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Asteroid Mining Aff ................................................................................................................................................. 1 Asteroid Mining 1AC .............................................................................................................................................. 2 Asteroid Mining 1AC .............................................................................................................................................. 3 Asteroid Mining 1AC .............................................................................................................................................. 4 Asteroid Mining 1AC .............................................................................................................................................. 5 Asteroid Mining 1AC .............................................................................................................................................. 6 Asteroid Mining 1AC .............................................................................................................................................. 7 Asteroid Mining 1AC .............................................................................................................................................. 8 Asteroid Mining 1AC .............................................................................................................................................. 9 Asteroid Mining 1AC ............................................................................................................................................ 10InherencyNo Space Now .................................................................................................................................. 11InherencyNo Space Now .................................................................................................................................. 12InherencyNo Space Now .................................................................................................................................. 13InherencyNo Space Now .................................................................................................................................. 14AdvantageExtinction Without Space ................................................................................................................ 15 AdvantageExtinction Matters (1AC?) ............................................................................................................... 16 AdvantageExtinctionClimate Change ........................................................................................................... 17 AdvantageExtinctionClimate Change ........................................................................................................... 18 AdvantageExtinctionMass Extinction ............................................................................................................ 19 AdvantageExtinctionNuclear War ................................................................................................................. 20 AdvantageExtinctionNuclear War ................................................................................................................. 21AdvantagePlatinum Shortage .............. ................ ................ ................ ............... ................ ................ .............. 22AdvantagePlatinum Shortage .............. ................ ................ ................ ............... ................ ................ .............. 23SolvencyNASA Mining Key to Space ............................................................................................................... 24

SolvencyMining Key to Space .......................................................................................................................... 25SolvencyMining Solves Asteroids ..................................................................................................................... 26SolvencyMining Solves Overpop ...................................................................................................................... 27SolvencyMining Key to Space .......................................................................................................................... 28SolvencyMining Solves Economy ..................................................................................................................... 29SolvencyMining Key to Resources ................................................................................................................... 30SolvencyGovernment Key ................................................................................................................................ 31 AT: Private CP ..................................................................................................................................................... 32AT: Free Market Solves ....................................................................................................................................... 33AT: No Opportunities to Mine ............................................................................................................................... 34AT: We Can Solve Space Later ........................................................................................................................... 35 AT: Treaties ................ ................ ................ ................ ............... ................ ................ ................ ................ ........... 36AT: OST Precludes Mining................................................................................................................................... 37 AT: SBSP CP ....................................................................................................................................................... 38AT: Wont Warm That Much ................................................................................................................................. 39AT: Warming GoodCO2 Ag .............................................................................................................................. 40AT: Warming GoodSO2 Screw ......................................................................................................................... 41AT: Warming GoodIce Age ............................................................................................................................... 42AT: Nuclear War Good ......................................................................................................................................... 43AT: Nuclear War Good ......................................................................................................................................... 44AT: Nuclear Weapons Solve Asteroids ................................................................................................................ 45AT: Deflection Solves Asteroids ........................................................................................................................... 46NegSpace Diseases ......................................................................................................................................... 47NegKills Developing Nations ............................................................................................................................ 48NegTreaties CP ................................................................................................................................................ 49NegSpace Diseases ......................................................................................................................................... 50NegHurts the Poor ............................................................................................................................................ 51NegMining Now ................................................................................................................................................ 52NegMining Now ................................................................................................................................................ 53NegMining Now ................................................................................................................................................ 54NegPrivate CP Solvency .................................................................................................................................. 55NegKritik LinksAsteroids ............................................................................................................................... 56NegKritik LinksAsteroids ............................................................................................................................... 57


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Observation 1: Asteroid Mining

Asteroid Missions Now Dont Have Support or TechnologySubstantially More Investment isRequired

Aviation Week, Deep-Space Exploration Faces Major Hurdles, April 28th, 2011

(http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/asd/2011/04/28/01.xml&headline=Deep-Space%20Exploration%20Faces%20Major%20Hurdles)

From the hazards posed by deep-space radiation to the subtleties of spacesuit and closed-looplife-support system design, the U.S. faces significant technical and financial challenges ifhumans are to break out of low Earth orbit, according to witnesses testifying before a National ResearchCouncil (NRC) panel.

The obstacles will likely require NASA to seek closer ties with the Defense Department andinternational partners as well as the aerospace industry and academia; but these alliances mayraise security concerns and prompt compromises on destinations and timescales , experts told theNRCs Human Health and Surface Exploration Panel this week.Yet the agency has little choice but to reach out in an era of fiscal constraint and long-running uncertainty over itsfuture.

NASAs dilemma was underscored in presentations by NASAs Human Exploration FrameworkTeam (HEFT), a group formed a year ago to provide the agencys leadership with mission options for destinations

stretching from the International Space Station to Mars. When it wrapped up work in December, HEFT wasunable to define a politically sustainable course for any of the mission options, includingPresident Barack Obamas favorite, a near-Earth asteroid, by 2025. (See HEFT charts pp. 6-8.)We did not find an architectural solution, Christopher Culbert, manager of NASAs Exploration Missions &Systems Office, told the NRC panel. We do not believe its possible to satisfy all of the stakeholders.Somebody walks away unhappy.


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NASA investment in R+D Now is Crucial to Enable Asteroid Mining in the FutureCommercialInvestment Cant Start Without Our Lead

William Crandall, Larry Gorman, Peter Howard Et Al., Founder of Spacewealth, Prof of Finance at Cal Poly SLO andSenior Executive at Excelexis, Is Profitable Asteroid Mining A Pragmatic Goal? Spacewealth.org, February 23rd,2011 (http://spacewealth.org/files/[email protected])

The PGM value of a 200 m asteroid can exceed $1 billion, or possibly $25 billion.Over 7,500 NEAs have been detected.Close to a fifth of these are easier to reach thanthe moon; more than a fifth of those are 200 m in diameter: 200+ targets.President

Obama requested, and Congress has authorized, a four fold increase in detection funding($5.8 m to $20.4 m/year).This could lead to ~10,000 known 200 m NEAs in a decade.

But detection is just a start. The costs to locate, extract, and process asteroid ore are notwell understood.Before significant private capital is put at risk, we need to learn more.In cooperation with other forward looking nations,the U.S. should purchase an option

to develop asteroid resources by investing in the knowledge required to mine asteroids.We can then choose to exercise this option if terrestrial PGM supplies do in fact collapse.

Asteroids may also be able to supply other metals that are increasingly at risk.Thereare several candidates: In 2009, the U.S. imported 100% of 19 key industrial metals.

To seek the fullest commercial use of space, NASA should buy down the risk of asteroidmining ventures by investing in R&D that can give us the tools to discover, analyze, andprocess asteroid ore, and deliver it safely to Earth, and to Earth orbit. NASA, with otherspace agencies, should run demonstrations for this globally important program so that,as the GAO likes to put it, useful knowledge supplants risk over time.


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NASA is Key to SuccessIt Empirically Motivates and Guides Industry, EncouragesInnovation and InvestmentOnly Government Development of Resources in Space Itself CanOpen the Possibilty of Extra-Planetary Existence

William Crandall, Larry Gorman, Peter Howard Et Al., Founder of Spacewealth, Prof of Finance at Cal Poly SLO andSenior Executive at Excelexis, Is Profitable Asteroid Mining A Pragmatic Goal? Spacewealth.org, February 23rd,

2011 (http://spacewealth.org/files/[email protected])

NASA, a creation of the Cold War, demonstrated U.S. capacity to put boots on the Moon.In doing so, it fulfilled its mission (as a non military branch) to help beat the Soviets.Today we need NASAthe largest civil space agencyin cooperation with industry andother space agencies, to demonstrate the capacity to put autocatalytic extraterrestrialresource development into action, to achieve a more rewarding economic success andto help contribute solutions to [humanitys] most pressing problems.In 1961, it was risky for JFK to commit to putting a man on the moon. Today, with theadvancing power of computational systems of all kinds, it may be less risky to commit tomaking deep space profitable. Young people are ready for highly capable robots.If theycan see that it offers real promise for future generations, students around the world maybe willing to pay the startup costs for profitable robotic asteroid mining.

