Tournament: lex | Round: 1 | Opponent: Millburn ST | Judge: Grant Brown
framework
1 Util is Intrinsic and we can measure it through pain and pleasure – Science proves
Moen 16 (Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo) “An Argument for Hedonism,” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10790-015-9506-9 TDI
Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic value and disvalue is that pleasure is intrinsically valuable and pain is intrinsically disvaluable. On virtually any proposed list of intrinsic values and disvalues (we will look at some of them below), pleasure is included among the intrinsic values and pain among the intrinsic disvalues. This inclusion makes intuitive sense, moreover, for there is something undeniably good about the way pleasure feels and something undeniably bad about the way pain feels, and neither the goodness of pleasure nor the badness of pain seems to be exhausted by the further effects that these experiences might have. “Pleasure” and “pain” are here understood inclusively, as encompassing anything hedonically positive and anything hedonically negative.2 The special value statuses of pleasure and pain are manifested in how we treat these experiences in our everyday reasoning about values. If you tell me that you are heading for the convenience store, I might ask: “What for?” This is a reasonable question, for when you go to the convenience store you usually do so, not merely for the sake of going to the convenience store, but for the sake of achieving something further that you deem to be valuable. You might answer, for example: “To buy soda.” This answer makes sense, for soda is a nice thing and you can get it at the convenience store. I might further inquire, however: “What is buying the soda good for?” This further question can also be a reasonable one, for it need not be obvious why you want the soda. You might answer: “Well, I want it for the pleasure of drinking it.” If I then proceed by asking “But what is the pleasure of drinking the soda good for?” the discussion is likely to reach an awkward end. The reason is that the pleasure is not good for anything further; it is simply that for which going to the convenience store and buying the soda is good.3 As Aristotle observes: “We never ask a man what his end is in being pleased, because we assume that pleasure is choice worthy in itself.”4 Presumably, a similar story can be told in the case of pains, for if someone says “This is painful!” we never respond by asking: “And why is that a problem?” We take for granted that if something is painful, we have a sufficient explanation of why it is bad. If we are onto something in our everyday reasoning about values, it seems that pleasure and pain are both places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value.
2 Actor specificity:
A Governments must aggregate since every policy benefit some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action.
B States lack wills or intentions since policies are collective actions.
C Actor-specificity comes first since different agents have different ethical standings.
3 Maximizing well-being undergrids all human motivation – neuroscience means we’re all utilitarian
Joshua D Green PhD 14 – Psych professor @ Harvard
(July 2014, “Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality: Why Cognitive (Neuro)Science Matters for Ethics” Source Ethics, https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/files/psych/files/beyond-point-and-shoot-morality.pdf?m=1441302794) Coach Eli
In this article I explain why cognitive science !including some neuroscience" matters for normative ethics. First, I describe the dual-process theory of moral judg- ment and briefly summarize the evidence supporting it. Next I describe related experimental research examining influences on intuitive moral judgment. I then describe two ways in which research along these lines can have implications for ethics. I argue that a deeper understanding of moral psychology favors certain forms of consequentialism over other classes of normative moral theory. I close with some brief remarks concerning the bright future of ethics as an interdisci- plinary enterprise. The cognitive science of ethics is booming, thanks in no small part to philosophers.1 Nevertheless, many philosophers wonder whether this, or any, empirical research could have implications for foundational ques- tions in normative ethics. In this article I will explain why cognitive science matters for ethics. More specifically, I will defend the following thesis: Science can advance ethics by revealing the hidden inner workings of our moral judgments, especially the ones we make intuitively. dence in some of our judgments and the ethical theories that are !explicitly or implicitly" based on them. In Section I, I will describe our brains as dual-process systems and in- troduce the camera analog y , the organizing metaphor of this essay and a central idea in my book.2 In Section II, I will describe and present evi- dence for the dual-process theory of moral judgment. In Section III, I will describe related experimental research examining influences on our moral intuitions. In Sections IV and V, I’ll describe two routes by which cognitive science can have implications for ethics, and with no illicit is/ oughtbordercrossings.Icalltheseroutesdirect andindirect.InSectionVI, I’ll explain why a deeper understanding of moral psychology favors certain forms of consequentialism. I will then close with a few words about the bright future of ethics as an interdisciplinary enterprise. I. THE DUAL-PROCESS BRAIN I own a digital SLR camera that, like many others, operates in two com- plementary modes. First, it has a variety of point-and-shoot automatic settings that are optimized for typical photographic situations !“portrait,” “action,” “landscape,” etc.". I use these most of the time. Occasionally, I get ambitious and put the camera in manual mode, which allows me to adjust all of the camera’s settings by hand. This dual-mode design exemplifies an elegant solution to a ubiqui- tous design problem, namely, the trade-off between efficiency and flexi- bility. The automatic settings are highly efficient, but not very flexible, and the reverse is true of the manual mode. Put them together, however, and you get the best of both worlds, provided that you know when to use each mode. The human brain has the same general design.3 First, we humans have a variety of automatic settings—reflexes and intuitions that guide our behavior, many of which are emotional. We may be conscious of such emo- tional responses, but we are generally not conscious of the processes that trigger them. We rely on our automatic settings most of the time, and they generally serve us well.4 Our brains also have a manual mode. It is a general-purpose rea- soning system, specialized for enabling behaviors that serve long!er"- term goals, that is, goals that are not automatically activated by current environmental stimuli or endogenous somatic states.5 The operations of this system are typically conscious, experienced as voluntary, and often experienced as effortful. Our manual mode allows us to formulate be- havioral plans based on detailed and explicit knowledge of the situations we face, along with explicit general knowledge about the world and how it works. Manual mode allows us to guide our behavior using explicit rules and to think explicitly about how the world works. In short, manual mode thinking is the kind of thinking that we think of as “thinking.”6 The way our brains handle the efficiency/flexibility tradeoff is nicely illustrated by our navigation of the familiar tension between now and later. We have automatic settings that urge us to consume or acquire valuable resources, such as calorie-rich food and money, whenever they are avail- able. This is very efficient because it is generally adaptive to acquire valu- able resources. At the same time, we humans have the capacity to think explicitly about whether our long-term goals are served by immediate consumption/acquisition, along with the capacity to regulate our behav- ior accordingly. In other words, we can delay gratification, choosing, for example, a slimmer waistline in three months over chocolate cake right now. This is a dual-process phenomenon. If, for example, our manual mode capacity is occupied by a distracting memory task, our automatic settings gain the advantage, and we are more likely to choose chocolate cake over fruit salad.7 Recent brain imaging studies reveal the underlying neural dynamics.8 Brain regions such as the ventral striatum and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex !VMPFC" produce the automatic response favoring now and enable this response to influence behavior. Other brain regions, most notably the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex !DLPFC", enable the controlled response that sometimes favors later, depending on the situational details. We see the dual-process brain at work in other domains, for example, in the cog- nitive control of negative reactions to members of racial out-groups and sad scenes.9 In these cases among others, the amygdala, an ancient mam- malian brain structure with direct connections to the VMPFC, plays a crit- ical role in automatic responding, while the DLPFC plays a central role in coordinating manual mode thinking and responding. Before moving on, it’s worth highlighting three ways in which the camera analogy may mislead. First, while a camera must be in one mode or another, the waking human brain’s automatic settings are always on. Second, a camera’s dual modes can function independently of each other, but in animals there is an asymmetrical dependence. One can have auto- matic settings without a manual mode, as in most animals, but not the reverse. Finally, automatic settings need not be “innate” or “hardwired.” They can be acquired or modified through cultural learning !as in prej- udicial responses to racial out-groups" and through individual experi- ences !as in classical conditioning".
