to the particular political interests of the state. What it does mean, however, is that to be persuasive, research has to be relevant and practical and, above all, backed up by persuasive empirical investigation and clear and logical argument. Policy-makers are less able to ignore or reject policy research – even if it is highly critical of policies – if that research is well founded methodologically and empirically.

Our claims are more accurate than theirsRon Martin, Professor of Geography, “Geography and public policy: the case of the missing agenda,” 2001, Progress in Human Geography 25, 2, http://geography.fullerton.edu/550/public%20policy.pdfMuch of the research in this field has revolved either round the use of highlygeneralized ‘master notions’ (such as flexible specialization, post-Fordism, globalization, and the like), or vague and impressionistic neologisms (such as ‘learning regions’, ‘institutional thickness’, ‘untraded interdependencies’, ‘embeddedness’, ‘local regulation’, the ‘associational’ regional economy, and so on). At the same time, empirical investigation has shifted away from extensive to intensive approaches, and comprehensive empirical inquiry has given way to anecdote, single case studies and partial ‘stories’. It is difficult to translate such work into a policy context, and this is probably another reason why, in general, it has made little impact on policy debates.

Structural determinants are reflected in our claimsRon Martin, Professor of Geography, “Geography and public policy: the case of the missing agenda,” 2001, Progress in Human Geography 25, 2, http://geography.fullerton.edu/550/public%20policy.pdfThus although the new cultural left has thrown much valuable critical theoretical light on multiple identities, social marginalization and multiculturalism, the focus on difference and identity leads away from a concern with the structural determinants of sociospatial problems and inequalities. Social critique has become divorced from the critique of these systemic determinants, and extended theorization has become substituted for practical application. As Merrifield and Swyngedouw (1996: 11) argue, ‘intriguing though this stuff may be for critical scholars, it is also intrinsically dangerous in its prospective definition of political action. De-coupling social critique from its political-economic basis is not helpful for dealing with the shifting realities of (urban) life at the threshold of the new millennium’.


Deterrence Prevents Conflict

Deterrence is true and prevents the impactAmir Lupovici, Post-Doctoral Fellow at Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, 2008, “Why the Cold War Practices of Deterrence are Still Prevalent: Physical Security, Ontological Security and Strategic Discourse,” CPSA, http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2008/Lupovici.pdfIn this context, deterrence strategy and deterrence practices are better understood by the actors, and therefore the continuous avoidance of violence is more easily achieved. Furthermore, within such a context of deterrence relations, rationality is (re)defined, clarifying the appropriate practices for a rational actor, and this, in turn, reproduces this context and the actors’ identities. Therefore, the internalization of deterrence ideas helps to explain how actors may create more cooperative practices and break away from the spiral of hostility that is forced and maintained by the identities that are attached to the security dilemma, and which lead to mutual perception of the other as an aggressive enemy.

Norms of state-based deterrence prevent any escalation of their impactsAmir Lupovici, Post-Doctoral Fellow at Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, 2008, “Why the Cold War Practices of Deterrence are Still Prevalent: Physical Security, Ontological Security and Strategic Discourse,” CPSA, http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2008/Lupovici.pdfIn this respect, the norm of deterrence, the trust that is being built between the opponents, and the (mutual) constitution of their role identities may all lead to the creation of long term influences that preserve the practices of deterrence as well as the avoidance of violence. Since a basic level of trust is needed to attain ontological security, 21 the existence of it may further strengthen the practices of deterrence and the actors’ identities of deterrer and deterred actors. In this respect, I argue that for the reasons mentioned earlier, the practices of deterrence should be understood as providing both physical and ontological security, thus refuting that there is necessarily tension between them.

State based deterrence solves conflictJohn Norton Moore, Professor of Law @ UVA, 2004, “Solving the War Puzzle: Beyond the Democratic Peace,” pg. 41If major interstate war is predominantly a product of a synergy between a potential nondemocratic aggressor and an absence of effective deterrence, what is the role of the many traditional "causes" of war? Past, and many contemporary, theories of war have focused on the role of specific disputes between nations, ethnic and religious differences, arms races, poverty or social injustice, competition for resources, incidents and accidents, greed, fear, and perceptions of "honor," or many other such factors. Such factors may well play a role in motivating aggression or in serving as a means for generating fear and manipulating public opinion. The reality, however, is that while some of these may have more potential to contribute to war than others, there may well be an infinite set of motivating factors, or human wants, motivating aggression. It is not independent the existence of such motivating factors for war but rather the circumstances permitting or encouraging high risk decisions leading to war that is the key to more effectively controlling war.