Humans will venture out into the solar system, as Charles Bolden suggests.But anythingless than an autocatalytic off planet economy will keep us from ever becoming more thanjust tourists. The game changing technologies that will unlock new possibilitiesarethose that can transform deep space from a consumer of resources into a source of value.We should go to space, first and foremost, to get the resources we need for ecologicallysustainable development on Earth, where we all live. Such an effort may, simultaneously,build an economically sustainable infrastructure for thriving extraterrestrial civilizations.


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Plan: The United States Federal Government Should Substantially Increase its Development ofSpace Beyond the Earths Mesosphere By Directing and Fully Funding NASA to Promote andEngage in Research, Development and Deployment of Asteroid Mining Technologies.


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Observation 2 is Extinction:

Catastrophic Warming Has Already Begun and Will Trigger FeedbacksIts Too Late toPreserve Civilization on Earth

The Guardian, Too late? Why scientists say we should expect the worst, December 9th, 2008(http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/09/poznan-copenhagen-global-warming-targets-climate-change)

The escalating scale of human emissions could not have come at a worst time, as scientists havediscovered that the Earth's forests and oceans could be losing their ability to soak up carbonpollution. Most climate projections assume that about half of all carbon emissions are reabsorbed in these naturalsinks.

Computer models predict that this effect will weaken as the world warms, and a string of recentstudies suggests this is happening already.The Southern Ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide has weakened by about 15% a decade since1981, while in the North Atlantic, scientists at the University of East Anglia also found a dramatic decline in the CO2sink between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s.

A separate study published this year showed the ability of forests to soak up anthropogenic carbondioxide - that caused by human activity - was weakening, because the changing length of theseasons alters the time when trees switch from being a sink of carbon to a source.Soils could also be giving up their carbon stores : evidence emerged in 2005 that a vast expanse of westernSiberia was undergoing an unprecedented thaw.

The region, the largest frozen peat bog in the world, had begun to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 yearsago. Scientists believe the bog could begin to release billions of tonnes of methane locked up in thesoils, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The World MeteorologicalOrganisation recently reported the largest annual rise of methane levels in the atmosphere for a decade.

Some experts argue that the grave nature of recent studies, combined with the unexpected boom incarbon emissions, demands an urgent reassessment of the situation. In an article published this monthin the journal Climatic Change, Peter Sheehan, an economist at Victoria University, Australia, says the scale ofrecent emissions means the carbon cuts suggested by the IPCC to stabilise levels in theatmosphere "cannot be taken as a reliable guide for immediate policy determination" . The cuts, hesays, will need to be bigger and in more places.Earlier this year, Jim Hansen, senior climate scientist with Nasa, published a paper that said the world's carbontargets needed to be urgently revised because of the risk of feedbacks in the climate system. He used reconstructions

of the Earth's past climate to show that a target of 350ppm, significantly below where we are today, isneeded to "preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed and to which life onEarth is adapted". Hansen has suggested a joint review by Britain's Royal Society and the US National Academyof Sciences of all research findings since the IPCC report.


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Extinction is Inevitable and On the Way NowThe Totality of the Risks Will Eventually CatchUp to UsAttention to Asteroids is the Best Way to Avoid the Coming CatastropheWe MustTake the Chance to Get off the Planet

Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences, How can we reduce the risk of human extinction? September 9th, 2008(http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/how-can-we-reduce-the-risk-of-human-extinction)

Despite these notable instances, in the 61 years since the Doomsday Clock's creation, the risk ofhuman extinction has received relatively scant scientific attention, with a bibliography filling perhapsone page. Maybe this is because human extinction seems to most of us impossible, inevitable, or,in either case, beyond our control. Still, it's surprising that a topic of primary significance tohumanity has provoked so little serious research.

One of the missions of theFuture of Humanity Instituteat Oxford University is to expand scholarlyanalysis of extinction risks by studying extinction-level hazards, their relative probabilities, and strategies formitigation. In July 2008, the institute organized a meeting on these subjects, drawing experts from physics, biology,philosophy, economics, law, and public policy.

The facts are sobering. More than 99.9 percent of species that have ever existed on Earth havegone extinct. Over the long run, it seems likely that humanity will meet the same fate. In less thana billion years, the increased intensity of the Sun will initiate a wet greenhouse effect, evenwithout any human interference, making Earth inhospitable to life. A couple of billion years laterEarth will be destroyed, when it's engulfed by our Sun as it expands into a red-giant star. If we

colonize space, we could survive longer than our planet, but as mammalian species survive, onaverage, only two million years, we should consider ourselves very lucky if we make it to onebillion.Humanity could be extinguished as early as this century by succumbing to natural hazards, suchas an extinction-level asteroid or comet impact, supervolcanic eruption, global methane-hydraterelease, or nearby supernova or gamma-ray burst. (Perhaps the most probable of these hazards,supervolcanism, was discovered only in the last 25 years, suggesting that other natural hazardsmay remain unrecognized.) Fortunately the probability of any one of these events killing off ourspecies is very low--less than one in 100 million per year, given what we know about their pastfrequency. But as improbable as these events are, measures to reduce their probability can still

be worthwhile. For instance,investments in asteroid detection and deflection technologies costless, per life saved, than most investments in medicine. While an extinction-level asteroid impactis very unlikely, its improbability is outweighed by its potential death toll.


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Space Colonization is Critical to Avoid Near-Term and Long Term CatastropheExtinction isJust a Matter of Time Without It

Seth Baum, Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University, Cost-benefit analysis of space exploration:Some ethical considerations, Space Policy, 2009 (http://sethbaum.com/ac/2009_CBA-SpaceExploration.pdf)

Another non-market benefit of space exploration is reduction in the risk of the extinction of

humanity and other Earth-originating life. Without space colonization, the survival of humanityand other Earth-originating life becomes extremely difficult- perhaps impossible- over the verylong-term. This is because the Sun, like all stars, changes in its composition and radiative output over time. TheSun is gradually converting hydrogen into helium, thereby getting warmer. In approximately 500 million to onebillion years, this warming is projected to render Earth uninhabitable to life as we know it [2526]. Humanity, if it still exists on Earth then, could conceivably develop technology by thento survive on Earth despite these radical conditions. Such technology may descend from presentproposals to geoengineer the planet in response to anthropogenic climate change [2728]. However, the Sun later-approximately seven billion years later- loses mass that spreads into Earths orbit, causing Earth to slow, be pulledinto the Sun, and evaporate. The only way life could survive on Earth may be if Earth, by sheer coincidence (the oddsare on the order of one in 10 to one in 10 [29]) happens to be pulled out of the solar system by a star system thatpasses by. This process might enable life to survive on Earth much longer, although the chance of this is quite

remote. While space colonization would provide a hedge against these very long-term astrologicalthreats, it would also provide a hedge against the more immediate threats that face humanity andother species. These threats include nuclear warfare, pandemics, anthropogenic climate change,and disruptive technology [30]. Because these threats would generally only affect life on Earthand not life elsewhere, self-sufficient space colonies would survive these catastrophes, enablinglife to persist in the universe. For this reason, space colonization has been advocated as ameans of ensuring long-term human survival [3233]. Space exploration projects can helpincrease the probability of long-term human survival in other ways as well: technology developedfor space exploration is central to proposals to avoid threats from large comet and asteroidimpacts [3435]. However, given the goal of increasing the probability of long-term human survival by a certainamount, there may be more cost-effective options than space colonization (with costs defined in terms of money,effort, or related measures). More cost-effective options may include isolated refuges on Earth to help humanssurvive a catastrophe [36] and materials to assist survivors, such as a how-to manual for civilization [37] or a seedbank [38]. Further analysis is necessary to determine the most cost-effective means of increasing the probability oflong-term human survival.