4 Extinction comes first it’s the top priority in any coherent moral theory
Plummer 15 (Theron, Philosophy @St. Andrews http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/05/moral-agreement-on-saving-the-world/)
There appears to be lot of disagreement in moral philosophy. Whether these many apparent disagreements are deep and irresolvable, I believe there is at least one thing it is reasonable to agree on right now, whatever general moral view we adopt: that it is very important to reduce the risk that all intelligent beings on this planet are eliminated by an enormous catastrophe, such as a nuclear war. How we might in fact try to reduce such existential risks is discussed elsewhere. My claim here is only that we – whether we’re consequentialists, deontologists, or virtue ethicists – should all agree that we should try to save the world. According to consequentialism, we should maximize the good, where this is taken to be the goodness, from an impartial perspective, of outcomes. Clearly one thing that makes an outcome good is that the people in it are doing well. There is little disagreement here. If the happiness or well-being of possible future people is just as important as that of people who already exist, and if they would have good lives, it is not hard to see how reducing existential risk is easily the most important thing in the whole world. This is for the familiar reason that there are so many people who could exist in the future – there are trillions upon trillions… upon trillions. There are so many possible future people that reducing existential risk is arguably the most important thing in the world, even if the well-being of these possible people were given only 0.001 as much weight as that of existing people. Even on a wholly person-affecting view – according to which there’s nothing (apart from effects on existing people) to be said in favor of creating happy people – the case for reducing existential risk is very strong. As noted in this seminal paper, this case is strengthened by the fact that there’s a good chance that many existing people will, with the aid of life-extension technology, live very long and very high quality lives. You might think what I have just argued applies to consequentialists only. There is a tendency to assume that, if an argument appeals to consequentialist considerations (the goodness of outcomes), it is irrelevant to non-consequentialists. But that is a huge mistake. Non-consequentialism is the view that there’s more that determines rightness than the goodness of consequences or outcomes; it is not the view that the latter don’t matter. Even John Rawls wrote, “All ethical doctrines worth our attention take consequences into account in judging rightness. One which did not would simply be irrational, crazy.” Minimally plausible versions of deontology and virtue ethics must be concerned in part with promoting the good, from an impartial point of view. They’d thus imply very strong reasons to reduce existential risk, at least when this doesn’t significantly involve doing harm to others or damaging one’s character. What’s even more surprising, perhaps, is that even if our own good (or that of those near and dear to us) has much greater weight than goodness from the impartial “point of view of the universe,” indeed even if the latter is entirely morally irrelevant, we may nonetheless have very strong reasons to reduce existential risk. Even egoism, the view that each agent should maximize her own good, might imply strong reasons to reduce existential risk. It will depend, among other things, on what one’s own good consists in. If well-being consisted in pleasure only, it is somewhat harder to argue that egoism would imply strong reasons to reduce existential risk – perhaps we could argue that one would maximize her expected hedonic well-being by funding life extension technology or by having herself cryogenically frozen at the time of her bodily death as well as giving money to reduce existential risk (so that there is a world for her to live in!). I am not sure, however, how strong the reasons to do this would be. But views which imply that, if I don’t care about other people, I have no or very little reason to help them are not even minimally plausible views (in addition to hedonistic egoism, I here have in mind views that imply that one has no reason to perform an act unless one actually desires to do that act). To be minimally plausible, egoism will need to be paired with a more sophisticated account of well-being. To see this, it is enough to consider, as Plato did, the possibility of a ring of invisibility – suppose that, while wearing it, Ayn could derive some pleasure by helping the poor, but instead could derive just a bit more by severely harming them. Hedonistic egoism would absurdly imply she should do the latter. To avoid this implication, egoists would need to build something like the meaningfulness of a life into well-being, in some robust way, where this would to a significant extent be a function of other-regarding concerns (see chapter 12 of this classic intro to ethics). But once these elements are included, we can (roughly, as above) argue that this sort of egoism will imply strong reasons to reduce existential risk. Add to all of this Samuel Scheffler’s recent intriguing arguments (quick podcast version available here) that most of what makes our lives go well would be undermined if there were no future generations of intelligent persons. On his view, my life would contain vastly less well-being if (say) a year after my death the world came to an end. So obviously if Scheffler were right I’d have very strong reason to reduce existential risk. We should also take into account moral uncertainty. What is it reasonable for one to do, when one is uncertain not (only) about the empirical facts, but also about the moral facts? I’ve just argued that there’s agreement among minimally plausible ethical views that we have strong reason to reduce existential risk – not only consequentialists, but also deontologists, virtue ethicists, and sophisticated egoists should agree. But even those (hedonistic egoists) who disagree should have a significant level of confidence that they are mistaken, and that one of the above views is correct. Even if they were 90 sure that their view is the correct one (and 10 sure that one of these other ones is correct), they would have pretty strong reason, from the standpoint of moral uncertainty, to reduce existential risk. Perhaps most disturbingly still, even if we are only 1 sure that the well-being of possible future people matters, it is at least arguable that, from the standpoint of moral uncertainty, reducing existential risk is the most important thing in the world. Again, this is largely for the reason that there are so many people who could exist in the future – there are trillions upon trillions… upon trillions. (For more on this and other related issues, see this excellent dissertation). Of course, it is uncertain whether these untold trillions would, in general, have good lives. It’s possible they’ll be miserable. It is enough for my claim that there is moral agreement in the relevant sense if, at least given certain empirical claims about what future lives would most likely be like, all minimally plausible moral views would converge on the conclusion that we should try to save the world. While there are some non-crazy views that place significantly greater moral weight on avoiding suffering than on promoting happiness, for reasons others have offered (and for independent reasons I won’t get into here unless requested to), they nonetheless seem to be fairly implausible views. And even if things did not go well for our ancestors, I am optimistic that they will overall go fantastically well for our descendants, if we allow them to. I suspect that most of us alive today – at least those of us not suffering from extreme illness or poverty – have lives that are well worth living, and that things will continue to improve. Derek Parfit, whose work has emphasized future generations as well as agreement in ethics, described our situation clearly and accurately: “We live during the hinge of history. Given the scientific and technological discoveries of the last two centuries, the world has never changed as fast. We shall soon have even greater powers to transform, not only our surroundings, but ourselves and our successors. If we act wisely in the next few centuries, humanity will survive its most dangerous and decisive period. Our descendants could, if necessary, go elsewhere, spreading through this galaxy…. Our descendants might, I believe, make the further future very good. But that good future may also depend in part on us. If our selfish recklessness ends human history, we would be acting very wrongly.” (From chapter 36 of On What Matters)
inherency
Currently, entrepreneurs are pushing for privatization of space travel with increasing success
Thompson 20 (Clive, author of Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World, a columnist for Wired magazine, and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine) “Monetizing the Final Frontier The strange new push for space privatization,” December 3, 2020 https://newrepublic.com/article/160303/monetizing-final-frontier TDI
For longtime enthusiasts of NASA’s human spacefaring, it was a singularly auspicious moment. Ever since NASA’s space shuttles were mothballed in 2011, the agency had no American-owned way of getting people into space. It had been paying the Russian government to fly U.S. astronauts up and back, on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft. But this flight was different. It was the first time humans had flown in a rocket and a capsule made by a private-sector company: SpaceX, the creation of the billionaire Elon Musk. The launch was also a SpaceX branding bonanza. The astronauts rode up to the rocket in a Tesla, Musk’s fabled luxury electric car; when they’d reached orbit, they broadcast a live video in which they thanked SpaceX for making the flight happen, and showed off the sleek capsule—a genuine marvel of engineering, with huge touch screen control panels that looked rather like the ones inside a Tesla itself. Over the next few years, NASA will pay Musk and SpaceX $2.6 billion to ferry astronauts to and from the space station six times. For the feds, this price tag is remarkably cheaper than the space shuttle, which cost over $1 billion per flight. In his speech after the launch, Trump lauded the cost savings that SpaceX had realized on the government’s behalf. SpaceX, he announced, “embodies the American ethos of big thinking and risk-taking.... Congratulations, Elon.” For Musk, though, the launch was more than just a technical success, and is bigger even than the $2.6 billion contract. It cements him as a leading player in what might seem the unlikeliest stage of the final frontier’s exploration—the privatization of space. Private-sector activity in space travel is accelerating dramatically—rocketing, one might say. For decades, ever since people first headed for orbit in the 1960s, spaceflight had been mostly the preserve of governments. States were the only actors with the money and technical acumen to blast things into the vacuum and get them safely down again. The private sector didn’t have NASA’s know-how, nor—more important—a business plan that could rationalize the massive outlay of capital required to operate in space. In the last few years, that calculus has changed dramatically. A generation of “New Space” entrepreneurs has begun launching rockets and satellites. Some seek to flood the planet with fast, cheap mobile-phone signals; others want to manufacture new products in zero gravity, harnessing the novel physics of such conditions to engineer substances that can’t be made in Earth’s gravity. Further afield, they’re aiming to harvest water on the moon and even mine asteroids. Backing this burst of entrepreneurial fervor are many billionaires who made their money in the early Wild West of the internet, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, with dreams of building space colonies, and Musk, the former PayPal titan who hopes to personally make it to Mars. Barack Obama’s administration made the first major overtures to the space privatizers, signing legislation that paved the way for today’s space boom. But the real land rush has occurred under Trump, via a flurry of executive orders designed to give private firms greater access to “low-Earth orbit.” Trump officials have even touted the idea of privatizing the $100 billion space station itself—the last signature NASA-sponsored human spacecraft project still aloft. When Trump’s transition team in 2017 pondered the handoff of low-Earth orbit to the private sector, it concluded: “This may be the biggest and most public privatization effort America has ever conducted.” Or as Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz—at the time the chairman of the Space, Science, and Competitiveness Subcommittee—put it in 2018: “I predict the first trillionaire will be made in space.” The burst of activity and high-tech acumen thrills many space fans. But it is making many others quite nervous. Opening up space to a frenzy of private actors could, they agree, produce measurable benefits back on planet Earth—making crucial scientific research, environmental monitoring, and everyday communication cheaper. But the critics are quick to note as well that the history of privatization is spotty at best, with plenty of civically brutal knock-on effects: concentrations of monopolistic power, enfeebled democratic control, and widespread environmental degradation. We’ve seen all those problems appear on Earth as all manner of traditional social goods, from education and housing to pension plans and mass transit, have been targeted for private-sector control. Next up, it seems, is the great beyond.