Leadership in Space is Good

US space dominance is key to hegemony and morally justifiedEverett Dolman, Professor of Military Studies, 2005, Astropolitik, pg. 154It is admirable and socially encompassing. If any one state should dominate space, it ought be one with a constitutive political principle that government should be responsible and responsive to its people, tolerant and accepting of their views, and willing to extend legal and political equality to all. In other words, the United States should seize control of outer space and become the shepherd (or perhaps watchdog) for all who would venture there, for if any one state must do so, it is the most likely to establish a benign hegemony.

The alternative leads to foreign space dominance – the US is comparatively the bestEverett Dolman, Professor of Military Studies, 2005, Astropolitik, pg. 156 As the great liberal democracy of its time, the United States is preferentially endowed to guide the whole of humanity into space, to police any misuse of that realm, and to ensure an equitable division of its spoils. But if the United States were to abandon its egalitarian values, corrupted by its own power, and follow a path of aggressive expansion into the cosmos using the riches gained to dominate the peoples of the Earth, what then? Does the benign era of Pax Americana end? Perhaps, but the likelihood of that outcome depends on one’s current view of the benevolence of US hegemony and the future role of ongoing globalism. The argument here is that the checks and balances of liberal democracy make it the least likely of all potential candidates to misuse its power, and history for the most part backs the assertion. If one state is to seize control of space, as the astropolitical model suggests, there seems to be little evidence that any other nation is more suitable.

The United States is extremely powerful—it can implement harsh realist policies in space with little oppositionEverett Dolman, Professor of Military Studies, 2005, Astropolitik, pg. 153 Astropolitik gets its moniker from the old, now completely discredited German school of Geopolitik. It is meant to be a constant reminder of the inherent flaws of letting the cultural dimension (specifically hypernationalism) drive grand strategy. One should also be struck by the affinity with the doctrine of Realpolitik. This most extreme of the political realist theories makes no attempt to hide its ruthless concentration on the national interest and the cold, calculating central role of raw power in politics. It is widely criticized by those who do not have power, widely employed by those who do. Such is the case today that in space, at the very least, the United States can adopt any policy it wishes and the attitudes and reactions of the domestic public and of other states can do little to challenge it. So powerful is the United States that should it accept the harsh Realpolitik doctrine in space that the military services appear to be proposing, and given a proper explanation for employing it, there may in fact be little if any opposition to a fait accompli of total US domination in space.


Leadership in Space is Key to Motivating Policy

The international community is demanding a US lead in spaceElizabeth Newton, PhD @ UA-Huntsville, Leader @ Center for System Studies, 2011, “United States space policy and international partnership,” Space Policy, Vol. 27, pg. 78In addition, the USA’s unilateral abandonment of the Moon as a near-term destination shakes partners’ political support for their exploration plans, some of which were carefully premised on US intentions, and more than five years of collaborative development of lunar base plans. 3.3. Leadership The USA is a majority funder for many space programs and is a technology leader, two features which have provided sufficient motivation for partners to accept US leadership, even when unfortunately high-handed. It is a stunning failure of political will to lack a successor system to the retiring Space Shuttle, and so the US cedes leadership in human spaceflight with its inability to access the ISS independently, for itself or for its partners, until a new commercial capability has been demonstrated. The USA further relinquishes leadership when abandoning years of work on strategic planning and guidance, the evaluation of alternatives, and orchestration of diverse but important contributions that were manifested in the Global Exploration Strategy.

Leadership framing is key to domestic motivationSpace Studies Board, “Approaches to Future Space Cooperation and Competition in a Globalizing World: Summary of a Workshop,” 2009, National Academies Press, pg. 11209Considering the significant U.S. investment in space activities, group participants observed that the administration and Congress will want to continue referring to U.S. leadership in defining and pursuing the global space agenda. But the group also discussed steps that the United States could take to pursue its goals in a fashion that is sensitive to the interests and needs of its partners. These steps include forging high-level, long-term commitments; ensuring that the tone of U.S. space policy statements reflects a global role; and revising current export control regulations.