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Status Quo Wont Have the Motivation or Understanding of Risk to Get Us to SpaceTheAffirmative is Key to Overcoming Inevitable ExtinctionContinuing the Status QuoMethodology of Thinking on the Scale of a Single Lifetime Dooms Humanity in the Long run

Paul Gilster, Tau Zero Foundation, A Planetary Greenland: Looking at Risk, Centauri Dreams, December 27th, 2010(http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=16018)

Thus it is that, while we know about the risk of impacts from space and have funded efforts todetect incoming debris, we have yet to devise a well-funded solution to prevent such an impact.Having little experience with truly existential threats, and having seen nothing but theexcavations at scattered sites like those above to remind us how a culture can collapse anddisappear, we fail to accept the severity of long-term risk. Hickman thinks we're hard-wired to recognizingonly the immediate, a consequence of evolving in environments that did not demand a longer perspective.

Rather than evolve a general perception of risk and a rational calculation of relative risk, our 150millennia living as hunter-gatherers and the most recent 2 millennia living as farmers prepared usto deal with only some kinds of risk. We respond strongly to those with a high probability ofoccurring rather than to those with a low or unknown probability of occurring. Warfare,subsistence failure and cooperation failure have produced an animal that is equipped with"specific cognitive adaptations for perceiving cues regarding the likelihood and magnitude of

adverse events" and for making rapid decisions based on "risk-risk" trade-off calculations.And so it is that three million Italians continue to live around the Bay of Naples near Mt. Vesuvius, the consequencesof whose historical eruptions are available for all to see in the ruins of Pompeii. People live by the millionsalong fault lines in California that could spawn catastrophic earthquakes, coping with a threat ofextinction that is, in many ways, too abstract to visualize. We get on with daily life. Ourperception is deeply human and understandable, and it offers a recipe for playing down securityfor future generations in favor of proceeding with today and stressing how infrequentlycatastrophes occur. Short-term means getting through a finite lifespan, and it doesn't extend to the kind oflapidary effort that builds a safer future for generations beyond.

It's a difficult truth to acknowledge, but it seems to be part of human nature. Our innateassessment of risk means we have a steep wall to climb to promote the well-being of our distantdescendants, and that makes even the most basic attempts to survey the population of near-Earth objects a matter of constant watchfulness to ensure the continuation of funding. Gettinginto space to prevent an asteroid strike that might not occur for millennia is a hard sell, and so isestablishing a space presence to ensure species survival in case anything happens to our planet .Read the excerpt from Hickman's book and you'll understand why it may take a near-fatal event (think of thesurvivable asteroid strike in Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama) to make long-term danger immediate and reinvigorateour will to master space technologies.


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InherencyNo Space Now

Obamas New Strategy Dooms Space Exploration, Cant Trade off the Short Term for the LongMark Whittington, Journalist, No, We Should Not Cut NASA Funding, Yahoo Associated Content, April 10th, 2010(http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2880660/no_we_should_not_cut_nasa_funding_pg4.html?cat=15)

Which leads us back to Obamaspace. Keith Yost is correct about one thing. Obamaspace does not lead to a new ageof space exploration somewhere down the road, in the indeterminate future. It leads, as many have suggested, to thedeath of human space exploration, at least by the United States. The opportunities that will be lost will be as infinite asthe heavens themselves.

But this is the essential motive behind the cancellation of Constellation. The current administration has no interest inpursuing any kind of space exploration, now or ever. The technology R&D program is meant as a sop to people tomaintain some faint hope that someday Americans will venture beyond low Earth orbit once again. UnderObamaspace, that hope will never become reality. That is because President Obama and his advisors agree withKeith Yost. Understanding this unpleasant fact is the first step in confronting Obamaspace and, sooner or later,reversing it and once again setting this nation on a course toward the stars.


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NASA Has No Long Term Role or Budgetary PriorityEven Current Funding Increases JustKeep Up With Inflation

Steve Denning, Blogger at Forbes, On Becoming A Country That Can Get Things Done: Lessons From NASA,Rethink, May 5th, 2011 (http://blogs.forbes.com/stevedenning/2011/05/05/on-becoming-a-country-that-can-get-things-done-again/)

The history of NASA after triumphantly landing a man on the moon in 1969 is less glorious. In 1970, NASA had abudget of $3,752 (or $18.7 billion in 2007 constant dollars).NASAs 2011 budget is still roughly the same size: $19 billion.In effect, NASA has spent much of the last forty years successfully defending its substantial budget and somewhatless successfully trying to define something meaningful to do with the money.Since February 2006, NASAs mission statement is to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery andaeronautics research.Defenders of NASA point to the hundreds of thousands of (mostly skilled) jobs created orsaved, the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal corporate income taxes and incalculable benefits resulting fromlives saved and improved quality of life.For instance, it is said that in 2002, the aerospace industry contributed more than $95 billion to U.S. economic activity,which included $23.5 billion in employee earnings, and employed 576,000 peoplea 16% increase in jobs from threeyears earlier.The reality is that over the forty year period, NASA has been struggling to find a meaningful role. It tried the spaceshuttle but that ultimately made no business sense. It toyed with the idea of manned flight to other planets but thatmade less sense than unmanned flights. It now devotes itself to scientific experiments, and running a televisionchannel with programs as exciting as watching paint dry.

Like the Defense Department, NASA has judiciously placed its contracts in states and congressional districts aroundthe country, so that any effort to seriously review NASAs budget stimulates a wail of congressional complaints.


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Obamas Goals are Just TalkHe Has no Congressional Support or Motivation to Get it DonePhysorg.com, Landing on an asteroid: Not quite like in the movies, June 28th, 2010(http://www.physorg.com/news196920110.html)

In February, Obama took steps toward killing Bush's moon program, which was beset by technical troubles andmoney woes. Two months later, in a speech at Cape Canaveral, Fla., Obama announced that the astronauts' nextstop is an asteroid.So far, the Obama administration has been quiet on the need for a major sum of money to accomplish his goal. Andunlike Kennedy, who used Russian spacecraft missions known as Sputnik to promote the moon mission, Obamadoesn't have a geopolitical imperative to justify the scheme. Congress is resisting Obama's change of direction, whichcould delay investment in the program.


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NASA Doesnt Have the Cash For Deep Space Exploration and No Immediate Plans to Createthe Technology Necessary

New Zealand Herald, Shuttle programme comes down to earth, May 7th, 2011(http://www.nzherald.co.nz/space/news/article.cfm?c_id=325&objectid=10723917)

The changes were heralded when President Barack Obama signed legislation calling for US$1.3 billion ($1.65 billion)to be allocated to the development of commercial crew services over the next three years. The money will help privatecompanies design and build devices capable of delivering astronauts to the International Space Station - currentlyjointly operated with the Russian space agency.But in spite of a temporary spending measure signed by the president in December, uncertainties abound. Nasa couldbe left waiting for cash before it can get started on its deep space exploration programme. The administration has alsodecided not to fund a replacement rocket capable of sending people into space this year.


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AdvantageExtinction Without Space

Even Stephen Hawking AgreesWe are Extinct Within 100 Years Without Space ColonizationTrilby Henderson, Independent Journalist, Space Colonization or Extinction of the Human Race Says Hawking,Suite101.com, August 10th, 2010 (http://www.suite101.com/content/space-colonization-or-extinction-of-the-human-race-says-hawking-a272555#ixzz1Lj5di7IK)

Predicting inevitable disaster on Earth, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking recently told the website ThinkBig.comthat the only chance the human race has for long term survival is to explore future space travel and spacecolonization.We have made remarkable progress in the last hundred years. But if we want to continue beyond the next hundredyears, our future is in space. That is why I'm in favour of manned, or should I say "personed," space flight, saidHawking.Hawking referred to the 1963 Cuban missile crisis as an example of the type of disaster that could destroy the humanrace, noting that these types of situations are likely to increase in the future.Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical

ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instinctsthat were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, letalone the next thousand or million, he said.


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AdvantageExtinction Matters (1AC?)