Advantage
Public sector developments coming now –
1/13 Wells (Robert Wells, Writer for the UCF Today, “UCF Researcher Leads $1.5 Million DARPA Project to Improve Night Vision, Space Exploration and Healthcare Diagnostics, https://www.ucf.edu/news/ucf-researcher-leads-1-5-million-darpa-project-to-improve-night-vision-space-exploration-and-healthcare-diagnostics/, shub)
A University of Central Florida researcher is leading a new, $1.5 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency project to develop a highly sensitive infrared imaging system designed to enable improved night vision, space exploration and healthcare diagnostics.
The project will use a new infrared detection concept based on graphene — a material that is composed of one atom thick regular honeycomb arrangement of carbon atoms.
“We could pattern graphene with engineered nano-scale features that works as nano-antennas to collect light —enhancing infrared light absorption by over 30 times compared to the bare graphene sheet,” says Debashis Chanda, the project’s leader and a professor in UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center. “This enables this ‘engineered’ graphene to be used as a light detection material.”
The new imaging system will be more sensitive than current infrared imaging systems and will cost significantly less as it will not require expensive and cumbersome cryogenic cooling.
“A highly sensitive, room temperature infrared imaging system will facilitate many practical applications to emerge,” Chanda says. “The next challenge is to add required electronics to convert this new one-atom thick material to a functional camera.”
The funding for the three-year, DARPA Direct Phase-II project will be split between UCF and E-Skin Displays Inc., which is a California startup focused on commercializing technologies developed in Chanda’s lab. The main goal of the new grant is to take this new concept to the commercialization domain by transforming it to a functional infrared camera.
This direct Phase II award continues the research and development effort from the previously completed DARPA-funded work.
“Receiving a DARPA Direct Phase-II award is very rare, so I’m feeling quite happy that a challenging agency like DARPA considers my team capable and has confidence in me,” Chanda says.
Chanda has joint appointments in UCF’s Department of NanoScience Technology Center, the Department of Physics and the College of Optics and Photonics. He received his doctorate in photonics from the University of Toronto and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before joining UCF in Fall 2012.
Privatization of space travel kills off public space exploration. Space exploration must be public-sector – entrepreneurs purposely understate the barriers to colonization, yet exploit its potential for financial gain.
Phillips 20 (Leigh, science writer and EU affairs journalist, author of Austerity Ecology and the Collapse-Porn Addicts.) “We Don’t Need Elon Musk to Explore the Solar System,” May 8, 2021, https://jacobinmag.com/2021/05/elon-musk-space-exploration-mars-colonization TDI
He opens the paper with a recognition that, at some point, if we stay on Earth, we will confront an eventual extinction event. “The alternative is to become a spacefaring civilization and a multi-planetary species.” He alights upon Mars as the obvious first option for establishing a “self-sustaining city — a city that is not merely an outpost, but which can become a planet in its own right.” He rejects Venus due to it being, as he correctly puts it, a super-high-pressure, hot acid bath. He rejects Mercury due to it being too close to the Sun, and the Moon for lack of atmosphere and its twenty-eight-day “day” (a Martian day, or “sol,” for comparison, is an Earthling-friendly 24.5 hours). And he rejects, at least for now, the moons of Jupiter or Saturn, as they are much harder to get to. Mars has more than its own share of habitability issues, but Musk does not mention them, other than to say that, while Mars is “a little cold” (in reality, -63ºC, or -81ºF, compared to Earth’s balmy 16ºC, or 57ºF), “we can warm it up.” The Martian atmosphere is “very helpful” because it’s primarily CO2, with some nitrogen and argon, meaning that “we can grow plants on Mars just by compressing the atmosphere.” Most cheery of all, Musk says it would be “quite fun” to be on Mars, because the gravity is about 38 percent that of Earth, making it easy to lift heavy things and “bound around.” Mars, as seen from space. (WikiImages via Pixabay) It’s all so simple. “We just need to change the populations because currently we have seven billion people on Earth and none on Mars.” And so the paper is primarily devoted to explaining how to solve that sole problem: how to lower the cost of a trip to Mars from the current roughly $10 billion per person down to the median cost of a house in the United States. By making rockets reusable, refilling in orbit, producing propellant on Mars, choosing the right propellant, and improving system design and performance, Musk reckons he can get the cost of a ticket down to $200,000, perhaps as little as $100,000. And Musk’s SpaceX has done a tremendous job so far of sharply reducing the cost of escaping Earth’s gravity well, primarily via deep vertical integration of the firm. It produces a whopping 70 percent of its components in-house, as opposed to the 1,200 different suppliers in the outsourced supply chain of its main competitor, the Boeing–Lockheed Martin partnership known as the United Space Alliance. Each of these suppliers extracts their own profit margin from every contract in the chain, jacking up the cost per launch to $460 million. SpaceX, by comparison, charges NASA and its other clients just $62 million per launch, and Musk says he has slashed the marginal cost of a reused Falcon 9 booster launch to a mere $15 million. Well done, Elon. Or, rather, well done to all the engineers, logistical experts, and other workers who have done most of the labor, allowing SpaceX to revolutionize the business model of getting to space. There is not really any mention of the enormous challenges of the atmosphere’s low pressure and toxic composition, the preponderance of deadly perchlorates in the soil, or the lack of magnetosphere to protect against solar and cosmic radiation. The current atmosphere of Mars is too thin to support most life: its pressure is only about 1 percent that of Earth. Only hypopiezotolerant microbes (those that live in low-pressure environments), such as ones that are lofted by winds into Earth’s stratosphere, would be able to survive. The atmosphere is also 95 percent carbon dioxide — fine for plants (if the pressure were able to be raised) but not for animals. Musk does say that once Mars is warmed up, “we would once again have a thick atmosphere and liquid oceans.” Bioremediation using bacteria to clean up perchlorates already occurs on Earth, but we are talking about an entire planet here. There is no discussion of how any of this might happen, over what time period, and who would pay for it. Same with the construction of an artificial magnetosphere. Dealing with the perchlorates alone would likely be profoundly more challenging and expensive than the relatively straightforward process of decarbonizing Earth’s economy. A 2018 NASA study found that there is insufficient CO2 and H2O from the Martian soil, polar ice caps, and minerals in the upper crust to get anywhere close to thickening the atmosphere and using it like a blanket to warm up the planet. All these sources combined would still only boost the pressure to about 7 percent of that of Earth. Carbon-bearing minerals deep in the crust might have enough CO2 to achieve the needed pressure, but nothing is known about their extent, and recovering them with current technology would be colossally energy intensive. Another idea is to direct comets or asteroids to crash into Mars and release their greenhouse gases that way. Again, these are fantastical ideas that will be impractical for many, many generations yet to come. NASA astronauts in space. (NASA) And there is likely no way of ever overcoming Mars’s low gravity. If you added all the mass of Venus to that of Mars, smashing the planets together, even then, you would still not quite achieve Earth’s gravity. It is true that we do not know what the physiological effects of 38 percent of Earth’s gravity are, either on humans or other life. We have two data points: Earth gravity, what we call 1G, and the 0G microgravity of the International Space Station (ISS). But from studies of astronauts who have spent extended periods aboard the ISS, we know that 0G is extremely bad for human health. Muscles atrophy. Tendons and ligaments begin to fail. Facial and finger muscles, which cannot be worked out via onboard gyms or treadmills, weaken. The spine lengthens, with astronauts gaining an inch or two in height and suffering from back pain. Bones demineralize, losing density at a rate of 1 percent per month. As Christopher Wanjek, a former NASA science writer and author of 2020 book Spacefarers — which is an optimistic volume on the viability of manned space travel — notes: “To visualize how bad that bone loss is, consider the fact that the major obstacle to fully recycling urine into drinking water on the ISS is that the filters get clogged daily with calcium deposits.” Wanjek writes how the rate of vision loss is such that a crew to Mars would need to pack eyeglasses with various prescriptions for “each phase of their gradual, inevitable, and permanent vision loss.” Kidneys get confused by blood not being where it’s supposed to be and think there is an excess, so they start to remove what they believe to be excess water. The blood thickens, driving a reduced production of red blood cells, which in turn drives anemia, shortness of breath, lethargy, and greater likelihood of infection. Perhaps worst of all, brain compression resulting from microgravity negatively impacts regions responsible for fine motor movement and executive function — deteriorations that could be permanent. A range of interventions, including exercise, drugs, and compression clothing can shave the sharp edges off some of these effects, but ultimately, the