There is no risk of frontier enemyship in spaceDale Gray, president of Frontier Historical Consultants, 2009, “Space as a frontier - the role of human motivation,” Space Policy, pg. 82Frontiers have the reputation for generating a ‘Frontier Mentality’. This is generally thought of in terms of the American frontier mythos. The sturdy pioneer is seen as independent, self-sufficient, and highly motivated to provide a better life for his family. He is also portrayed as having little regard for any environmental devastation or for any indigenous society he might encounter. While there were no doubt pioneers with these qualities, these values reflect the unique mixing of the historic society and the realities of the resources being utilized on the frontier at that time. Further, our perception of the past is distorted by the ethics of our society and the historic, social and entertainment mediums by which the picture of the past is presented. If historic frontiers are studied in some detail, it soon becomes apparent that each has a unique set of values, ideals and mind-sets.


Countries Will Choose Not to Cooperate

International space law proves that space cooperation isn’t possibleEverett Dolman, Professor of Military Studies, 2005, Astropolitik, pg. 154The core problem in international space law is that the practical effect of collectivizing space has been counter to its intended purpose of encouraging the development of outer space. Indeed, it would seem to have had precisely the opposite effect. The reason is that the treaty solved an entirely speculative collective action problem, a ‘tragedy of the commons’ in outer space, in the belief that common pool resources were wasted in the competitive scramble of states to claim sovereignty over the new frontier. The treaty may actually have resulted in a collective inaction problem as states failed to invest in the development of space because an important incentive for its development had been eliminated. The argument here is that in rendering space and all celestial bodies res communis rather than res nullius, and thus eliminating them as proper objects for which states may compete, the treaty dramatically reduced the impetus for the development of outer space.

Space sovereignty is goodEverett Dolman, Professor of Military Studies, 2005, Astropolitik, pg. 154Having been deprived of the possibility of assuming sovereign possession of new territory discovered and claimable on celestial bodies and in space, states did the same thing that individuals and firms do when domestic law deprives them of the possibility of assuming legal possession of real estate. They rationally choose not to make investments that would lead to its development. In the absence of some immediate political return in the form of new national territory, the attractions of political, economic, and social returns in the near term from investment in or consumption by states are likely to be underwhelming. The perverse consequence of the OST was the inducement of individually rational behavior by decisionmakers in the few spacefaring states with the technology and fiscal resources to undertake the development of outer space to not do so. This deprives all of humanity much less all states of the long-term benefits of the development of outer space. By collectivizing outer space, the OST vested legal rights in all states that they would not or could not exercise. That spacefaring states would not is the result of disincentives. The actual tragedy of the commons is that the effort to achieve collective action resulted in collective inaction.

Cooperation in space is impossibleRoger D. Blandford, Chair, Committee for a Decadal Survey of Astronomy and Astrophysics National Research Council, 2010, “New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics,” New Worlds, pg. 83-4Traditional international partnerships, in which two or more national partners collaborate in the construction, operation, and management of a facility, also carry with them inherent disadvantages and overheads. The involvement of multiple organizations inevitably increases the complexity of decision making and management, which translates into a significant overhead in project costs.


Realism Inevitable

Realism is an accurate description of international relationsYuan-Kang Wang, Professor of Diplomacy @ Chengchi University, 2004, “Offensive Realism and the Rise of China,” Issues and Studies, 40.1, pg. 34Contrary to the stance articulated in "Realism, Revisionism, and the Great Powers," I argue that realism does a reasonably good job in explaining not only Western but also Asian experience. Although a large literature has developed on the Western experience, few international relations scholars take Asia as their empirical focus. In this article I present evidence from Chinese history to support my claim that realism can be fruitfully applied to Asia. Although the Asian state system existed separately from the European one throughout most of history, Asian states— notably China— behaved according to the dictates of realism. Imperial China placed a high premium on the utility of force and looked for opportunities to maximize China's relative power. China adopted a more offensive posture as its power grew and shifted to a more defensive one as its power declined.