Extinction is an Event Categorically Distinct From All Other Violence and CatastropheExploring and Colonizing Space is the Crucial Internal Link to Avoiding It

Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences, How can we reduce the risk of human extinction? September 9th, 2008(http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/how-can-we-reduce-the-risk-of-human-extinction)

Such remote risks may seem academic in a world plagued by immediate problems, such as global poverty, HIV, andclimate change. But as intimidating as these problems are, they do not threaten human existence. In discussing therisk of nuclear winter, Carl Sagan emphasized the astronomical toll of human extinction:A nuclear war imperils all of our descendants, for as long as there will be humans. Even if the population remainsstatic, with an average lifetime of the order of 100 years, over a typical time period for the biological evolution of asuccessful species (roughly ten million years), we are talking about some 500 trillion people yet to come. By thiscriterion, the stakes are one million times greater for extinction than for the more modest nuclear wars that kill "only"hundreds of millions of people. There are many other possible measures of the potential loss--including culture andscience, the evolutionary history of the planet, and the significance of the lives of all of our ancestors who contributedto the future of their descendants. Extinction is the undoing of the human enterprise.There is a discontinuity between risks that threaten 10 percent or even 99 percent of humanity and those that threaten100 percent. For disasters killing less than all humanity, there is a good chance that the species could recover. If wevalue future human generations, then reducing extinction risks should dominate our considerations. Fortunately, mostmeasures to reduce these risks also improve global security against a range of lesser catastrophes, and thus deservesupport regardless of how much one worries about extinction. These measures include:Removing nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert and further reducing their numbers;Placing safeguards on gene synthesis equipment to prevent synthesis of select pathogens;Improving our ability to respond to infectious diseases, including rapid disease surveillance, diagnosis, and control, as

well as accelerated drug development;Funding research on asteroid detection and deflection, "hot spot" eruptions, methane hydrate deposits, and othercatastrophic natural hazards;Monitoring developments in key disruptive technologies, such as nanotechnology and computational neuroscience,and developing international policies to reduce the risk of catastrophic accidents.Other measures to reduce extinction risks may have less in common with strategies to improve global security,generally. Since a species' survivability is closely related to the extent of its range, perhaps the most effective meansof reducing the risk of human extinction is to colonize space sooner, rather than later. Citing, in particular, the threat ofnew biological weapons, Stephen Hawking has said, "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousandyears, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet." Similarly,NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has noted, "The history of life on Earth is the history of extinction events, andhuman expansion into the Solar System is, in the end, fundamentally about the survival of the species."


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AdvantageExtinctionClimate Change

Its Too Late to Solve Global WarmingExtinction Level Climate Change Has Already OccurredAllison van Digellen, Green Journalist, Global Warming: It's Too Late, Huffington Post Green, January 27th, 2010(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alison-van-diggelen/global-warming-its-too-la_b_438848.html)

In an exclusive Fresh Dialogues interview, Robert Ballard, ocean explorer ofTitanic fame says, "If you want to knowthe truth: it's too late. All the ice is going to melt. There's a lag and it's already in the system."Ballard, a respected scientist, professor of oceanography and founder of the Inner Space Centersays he is worried

about the future of mankind, "Sometimes I see this tombstone that says, 'the human race came and went but it waspolitically correct.' As a scientist I am not politically correct. My job is not to be politically correct. My job is to call it as Isee it."


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AdvantageExtinctionClimate Change

Scientific Concensus is Emerging, Warming Levels Will be Disastrous and Cause ExtinctionWith Status Quo Temperature Rises

The Guardian, Too late? Why scientists say we should expect the worst, December 9th, 2008(http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/09/poznan-copenhagen-global-warming-targets-climate-change)

At a high-level academic conference on global warming at Exeter University this summer, climate scientist KevinAnderson stood before his expert audience and contemplated a strange feeling. He wanted to be wrong. Many ofthose in the room who knew what he was about to say felt the same. His conclusions had already caused a stir inscientific and political circles. Even committed green campaigners said the implications left them terrified.Anderson, an expert at the Tyndall Centre forClimate Change Research at Manchester University, was about to sendthe gloomiest dispatch yet from the frontline of the war against climate change.Despite the political rhetoric, the scientific warnings, the media headlines and the corporate promises, he wouldsay, carbon emissions were soaring way out of control - far above even the bleak scenarios considered by last year'sreport from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Stern review. The battle againstdangerous climate change had been lost, and the world needed to prepare for things to get very, very bad."As an academic I wanted to be told that it was a very good piece of work and that the conclusions were sound,"Anderson said. "But as a human being I desperately wanted someone to point out a mistake, and to tell me we hadgot it completely wrong."Nobody did. The cream of the UK climate science community sat in stunned silence as Anderson pointed out thatcarbon emissions since 2000 have risen much faster than anyone thought possible, driven mainly by the coal-fuelledeconomic boom in the developing world. So much extra pollution is being pumped out, he said, that most of theclimate targets debated by politicians and campaigners are fanciful at best, and "dangerously misguided" at worst.In the jargon used to count the steady accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth's thin layer of atmosphere, he said

it was "improbable" that levels could now be restricted to 650 parts per million (ppm).The CO2 level is currently over 380ppm, up from 280ppm at the time of the industrial revolution, and it rises by morethan 2ppm each year. The government's official position is that the world should aim to cap this rise at 450ppm.The science is fuzzy, but experts say that could offer an even-money chance of limiting the eventual temperature riseabove pre-industrial times to 2C, which the EU defines as dangerous. (We have had 0.7C of that already and anestimated extra 0.5C is guaranteed because of emissions to date.)The graphs on the large screens behind Anderson's head at Exeter told a different story. Line after line, representingthe fumes that belch from chimneys, exhausts and jet engines, that should have bent in a rapid curve towards theground, were heading for the ceiling instead.At 650ppm, the same fuzzy science says the world would face a catastrophic 4C average rise. And even that bleakfuture, Anderson said, could only be achieved if rich countries adopted "draconian emission reductions within adecade". Only an unprecedented "planned economic recession" might be enough. The current financial woes wouldnot come close.Lost causeAnderson is not the only expert to voice concerns that current targets are hopelessly optimistic. Many scientists,politicians and campaigners privately admit that 2C is a lost cause. Ask for projections around the dinner table after afew bottles of wine and more vote for 650ppm than 450ppm as the more likely outcome.

Bob Watson, chief scientist at the Environment Department and a former head of the IPCC, warned this year that theworld needed to prepare for a 4C rise, which would wipe out hundreds of species, bring extreme food and watershortages in vulnerable countries and cause floods that would displace hundreds of millions of people. Warmingwould be much more severe towards the poles, which could accelerate melting of the Greenland and West Antarcticice sheets.


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AdvantageExtinctionMass Extinction

Mass Extinction is Coming NowThe Earth Will Be Decimated Within 300 YearsNational Science Foundation, Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction, Astrobiology Magazine, March 6th, 2011(http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/3824/earths-sixth-mass-extinction)

With the steep decline in populations of many animal species, scientists have warned that Earth is on the brink ofa mass extinctionlike those that have occurred just five times during the past 540 million years.

Each of these "Big Five" saw three-quarters or more of all animal species go extinct.

In results of a study published in the journal Nature, researchers report on an assessment of where mammals andother species stand today in terms of possible extinction compared with the past 540 million years.

They find cause for hope--and alarm.

"If you look only at the critically endangered mammals--those where the risk of extinction is at least 50 percent withinthree of their generations--and assume that their time will run out and they will be extinct in 1,000 years, that puts usclearly outside any range of normal and tells us that we are moving into the mass extinction realm," said AnthonyBarnosky, an integrative biologist at the University of California at Berkeley, and first author of the paper.

Barnosky is also a curator in the university's Museum of Paleontology and a research paleontologist in its Museum ofVertebrate Zoology.

"A modern global mass extinction is a largely unaddressed hazard of climate change and human activities," said H.Richard Lane, program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences, which fundedthe research.

"Its continued progression, as this paper shows, could result in unforeseen--and irreversible--consequences to theenvironment and to humanity," said Lane.If currently threatened species--those officially classed as critically endangered, endangered, and vulnerable--actuallywent extinct, and that rate of extinction continued, the sixth mass extinction could arrive in as little as 3 to 22centuries, according to Barnosky.


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AdvantageExtinctionNuclear War

Nuclear War Is InevitableGreat Number of Conflicts Will Explode and Spill OverFutureStorm, Has Nuclear War Now Become An Inevitable Part Of The Future Destiny Of Mankind? May 27th, 2009(http://futurestorm.blogspot.com/2009/05/has-nuclear-war-now-become-inevitable.html)

North Korea's recent nuclear test and Iran's nuclear ambitions are now causing many to wonder if we are now at thepoint where nuclear war has become inevitable.