solution on a spacecraft is the simulation of gravity via centrifugal force — a spinning ship. This is not something that you can do with a whole planet. It is for this reason that Venus, with its gravity not too far off that of Earth, may actually be a better terraforming candidate than Mars — one day — despite its currently inhospitable atmosphere. The Real Business of SpaceX Isn’t Mars One has to suspect that Musk knows all this. We have a hint of this when, at one point in his paper, Musk concedes that it will be difficult to fund his vision just by slashing the cost of getting to space. He admits that SpaceX expects to generate substantial cash flow from launching lots of satellites and servicing the International Space Station for NASA. Additional help for bankrolling the Mars project might come from the emergence of a market for really fast transportation of things or people around the world by rocket: cargo could be transported anywhere on Earth in forty-five minutes, and a trip from New York to Tokyo could take a mere twenty-five minutes (so long as takeoff and landing takes place where the tremendous noise, as he puts it in hip-CEO-speak, “is not a super-big deal”). As a result, one gets the impression by reading between the lines that a self-sustaining Martian city is all just an impressive marketing maneuver taking advantage of most people’s sense of adventure and wonder; of our species’ ancient need to wander and explore. The real business of SpaceX was never a Martian colony but rather servicing a mature satellite market, stealing government space contracts from the likes of Boeing, and kicking off a terrestrial rocket transport sector. The dream of Mars is, in this case, not really any different from the adman’s fiction of romance and aspiration that sells a can of Pepsi or a Jeep. The dream of Mars is, in this case, not really any different from the adman’s fiction of romance and aspiration that sells a can of Pepsi or a Jeep. None of this is to suggest that establishing an outpost on Mars for the purposes of scientific exploration should not be attempted, even in the next couple of decades. But an outpost, as Musk himself makes clear, does not approach a self-sustaining city, and still less a multi-planetary species. Because humans do need to exit Earth at some point in order to maintain the species, if we are to establish genuinely self-sustaining colonies, then terraforming will likely be necessary one day, as well as interstellar generation ships that take us to habitable exoplanets far beyond the solar system. For all of this, we will have to figure out how to take our ecology with us. We are not really the collection of individuals we thought we were, but rather are deeply embedded within our ecosystems. Indeed, each of us is a microbial ecosystem whose edges are vague. Where does the bacterial, fungal, and viral multitude that is “me” stop and my equally microbiological environment begin? This does not mean that Earth will be the only home we ever have, but it does mean that the antiseptic, forestless, riverless Starship Enterprise would leave its inhabitants very sick before too long. How much of our ecology do we need to take with us, though? We just don’t know yet. The science of ecology is very much still a young discipline. This is where fantastical science-fiction conceptions of vast ships made from hollowed out asteroids and packed with different biomes fills the gap of what we do not know. Likewise for novels like Becky Chambers’s To be Taught, if Fortunate, in which, instead of terraforming other worlds, adapting them to our needs, we genetically alter our bodies via “somaforming” to adapt ourselves to their conditions. Plainly, then, there is no rush for any of this, even as there is a moral imperative for us, one day in the distant future, to permanently exit Earth. Our colonization of other worlds is akin to the building of the grandest cathedral we have ever envisaged: a project that will take centuries, or more likely millennia, many millennia. This is nothing that a private company can deliver. There is no near-term return on investment; indeed, there is no aim of profitability at all, but rather of our species’ survival through the eons.
Space exploration is essential to the survival of humanity. Two impacts—
First, colonization—
It solves a litany of existential threats – don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
Fitzgerald 3/9 (Shanon, Assistant Websites Editor at Liberty Fund), “Why Human Space Exploration Matters,” March 9 2021, https://www.econlib.org/why-human-space-exploration-matters/ TDI
While the yields to space exploration and the development of spaceflight technology may appear minimal in the immediate future, shifting our perspective to the longer term renders the human situation vis a viz space exploration extremely clear: if humans want to survive in perpetuity, we need to establish ourselves on other planets in addition to Earth. It is as simple as that. And yet we are not doing all that much to make that happen. To be clear, I’m long on Earth, too, and hope that technological improvements will continue to allow our species to get “more from less” right here on the third rock from the sun, enabling us to keep occupying the planet that saw us evolve into consciousness. I like to imagine that the distant future on Earth has the potential to be an extremely pleasant one, as advances in our scientific understanding and bio-technical praxis should hopefully allow our descendants to clean up any of the remaining messes previous generations will have left behind (e.g., nuclear and industrial waste, high amounts of atmospheric carbon, other lingering nasties) and stable-state free societies will hopefully allow all persons (or very nearly all persons) to live free and meaningful lives in productive community and exchange with their fellows. As the previous qualification highlights, the trickiest problems here on Earth and extending to wherever humans end up in the spacefaring age will still be social and political, and their successful resolution will depend more on the future state of our governing arts than our hard sciences. But regarding the negative events that could very well happen to Earth I think we all need to be equally clear: life might not make it here. There is no guarantee that it will, and in the very long run, with the expansion and subsequent death of our sun, we know with near certainty that it will not. Consider just a few possible extinction-level events that could strike even earlier: large meteors, supervolcanic eruptions, drastic climactic disruption of the “Snowball Earth” variety. As SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently observed on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, “A species that does not become multiplanetary is simply waiting around until there is some extinction event, either self-inflicted or external.” This statement, applied to the human species, is obviously true on its face. As doomsday events go a giant asteroid might be more shocking, since we (people living today) have never experienced one before while concerned atomic scientists warn us about the nuclear bomb all the time, but the odds that we blow ourselves up are still there. Slim, but there. It’s more plausible that a severe nuclear war and the nuclear winter it would likely trigger would leave the human population greatly reduced as opposed to completely extinct, but then the question becomes: why is that a risk we would want to take? The bomb is here to stay for now, but there is no reason that 100 of known life in the universe needs to stay here on Earth to keep it company, waiting around for something even more destructive to show up. While we’re on that happy subject: Do you have any good intuitions about our collective chances against hostile, or simply arrogant or domineering, technologically-advanced extraterrestrial lifeforms, if and/or when they decide to pay us a visit on our home turf? These scary situation sketches will suffice. At bottom, the core reason I am a believer in the need to make life—and not just human life—multiplanetary is the same basic reason I would never counsel a friend to keep all their money and valuables in one place: diversification is good. Wisdom and experience suggest we store precious resources in multiple safe(ish) places. Diversification limits our exposure to risk, and increases our resilience when bad things do happen. One reserve gets hit, two or three others survive, and you probably feel that the effort to spread things out was worth it. What I’m saying here has strong undercurrents of common sense, yet our approach to the human population itself—the universal store and font of “human capital”—does not currently prioritize diversification to the degree our technological capabilities would allow. The distribution of the human population, and of almost all human knowledge and works, is overwhelmingly local. (Let us set to one side the possibility that aliens somewhere maintain an archive of captured human information.) Establishing outposts at least as large as those we maintain in Antarctica on the Moon and Mars, or other more suitable sites, by the end of this century would be a great first step toward genuinely diversifying the physical locations of the most precious resources known to us: human consciousness and creativity, human love and human soul, the great works in which all these things are displayed. Add also to this list repositories of scientific knowledge and knowhow, seed reserves, and certain materials necessary to re-start the manufacturing of fundamental technologies. Spreading these goods to a few additional locations within the solar system would be a major species-and-civilization-level accomplishment that all living at the time could feel satisfied by, and even take some pride in. And this is something that we seem to be just on the cusp of being able to do, given our recent and rapid technological advances in rocketry, computers, and materials science and engineering, among other important fields for space exploration and settlement. Quickly the uniplanetary human situation is becoming, if it is not already, one of pure choice.
