T-DEVELOPMENT (200) A.

The word of in the rez means that exploration or development happens relating to space, not purely in space Bockstiegel 95Ph D., Director of the Institute of Air and Space Law, Chair Space Law Committee of the
International Law Association; Chair of Council of the National German Space Agency
(Dr. Karl-Heinz, 1995, Research and invention in outer space: liability and intellectual property rights pg 4.)

The official title of the Outer Space Treaty (OST) mentions both exploration and use of outer space as the two activities of States which one has to take into account and which are therefore covered by the Outer Space Treaty. The same pair of terms appears again in the Preamble as well as further articles such as Article I and Article III of the Treaty. Other articles and other space treaties either take up only one of these two terms or use a general terms such as activities in outer space (Art. VI, OST) or generally deal with objects launched into outer space (Art. VII, Art. VIII, OST and the Registration Convention) or space objects (Liability Convention) or finally activities of States on the Moon and other celestial bodies (Moon Treaty). At first sight the distinction between exploration and use may seem sufficiently clear. Indeed in connection with most space activities there may be little doubt which of these two terms is applicable. First doubts appear, however, because the Outer Space Treaty speaks of exploration of outer space. This wording could be interpreted to mean that space must be the object of exploration. The consequence would be that the great part of research which has to take place in space in view of the specific physical conditions there, but which has as its object specific materials, would not be covered and might only be considered as use of space.

B. Space is beyond the earths atmosphereMerriam websters dictionary

Merriam-Webster http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/space 5: the region beyond the earth's atmosphere or beyond the solar system

C. Creating, clarifying, or expanding a program is not the development of space. You literally include a different technology in a pre-existing nasa mission D. Vote neg even if we overlimit-development sets the topic up for explosion, we should define the topic as a development OF space rather than space development-its key to grammatical precision which is the key internal to predictability-linguistic clarity is a realworld skill and clear limits is key to fair, on-topic debates E. Effects topicality is bad, its arbitrary and thus destroys predictability-snowballing topic explosion causes shallow debates-you must hold the line to set a precedent for acceptable aff choices

SECURITY K (539) A. The Total Solution The rhetoric of environmental catastrophe creates the illusion of a perpetual apocalypse treating the environment as a monolithic 'problem' to be 'fixed' cedes the political and causes policy failure Buell '3Prof English at Cornell (Frederick, "From Apocalypse to Way of Life")
Elaborating crisis is thus not only hard to do but can also perhaps never really be done. Worse, even an actual occurrence of crisis, not just an elaboration of its imminence, is no guarantee that people will fall in line with the analyses and prescriptions of environmentalists. Environmental crisis, as Ulrich Beck has argued, is uniquely susceptible to social construction, and while an actual crisis, like Samuel Johnson's hanging, can indeed concentrate the mind wonderfully, it can concentrate it on the wrong target. Revenge against an outgroup can easily substitute for remedy to ecological crisis-especially given the political machinery devoted to obscuring problems and displacing blame described in Chapter 1. Looked at critically then, crisis discourse thus suffers from a number of liabilities. First, it seems to have become a political liability almost as much as an asset. It calls up a fierce and effective opposition with its predictions; worse, its more specific predictions are all too vulnerable to refutation by events. It also exposes environmentalists to being called grim doomsters and antilife Puritan extremists. Further, concern with crisis has all too often tempted people to try to find a total solution to the problems involved a phrase that, as an astute, analyst of the limitations of crisis discourse, John Barry, puts it, is all too reminiscent of the Third Reichs infamous final solution. A total crisis of society environmental crisis at its gravest threatens to translate despair into inhumanist authoritarianism; more often, however, it helps keep merely dysfunctional authority in place. It thus leads, Barry suggests, to the belief that only elite-and expert-led solutions are possible. At the same time it depoliticizes people, inducing them to accept their impotence as individuals; this is something that has made many people today feel, ironically and/or passively, that since it makes no difference at all what any individual does on his or her own, one might as well go along with it. Yet another pitfall for the full and sustained elaboration of environmental crisis is, though least discussed, perhaps the most deeply ironic. A problem with deep cultural and psychological as well as social effects, it is embodied in a startlingly simple proposition: the worse one feels environmental crisis is, the ore one is tempted to turn ones back on the environment. This means, preeminently, turning ones back on nature on traditions of nature feeling, traditions of knowledge about nature (ones that range from organic farming techniques to the different departments of ecological science), and traditions of nature-based activism. If nature is thoroughly wrecked these days, people need to delink from nature and live in postnature a conclusion that, as the next chapter shows, many in U.S. society drew at the end of the millennium. Explorations of how deeply nature has been wounded and how intensely vulnerable to and dependent on human actions it is can thus lead, ironically, to further indifference to nature-based environmental issues, not greater concern with them.

Technological fixes make environmental problems worse the plan legitimizes destruction of nature by framing humans as the orderers of the natural world Katz 2K Assoc. Prof Philosophy and director of Science, Technology, and Society Program @ New Jersey Tech (Eric, Nature as Subject: Human Obligation and Natural Community)
Even more important, the question arises whether or not Nature can heal these wounds of human oppression. Consider the reverse process, the human attempt to heal the wounds of Nature. We often tend to clean up natural areas polluted or damaged by human activity, such as the Alaskan coast harmed by the Exxon Valdez oil spill. But we also attempt to improve natural areas dramatically altered by natural events, such as a forest damaged by a massive brush fire, or a beach suffering severe natural erosion. In most of these kinds of cases, human science and technology are capable of making a significant change in the appearance and processes of the natural area. Forests can be replanted, oil is removed from the surface of bays and estuaries, sand and dune vegetation replenish a beach. But are these activities the healing of Nature? Has human activityscience and technologyrestored Nature to a healthy state? No. When humans modify a natural area they create an artifact, a product of human labor and human design. 12 This restored natural area may resemble a wild and unmodified natural system, but it is, in actuality, a product of human thought, the result of human desires and interests. All humanly created artifacts are manifestations of human interestsfrom computer screens to rice pudding. An ecosystem restored by human activity may appear to be in a different categoryit may appear to be an autonomous living system uncontrolled by human thoughtbut it nonetheless exhibits characteristics of human design and intentionality: it is created to meet human interests, to satisfy human desires, and to maximize human good. Consider again my examples of human attempts to heal damaged natural areas. A forest is replanted to correct the damage of a fire because humans want the benefits of the forestwhether these be timber, a habitat for wildlife, or protection of a watershed. The replanting of the forest by humans is different from a natural re-growth of the forest vegetation, which would take much longer. The forest is replanted because humans want the beneficial results of the mature forest in a shorter time. Similarly, the eroded beach is replenishedwith sand 2