Fortunately nuclear weapons have not been used in an open conflict since the end of World War II. Somehowhumanity has gone over 60 years without using them. But now, as nukes get into more and more hands, are we nowgetting to the point where it is almost certain that somebody out there will use them?

After all, Korea is closer to war than at any point since the end of the Korean war.

North Koreas official news agency has announced that Kim Jong Il's government will no longer abide by the 1953armistice that ended the Korean War. Now that the armistice has been done away with, many analysts are claimingthat North Korea and South Korea are now technically in a state of war.

When you consider the fact that Kim Jong Il is completely insane, the reality is that anything is possible.

Russia knows what the score is over there. The Kremlin fears that the Korean conflict could quickly go nuclear.

As North Korea threatens to fire even more "test" missiles, the world is watching what Barack Obama will do. How willhe respond to this threat?

What would he do if either North Korea or South Korea attacked?

Let's hope that we don't have to find out.

But Korea is not the only place where nuclear war may break out.

Iran is getting increasingly closer to be able to produce a nuclear weapon, and Israel seems determined not to let thathappen.

Many thought that the U.S. would be the one to attack Iran, but now that seems quite unlikely, and it looks like Israelis ready to take action with or without the U.S.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is saying that if Israel does not eliminate the Iranian threat, no one will .Apparently he agrees with many analysts who are now realizing that Barack Obama plans to do absolutely nothing tostop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

So will Israel use their nuclear weapons to prevent Iran from producing their own?

Can Israel afford to let the crazed Islamic fundamentalists in Iran get nukes?

It is important to understand the mindset of these people.

For example, the Palestinians actually teach their children that no Jewish kingdom ever existed in the land of Israel,and that there never was a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Seriously.

What's next? Will they teach their children that the sky is pink and that the moon is made out of green cheese?

The spread of nuclear weapons threatens all of humanity.

Pakistan and India both have nukes, and the world has been openly considering what the Taliban would do withnuclear weapons if they are able to overthrow Pakistan's government.

What IF nukes got into the hands of terrorists who really wanted to use them?

The truth is that humanity has been really fortunate up to this point that nukes have not been used.

But is our good fortune about to run out?


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AdvantageExtinctionNuclear War

Nuclear War is Inevitable NowWill Cause ExtinctionCharles L. Rulon, Professor Emeritus, Life & Health Sciences, Long Beach City College, Is a Nuclear War Inevitable?April 16th, 2011 (http://www.philosophylounge.com/nuclear-war-inevitable/)

Throughout recorded history humans have used war as the ultimate arbiter for acquiring, defending and expandingsome 14,000 major and minor wars; over one billion people killed.War is one of the constants of history and has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3,411 years of

recorded history only 268 have seen no war.Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History (1968)But 65 years ago a quantum jump in warfare took placethe atomic bomb. Soon the nuclear genie was out of thebottle. More and more countries were eventually able to build or acquire nuclear weapons. North Korea and Pakistan.Soon Iran? There is even a nuclear black market that attracts terrorist groups. Yet, a full-scale nuclear war woulddestroy civilization and threaten life itself. Even a limited nuclear war could escalate into a full-scale one, as could aconventional war among the superpowers. At some point, if civilization is to flourish, loyalty to 200 individual nation-states must be enlarged to include a new over-riding loyalty to humanity as a whole. But, can we do this? Does ourbrain carry within it the potential to peacefully resolve fundamental conflicts? According to historian Will Durant,history isnt encouraging:Some conflicts are too fundamental to be resolved by negotiation; and during the prolonged negotiations (if historymay be our guide) subversion would go on. . . Such interludes of widespread peace are unnatural and exceptional;they will soon be ended by changes in the distribution of military power.Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History (1968)The worlds political and military leaders, we would hope, know that a nuclear war would be catastrophic. But ourbraina brain that evolved from an ape brainis prone to nationalistic pride, distrusting those who are different, andobeying charismatic authority figures (even monomaniacal insane ones). Its prone to conforming to the behavior ofthe masses like good sheep, even displaying ideological fervor.Now mix in grotesque global economic disparities. Add overpopulation pressures, resource shortages, local ecologicalcollapses and global climate destabilization. Stir in willful ignorance, stupidity, relentless greed, fear, selfishness,indifference, lust for power, primal religious conflicts, entrenched racism, and virulent xenophobia. Sprinkle on morefear, plus our brains tendency for simplistic solutions and paranoid emotional responses. Whip it all together andshove it into historys oven of nightmares. Yes, our political and military leaders must know that a nuclear war wouldbe catastrophic, but. . . .Nobel Prize-winning philosopher Arthur Koestler observes in the book, Brain, Mind and Behavior:The trouble with our species is not an overdose of self-asserting aggression but an excess of self-transcendingdevotion, which manifests itself in blind obedience and loyalty to the king, country, or cause One of the centralfeatures of the human predicament is this overwhelming capacity and need for identification with a social group and/orsystem of beliefs, which is indifferent to reason, indifferent to self-interest, and even to the claim of self-preservation.Emeritus physics professor Mark Perakh, author of the book, Unintelligent Design, adds his resigned rage:Most probably the 21st century will see devastating wars and enormous explosions of barbarism. Humans as aspecies are the most stupid of all animals. There is hardly anything more stupid than a war, but humans seem to beunable to live without it. The struggle between reason and obscurantism is just a footnote to the idiocy of wars that

humanity sinks into with an inevitable regularity.Our existential dilemmaThe detonation of even a small fraction of our nuclear weapons could likely result in the greatest catastrophe inhuman history, one that could unravel much of civilization as we know it and even push us to the brink of extinction.Thus, our policies of nuclear deterrence must never fail. Never! Never! No failure. Ever! Yet, year after year theroulette wheel of human conflicts continues to spin and the minute hand on the doomsday clock ticks closer tomidnight.Is a nuclear war inevitable? Well, one formidable obstacle to lasting peace is the military-industrial complex, itself. Allmilitary organizations are trained to fight, to kill. Also, they must have actual or potential enemies in order to justifytheir budgets. Hence they are designed to be very ineffective at negotiation and compromise, critically important skillswe need on this planet today. Somehow we must catch onto this and recognize that one of the greatest conflicts in theworld today is between the militaries of the world and the human species.U.S. weapons manufacturers actively promote the sale of their products to foreign nations irrespective of humanrights abuses, type of government, or aggressive actions against neighboring states. Members of Congress seemilitary spending as a big public works job programand a source of juicy pork for their states and districts.The Defense Monitor & Center for Defense Information bulletinsFor the first time in human history the fate of our entire species is in the hands of a very few decision makers. Do their

evolved brains really have what it takes to survive at so dangerous a juncture, to not, sooner or later, make the fataldecision?The mind resists involvement with horror as, in a normal person, it resists preoccupation with death. And inconsequence we leave the issue of nuclear arms, their control and their consequences to the men who make horrortheir everyday occupation. It is a reckless, even fatal, delegation of power.John Kenneth Galbraith


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AdvantagePlatinum Shortage

Platinum Shortage Exists NowThere Will Be a Huge DeficitDr. Alex Cowie, Editor of Diggers and Drillers, Platinum, the Commodity Story of 2010? January 15th, 2010(http://www.moneymorning.com.au/20100115/platinum-the-commodity-story-of-2010.html)

Platinum has the makings of being the commodity story of 2010. Right now, the stars are aligned for this super raremetal, and this year I expect it will even outperform gold and silver.Over the last three months Platinum prices have already risen 15.8%. And thats set to continue.So why are investors worldwide getting so excited about platinum? Let me tell you.First of all, the supply of platinum is really tight.When the world asks for more of the stuff, the industry is stuck in first gear and just cant increase the supply. Forinstance, its taken the industry thirty years to just double production.This is partly because its so rare. For every trillion particles in the earths crust, just three parts of them are platinum.Last year the entire industry managed to squeeze out just six million ounces, which would fit in a box measuring twometres on each side!Second, demand is rising fast.The four main groups of users take everything the industry can provide already. With demand rising, a global platinumdeficit is on the way.