Space col key to innovation,
West 20 Darrell M. West, 8-18-2020, "Five reasons to explore Mars," Brookings, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2020/08/18/five-reasons-to-explore-mars/ TDI
The recent launch of the Mars rover Perseverance is the latest U.S. space mission seeking to understand our solar system. Its expected arrival at the Red Planet in mid-February 2021 has a number of objectives linked to science and innovation. The rover is equipped with sophisticated instruments designed to search for the remains of ancient microbial life, take pictures and videos of rocks, drill for soil and rock samples, and use a small helicopter to fly around the Jezero Crater landing spot. Mars is a valuable place for exploration because it can be reached in 6 ½ months, is a major opportunity for scientific exploration, and has been mapped and studied for several decades. The mission represents the first step in a long-term effort to bring Martian samples back to Earth, where they can be analyzed for residues of microbial life. Beyond the study of life itself, there are a number of different benefits of Mars exploration. UNDERSTAND THE ORIGINS AND UBIQUITY OF LIFE The site where Perseverance is expected to land is the place where experts believe 3.5 billion years ago held a lake filled with water and flowing rivers. It is an ideal place to search for the residues of microbial life, test new technologies, and lay the groundwork for human exploration down the road. The mission plans to investigate whether microbial life existed on Mars billions of years ago and therefore that life is not unique to Planet Earth. As noted by Chris McKay, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Science Center, that would be an extraordinary discovery. “Right here in our solar system, if life started twice, that tells us some amazing things about our universe,” he pointed out. “It means the universe is full of life. Life becomes a natural feature of the universe, not just a quirk of this odd little planet around this star.” The question of the origins of life and its ubiquity around the universe is central to science, religion, and philosophy. For much of our existence, humans have assumed that even primitive life was unique to Planet Earth and not present in the rest of the solar system, let alone the universe. We have constructed elaborate religious and philosophical narratives around this assumption and built our identity along the notion that life is unique to Earth. If, as many scientists expect, future space missions cast doubt on that assumption or outright disprove it by finding remnants of microbial life on other planets, it will be both invigorating and illusion-shattering. It will force humans to confront their own myths and consider alternative narratives about the universe and the place of Earth in the overall scheme of things. As noted in my Brookings book, Megachange, given the centrality of these issues for fundamental questions about human existence and the meaning of life, it would represent a far-reaching shift in existing human paradigms. As argued by scientist McKay, discovering evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars would lead experts to conclude that life likely is ubiquitous around the universe and not limited to Planet Earth. Humans would have to construct new theories about ourselves and our place in the universe. DEVELOP NEW TECHNOLOGIES The U.S. space program has been an extraordinary catalyst for technology innovation. Everything from Global Positioning Systems and medical diagnostic tools to wireless technology and camera phones owe at least part of their creation to the space program. Space exploration required the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to learn how to communicate across wide distances, develop precise navigational tools, store, transmit, and process large amounts of data, deal with health issues through digital imaging and telemedicine, and develop collaborative tools that link scientists around the world. The space program has pioneered the miniaturization of scientific equipment and helped engineers figure out how to land and maneuver a rover from millions of miles away. Going to Mars requires similar inventiveness. Scientists have had to figure out how to search for life in ancient rocks, drill for rock samples, take high resolution videos, develop flying machines in a place with gravity that is 40 percent lower than on Earth, send detailed information back to Earth in a timely manner, and take off from another planet. In the future, we should expect large payoffs in commercial developments from Mars exploration and advances that bring new conveniences and inventions to people. ENCOURAGE SPACE TOURISM In the not too distant future, wealthy tourists likely will take trips around the Earth, visit space stations, orbit the Moon, and perhaps even take trips around Mars. For a substantial fee, they can experience weightlessness, take in the views of the entire planet, see the stars from outside the Earth’s atmosphere, and witness the wonders of other celestial bodies. The Mars program will help with space tourism by improving engineering expertise with space docking, launches, and reentry and providing additional experience about the impact of space travel on the human body. Figuring out how weightlessness and low gravity situations alter human performance and how space radiation affects people represent just a couple areas where there are likely to be positive by-products for future travel. The advent of space tourism will broaden human horizons in the same way international travel has exposed people to other lands and perspectives. It will show them that the Earth has a delicate ecosystem that deserves protecting and why it is important for people of differing countries to work together to solve global problems. Astronauts who have had this experience say it has altered their viewpoints and had a profound impact on their way of thinking. FACILITATE SPACE MINING Many objects around the solar system are made of similar minerals and chemical compounds that exist on Earth. That means that some asteroids, moons, and planets could be rich in minerals and rare elements. Figuring out how to harvest those materials in a safe and responsible manner and bring them back to Earth represents a possible benefit of space exploration. Elements that are rare on Earth may exist elsewhere, and that could open new avenues for manufacturing, product design, and resource distribution. This mission could help resource utilization through advances gained with its Mars Oxygen Experiment (MOXIE) equipment that converts Martian carbon dioxide into oxygen. If MOXIE works as intended, it would help humans live and work on the Red Planet. ADVANCE SCIENCE One of the most crucial features of humanity is our curiosity about the life, the universe, and how things operate. Exploring space provides a means to satisfy our thirst for knowledge and improve our understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe. Space travel already has exploded centuries-old myths and promises to continue to confront our long-held assumptions about who we are and where we come from. The next decade promises to be an exciting period as scientists mine new data from space telescopes, space travel, and robotic exploration. Ten or twenty years from now, we may have answers to basic questions that have eluded humans for centuries, such as how ubiquitous life is outside of Earth, whether it is possible for humans to survive on other planets, and how planets evolve over time.