Realism is the best explanation we’ve got for international relationsYuan-Kang Wang, Professor of Diplomacy @ Chengchi University, 2004, “Offensive Realism and the Rise of China,” Issues and Studies, 40.1, pg. 34There seems to be a tendency in "Realism, Revisionism, and the Great Powers" to misrepresent realism and set up straw men. Realism does not purport to explain everything or predict every possible state behavior; nor do realists insist that states must not violate realist prescriptions. Both Waltz and Mearsheimer have acknowledged the existence of anomalies. Chan asserts that the fact that Germany and Japan depend on the United States for their defense "does not seem to suggest an enigma" for realists. In a 2000 article in International Security, Waltz acknowledges that Japan's postwar behavior is "a structural anomaly" but stresses that such a situation is difficult to sustain over time "when external conditions press firmly enough." Waltz alerts us to Japan's increasing concerns over China and its aspiration to a larger international role. Mearsheimer also acknowledges that there will be anomalies that offensive realism cannot explain and that states might concede power "for realist reasons."

Realism isn’t exclusive with cosmopolitanismRobert Schuett, PhD in the philosophy of political realism in international relations, Research Fellow in the School of Government and International Affairs, University of Durham, 2011, “Peace through Transformation? Political Realism and the Progressivism of National Security,” pg. 27Such a transformation of an anarchical system of sovereign states into a unified, monistic world-state is deemed possible (and desired), but Realism warns that we must never lose sight of the dangerous dynamics of nationalism and nationalistic universalism; this is where political anthropology becomes significant again, in the positive and negative. It is, however, false to accuse Realism of an intrinsic nationalistic, organicist conservative bias. To be sure, Realism emphasises and endorses the concepts of national interest and national security. Yet, perhaps an irony in light of much criticism, Morgenthau’s defence and support of a foreign policy of national security is imbued with the motive of transcending the national towards the global, the world-state.


Exploitation of Space is Good

Environmental concerns should not extend to spaceJacob Huebert, Professor of Law, and Walter Block, Professor of Economics, 2008, “Environmentalists in Outer Space,” J H Huebert, http://jhhuebert.com/articles/environmentalists-in-outer-space/Save the earth! That’s been the mantra of environmentalists for decades. But now they want more. They not only want to tell us what we can do on the earth, but also what we can do off the earth, in outer space. Yes, statist environmentalists are already concerned about the alleged threat to the outer-space environment posed by humanity. Humans have already defiled the earth, they say, so why should we be allowed to do it to the rest of the universe? We find their proposed environmental programs for outer space wholly unjustified.

There is no such thing as a pristine space environmentJacob Huebert, Professor of Law, and Walter Block, Professor of Economics, 2008, “Environmentalists in Outer Space,” J H Huebert, http://jhhuebert.com/articles/environmentalists-in-outer-space/To speak of a “pristine” outer-space environment is a rather strange thing to do, given how utterly unpleasant the rest of the universe appears to be. Mercury, for example, has no atmosphere, and portions of its surface become hot enough to melt tin, while others remain cold enough to keep ice from crashed comets perpetually frozen—with little remotely pleasant in between. Venus is even worse. Its atmosphere is almost pure carbon dioxide, complemented by thick clouds of something like battery acid. Its atmospheric pressure is 92 times greater than earth’s, so any visiting astronaut in a normal spacesuit would be crushed instantly. The mean surface temperature is 480 degrees Celsius. Earth’s moon is relatively less hateful, but it has no atmosphere, of course, and has never supported liquid water, let alone life. Mars is dead, too.

The plan solves terrestrial environmental concernsJacob Huebert, Professor of Law, and Walter Block, Professor of Economics, 2008, “Environmentalists in Outer Space,” J H Huebert, http://jhhuebert.com/articles/environmentalists-in-outer-space/Only governmental intervention (say, stripping individuals of property rights when something of scientific interest is found on their property) is likely to cause incentives to run in any other direction. Space environmentalism lacks any justification, and its only philosophical foundation is a most extreme form of environmentalism to which very few people seriously subscribe. For the good of the human race, and because it is just, private parties should be free to use space for whatever human purposes they see fit within the limits of private property rights.