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AdvantagePlatinum Shortage

Obtaining More Platinum is Key to the Hydrogen Economy, The Only Chance for Truly GreenEnergy

Science Wise Magazine, PLATINUM SHORTAGE THREATENS HYDROGEN ECONOMY, February 15th, 2011(http://sciencewise.anu.edu.au/articles/John%20Mavrogenes)

The move to get clean, green hydrogen cars on the road will stall unless new reserves of platinum are found fast,according to an academic from The Australian National University.Platinum is critical to the fuel cells that will drive the hydrogen economy of the future, but the metal is scarce anddifficult to find, with only three big reserves known worldwide, said ANU Geochemist John Mavrogenes. AssociateProfessor Mavrogenes is a member of a team of geochemists at ANU simulating platinum deposition, to get hints onwhere to look for the metal in the future. He said the work is essential to meet future demands.Existing reserves would meet less than 20 per cent of the worlds platinum demand if all cars went hydrogen, hesaid. Eighty per cent of the worlds supplies come from just three deposits in South Africa, the United States andSiberia. There is one prospective, but as yet unworked, reserve in Western Australia, and geologists suspect theremay be others.


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SolvencyNASA Mining Key to Space

NASA Engagement in Space Mining is Key to Space Exploration and EncouragingCommercialization

William Crandall, Larry Gorman, Peter Howard Et Al., Founder of Spacewealth, Prof of Finance at Cal Poly SLO andSenior Executive at Excelexis, Is Profitable Asteroid Mining A Pragmatic Goal? Spacewealth.org, February 23rd,2011 (http://spacewealth.org/files/[email protected])

We need out space agencies to reach outwith robots, certainly; perhaps with humans to find, get hold of, andbring back an economically significant chunk of matter, and sell it on the open market. We need them to prime thepump for economically and ecologically sustainable, post-Earth as a closed system, industrial societies. Ourspace agencies need to enable a revolutionary transformation in the material culture of our home planet. They needto design and launch positive economic feedback systems that utilize off planet resources. Space agencies need todevelop the skills and knowledge required to draw material resources through extraterrestrial supply chains, and putthem to use in terrestrial systems of production. Once learned, space agencies need to transfer these skills and

understandings to individuals in industry. Civil space agencies also need to help design, publish, and promote theinner solar system knowledgebases that will prepare todays students for profitable extraterrestrial careers. Weneed our civil space agencies to do these things, because we need the metals that are available in asteroid ore tosupport our technological societies on Earth, so that they may become ecologically sustainable over the decades andcenturies to come In its 1985 revision of the 1958 Space Act, Congress defined NASAs #1 Priority: Seek andencourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space. Given such direction, one mightassume that today, 25 years latter, NASAs top activity would be developing economically promising space resources:

energy from the sun and metals from asteroids. Instead, most funds go to programs to put humans in space. Some ofthese resources have outstanding value. Space agencies intent on addressing fundamental economic needs shouldfocus on these materials. Platinum, for example, has sold at over $1,700/oz since January.


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SolvencyMining Key to Space

Asteroid Mining Makes Earth Concentrations Look MinisculeIts Key to Further SpaceDevelopment

Mark Sonter, Independent Scientific Consultant, Asteroid Mining: Key to the Space Economy, National SpaceSociety, February 9th, 2006 (http://www.space.com/2032-asteroid-mining-key-space-economy.html)

The Near Earth Asteroids offer both threat and promise. They present the threat of planetary impact with regional orglobal disaster. And they also offer the promise of resources to support humanity's long-term prosperity on Earth, andour movement into space and the solar system.The technologies needed to return asteroidal resources to Earth Orbit (and thus catalyze our colonization of space)will also enable the deflection of at least some of the impact-threat objects.Development and operation of future in-orbit infrastructure (for example, orbital hotels, satellite solar power stations,earth-moon transport node satellites, zero-g manufacturing facilities) will require large masses of materials forconstruction, shielding, and ballast; and also large quantities of propellant for station-keeping and orbit-changemaneuvers, and for fuelling craft departing for lunar or interplanetary destinations.Spectroscopic studies suggest, and 'ground-truth' chemical assays of meteorites confirm, that a wide range ofresources are present in asteroids and comets, including nickel-iron metal, silicate minerals, semiconductor andplatinum group metals, water, bituminous hydrocarbons, and trapped or frozen gases including carbon dioxide andammonia.As one startling pointer to the unexpected riches in asteroids, many stony and stony-iron meteorites contain PlatinumGroup Metals at grades of up to 100 ppm (or 100 grams per ton). Operating open pit platinum and gold mines inSouth Africa and elsewhere mine ores of grade 5 to 10 ppm, so grades of 10 to 20 times higher would be regardedas spectacular if available in quantity, on Earth.


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SolvencyMining Solves Asteroids

Asteroid Mining Will Encourage Knowledge About Potential NEO Threats, Allow for DeflectionMark Sonter, Independent Scientific Consultant, Asteroid Mining: Key to the Space Economy, National SpaceSociety, February 9th, 2006 (http://www.space.com/2032-asteroid-mining-key-space-economy.html)

The total number of identified NEAs has increased from about 300 to more than 3,000 in the period 1995 to 2005.The most accessible group of NEAs for resource recovery is a subset of the Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs).These are bodies (about 770 now discovered) which approach to within 7.5 million km of earth orbit. The smaller

subset of those with orbits which are earth-orbit-grazing give intermittently very low delta-v return opportunities (that isit is easy velocity wise to return to Earth).These are also the bodies which humanity should want to learn about in terms of surface properties and strength soas to plan deflection missions, in case we should ever find one on a collision course with us.


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SolvencyMining Solves Overpop

Mining is Crucial to Solve OverpopulationWe Can Support a Quadrillion PeopleMark Sonter, Independent Scientific Consultant, Asteroid Mining: Key to the Space Economy, National SpaceSociety, February 9th, 2006 (http://www.space.com/2032-asteroid-mining-key-space-economy.html)

Professor John Lewis has pointed out (in Mining the Sky) that the resources of the solar system (the most accessibleof which being those in the NEAs) can permanently support in first-world comfort some quadrillion people. In otherwords, the resources of the solar system are essentially infinite... And they are there for us to use,to invest consciousness into the universe, no less. It's time for humankind to come out of its shell, and begin to grow!!So both for species protection and for the expansion of humanity into the solar system, we need to characterize theseobjects and learn how to mine and manage them.Once we learn how to work on, handle, and modify the orbits of small near-earth objects, we will have achieved, as aspecies, both the capability to access the vast resources of the asteroids, and also the capability to protect our planetfrom identified collision threats.


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SolvencyMining Key to Space

Mining Asteroids Injects the Market into Space TravelResults in Massive Increases inExploration and Development

Wired Magazine, Making space exploration pay with asteroid mining, July 15th, 2010(http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-07/15/asteroid-mining)

Asteroids happen to be particularly rich in platinum group metals -- ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium,and platinum. These elements are extremely rare on Earth, and most of the world's known deposits come from sitesof asteroid impact.They're so rare that prices for a few grams can be in the thousands of pounds. However, they're also crucialingredients for electronics. They're very stable, resistant to chemical attack, and cope with high temperatures, makingthem perfect for use in circuitry.Asteroids that have already been surveyed have been shown to contain vast amounts of these metals. One average500-metre-wide asteroid contains hundreds of billions of pounds-worth of metal -- more than has ever been mined inthe course of human history. Near-Earth asteroids are likely first targets for mining, due to the ease of getting to them,and getting the materials back to earth.Increasing the supply of platinum group metals on earth by sending up specialist mining spacecraft could have twobenefits. Firstly, it'd allow the cost of electronics production to go down. More raw material should push down themarket price.Secondly, it'd offer a motive for space travel beyond "the pursuit of knowledge". While pursuit of knowledge is a noblegoal, it's proved increasing difficult to fund since the days of the space race in the 1960s. Introducing capitalism,

corporations and stockholders in that process might seem like an anathema to some space enthusiasts, but it may benecessary to fund the huge amount of space exploration that still needs to be done.In history, great voyages of exploration have rarely been done solely with the goal of furthering knowledge. Columbusdiscovered America while trying to find a easier, cheaper way of shipping spice from the East to the West, followingthe fall of Constantinople. The vast expanse of the interior of America was mapped by gold-rushers, seeking theirfortune.Similarly, Antarctica was discovered by explorers seeking new sources of seal meat, and much of northern Canadaand its lakes were charted by fur traders and those hoping to save time crossing the Pacific from Europe by avoidinghaving to round Cape Horn in South America.So to those despairing about the recent cutting of space budgets across the world, invest your savingsin asteroid mining. If history is any guide, then once that industry takes off, a whole new frontier will open up forhumanity.