pumped from the ocean floor several miles offshorebecause the human community does not want to maintain the natural status of the beach. The eroded beach threatens oceanfront homes and recreational beaches. Humanity prefers to restore the human benefits of a fully protected beach. The restored beach will resemble the original, but it will be the product of human technology, a humanly designed artifact for the promotion of human interests. After these actions of human restoration and modification, what emerges is a Nature with a different character than the original. This is an ontological difference, a difference in the essential qualities of the restored area. A beach that is replenished by human technology possesses a different essence than a beach created by natural forces such as wind and tides. A savanna replanted from wildflower seeds and weeds collected by human hands has a different essence than grassland that develops on its own. The source of these new areas is different manmade, technological, artificial. The restored Nature is not really Nature at all. A Nature healed by human action is thus not Nature. As an artifact, it is designed to meet human purposes and needsperhaps even the need for areas that look like a pristine, untouched Nature. In using our scientific and technological knowledge to restore natural areas, we actually practice another form of domination. We use our power to mold the natural world into a shape that is more amenable to our desires. We oppress the natural processes that function independent of human power; we prevent the autonomous development of the natural world. To believe that we heal or restore the natural world by the exercise of our technological power is, at best, a selfdeception and, at worst, a rationalization for the continued degradation of Nature for if we can heal the damage we inflict we will face no limits to our activities. This conclusion has serious implications for the idea that Nature can repair human destruction, that Nature can somehow heal the evil that humans perpetuate on the earth. Just as a restored human landscape has a different causal history than the original natural system, the reemergence of Nature in a place of human genocide and destruction is based on a series of human events that cannot be erased. The natural vegetation that covers the mass grave in the Warsaw cemetery is not the same as the vegetation that would have grown there if the mass grave had never been dug. The grass and trees in the cemetery have a different cause, a different history, that is inextricably linked to the history of the Holocaust. The grassy field in the Majdanek parade ground does not cover and heal the mud and desolation of the death campit rather grows from the dirt and ashes of the site's victims. For anyone who has an understanding of the Holocaust, of the innumerable evils heaped upon an oppressed people by the Nazi regime, the richness of Nature cannot obliterate nor heal the horror. In this essay I question the environmentalists' concern for the restoration of nature and argue against the optimistic view that humanity has the obligation and ability to repair or reconstruct damaged natural systems. This conception of environmental policy and environmental ethics is based on a misperception of natural reality and a misguided understanding of the human place in the natural environment. On a simple level, it is the same kind of "technological fix" that has engendered the environmental crisis. Human science and technology will fix, repair, and improve natural processes. means that the climate policy of most of the world's leading industrial nations is based on a total lie. According to the international energy Agency it will cost the world $45trillion to deal with AGW. Britain is committed to spending a whopping 18billion a year combatting the effects of climate change. Most of this will go on attempting to reduce CO2 - a gas which Spencer says is not merely harmless but positively beneficial. "Instead of asking 'By how much should we cut back our CO2 emissions?' we should ask 'is there any compelling reason to reduce CO2 emissions at all?'," says Spencer, who believes, "More atmospheric carbon dioxide might be good for life on earth." This doesn't mean that Spencer is a global warming "denier". In fact all the evidence tells him that temperature

B. Space Bombs (163) Their framing of asteroids as a natural inevitable enemy turns everything into a possible threat and strengthens the space defense industry natural technological progression will solve the impact of asteroids for future generations Mellor '7Lecturer in Science Communication in the Humanities Department at Imperial College London
(Felicity, Colliding Worlds: Asteroid Research and Legitimization of War in Space, Sagepub, Social Studies of Science, 499(37)) The 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: 21617) 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 humancentredness to events that, once the narratives had been evoked, could not easily be suppressed. Despite their attempts to distance themselves from the weapons scientists, the civilian scientists experienced a narrative imperative that drew them towards the same technologized ends as those promoting SDI. A sense of narrative agency was evoked even in texts that were not primarily narratival. Crucially, asteroids were no longer seen as 3

signifiers of the mathematically exacting Newtonian system, the distant objects moving through empty backdrop of space. Rather, they were configured as proximate beasts, acting subjects that could turn against humanity at any moment. Thus in their many popular books on the subject, the scientists described asteroids as belonging to a menagerie or a cosmic zoo (Steel, 2000a: 120); they were menacing (Kring, 2000: 171) and had teeth (Clube & Napier, 1990: 154); they were global killers (Lewis, 1997: 209) that could unleash ferocious assaults (Steel, 1995: 247) on the Earth; they were the enemy (Steel, 2000a: 153). Likewise, in their paper in Nature, Chapman & Morrison (1994: 33) stated that Earth resides in a swarm of asteroids. The construction of asteroids as the enemy was accompanied by a range of other militaristic metaphors. In the popular books, asteroids became missiles, pieces of ordnance or stealth weapons (Lewis, 1997: 37), which bombard the Earth with a death-dealing fusillade (Clube & Napier, 1990: 7). In a technical paper, too, they were construed as astral assailant[s] (Simonenko et al., 1994: 929). Where the military and the politicians talked of rogue states, 27 the scientists talked of rogue asteroids (Steel, 1995; Ailor, 2004: 3). This analogy was further reinforced by the construction of scenarios in which a small impact might be mistaken for the detonation of a nuclear warhead. One technical paper speculated on what would have happened during the first Gulf War if an atmospheric explosion that had been caused by a meteor burning up over the Pacific had actually occurred over Baghdad or Israel (Tagliaferri et al., 1994). The authors suggested that such an event would have been mistaken for a missile detonation by the opposing state. In such scenarios, the actions of interplanetary bodies were not just compared with those of rogue states but came to be identified with them. With the swarming asteroids filling space, space itself was also resignified. What had been an abstract mathematical space became a narrative place, the location where particular and contingent events occurred. Although the scientists continued to appeal to the predictability of celestial dynamics it was this that would enable a survey of near-Earth objects to identify any that might pose a threat they also noted that chaotic processes disturbed the orbits of comets and also, to a lesser degree, asteroids (for example, Yeomans & Chodas, 1994; Milani et al., 2000). The inherent unpredictability of the orbits was enhanced by the current state of scientific uncertainty. These chaotic and uncertain processes were projected onto space itself, construed as a place of random violence. In the popular books, the Solar System became a dangerous cosmic neighbourhood (Sumners & Allen, 2000b: 3), a capricious, violent place (Verschuur, 1996: 217), a place of mindless violence (Verschuur, 1996: 18) and wanton destruction (Levy, 1998: 13). Even in a peer-reviewed paper, Chapman (2004: 1) described space as a cosmic shooting gallery. Despite the agency attributed to the asteroids themselves, in the narratives of technological salvation it was the human agents, acting through new technologies, who moved the narratives forward. Narrative progression was thus generated through an assumption of technological progress. Through technology, humans intervene in space and become agents of cosmic events. The scientists promotion of the impact threat shared this assumption of technological progress. Like the US Air Force study, their technical papers on mitigation systems considered speculative technologies such as solar sails and mass drivers as well as more established explosive technologies (for example, Ahrens & Harris, 1992; Melosh & Nemchinov, 1993; Ivashkin & Smirnov, 1995; Gritzner & Kahle, 2004). Even those scientists who warned that it was too early to draw up detailed blueprints of interception technologies accepted the narratival implication that there was a problem that needed addressing, that the problem could be addressed by human action, and that this action would involve a technological solution. Technology, in this picture, was configured as inherently progressive. As Morrison & Teller (1994: 1137) put it: The development of technology in the past few centuries has been towards increasing understanding and control of natural forces in an effort to improve human life. Those scientists who argued against the immediate development of mitigation technology shared with its proponents a belief in the inexorable progress of technology. Future generations, they argued, would be better equipped than we are at the moment to meet the technological challenge of an impacting asteroid (for example, Ahrens & Harris, 1992). In contrast to traditional astronomical systems, which passively watched the skies, asteroid detection systems were to be surveillance systems that actively hunted the skies for objects of human import. The Spaceguard Survey was predicated on a will to action in a way in which the earlier Spacewatch Survey was not. Similarly, when it fired its impactor at Comet Tempel 1, NASAs Deep Impact mission took a far more active intervention in space than did earlier generations of probes. This was not far from Edward Tellers call for experimentation with near-Earth objects to test defence technologies (Tedeschi & Teller, 1994; Teller, 1995), an idea dismissed at the time as extreme by some civilian scientists (Chapman, 1998). Likewise, one of the recommendations of the 2004 Planetary Defense Conference was that deflection techniques should be demonstrated on an actual asteroid (Ailor, 2004: 5). 28 The technologization of space promoted in both the fictional works and the scientists technical proposals, also formed an integral part of the imagery and rhetoric that surrounded SDI, as its detractors highlighted when they re-named the project Star Wars. SDI was always premised on a vision of space as a technologized theatre of war. In the hands of a technoenthusiast such as Edward Teller, SDI was configured as a space-based technological extravaganza with few limits. 29 In SDI, as in asteroid research and science fiction, space became a dynamic arena through which our technologies would move, in which our weapons would be placed, and across which our wars were to be waged. 30 As discussed in the introduction to this paper, narrative is an inherently teleological form. In conventional narratives, the action is moved towards closure by the heroes of the story. In the impact narratives, the heroes are technological heroes set the task of saving the world. By drawing on these narratives and following the call for human agency inherent in the narrative structure, the scientists implicitly accepted this role as a necessary one. Having shifted apocalypse from the realm of nuclear politics to that 4