US Approach to Space is Ethical

Space industrialization is a moral approach to sustaining humanityLee Johnson, NASA Physicist, Steve Matloff, PhD in Applied Science, and C Bangs, Visual artist, 2009, “Paradise Regained: The Regreening of the Earth,” pg. xivChapter 1: Space Utilization: A Moral Imperative: It is in this chapter that we will put forth a moral concept on which this book is based. It is a concept that should have nearly niversal appeal and should guide much of our decision making regarding both space and environmental policies. Simply stated, life is good. The converse is also a moral assertion: that which leads to non-life is evil. Those who seek to preserve life, human and nonhuman, are acting in a morally superior manner compared to those who seek to diminish or harm life. We believe the moral decision that life on Earth is good drives those in the modern environmental movement to their activism. It is this same moral decision that motivates many space enthusiasts, activists, and professionals. We discuss why space industrialization and utilization is a viable, long-term, moral solution to our environmental problems.

Human expansion and use of space is a moral requirementLee Johnson, NASA Physicist, Steve Matloff, PhD in Applied Science, and C Bangs, Visual artist, 2009, “Paradise Regained: The Regreening of the Earth,” pg. xivIn fact, the argument can be made that by expanding the realm of human activity to space, including all the processes and products that on Earth would be called pollution and pollutants, we will be creating new places for life to exist and thrive. Such expansion would be a thoroughly positive moral choice. Our industrial plants will have to have breathable air and drinkable water, they will have to have artificial protection from solar radiation in all its forms, and they will have to regulate the temperature so that human life can survive and thrive.

Quick space development increases value to lifeLee Johnson, NASA Physicist, Steve Matloff, PhD in Applied Science, and C Bangs, Visual artist, 2009, “Paradise Regained: The Regreening of the Earth,” pg. 166We will be creating "green" ecosystems from desert, and the inevitable by-products of our civilization, the pollutants, will not harm any ecosystem in any way. We should not be profligate and wasteful by any means. Our explorers and industrialists will not want to waste anything that has potential use, because it simply will be too expensive to do so. Recycling should be the norm and only after all other options are exhausted should we discard our waste into the space environment. We have a moral obligation to develop space resources and to foster space industrialization. To not do so is ultimately anti-life and an immoral act of omission.


Space Frontierism is Good

Sovereignty in space encourages positive terrestrial relationshipsLee Johnson, NASA Physicist, Steve Matloff, PhD in Applied Science, and C Bangs, Visual artist, 2009, “Paradise Regained: The Regreening of the Earth,” pg. 166As humans travel once again to the moon (and other solar-system bodies), space mission planners will learn a great deal more about this radiation source. As we learn how to explore space, we will learn more about how to improve life on Earth. From taking the technologies developed to purify water on the International Space Station and adapting them for use in terrestrial water purification systems to the new technologies for capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide, the tools we will need for space development are increasingly becoming the same tools we need here on Earth.

Space sovereignty encourages cooperationYasuhito Fukushima, Fellow @ the National Institute for Defense Studies, 2011, “An Asian perspective on the new US space policy: The emphasis on international cooperation and its relevance to Asia,” Vol. 27, Space Policy, pg. 72Furthermore, while space is becoming a more competitive domain where other nations are increasing their presence, the USA seems to be aiming to shape the direction of global space activities in its favor and to expand its market opportunities through cooperation with other nations. In the case of space-based PNT, the new NSP stipulates that, for the purpose of maintaining US leadership in this area, the country shall “engage with foreign GNSS providers to encourage compatibility and interoperability, promote transparency in civil service provision, and enable market access for US industry.” Another reason the USA is in need of cooperation has something to do with the fact that outer space is a highly interdependent domain.

Obama’s policy encourages space cosmopolitanismYasuhito Fukushima, Fellow @ the National Institute for Defense Studies, 2011, “An Asian perspective on the new US space policy: The emphasis on international cooperation and its relevance to Asia,” Vol. 27, Space Policy, pg. 72The Obama NSP clearly recognizes that international cooperation is vital in addressing these challenges. It states that not only the USA but other countries also share the responsibility and “calls on all nations to work together to adopt approaches for responsible activity in space.” Also, the section on international cooperation in the inter-sectoral guidelines specifies that the USA will pursue bilateral and multilateral TCBMs “to encourage responsible actions in, and the peaceful use of, space.” Now it is increasingly important for the USA to go beyond its traditional cooperation with allies and partners, and to expand cooperation with virtually all nations. Thus, the Obama administration sees international cooperation as a “key cornerstone” of its NSP not only to take advantage of growing opportunities, but also to maintain both US primacy in space, and the safety and security of space. For the USA now, international cooperation has been evolving from “nice to do” to “must do” status.

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