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SolvencyMining Solves Economy

Space Resources Will Promote Billions of Dollars of Growth for Terrestrial and OrbitalIndustries

Shane D. Ross, Control and Dynamical Systems at CalTech, Near-Earth Asteroid Mining, Space Industry Report,December 14th, 2001 (http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:Bl-DRZ2ZlKYJ:scholar.google.com/+asteroid+mining&hl=en&as_sdt=0,24)

The industrialization and settlement of space is likely to be brought about primarily by increasing com-mercial activities in space, worth several billion dollars per year, including the following existing activities:telecommunications, direct broadcast television, navigation (e.g., the Global Positioning System), remotesensing, and metereological services. Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations will roughly double theannual income of these services over the next decade (Sonter [1997]).Other space-based commerce may come online within the next few decades, including manufacturing, solarpower stations, and space tourism. There is interest in space-based production of high value pharmaceuti-cals, semiconductors, ultra-pure crystals for many applications, and generally anything requiring large-scalematerial purity. The concept of satellite solar power stations (SSPS) is again receiving active consideration:the Japanese have considered an equatorial orbit SSPS pilot plant, orbiting at 1100 km altitude, of mass200 tonnes1 (Nagatomo, M. [1996]). Japans National Space Development Agency, which hopes to launchan experimental version of an SSPS between 2005 and 2007, has asked two teams of private companies tosubmit design proposals by the end of January 2002.2The feasibility of space tourism is also being promoted. Market research in the United States, Japan,

Canada and Germany has shown that as many as 80% of people younger than 40 would be interested incommercial space travel. A majority would be willing to pay up to three months salary for the privilege.Ten percent would pay a years salary.3 It is estimated that at a launch cost of $200/kg the space tourismindustry will grow rapidly to several billion dollars per year (Collins et al. [1994]). Hotels in orbit willbe needed to cater for 10,000 person accomodations after some years. The Japanese Shimizu Corp., anengineering and construction firm, has developed a plan for such an orbiting hotel, of mass 6000 tonnes.They have pledged to have their 64-room hotel aloft by 2020, with a lunar unit to follow.3As a result of these and other activities, we can expect a future market for mass in LEO, i.e., metalsfor construction, volatiles to make propellants for stationkeeping and transportation, and unprocessed massfor shielding against cosmic radiation. The size and rate of this future in-orbit market for materials couldexceed 1000 tonnes per year by 2010, growing exponentially to tens of thousands of tonnes per year if anylarge scale activity develops rapidly (Sonter [1997])Many terrestrial resources, such as precious metals and fossil fuels, are running out. As new terrestrialsources are sought, materials are obtained at increasing economic and environmental cost. Society paysfor this depletion of resources in the form of higher prices for manufactured goods, would-be technologiesthat are not developed for lack of raw materials, global and regional conflicts spurred by competition forremaining resources, and environmental damage caused by development of poorer and more problematic

deposits.Utilization of asteroid resources may provide a partial solution to the problem, as they hold the potentialfor becoming the main sources of some metals and other materials. Precious metals and semiconductingelements in iron meteorites, which form the metallic cores of asteroids, are found in relatively large concen-trations compared to Earth sources. In such sources, it may be possible to extract up to 187 parts per million(ppm) of precious metals, which includes Au, the Pt-group metals (Pt, Ru, Rh, Pd, Os, and It), Re, andGe. More than 1000 ppm of other metals, semiconductors, and nonmetals may may one day be extractedand imported by Earth from asteroids, such as Ag, In, Co, Ga, and As.


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SolvencyMining Key to Resources

Asteroid Mining is Crucial to Solve Resource DepletionInternational Space University, Space Studies Program, Asteroid Mining, Technologies, Roadmap and Application,2010 (http://www.mendeley.com/research/asteroid-mining-technologies-roadmap-and-applications-final-report/)

As humans deplete the Earth of its resources, it becomes increasingly apparent that many of our activities aredamaging to both the environment and humankind. Our expanding consumption within Earth s finite biosphere posesa threat to the global economy, the ecosystem, and the societies of Earth. Large-scale operations like strip-miningpose a threat to the environment that might be higher than establishing a mining infrastructure in space. Alternativesources of rare metals are needed both to address growing demand and to maintain an increasingly green public ssupport of the aerospace industry.One proposal to address this scarcity is to import material to Earth from near-Earth objects (NEOs) such as asteroids(Globus, 2010). There are thousands of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) (JPL, 2010). Current literature estimates suggestasteroids as a source of trillions of dollars worth of precious metals and minerals. The establishment of a space-boundmining program would generate new industry and potentially massive profits, and stimulate innovation. Thetechnology used to mine these asteroids may one day be adapted to facilitate deflection of earthbound potentiallyhazardous objects for to generate the materials necessary for the construction of human settlements in space.


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SolvencyGovernment Key

Asteroid Mining is Not Possible Without Governmental ActionLegislation is Key to SuccessInternational Space University, Space Studies Program, Asteroid Mining, Technologies, Roadmap and Application,2010 (http://www.mendeley.com/research/asteroid-mining-technologies-roadmap-and-applications-final-report/)

The first activity is an investigation into the current legal framework to identify the challenges that apply to asteroidmining. Gaining wide acceptance for legitimate asteroid mining using current space law would be the easiest, mostdesirable goal. This activity will conclude with the identification of key areas that require new legislation to allowasteroid mining activities. For example, the current legal framework sufficiently covers registration of an asteroidplaced into Low Earth Orbit and liability concerns. Conversely, appropriation will be problematic without newlegislation clarifying the way ahead.Following this investigation, the development of new legislation is required. This legislation shall be in place before aprivate entity invests significantly in an asteroid mining mission. Given the expected complexity of drafting newlegislation and the number of state stakeholders, this process could take many years. While other preparatoryactivities towards a successful asteroid mining mission can occur concurrently, financing may not be forthcoming froma commercial entity based on hopes that new legislation will exist at a future date. Another alternative is that a privateentity chooses to conduct asteroid mining prior to completion of the legislative framework. In this instance, the privateentity must accept greater risks in the venture to avoid delaying asteroid mining activities. The new legislation willclarify existing space law to allow asteroid mining activities for the benefit of humankind. Specifically, the newlegislation will cover the elements of jurisdiction, appropriation, liability, and distribution. A description of theseelements follows. In addition, this section makes recommendation for a starting point aimed at minimizingdevelopment time of legislation.


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AT: Private CP

Asteroid Mining is Still Far to Costlythe Market Will Focus on Terrestrial Mining WithoutGovernment Action

Richard Gertsch and Leslie Gertsch, Rock Mechanics and Explosive Research Center, University of Missouri and theCenter for Space Mining, Colorado School of Mines, ECONOMIC ANALYSIS TOOLS FOR MINERAL PROJECTS IN SPACE, 2005

(http://www.kemcom.net/EconAnal.pdf)

The risk involved in exploiting space resources is very high, from risky to wildcatting(Table 2). Terrestrial investors would like a very high ROI and a very short payback period forthis level of risk. However, high ROIs makes the project technologically more difficult. In theexample project, 100% ROI is basically prohibited by the very high ore tonnage needed, 500million tonnes. However, lesser ROIs are feasible (Tables3 and 4).The payback period for the example project also is very long for a commercial venture.However, 11 years before any income is long even for a low risk venture. Perhaps it is in the 6nature of space projects to have long payback periods. Asteroids, in particular, have a long triptime.The very high cost of space transportation alone (both for Earth to LEO and in spaceitself) is a significant barrier to commercial success. Lowering transportation costs is one key tofurthering successful commercial space ventures.When planning long space missions, costs should be delayed as long as possible, andrevenues captured as soon as possible. For example, an asteroid mining project could delay

building processing plants and miners until the exploration phase is complete. Sellable materialfrom the asteroid should be returned with minimum delay.R&D increases the cost of space projects compared to terrestrial projects. Most largescale terrestrial mining and manufacturing uses essentially off the shelf equipment, making R&Drelatively inexpensive. Further, R&D increases the risk of the project: new designs are lessreliable than tested designs, and testing takes time and money.