of natural science, the impact-threat scientists were able to position themselves as heroes whose combined farsightedness and technological know-how would save us all. Emphasizing the role of the unacknowledged hero in a foreword to a volume of conference proceedings, astronomer Tom Gehrels (2002: xiii) claimed: There is a beauty also in hazards, because we are taking care of them. We are working to safeguard our planet, even if the world does not seem to want to be saved. In a paper in another volume of conference proceedings, astrophysicist Eugene Levy was even more explicit about the scientists expanded role: In the arms race, the motivating dynamic was a political one. A dynamic in which scientists and engineers provided the technical tools, but, as a group, brought no special and unique wisdom to the table in making judgements about what to do. In the present case, the dynamic is different. The adversary is not another nation; the calculus is not one of political fears, anxieties, and motivations, for which we scientists have no special expertise. Rather the adversary is the physical world. In assessing this adversary, we scientists have special and unique expertise. (Levy, 1994: 7; italics in original) Eclipsing the political dimension of the impact threat with their appeals to the natural, the scientists appropriated for themselves a heroic role. This technological hero was a moral hero he would warn us of the danger and save us despite ourselves. Thus the scientists frequently quoted Representative George Browns opening statement to a Congressional hearing when he warned that if we were to do nothing about the impact threat, it would be the greatest abdication in all of human history not to use our gift of rational intellect and conscience to shepherd our own survival and that of all life on Earth. 31 Through such claims, the issue of planetary defence became a moral frame through which other threats of more human origin could also be addressed. Increased knowledge and surveillance of asteroids, the scientists insisted, would help stop mistakes by the military decision-makers by preventing the misidentification of asteroid airbursts as enemy nuclear warheads (Chapman & Morrison, 1994: 39). At the same time, destroying asteroids would provide us with a way of using up those unwanted bombs. As John Lewis (1997: 215) put it: The net result of the asteroid deflection is really a twofold benefit to Earth: a devastating impact would be avoided and there would be one less nuclear warhead on Earth. Similarly, Duncan Steel saw the use of SDI technologies in asteroid missions such as Clementine II as a prime example of beating swords into ploughshares (quoted in Matthews, 1997).

C. The alternative is to refuse to act given apocalyptic images of nature Reversing crisis discourse recognizes the environment is not in apocalypse but in a dwelling place. Only refusal can undermine the ecological horror story and avoid authoritarianism Buell '3Prof English at Cornell (Frederick, "From Apocalypse to Way of Life")
But what quickly becomes evident to any reflective consideration of the difficulties of crisis discourse is that all of these liabilities are in fact bound tightly up with one specific notion of environmental crisis with 1960s-and 1970sstyle environmental apocalypticism. Excessive concern about them does not recognize that crisis discourse as a whole has significantly changed since the 1970s. They remain inducements to look away from serious reflection on environmental crisis only if one does not explore how environmental crisis has turned of late from apocalypse to dwelling place. The apocalyptic mode had a number of prominent features: it was preoccupied with running out and running into walls; with scarcity and with the imminent rupture of limits; with actions that promised and temporally predicted imminent total melton; and with (often, though not always) the need for immediate total solution. Thus doomsterism was its reigning mode; eco-authoritarianism was a grave temptation; and as crisis was elaborated to show more and more severe deformations of nature, temptation increased to refute it, or give up, or even cut off ties to clearly terminal nature. But as crisis has become domesticated into daily life, crisis discourse has grown more self-reflective as well as more complexly and subtly encompassing. Circumstances are different; in the United States in particular, people now live threatened by hyperabundance even more than by scarcity; they live not with the fear of immanently transgressing limits (and thus incurring immediate and total punishment) but with the more or less conscious certainty that they have passed beyond the limits that they live not with sudden apocalypse immediately ahead but in a slow apocalypse, in a slow process of increasing ecological and ecosocial immiseration and rising ecological and ecosocial risk already embarked upon. In recognizing and responding to an awareness like this, there is as much danger in false optimism as there is in the political liabilities of doomsterism; voices that speak forthrightly to the age of anxiety underneath greenwash and ideological disinformation are both psychologically and socially necessary. Where once prophets sought to reveal awful truths to ignorant people and urged immediate action to avoid disaster, now voices need to ask people to acknowledge what they already suspect and what their society, even when denying environmental crisis, is still preoccupied with. If wise enough, such voices will be as self-conscious as possible; they will abandon apocalypse for a sadder realism that looks closely at social and environmental changes in process and recognizes crisis as a place where people dwell, both in their commonalities and in their differences from each other. Seen thus, problems will have both gone beyond and become too intimate to suggest authoritarian solutions or escape for dwelling in crisis means facing the fact that one dwells in a body and in ecosystems, both of which are already subject to considerable degradation, modification, and pressure. No credible refuge from damage to these is at hand. 5