Second, Russia—
Deep space exploration is a shared goal that prevents escalation of US-Russia tensions. But privatization threatens it independent of our other internal links
CSIS 18 (Center for Strategic and International Studies), “Why Human Space Exploration Matters,” August 21, 2018 https://www.csis.org/blogs/post-soviet-post/space-cooperation TDI
U.S.-Russian space cooperation continues to be a stated mutual goal. In April 2018, President Putin said of space, “Thank God, this field of activity is not being influenced by problems in politics. Therefore, I hope that everything will develop, since it is in the interests of everyone…This is a sphere that unites people. I hope it will continue to be this way.” During his statement at a recent event at CSIS, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said, “space is our best opportunity to dialogue when everything else falls apart. We’ve got American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts dependent on each other on the International Space Station, which enables us to ultimately maintain that dialogue.” The U.S. and Russia both benefit from the ISS partnership. Russia provides transportation to the ISS for U.S. astronauts, from which Russia receives an average of $81 million per seat on the Soyuz (and recognition of its status as a space power). The U.S. also benefits from Russia’s technical contributions to the ISS while Russia benefits The U.S. and Russia signed a joint statement in 2017 in support of the idea of collaborating on deep space exploration, including the construction of the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, a research-focused space station orbiting the moon. Through agreements on civilian space exploration, such as the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway or future Mars projects, that have clear benefits to both sides, some degree of cooperation will remain in both countries’ interest. The high price tag for pursuing space exploration alone and opportunities for sharing and receiving technical expertise encourages international partnerships like the ISS. However, at least three factors, apart from the overall deterioration of U.S.-Russia relations, threaten this cooperation. First, growth of the private sector space industry may alter the economic arrangement between the U.S. and Russia, and ultimately lower the benefits of cooperation to both countries. The development of advanced technologies by private companies will give NASA new options to choose from and reduce the need to depend on (and negotiate with) Russia. If NASA and its Russian counterpart, Roskosmos, have no need to talk with one another, they probably won’t in the face of tense political relations. The U.S. intends to use Boeing and SpaceX capsules for human spaceflight beginning in 2020, and a Congressional plan in 2016 set a phase out date of Russian RD-180 rocket engines by 2022.
Space missions prove vital for cooperation between Russia and The US, Biden and Putin know, first steps have already been made
Luxmoore, 11/03, U.S. and Russia Find Some Common Ground—in Space, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/03/us-russia-space-cooperation-nasa-sirius/, Foreign Policy,
MOSCOW—Ashley Kowalski has spent much of her career advancing international space cooperation at the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation in California, most recently as a project manager. Now, the 32-year-old American is going to put her passion to the test—by locking herself in a hermetically sealed capsule with five strangers for an eight-month simulated mission to space. “Throughout my life I’ve tried to marry my work in the space industry with my love for different cultures,” said Kowalski, who has done previous fellowships in Germany, Russia, and China. “So this program stood out for me.” On Nov. 4, Kowalski will join one other American, three Russians, and an Emirati inside the confined facility in a Soviet-era building on the outskirts of Moscow that’s meant to mimic as much as possible the conditions on long space journeys, including both the physiological and the psychological challenges. A barrage of daily tests will record the changes the aspiring astronauts undergo and relay the data to a team of researchers at Moscow’s Institute of Biomedical Problems, which has teamed up with NASA to launch the Scientific International Research in Unique Terrestrial Station, or SIRIUS. The project is meant to gather data on how people cope physically and mentally with long-term confinement, a necessary prelude to longer space journeys to the moon or even Mars; the data will be made available to various space agencies. The international component of the experiment is important, because scientists hope that international crews working together on land could smooth the path to eventual joint exploration of Mars. SIRIUS and similar experiments not only could pave the way for future joint missions but also show how 30 years after the end of the Cold War, and amid sharply rising tensions between Washington and Moscow, space remains a rare field of cooperation. The United States depended on Russia for years to deliver its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), an arrangement that bolstered Russia’s reputation as a reliable partner and ensured a steady revenue stream. In April, Russia extended its space cooperation agreement with the United States until 2030, ensuring joint work on the ISS will continue. But that has been overshadowed in recent years by Russia’s adventurism in Europe, meddling in U.S. elections, devastating cyberattacks against U.S. targets, use of the energy weapon to choke Europe, and a sudden breakdown in relations between Russia and NATO this fall. In June, at a bilateral summit in Geneva, U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin zeroed in on common interests such as cybersecurity and arms control as a way of maintaining some cooperation, and the Biden administration has continued to look for ways to reduce tension; space also fits the bill perfectly. “There are areas where there’s a mutual interest for us to cooperate, for our people—Russian and American people—but also for the benefit of the world,” Biden said after the summit. Six folks in a tube may not be enough to defuse all the tensions between the two geopolitical rivals. But for those going inside—and the scientists watching from the outside—the stakes are still high. Humans have evolved over hundreds of millennia to thrive in an environment with oxygen, water, and gravity. NASA has spent years conducting earthbound experiments to see what happens when those basic conditions are missing, including paying people to lie in bed for months and experience the effects of muscle loss and bone degradation, which accelerates rapidly in an atmosphere of weightlessness. The SIRIUS volunteers won’t have to worry about either weightlessness or cosmic radiation. But the simulation offers them a chance to prove they have the right stuff and could meet at least some of the criteria for future travel to space. “The process is somewhat similar to astronaut selection,” said Igor Kofman of NASA’s Human Research Program, which chose the two U.S. participants and two backups for this year’s mission, known as SIRIUS-21, from a pool of hundreds of candidates. In the past, far less attention was paid to the mental well-being of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo crews who pioneered early space exploration in the 1960s and 1970s. With longer missions on the horizon, a good psychological fit becomes even more important. The current crop of volunteers is being evaluated on their ability to adapt to new situations they cannot change, tolerance for isolation and confinement, and the unflappability required to spend extended periods of time with relative strangers. Reinhold Povilaitis, a participant in the four-month SIRIUS mission in 2019 and now an employee of NASA’s Human Research Program, said he found it hard initially to adapt to the customs of his crew members, like the constant tea-drinking sessions of the Russians. “They may have bonded prior to going in, but they haven’t lived together,” he said of the current crop of volunteers. “And what they can tolerate at the beginning might not be the same at the end. So they find balance, hopefully, in the course of eight months.” “This is a stressful situation,” said Oleg Blinov, a 43-year-old Russian space industry worker who will serve as captain of SIRIUS-21 and be responsible for safeguarding a sociable atmosphere among members of the crew and resolving any conflicts. “If we don’t remain upbeat, it’ll be difficult to get through it.” Many previous ground simulations had only American participants, but Kofman said the international crew of SIRIUS-21 likely reflects the space crews of the future. “We’re hoping future missions will be multicultural,” he said. “That’s why it’s important to simulate those parameters and those conditions.” Those conditions include plenty of physical discomforts to go with the isolation. Most of the time an astronaut spends on the ISS is spent assembling and maintaining the spacecraft, and the SIRIUS-21 volunteers will be subject to a daily schedule that is timed to the minute and designed to counteract boredom and mimic the workload of a real space flight. Exercise is daily; showers are once a week. Food rations include freeze-dried meals and powdered substances that solidify when mixed with hot water, and bathrooms are around the size of those on a Russian train. Communication with friends and family will be limited to an occasional email. “This means being away from your family, from home comforts. That’s the sacrifice,” said Abdalla al-Hammadi, 35, a former Emirati test pilot and father of two who was chosen from around 1,000 applicants to take part in SIRIUS. The United Arab Emirates has a burgeoning space sector and plans to send its first astronauts to Mars in 2117. Hammadi hopes his involvement with SIRIUS will increase his grandson’s or great-grandson’s chances of being on that Mars mission. “I am giving this to my son, my son will give it to his son, and it will carry on,” he said. (Just before the experiment started, Hammadi learned that another Emirati volunteer would take his spot, and he would act as a backup.) The UAE’s ambitions represent a shifting of the center of gravity in the space race. Russia for decades was one of the dominant powers, and even more so after the United States wound down its Space Shuttle program. But last year, SpaceX completed the first manned orbital flight from U.S. soil in almost a decade, breaking Russia’s monopoly and ushering in a new era of competition. Delivering astronauts to space on a rocket designed and manufactured by a private U.S. company, the SpaceX launch culminated a decadeslong effort to transform space into a new sphere of capitalist competition and rattled dominant Russian state enterprises that had inherited Soviet technology. (But not Soviet-level budgets: In 2020, the budget of Russian space agency Roscosmos was around $2.4 billion at current exchange rates; NASA’s was $22.6 billion.) “From a historical point of view, Russia played a major role in space. But from today’s perspective, its influence is rapidly waning,” said Ivan Moiseyev, head of the Institute of Space Policy in Moscow. “The U.S. is an economic powerhouse in space, and Europe and China are beginning to exceed Russia in their potential.” The end goal for most of the volunteers is to participate in a real orbital flight in the years to come, with SIRIUS a preview of that ultimate challenge. But if the space simulation is not enough to qualify them, it’s all in the name of advancing science, too. “This is probably the largest amount of data from an analog data study that anybody has ever collected,” Kowalski said. “At the end of the day, we’re doing something that’ll help human space flight. Maybe being an astronaut is not part of my future, maybe I don’t stay in the space industry. But at least I know that I was part of something bigger.”