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AT: Free Market Solves

The Market Doesnt SolveUntil Exhaustion of Earths Resources there is No EconomicIncentive

Universe Today Space Blog, Asteroid Mining, June 18th, 2009 (http://www.universetoday.com/32839/asteroid-mining/)

Asteroids are classed in three types: More than 75% of them are C-type which are very much like the Sun, but lessvolatile. Then there are the S-type which contain iron, nickel, and magnesium for sure, but may also contain gold andplatinum. Lastly, there are the M-type which contain iron and nickel.Astronomers know all of this by usingtelescopicspectroscopy, which analyzes light reflected from the asteroids surface, to find out what might be there.They also know that there is water and trapped oxygen on or in some of these asteroids. Asteroid mining would onlybe possible if miners could take advantage of the oxygen and water there. There is no other way to make a profit orcarry all of the supplies that you would need for a long term project.John S. Lewis, author of an asteroid mining book has said an asteroid with a diameter of one kilometer would havea mass of about two billion tons. One of these asteroids, according to Lewis, would contain 30 million tons of nickel,1.5 million tons of metal cobalt and 7,500 tons of platinum. The platinum alone would have a value of more than $150billion!. The huge sums of money involved could one day induce mining companies to look towards the heavens. Itmay not happen until we have exhausted most of the Earths natural resources, but it will happen.


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AT: No Opportunities to Mine

There are Lots of Opportunities NearbyWe Can Start Small and EarlyUniverse Today, Strange Asteroid 2009 BD Stalks the Earth, January 25th, 2009(http://www.universetoday.com/24131/strange-asteroid-2009-bd-stalks-the-earth/)

A 10 meter-wide asteroid named 2009 BD discovered earlier this month is making a slow pass of the Earth, comingwithin 400,000 miles (644,000 km) of ourplanet. The near-Earth asteroid (NEO) poses no threat to us, but it is anoddity worth studying. Astronomers believe the rock is a rare co-orbital asteroid which follows the orbit of the Earth,not receding more than 0.1 AU (15 million km) away. It is stalking us.On looking at the NASA JPL Small-Body Database orbital plot, it is hard to distinguish between the orbital path of theEarth and 2009 BD, showing just how close the asteroid is shadowing the Earth on its journey around the Sun

In 2006, NASA announced that Earths second moon was an asteroid called 2003 YN107 (with a diameter of about20 meters) and it was about to leave the vicinity of Earth, leaving its corkscrewing orbit around our planet for sevenyears, only to return again in 60 years time. 2003 YN107 was of no threat (and wont be in the future), but it isinteresting to study these bodies to understand how they interact with Earth. Having NEOs in stable orbits around theEarth could be of benefit to mankind in the future as missions can be planned, possibly sending mining missions tothese rocky visitors so we can tap their resources.


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AT: We Can Solve Space Later

We Have to Move Towards Space Colonization Nowthe Idea of Intervening Solvency Ignoresthe Idea of Intervening Catastrophe

J. Richard Gott, professor ofastrophysical sciences at Princeton University, A Grim Reckoning, November 15th,1997 (http://pthbb.org/manual/services/grim/)

For us, the end might come from a drastic climate change, nuclear war, a wandering asteroid or comet, or some othercatastrophe that catches us by surprise, such as a bad epidemic. If remain a one-planet species, we are exposed tothe same risk as other species, and are likely to perish on the same timescale. Some people might think that thediscoveries of our age--space travel, genetic engineering and electronic computers--place us in a special position.These breakthroughs, they might say, could lead us to spawn new intelligent species, including intelligent machinespecies, enhancing our chances of survival. But such thinking may raise false hopes. For, according to theCopernican principle, you are likely to be living in a century when the population is high because most people will beborn during such periods. And since it is people who make discoveries, it is not surprising that you will live in a centurywhen many interesting discoveries are being made. But your chance of being born 200 000 years after the beginningof your intelligent lineage, in the very century when a discovery is made that guarantees it a billion-year future, is verysmall, because a billion years of intelligent observers would be born after such a discovery, and you would be morelikely to be one of them. If you believe that any current discovery will dramatically increase our longevity, you must askyourself: why am I not already one of its products? Why am I not an intelligent machine or genetically engineered?Act NowThis a pretty grim reckoning, but we can see where our chances lie. If we plant self-supporting colonies in the SolarSystem, we will have an insurance policy against catastrophe. If something happens to us on Earth, some colonistsnight even eventually return and repopulate it. But we had better move quickly because the Copernican principle also

implies that we may not have the capacity for space travel for very long.In my 1993 Nature paper I estimated how long the human space programme, then 32 years old, would last. Since mypaper was not likely to fall either in the first 2.5 percent or the last 2.5 per cent of the programme, I predicted with 95per cent confidence that its future duration would be more than 10 months but less than 1248 years. The upper limit of1248 years is the total number of future years of human space flight, regardless of how many periods of inactivityoccur.You might argue that here is no hurry to colonise space within the next century. Why not wait a few centuries untiltechnology has become so advanced that colonising becomes easy? But if we lose the capacity for spaceflight beforewe've colonised--by the collapse of civilisation, loss of technology or diminished economic ability--then we've missedour chance. It's good that we went to the Moon in the 1960s. If we'd waited another 30 years hoping for an easier timeof it, we might never have made it, as we now seem to have less money for such ventures. Inset 2Unfortunately, I believe that we are likely to make precisely this kind of mistake. In 1969, Wernher von Braun hadplans to send astronauts to send astronauts to Mars by 1982; in 1989 Geirge Bush proposed sending people there by2019. This is an unfortunate trend, and I'm worried that the day may come when there is no one left alive who can say"I walked on the Moon". People who realise that colonising the Galaxy would be very beneficial to our survival havegenerally regarded such as inevitable. But it is not.

Since you are still on your home planet, the Copernican principle tells you that a significant fraction of all intelligentobservers must also still be on their home planets (otherwise you would be special). This explains why we have notbeen colonised by extraterrestrials--a significant fraction of them are still sitting at home. I would be more confidentabout the future if we were members of a billion-year-old civilisation which had already colonised is galaxy. But ourchance of colonising the entire Galaxy, increasing our current population by about a factor of a billion, is about one ina billion. Why? Because it would mean that you were born within the first billionth of all humans, which is exceedinglyunlikely (my colleagues Brandon Carter, John Leslie and Holgar Nielson have reached similar conclusions). Thefraction of all civiliastions that achieve galactic colonisation is likely to be small --otherwise, you would likely be livingin such a civilisation now.But that doesn't mean that we can't at least get off the planet and plant some colonies that will greatly enhance oursurvival chances. Colonisation, starting with Mars, should be our first goal. Space experiments could be gearedtowards making this possible. And if colonisation were the goal you would not have to bring the astronauts back fromMars--after all, that is where we want them. Instead, we could equip them to stay ("Escape from Mars", New Scientist,28 June, p 24) and establish a colony at the outset--a good strategy if one is worried that funding for the spaceprogramme may not last.


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AT: Treaties

The OST Doesnt Distract From Space Mining ActivitiesWe Can Work Within the TreatyInternational Space University, Space Studies Program, Asteroid Mining, Technologies, Roadmap and Application,2010 (http://www.mendeley.com/research/asteroid-mining-technologies-roadmap-and-applications-final-report/)

Current international law does not guarantee the right to conduct mining activities on near-Earth objects (NEOs).Article I of the OST states that outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States. This, however, may not

preclude mining activities. Moreover, Art. 6, paragraph 2 of the 1979 Agreement Governing the Activities of States onthe Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (Moon Agreement, 1984) stipulates that it is acceptable to remove samplesunder the auspices of scientific investigations but does not take into consideration the commercial extraction ofresources. We foresee that this could prevent other entities from exploring, using

11pola mining+ +copy

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