CAP DA (374) Cap will collapse Schmidheiny 98- A Swiss international industrialist, is founder of the Business Council for Sustainable
Development. He is the author of 'Changing Course: A Global Business Perspective on Development and the Environment.' (Stephan Schmidheiny, Christian Science Monitor, Making Capitalism Better, October 26, 1998, Lexis- Nexis Academic) Capitalism may be victorious, but it is far from being perfect. It tends toward boom and bust, and it tends toward increasing inequalities between rich and poor. The specter of bust is well covered these days. But perhaps Americans need reminding about the growing rich-poor gap, the fact that the net worth of the wealthiest 1 percent of the United States population is larger than that of the bottom 90 percent. The problem is also global: In 1996, the assets of the world's three richest people exceeded the combined GDP of the 48 poorest nations. Leaving aside the morality of such a situation, I am convinced that a system which leads to such inequalities is unworkable for long; it will collapse. In the words of the recent UN Human Development Report: "Development that perpetuates today's inequalities is neither sustainable nor worth sustaining." What to do while preserving the best of the capitalist system? Jeffrey Gates's recent book, "The Ownership Solution" (Addison Wesley) is awash with practical ideas toward that end. It argues that capitalism is good at producing capital and, usually, good at maximizing returns on this capital. But it is very bad at producing capitalists. Thus, most people are connected to their economic systems not through any ownership but through the very weak and tenuous connection of a job and a salary. This is important because accompanying the triumph of capitalism has been the almost global triumph of democracy. If capitalism cannot deliver the goods to the national majorities, it will be voted out and antibusiness populists voted in. Jeff Gates spent 10 years as a lawyer with the US Senate Finance Committee. There he helped refine and spread the concept of Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs). Companies receive tax incentives to get stocks into the hands of their employees, and today about 9 million people in 10,000 companies own stock through this system. It is a way to make capitalists of those with little capital.

Quick fix solutions to resource shortages are only attempts to remedy capitalism Dickens 10 (Peter Dickens Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex The Humanization of
the Cosmos To What End? November 2010 .< http://monthlyreview.org/2010/11/01/the-humanization-of-thecosmos-to-what-end) Capital is now also stalking outer space in the search for new resources and raw materials. Nature on a cosmic scale now seems likely to be incorporated into production processes, these being located mainly on earth. Since Luxemburg wrote, an increasing number of political economists have argued that the importance of a capitalist outside is not so much that of creating a new pool of customers or of finding new resources.10 Rather, an outside is needed as a zone into which surplus capital can be invested. Economic and social crisis stems less from the problem of finding new consumers, and more from that of finding, making, and exploiting zones of profitability for surplus capital. Developing outsides in this way is also a product of recurring crises, particularly those of declining economic profitability. These crises are followed by attempted fixes in distinct geographic regions. The word fix is used here both literally and figuratively. On the one hand, capital is being physically invested in new regions. On the other hand, the attempt is to fix capitalisms crises. Regarding the latter, however, there are, of course, no absolute guarantees that such fixes will really correct an essentially unstable social and economic system. At best, they are short-term solutions.

Fleeing Earth re-trenches capitalism Monbiot 10 George Monbiot has held visiting fellowships or professorships at the universities of Oxford
(environmental policy), Bristol (philosophy), Keele (politics) and East London (environmental science). He is currently visiting professor of planning at Oxford Brookes University. In 1995 Nelson Mandela presented him with a United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement. January 4, 2010. After this 60year feeding frenzy, Earth itself has become disposable. < http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/04/standard-of-living-spending-consumerism>. Let me give you an example of how far this self-enforcement has progressed. In a recent comment thread, a poster expressed an idea that I have now heard a few times. "We need to get off this tiny little world and out into the wider universe if it takes the resources of the planet to get us out there, so be it. However we use them, however we utilise the energy of the sun and the mineral wealth of this world and the others of our planetary system, either we do use them to expand and explore other worlds, and become something greater than a mud-grubbing semi-sentient animal, or we die as a species." This is the consumer society taken to its logical extreme: the Earth itself becomes disposable. This idea appears to be more acceptable in some circles than any restraint on pointless spending. That we might hop, like the aliens in the film Independence Day, from one planet to another, consuming their resources then moving on, is considered by these people a more realistic and desirable prospect than changing the way in which we measure wealth. So how do we break this system? How do we pursue happiness and wellbeing rather than 6

growth? I came back from the Copenhagen climate talks depressed for several reasons, but above all because, listening to the discussions at the citizens' summit, it struck me that we no longer have movements; we have thousands of people each clamouring to have their own visions adopted. We might come together for occasional rallies and marches, but as soon as we start discussing alternatives, solidarity is shattered by possessive individualism. Consumerism has changed all of us. Our challenge is now to fight a system we have internalised.

Extinction Brown 5Prof at Univ. of Utah (Charles, http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2005w15/msg00062.htm,

May) The capitalist class owns the factories, the banks, and transportation-the means of production and distribution. Workers sell their ability to work in order to acquire the necessities of life. Capitalists buy the workers' labor, but only pay them back a portion of the wealth they create. Because the capitalists own the means of production, they are able to keep the surplus wealth created by workers above and beyond the cost of paying worker's wages and other costs of production. This surplus is called "profit" and consists of unpaid labor that the capitalists appropriate and use to achieve ever-greater profits. These profits are turned into capital which capitalists use to further exploit the producers of all wealth-the working class. Capitalists are compelled by competition to seek to maximize profits. The capitalist class as a whole can do that only by extracting a greater surplus from the unpaid labor of workers by increasing exploitation. Under capitalism, economic development happens only if it is profitable to the individual capitalists, not for any social need or good. The profit drive is inherent in capitalism, and underlies or exacerbates all major social ills of our times. With the rapid advance of technology and productivity, new forms of capitalist ownership have developed to maximize profit. The working people of our country confront serious, chronic problems because of capitalism. These chronic problems become part of the objective conditions that confront each new generation of working people. The threat of nuclear war, which can destroy all humanity, grows with the spread of nuclear weapons, space-based weaponry, and a military doctrine that justifies their use in preemptive wars and wars without end. Ever since the end of World War II, the U.S. has been constantly involved in aggressive military actions big and small. These wars have cost millions of lives and casualties, huge material losses, as well as trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Threats to the environment continue to spiral, threatening all life on our planet. Millions of workers are unemployed or insecure in their jobs, even during economic upswings and periods of "recovery" from recessions. Most workers experience long years of stagnant real wages, while health and education costs soar. Many workers are forced to work second and third jobs to make ends meet. Most workers now average four different occupations during their lifetime, being involuntarily moved from job to job and career to career. Often, retirement-age workers are forced to continue working just to provide health care for themselves. With capitalist globalization, jobs move as capitalists export factories and even entire industries to other countries. Millions of people continuously live below the poverty level; many suffer homelessness and hunger. Public and private programs to alleviate poverty and hunger do not reach everyone, and are inadequate even for those they do reach. Racism remains the most potent weapon to divide working people. Institutionalized racism provides billions in extra profits for the capitalists every year due to the unequal pay racially oppressed workers receive for work of comparable value. All workers receive lower wages when racism succeeds in dividing and disorganizing them. In every aspect of economic and social life, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian a nd Pacific Islanders, Arabs and Middle Eastern peoples, and other nationally and racially oppressed people experience conditions inferior to that of whites. Racist violence and the poison of racist ideas victimize all people of color no matter which economic class they belong to. The attempts to suppress and undercount the vote of the African American and other racially oppressed people are part of racism in the electoral process. Racism permeates the police, judicial and prison systems, perpetuating unequal sentencing, racial profiling, discriminatory enforcement, and police brutality. The democratic, civil and human rights of all working people are continually under attack. These attacks range from increasingly difficult procedures for union recognition and attempts to prevent full union participation in elections, to the absence of the right to strike for many public workers. They range from undercounting minority communities in the census to making it difficult for working people to run for office because of the domination of corporate campaign funding and the high cost of advertising. These attacks also include growing censorship and domination of the media by the ultra-right; growing restrictions and surveillance of activist social movements and the Left; open denial of basic rights to immigrants; and, violations of the Geneva Conventions up to and including torture for prisoners. These abuses all serve to maintain the grip of the capitalists on government power. They use this power to ensure the economic and political dominance of their class. Women still face a considerable differential in wages for work of equal or comparable value. They also confront barriers to promotion, physical and sexual abuse, continuing unequal workload in home and family life, and male supremacist ideology perpetuating unequal and often unsafe conditions. The constant attacks on social welfare programs severely impact single women, single mothers, nationally and racially oppressed women, and all working class women. The reproductive rights of all women are continually under attack ideologically and politically. Violence against women in the home and in society at large remains a shameful fact of life in the U.S. 7