It’s make or break for the relationship—Ukraine, decline of US moral authority on international affairs puts us at the brink of the end of Russian diplomacy and even war
Weir 21 (Fred Weir has been the Monitor's Moscow correspondent, covering Russia and the former Soviet Union, since 1998. He's traveled over much of that vast territory, reporting on stories ranging from Russia's financial crash to the war in Chechnya, creeping Islamization in central Asia, Russia's demographic crisis, the rise of Vladimir Putin and his repeated returns to the Kremlin, and the ups and downs of US-Russia relations). “Worse than the Cold War? US-Russia relations hit new low.“ Christian Science Monitor 4-20-2021 https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2021/0420/Worse-than-the-Cold-War-US-Russia-relations-hit-new-low TDI
Russia’s relations with the West, and the United States in particular, appear to be plumbing depths of acrimony and mutual misunderstanding unseen even during the original Cold War. After years of deteriorating relations, sanctions, tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions, and an escalating “information war,” some in Moscow are asking if there even is any point in seeking renewed dialogue with the U.S., if only out of concern that more talking might just make things worse. Events have cascaded over the past month. Russia’s treatment of imprisoned dissident Alexei Navalny, who has been sent to a prison hospital amid reports of failing health, underlines the sharp perceived differences between Russia and the West over matters of human rights. Meanwhile, a Russian military buildup near Ukraine has illustrated that the conflict in the Donbass region might explode at any time, possibly even dragging Russia and NATO into direct confrontation. With its relations with Washington at a nadir, Russia is eyeing a more pragmatic, if adversarial, relationship with the U.S. in the hopes of getting the respect it desires. President Joe Biden surprised the Kremlin by proposing a “personal summit” to discuss the growing list of U.S.-Russia disagreements in a phone conversation with Vladimir Putin last week. He later spoke of the need for “disengagement” in the escalating tensions around Ukraine, and postponed a planned visit of two U.S. warships to Russia-adjacent waters in the Black Sea. But days later he also imposed a package of tough sanctions against Russia, for its alleged SolarWinds hacking and interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections, infuriating Moscow and drawing threats of retaliation. Last month, after Mr. Biden agreed with a journalist’s intimation that Mr. Putin is a “killer,” the Kremlin ordered Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. to return home for intensive consultations, an almost unprecedented peacetime move. Over the weekend, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested that the acting U.S. ambassador to Moscow, John Sullivan, should likewise go back to Washington for a spell. On Tuesday, Mr. Sullivan announced he would do just that this week. And there is a growing sense in Moscow that the downward spiral of East-West ties has reached a point of no return, and that Russia should consider abandoning hopes of reconciliation with the West and seek permanent alternatives: perhaps in an intensified compact with China, and targeted relationships with countries of Europe and other regions that are willing to do business with Moscow. “Things are at rock bottom. This may not be structurally a cold war in the way the old one was, but mentally, in terms of atmosphere, it’s even worse,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a Moscow-based foreign policy journal. “The fact that Biden offered a summit meeting would have sounded a hopeful note anytime in the past. Now, nobody can be sure of that. A hypothetical Putin-Biden meeting might not prove to be a path to better relations, but just the opposite. It could just become a shouting match that would bring a hardening of differences, and make relations look like even more of a dead end.” Room for discussion Foreign policy experts agree that there is a long list of practical issues that could benefit from purposeful high-level discussion. With the U.S. preparing to finally exit Afghanistan, some coordination with regional countries, including Russia and its Central Asian allies, might make the transition easier for everyone. One of Mr. Biden’s first acts in office was to extend the New START arms control agreement, which the Trump administration had been threatening to abandon, but the former paradigm of strategic stability remains in tatters and requires urgent attention, experts say. “If you are looking for opportunities to make the world a safer place through reason and compromise, there are quite a few,” says Andrey Kortunov, director of the Russian International Affairs Council, which is affiliated with the Foreign Ministry. “There are also some areas where the best we could do is agree to disagree, such as Ukraine and human rights issues.” The plight of Mr. Navalny, which has evoked so much outrage in the West, seems unlikely to provide leverage in dealing with the Kremlin because – as Western moral authority fades – Russian public opinion appears indifferent, or even in agreement with its government’s actions. Recent surveys by the Levada Center in Moscow, Russia’s only independent pollster, found that fewer than a fifth of Russians approve of Mr. Navalny’s activities, while well over half disapprove. An April poll found that while 29 of Russians consider Mr. Navalny’s imprisonment unfair, 48 think it is fair. Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, shown here during a hearing in the Babuskinsky District Court in Moscow Feb. 12, 2021, is in poor health amid his hunger strike while in prison in Russia. He was recently moved to a prison hospital. Tensions around the Russian-backed rebel republics in eastern Ukraine have been much severer than usual, with a spike in violent incidents on the front line, a demonstrative Russian military buildup near the borders, and strong U.S. and NATO affirmations of support for Kyiv. The Russian narrative claims that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy triggered the crisis a month ago by signing a decree that makes retaking the Russian-annexed territory of Crimea official Ukrainian state policy. Mr. Zelenskiy has also appealed to the U.S. and Europe to expedite Ukraine’s membership in NATO, which Russia has long described as a “red line” that would lead to war. But Russian leaders, who have been at pains to deny any direct involvement in Ukraine’s war for the past seven years, now say openly that they will fight to defend the two rebel republics. Top Kremlin official Dmitry Kozak even warned that if conflict erupts, it could be “the beginning of the end” for Ukraine. “This is a very desperate situation,” says Vadim Karasyov, director of the independent Institute of Global Strategies in Kyiv. “We know the West is not going to help Ukraine militarily if it comes to war. So we need to find some kind of workable compromises, not more pretexts for war.” Time to turn eastward? In this increasingly vexed atmosphere, the Russians appear to be saying there is no point in Mr. Putin and Mr. Biden meeting unless an agenda has been prepared well in advance, setting out a few achievable goals and leaving aside areas where there can be no agreement. “Russia isn’t going to take part in another circus like we had with Trump in Helsinki in 2018,” says Sergei Markedonov, an expert with MGIMO University in Moscow. “What is needed is a deeper dialogue. That could begin if we had a real old-fashioned summit between Biden and Putin, one that has been calculated to yield at least some positive results. We need to find a modus vivendi going forward, and the present course is not leading there.” Alternatively, Russia may turn away from any hopes of even pragmatic rapprochement with the West, experts warn. Mr. Lukyanov, who maintains close contact with his Chinese counterparts, says they felt blindsided at a summit with U.S. foreign policy chiefs in Alaska last month, when what they expected to be a practical discussion of how to overcome the acrimonious Trump-era legacy in their relations turned into what they saw as a U.S. lecture about how China needs to obey the “rules-based” international order. “It was the Chinese, in the past, who were very cautious about participating” in anything that looked like an anti-Western alliance, says Mr. Lukyanov. “We are hearing a new tone from them now. Now our growing relationship with China isn’t just about compensating for a lack of relations with the U.S. It’s about the need to build up a group of countries that will resist the U.S., aimed at containing U.S. activities and policies that are harmful to our two countries.”