CHINA CP (436) The Peoples Republic of China should increase its efforts to detect and deflect asteroid strikes; enhance its Mars mission with the Aldrin Mars Cycler Program, and use the Aldrin Cycler Program to travel to and mine near-Earth asteroids.
Solves detection Richard Stone, Asia News Editor of Science, 3/7/08, the international weekly magazine, NEAR-EARTH OBJECTS: Preparing for Doomsday, http://www.fr.sott.net/articles/show/150527-NEAR-EARTH-OBJECTSPreparing-for-Doomsday On a ridge in this quiet, dark corner of southeastern China, about 100 kilometers northwest of Nanjing, XuYi's new 1-meter telescope espies a few dozen asteroids on a good night. Most are known to science. But since China's first telescope dedicated to asteroid detection saw first light early last year, Zhao's team has discovered more than 300 asteroids, including a near-Earth object (NEO), the class of asteroids and comets that could smash into our planet, if fate would have it. China's asteroid hunters are the latest participants in a painstaking global effort to catalog NEOs. Close encounters with asteroids in recent years--and comet Shoemaker-Levy's spectacular death plunge into Jupiter in 1994--have spurred efforts to find the riskiest NEOs before they blindside us. Tracking potentially hazardous objects--NEOs passing within 0.05 astronomical units, or 7.5 million kilometers, of Earth's orbit--is essential for any attempt to deflect an incoming rock. China can do space Thilo Schroeter, Matthew Sollenberger, and Bastiaan Verink, Expertise in the areas of security and foreign policy , especially counterinsurgency, stability operations, security sector reform, regional knowledge in the Middle East, interdisciplinary training in international law, economics and political science, international experience, organizational skills, teamwork, December 29, 2010, Bologna Center Journal of International Affairs, Challenging US Command of the Commons, http://bcjournal.org/volume-13/challenging-us-command-of-the-commons.html? printerFriendly=true Chinas space capabilities are growing, and their kinetic ASAT systems are advancing in lockstep. In 2008, China conducted 11 space launches that put a combined 15 satellites into orbit, and the country is in the process of developing more highly advanced rockets that could deliver greater payloads to a wider variety of orbits. The 2009 edition of the annual Pentagon report on the Military Power of the Peoples Republic of China noted that once the ongoing developments of Chinas Long March V rocket are complete, they will more than double the size of the payloads that China can deliver into low-earth and geosynchronous orbits.11 In addition to new launch vehicles and expanding launch capabilities, China is also developing improved long-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering ASAT payloads into geosynchronous orbits. These new missiles might be capable of directly attacking satellites in a geosynchronous orbit, effectively giving the Chinese military the capability to use direct-ascent methods on satellites operating at any altitude.12 At present, Chinas ability to strike at targets in geosynchronous orbits is somewhat limited, as it only possesses the facilities to launch simultaneously four rockets capable of reaching satellites at that altitude.13 Space is zero sum

Martel & Yoshihara 3. William Martel [PhD in Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst,
Associate Professor of International Security Studies Yoshihara [Analyst at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, RAND, and the American Enterprise Institute. He holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, an M.A. from the School of Advanced International Studies] 2003 The Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Averting a Sino-U.S.Space Race At the same time that the United States views space dominance as a fundamental tenet of its national security, China evidently views U.S. space dominance as a major threat to its geostrategic interests. These views inevitably breed a zero-sum competition, in which one side perceives any loss as a gain for the other, and could ultimately prove destabilizing for Sino-U.S. relations. First, Beijing perceives the proposed U.S. missile defense system, which will be supported by an array of space systems and sensors, as a strategic menace to China and to international security.15 Many China watchers con- tend that this perception stems from anxieties that any conceivable system of missile defenses being developed by the Bush administration will under- mine Chinas small nuclear deterrent.16 Beijing remains wary of the joint re- search program on missile defense by the U.S.-Japanese alliance, which the PRC sees as a potential partnership for blocking Chinese regional aspirations or, in broader terms, for containing China. Of particular concern for Beijing is the possibility that Tokyos decision formally to join U.S. plans for deploying missile defense in Northeast Asia will significantly increase Japans military capabilities by providing an opportunity for Japanese forces to enjoy unprecedented military integration with U.S. forces in the areas of spacebased intelligence and communications. 8

Key to Chinas economy Kevin Pollpeter, China Program Manager at Defense Group Incs Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, previously worked at RAND, Strategic Studies Institute, March 2008, Building for the Future: Chinas Progress in Space Technology During the Tenth 5-Year Plan and the U.S. Response Economic Benefits. China has embraced its space program as a driver for economic and technological advancement. Chinas 2006 white paper states: Since the space industry is an important part of the national overall development strategy, China will maintain long term, steady development in this field. Chinas support for its space program lies in its potential to spark innovation. Innovation has been identified as a key factor for economic growth, yet much of Chinas growth has come through increasing inputs rather than through productivity gains. Moreover, much of Chinas technological advancement has come through the importation of foreign technology. As James Kynge writes in China Shakes the World, Chinas technological advancement is driven not so much by research as by commerce. Chinese companies, by and large, derive their technologies by buying them, copying them, or encouraging a foreign partner to transfer them as part of the price of access to a large potential market. 70 A report by the RAND Corporation 29 notes that the most profitable defense industries, information technology, and shipbuilding are also the ones that have the most access to foreign technology. 71 Chinas space industry hopes to not only follow in the footsteps of these industries, but also achieve success by indigenously developing technologies that not only spur development within the industry but also have spillover effects for the entire economy. Despite these hopes, the Chinese government acknowledges that it still has far to go. The vice chair of the Chinese Association for Science and Technology has acknowledged that Chinas space technology is still in an experimental stage. 72 The space industry is still too immature to make large contributions to Chinas economic development and makes up less than 1 percent of Chinas gross domestic product (GDP). Chinas space technology is also recognized as still developing while other industries in China rely on mature technology. Because of this, the space industry has not been able to realize the spin-off benefits other industries have experienced since Chinese companies favor foreign technologies over domestically produced technologies. Given these challenges, the space industry is expected to have difficulty making a meaningful impact on Chinas economy in the near term. 73 Nevertheless, a foundation has been laid for the space program to benefit other sectors of the economy. In regards to human capital, Chinas space industry keeps large numbers of engineers employed and motivates others to become involved in high technology fields. The Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (BUAA), for example, has 23,000 students, about one-third of them directly involved in aerospace. In 2001, space-related research and educational programs at BUAA were reported to have increased by 20 percent. 7430 The training of so many highly skilled workers can also benefit the entire economy. It is possible that some of these engineers either directly after graduation or later in their careers may be employed in non-aerospace jobs. In fact, maintaining a large pool of aerospace engineers and scientists presents a strategic advantage for China and a long-term challenge for the United States. Chinas increasing number of engineers and scientists coincides with the drop in the number of U.S. citizens graduating with advanced technical degrees. If these trends continue, it will become increasingly difficult for the United States to maintain its technical advantage.

Collapse causes lashout Friedberg 11 (July/August, Aaron L., professor of politics and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton
University, Hegemony with Chinese Characteristics, The National Interest, lexis)

Such fears of aggression are heightened by an awareness that anxiety over a lack of legitimacy at home can cause nondemocratic governments to try to deflect popular frustration and discontent toward external enemies. Some Western observers worry, for example, that if Chinas economy falters its rulers will try to blame foreigners and even manufacture crises with Taiwan, Japan or the United States in order to rally their people and redirect the populations anger. Whatever Beijings intent, such confrontations could easily spiral out of control. Democratic leaders are hardly immune to the temptation of foreign adventures. However, because the stakes for them are so much lower (being voted out of office rather than being overthrown and imprisoned, or worse), they are less likely to take extreme risks to retain their hold on power.

COOP DA (146) A. NSP sets a peaceful tone for spacebut unilateralism kills cooperation Dant 11chief of staff of the Air Force fellow and the director of space policy for the under secretary of defense
for policy (Daniel, The National Space Policy: Sustainability and Cooperation in a Congested, Competitive, and Contested Domain, High Frontier, February) Cooperation for contested and competitive domain. The NSP also recommits us to cooperate in space: The US hereby renews its pledge of cooperation in the belief that with strengthened international collaboration and reinvigorated US leadership, all nations and peoplesspace-faring and space-benefiting will find their horizons broadened, their knowledge enhanced, and their lives greatly improved. In addition, the policy specifies that the US endeavors to leverage national security space to expand international cooperation in order to extend the benefits of space; further the peaceful use of space; and enhance collection and partnership in sharing of space-derived information.8 This represents a subtle but significant shift in policy. Some argue, including many international partners I have spoken to, that our previous policies paid a certain degree of lip service to cooperation and were best described as bellicose. Moreover, these policies were underwritten by an informal strategy of space dominance which called for discouraging and restraining others to our benefit. This methodology was lost neither by our allies nor our rivals. Clearly, that scheme of maneuver has not worked, evidenced by the increasing competition in the domain, higher incidents of denied access in space, and decline in the American space industrial base, especially second and third tier companies. A perceptible result of cooperating in space, and thus converting competitors to collaborators, is that it gives space-faring partners a stake in pursuing responsible behavior and increases their willingness to cooperate in space (or at least lessens the chances of hostile or irresponsible actions in space).9 Once again, the president, in both substance and tone, has started us on the right path with the new NSP by re-energizing international cooperation. It is now up to the Department of Defense (DoD), led by and in close coordination with the State Department via a whole of government approach, to translate our advantages in space to active leadership of the coalition of responsible space-faring nations.

B. Kills efforts to solve militarization Hitchens 8president of the CDI and UNIDIR (Theresa, Space Wars - Coming to the Sky Near You?,
Scientific American, February) Given the risks of space warfare to national and international security, as well as the technical and financial hurdles that must be overcome, it would seem only prudent for spacefaring nations to find ways to prevent an arms race in space. The U.S. focus has been to reduce the vulnerability of its satellite fleet and explore alternatives to its dependence on satellite services. Most other space-capable countries are instead seeking multilateral diplomatic and legal measures. The options range from treaties that would ban antisatellite and space-based weapons to voluntary measures that would help build transparency and mutual confidence. The Bush administration has adamantly opposed any form of negotiations regarding space weapons. Opponents of multilateral space weapons agreements contend that others (particularly China) will sign up but build secret arsenals at the same time, because such treaty violations cannot be detected. They argue further that the U.S. cannot sit idly as potential adversaries gain spaceborne resources that could enhance their terrestrial combat capabilities. Proponents of international treaties counter that failure to negotiate such agreements entails real opportunity costs. An arms race in space may end up compromising the security of all nations, including that of the U.S., while it stretches the economic capacities of the competitors to the breaking point. And whereas many advocates of a space weapons ban concede that it will be difficult to construct a fully verifiable treatybecause space technology can be used for both military and civilian endseffective treaties already exist that do not require strict verification. A good example is the Biological Weapons Convention. Certainly a prohibition on the testing and use (as opposed to the deployment) of the most dangerous class of near-term space weaponsdestructive (as opposed to jamming) antisatellite systemswould be easily verifiable, because earthbound observers can readily detect orbital debris. Furthermore, any party to a treaty would know that all its space launches would be tracked from the ground, and any suspicious object in orbit would promptly be labeled as such. The international outcry that would ensue from such overt treaty violations could deter would-be violators. Since the mid-1990s, however, progress on establishing a new multilateral space regime has lagged. The U.S. has blocked efforts at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva to begin negotiations on a treaty to ban space weapons. China, meanwhile, has refused to accept anything less. Hence, intermediate measures such as voluntary confidence-building, space traffic control or a code of responsible conduct for spacefaring nations have remained stalled. Space warfare is not inevitable. But the recent policy shift in the U.S. and Chinas provocative actions have highlighted the fact that the world is approaching a crossroads. Countries must come to grips with their strong self-interest in preventing the testing and use of orbital weapons. The nations of Earth must soon decide whether it is possible to sustain the predominantly peaceful human space exploration that has already lasted half a century. The likely alternative would be unacceptable to all.

C. Extinction
10

Mitchell 1Assoc. Prof Communications at the Univ. of Pittsburgh, cites military analysts and disarmament
experts (Gordon, ISIS Briefing on Ballistic Missile Defense, No. 6) A buildup of space weapons might begin with noble intentions of 'peace through strength' deterrence, but this rationale glosses over the tendency that ' the presence of space weaponswill result in the increased likelihood of their use'.33 This drift toward usage is strengthened by a strategic fact elucidated by Frank Barnaby: when it comes to arming the heavens, 'anti-ballistic missiles and anti-satellite warfare technologies go hand-in-hand'.34 The interlocking nature of offense and defense in military space technology stems from the inherent 'dual capability' of spaceborne weapon components. As Marc Vidricaire, Delegation of Canada to the UN Conference on Disarmament, explains: 'If you want to intercept something in space, you could use the same capability to target something on land'. 35 To the extent that ballistic missile interceptors based in space can knock out enemy missiles in mid-flight, such interceptors can also be used as orbiting 'Death Stars', capable of sending munitions hurtling through the Earth's atmosphere. The dizzying speed of space warfare would introduce intense 'use or lose' pressure into strategic calculations, with the spectre of split-second attacks creating incentives to rig orbiting Death Stars with automated 'hair trigger' devices. In theory, this automation would enhance survivability of vulnerable space weapon platforms. However, by taking the decision to commit violence out of human hands and endowing computers with authority to make war, military planners could sow insidious seeds of accidental conflict. Yale sociologist Charles Perrow has analyzed 'complexly interactive, tightly coupled' industrial systems such as space weapons, which have many sophisticated components that all depend on each other's flawless performance. According to Perrow, this interlocking complexity makes it impossible to foresee all the different ways such systems could fail. As Perrow explains, '[t]he odd term "normal accident" is meant to signal that, given the system characteristics, multiple and unexpected interactions of failures are inevitable'.36 Deployment of space weapons with pre-delegated authority to fire death rays or unleash killer projectiles would likely make war itself inevitable, given the susceptibility of such systems to 'normal accidents'. It is chilling to contemplate the possible effects of a space war. According to retired Lt. Col. Robert M. Bowman, 'even a tiny projectile reentering from space strikes the earth with such high velocity that it can do enormous damage even more than would be done by a nuclear weapon of the same size!'. 37 In the same Star Wars technology touted as a quintessential tool of peace, defence analyst David Langford sees one of the most destabilizing offensive weapons ever conceived: 'One imagines dead cities of microwave-grilled people'.38 Given this unique potential for destruction, it is not hard to imagine that any nation subjected to space weapon attack would retaliate with maximum force, including use of nuclear, biological, and/or chemical weapons. An accidental war sparked by a computer glitch in space could plunge the world into the most destructive military conflict ever seen.

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DEBRIS DA (157) A. Debris is at the tipping pointscientists agree BBC 9-1 (Space Junk at Tipping Point, Says Report,)
Scientists in the US have warned Nasa that the amount of so-called space junk orbiting Earth is at tipping point. A report by the National Research Council says the debris could cause fatal leaks in spaceships or destroy valuable satellites. It calls for international regulations to limit the junk and more research into the possible use of launching large magnetic nets or giant umbrellas. The debris includes clouds of minuscule fragments, old boosters and satellites. Some computer models show the amount of orbital rubbish "has reached a tipping point, with enough currently in orbit to continually collide and create even more debris, raising the risk of spacecraft failures," the research council said in a statement on Thursday. Situation 'critical' Hopes of limiting the amount of space junk in orbit suffered two major setbacks in recent years. In 2007, China conducted an anti-satellite weapon test which destroyed a decommissioned weather satellite, smashing the object into 150,000 pieces larger than 1cm. Two years later, two satellites - one defunct and one active - crashed in orbit, creating even more debris. "Those two single events doubled the amount of fragments in Earth orbit and completely wiped out what we had done in the last 25 years," said Donald Kessler, who led the research.

B. The propensity for the link is huge

ASA 7 [Australian Space Academy, Briefing on Space Law,

http://www.spaceacademy.net.au/spacelaw/spacelaw.htm] Since the start of the space age the problem of unwanted material or debris in space has been growing. Each space launch usually leaves considerably more than the desired satellite in orbit. Expended rocket boosters, attachment bolts, shields, solid rocket motor slag, and innumerable other items are placed into Earth orbit. Some of these decay (lose altitude) and burn up in the atmosphere - some are large enough to escape complete destruction by ablation and then may pose a potential hazard to life and property on the Earth's surface. In space, materials degrade and detach from satellites; stored energy in the form of unspent fuel and battery vapours may cause explosive rupture and fragmentation of space objects. Collisions between space objects at hypervelocity not only causes damage, but also creates thousands of other space objects (ie fragments of the original objects) which themselves then pose collision hazards to active spacecraft.

C. The impact turns case Imburgia 11Lt. Colonel, USAF, Advocate General Legal Center, Australian and New Zealand Society of
International Law (Joseph, Space Debris and Its Threat to National Security: A Proposal for a Binding International Agreement to Clean Up the Junk, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Vol. 44) These gloomy prognostications about the threats to our space environment should be troubling to Americans. The United States relies on the unhindered use of outer space for national security.151 According to a space commission led by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the [United States] is more dependent on space than any other nation.152 According to Robert G. Joseph, former Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security at the State Department, space capabilities are vital to our national security and to our economic wellbeing.153 Therefore, a catastrophic collision between space debris and the satellites on which that national security so heavily depends poses a very real and current threat to the national security interests of the United States. Since the [1991] Gulf War, the [United States] military has depended on satellites for communications, intelligence and navigation for its troops and precision-guided weapons. Satellites are also used for reconnaissance and surveillance, command and control, and control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles national security, and those assets are vulnerable to space debris collisions. As Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Edward Markey stated, American satellites are the soft underbelly of our national security.161 The Rumsfeld Commission set the groundwork for such a conclusion in 2001, when it discussed the vulnerability of U.S. space-based assets and warned of the Space Pearl Harbor.162 Congress also recognized this vulnerability in June 2006, when it held hearings concerning space and its import to U.S. national power and security.163 In his June 2006 Congressional Statement, Lieutenant General C. Robert Kehler, then the Deputy Commander, United States Strategic Command, stated that space capabilities are inextricably woven into the fabric of American security.164 He added that these space capabilities are vital to our daily efforts throughout the world in all aspects of modern warfare and discussed how integral space capabilities are to defeating terrorist threats, defending the homeland in depth, shaping the choices of countries at strategic crossroads and preventing hostile states and actors from acquiring or using WMD.165

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MINING (247)
Squo solves Bennett 10 [JOHN T. BENNETT, DoD Sees U.S., Allies Ending China's Rare Earths Dominance, Defense News, Published: 9 Nov 2010
15:46, pg. http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=5020374&c=POL&s=TOP] NEW YORK - The U.S. must only survive a few more years of Beijing's

dominance over rare earths minerals supply and pricing, then American and key allies should be able to turn the tables, said Brett Lambert, U.S. Defense Department industrial affairs chief. "I wouldn't run out and buy a bunch of rare earths," Lambert said Nov. 9 during a conference here
sponsored by Bank of America-Merrill Lynch in association with Defense News. Though he acknowledged "the issue is in the near term," he said, "I think we'll be fine." The markets should prompt Western nations to develop alternative to Beijing's rare earths dominance, he said. Sources say a soon-to-be-released Pentagon study will feature a similar bottom-line conclusion. China now controls nearly 100 percent of the global supply and production of this family of elements, which is used to make crucial components in a list of American weapon systems, including jet engine turbines, unmanned planes, electric motors, radars, night-vision goggles, missiles, electronics and other items. The United States imports 100 percent of the rare earths it needs, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). China's control, experts say, allows Beijing to dictate rare earths prices and global availability. This was spotlighted in recent weeks when China threatened to withhold rare earths from Japan during an unrelated flap. Lambert, echoing some industry officials, said DoD officials, informed by the DoD study of the issue, have concluded market forces will drive Washington and several other Western nations to build up an alternative to Beijing's rare earths dominance. Lambert said a "short-term squeeze" is likely, "over the longer term, the market will correct itself." And what might that look like? He painted a picture where the United States, Australia and Japan all

ramp up their respective rare earths mining and production - eventually collectively knocking China from its rare earth throne. This advantage is silly, hes read zero evidence that conflicts go nuclear or even escalate. Dont set the bar high for the neg, burden of rejoinder doesnt exist until affs proved why their considerations are importantand Ill pre-empt that, resource conflicts wont escalate because diplomacy and intervening actors prevent interstate conflicts and border dispute Also his Reuters card in the un-underlined part lists 2 or 3 different mines that would make up for the demand for minerals, theres no evidence were going to run out soon Resources arent the only reason that conflicts happen, Korea, Vietnam, World War I prove Even if resource conflicts cause war they dont solve, their dedication to the expansion of cap ensures that conflicts would just happen over resources in space The plan doesnt solve this advantagethe literally expand the Mars Mission to include a certain kind of tech-its highly probabilistic that private companies would then get the tech and use itto mine asteroids their plan directs the use of cyclers towards Mars, not asteroids

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GET OFF THE ROCK The Apophis coming now evidence cites a German schoolboya kid from Germany not quite sure where the qualifications are in therebut prefer NASA analysis anyways chances are 45,000 to 1 that its catastrophic Guardian 8 (Full Marks for Effort,)
If he had been proved correct, 13-year-old Nico Marquardt might have embarrassed some of Nasa's finest scientists. The schoolboy astronomer thought the space agency had missed something when calculating whether or not an asteroid it is tracking is likely to hit the Earth in 2036. His own calculation suggested that a collision is hundreds of times more likely than Nasa thinks. But anyone concerned about an imminent impact should rest easy. Scientists welcomed the German teenager's enthusiasm but have pointed to a number of errors in his work. And reports that Nasa has put its hands up and admitted errors (repeated all over the web today) seem wildly exaggerated. According to the Potsdamer Neuerste Nachrichten newspaper, Marquardt used data from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam to work out the future orbit of Apophis, a 270m-wide asteroid that will pass close to the Earth in 2029 and again in 2036. Alarmingly high odds It's true that when astronomers first noticed the asteroid in 2004, they calculated alarmingly high odds of it hitting the Earth in 2029. At the peak of concern, Apophis scored four out of 10 on the Torino scale - a measure of the threat posed by near-Earth objects, where 10 is a certain collision that could cause a global catastrophe. A score of four was the highest of any asteroid in recorded history and Apophis was given a 1 in 37 chance of hitting the Earth. Estimates of an impact suggested that it would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square kilometres would be directly affected by the blast, but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere. A collision in 2029 was eventually ruled out but there remained a small possibility that, if the asteroid passed through a specific 600m patch of space that year called the keyhole, the Earth's gravity would change the asteroid's orbit so that when it came back around again in 2036, it would collide with us. Altered trajectory Nasa's current estimate is that Apophis has a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting the Earth in 2036. Marquardt reckoned that this should be raised to 1 in 450. He re-calculated the odds by taking into account whether the asteroid would hit one of the 40,000 artificial satellites in orbit around the Earth during its approach in 2029, which he claimed would change its trajectory and increase its chances of hitting the Earth in 2036. The Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten said that satellites travel around 35,000km above Earth, and it is thought that Apophis will get to within 32,500km of the surface. Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queen's University Belfast said that while he applauded Marquardt's understanding of orbital mechanics, there were some questions over his conclusions. "Most satellites orbit in lowEarth orbit at altitudes of 300km-2000km. These are in no danger from the asteroid. Many of the rest are in geostationary orbits at 42,100km from the centre of the Earth. This is much further out than the pass distance of the asteroid in 2029. Overall the risk to satellites is minuscule." In addition, to be deflected by gravity into the path of the Earth for a collision in 2036, the asteroid still needs to pass through the keyhole. "It either will or it won't. Hitting a satellite will not deflect it into that point." Increasing commercial launches would release black carbon causing sea level rise, turns case Ross et al 10 Martin Ross, The Aerospace Corporation, Michael Mills, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Darin Toohey, department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at Univ of Colorado, Boulder, Potential Climate Impact of Black Carbon Emitted by Rockets,2010, http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/files/tourisme-spatial-et-climat.pdf A new type of hydrocarbon rocket engine is expected to power a fleet of suborbital rockets for commercial and scientific purposes in coming decades. A global climate model predicts that emissions from a fleet of 1000 launches per year of suborbital rockets would create a persistent layer of black carbon particulate in the northern stratosphere that could cause potentially significant changes in the global atmospheric circulation and distributions of ozone and temperature. Tropical ozone columns are predicted to decline as much as 1%, while polar ozone columns increase by up to 6%. Polar surface temperatures rise one degree K regionally and polar summer sea ice fractions shrink between 5 15%. After one decade of continuous launches, globally averaged radiative forcing from the black carbon would exceed the forcing from the emitted CO2 by a factor of about 140,000 and would be comparable to the radiative forcing estimated from current subsonic aviation. We wont get off the rock if you destroy humanity in the short term, catastrophic wars or international suspicion impede our efforts to expand to space Turn, you increase launches-destroying the Ozone Jeff Foust, editor and publisher of The Space Review, Space and (or versus) the environment, 6-5-2009, The Space Review (blog), http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1395/1 Right now, such emissions are insignificant. In a paper published earlier this year in the journal Astropolitics, researchers at the Aerospace Corporation, University of Colorado, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University noted that rocket launches worldwide deplete the ozone layer currently at a rate of 0.03%, a rate they described as 14

insignificant. Different rockets, and different combinations of propellants, have varying contributions: solid-fuel rockets have a greater impact than liquid-propellant engines, and systems that use liquid oxygen (LOX) as an oxidizer (in combination with liquid hydrogen or kerosene) have a greater effect than hypergolics. The paper notes that the Ariane 5, which has solid-rocket boosters and a LOX/liquid hydrogen main engine, likely causes about 25 times the ozone loss as one of its biggest competitors on the commercial launch market, the Proton, which uses unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxidea combination that, ironically, is usually considered environmentally unfriendly given the propellants toxic nature. While the current rate of ozone loss is considered insignificant, the paper examined what would happen if there was a sharp increase in launch rates. If launch rates doubled every decade, they found, rising emissions from rockets would offset the decline in other ozone-depleting substances by around 2035, causing ozone depletion rates to rise again. The effect would be sooner and sharper if launch rates tripled every decade. The authors conclude that, in such a scenario, there would be a move to regulate rocket emissions that could, in the worst case, sharply restrict launch activity.

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