Space weapons heighten potential for escalation and make perceptions of US-Russia space conflict key.
Alexey Arbatov et al, head of the Center for International Security at the Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Major General Vladimir Dvorkin, a principal researcher at the Center for International Security at the Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations and Peter Topychkanov, fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Nonproliferation Program, ‘17 “Russian And Chinese Perspectives On Non-Nuclear Weapons And Nuclear Risks” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Publications, https://www.russiamatters.org/sites/default/files/media/files/Entanglement_interior_FNL.pdf
Against this background, Russian military and technical experts are currently engaged in efforts to elaborate strategies for fighting an air-space war. The following is an attempt to frame such an integrated doctrine by one of its main theoreticians, Colonel Yuri Krinitsky from the Military Air-Space Defense Academy: “The integration of aerial and space-based means of attack has transformed airspace and space into a specific field of armed conflict: an air-space theater of military operations. United, systematically organized actions of U.S. air-space power in this theater should be countered with united and systematically organized actions by the Russian Air-Space Defense Forces. This is required under the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation and Air-Space Defense Plan approved by the Russian president in 2006.”6 This document goes on to list the tasks of the Air-Space Defense Forces as “monitoring and reconnaissance of the airspace situation; identifying the beginning of an aerial, missile, or space attack; informing state organs and the military leadership of the Russian Federation about it; repelling air-space attacks; and defending command sites of the top levels of state and military command authorities, strategic nuclear forces’ groupings, and the elements of missile warning systems.”7 While picking apart in detail the organizational, operational, and technical aspects of the Air-Space Defense Forces (now part of the Air-Space Forces),8 military analysts step around the basic question of what constitutes “the means of air-space attack” (SVKN in Russian, MASA in English). This term and “air-space attack” are broadly used in official documents (including the Military Doctrine) and statements, as well as in the new names of military organizations (such as the Air-Space Forces), and in a seemingly infinite number of professional articles, books, and pamphlets. If MASA refers to aircraft and cruise missiles, then what does space have to do with it? To be sure, various military communication and intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance satellites are based in space, but these assets also serve the Navy and Ground Forces without the word “space” tacked onto their names. If MASA refers to long-range ballistic missiles, which have trajectories that pass mostly through space, then this threat is not new but has existed for more than sixty years. There was—and still is—no defense against a massive ballistic missile strike, and none is likely in the future in spite of U.S. and Russian efforts at missile defense. In the past (and possibly now), one of the possible tasks of ballistic missiles was to break “corridors” in the enemy’s air-defense system to enable bombers to penetrate it. But with ballistic missiles being armed with more warheads with improved accuracy, and with the advent of longrange air-launched cruise missiles, it is increasingly unnecessary for bombers to be able to penetrate enemy air defenses. Coordination between air and notional “space” systems has apparently moved to the background of strategic planning. Anyway, this tactic was never considered as air-space warfare before now. MASA may be used in reference to potential hypersonic boost-glide weapons, which are discussed below. But their role and capabilities are not yet known, so it would clearly be premature to build the theory of air-space war on them, and even more so to start creating defenses against them. In any case, referring to those weapons as MASA is farfetched: besides a short boost phase, their entire trajectory is in the upper atmosphere at speeds greater than airplanes but lower than ballistic missiles. It is, therefore, even less apt to describe such systems as space arms than it is to refer to traditional long-range ballistic missiles as such. Finally, as for theoretically possible space-based weapons that would conduct strikes against targets on the ground, at sea, and in the air, they do not yet exist, and their future viability is far from clear. Even if the concept of air-space war is ill-defined, the military and technical experts who propound it reach a predictable conclusion with regard to the capabilities needed to fight one. They typically argue that Russia needs “to counter the air-space attack system with an air-space defense system. . . . A prospective system for destroying and suppressing MASA should be a synergy of anti-missile, anti-satellite, and air-defense missiles, and air units, and radio-electronic warfare forces. And its composition should be multilayered.”9 Such calls are being translated into policy. Most notably, the air-space defense program, for which the military’s top brass and industrial corporations lobbied, is the single largest component of the State Armaments Program through 2020, accounting for about 20 percent of all costs when the program was first announced in 2011—about 3.4 trillion rubles ($106 billion at the time).10 Along with the modernization of the missile early-warning system by the development and deployment of new Voronezh-type land-based radars and missile-launch detection satellites, the program envisages the deployment of twenty-eight missile regiments of S-400 Triumph air-defense systems (about 450 to 670 launchers), and thirty-eight battalions equipped with the next-generation S-500 Vityaz (recently renamed Prometey) systems (300 to 460 launchers).11 In total, the plan is to manufacture up to 3,000 missile interceptors of the two types, for which three new production plants were built. A new integrated and fully automatic command-and-control system is being created to facilitate operations by the Air-Space Defense Forces. The Moscow A-135 missile defense system (now renamed A-235) is being modernized with non-nuclear kinetic interceptors to engage incoming ballistic missiles (previously the interceptors were armed with nuclear warheads).12 The current Russian economic crisis, which has resulted in defense budget cuts in fiscal year 2017, may slow down the air-space armament programs and the scale of arms procurement, but the underlying momentum will be unaffected unless stopped or redirected by a major change in Russia’s defense posture. In a sense, Russian policy may be explained by the visceral desire of the military to break out from the deadlock—the “strangulating effect”—of mutual assured nuclear destruction, which has made further arms development, high-technology competition, and supposedly fascinating global war scenarios senseless (indeed, it prompted U.S. and Soviet leaders of the 1970s and 1980s to agree that, as then U.S. president Ronald Reagan put it, “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”13) During the four decades of the Cold War, several generations of the Soviet military and defense industrial elite had learned and become accustomed to competing with the most powerful possible opponent, the United States, and such competition became their raison d’être. The end of the Cold War and of the nuclear arms race in the early 1990s deprived them of this supposedly glorious quest, and opposing rogue states and terrorists was not a noble substitute. U.S. and NATO operations in Yugoslavia and Iraq, however, provided a new hightechnology challenge, defined in Russia as air-space warfare, which was eagerly embraced as a new and fascinating domain of seemingly endless competition with a worthy counterpart. Besides, this new dimension of warfare doubtless gave the military and associated defense industries an opportunity to impress political leadership with newly discovered esoteric and frightening threats, justifying the prioritization of national defense, and hence arms procurement programs and large defense budgets. In any case, the Russian strategy for air-space war is directly connected to the problem of entanglement. Astonishingly—and this makes the concept look quite scholastic—its framers shed no light on the single most important question: Is the context for air-space war a global (or regional) nuclear war, or a non-nuclear war that pits Russia against the United States and NATO? If it is the former, then in the event of the large-scale use of ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads (and in the absence of effective missile defense systems), the Russian Air-Space Forces would be unlikely to function effectively. Except for issuing warnings about incoming missile attacks, they would not be able to fulfill the tasks assigned to them by Russia’s Military Doctrine, including “repelling air-space attacks and defending command sites of the top levels of state and military administration, strategic nuclear forces’ units, and elements of missile warning systems.”14 Alternatively, if air-space war assumes a non-nuclear conflict, then the concept raises serious doubts of a different nature. Russian state and military leaders have regularly depicted terrifying scenarios of large-scale conflicts being won through non-nuclear means. Former deputy defense minister General Arkady Bakhin, for example, has described how “leading world powers are staking everything on winning supremacy in the air and in space, on carrying out massive air-space operations at the outbreak of hostilities, to conduct strikes against sites of strategic and vital importance all across the country.”15 It is difficult to imagine, however, that such a conflict, in reality, would not quickly escalate to a nuclear exchange, especially as strategic forces and their C3I systems were continually attacked by conventional munitions. Right up until the mid-1980s, the military leadership of the USSR believed that a major war would likely begin in Europe with the early use by Warsaw Pact forces of hundreds of tactical nuclear weapons “as soon as they received information” that NATO was preparing to launch a nuclear strike.16 After that, Soviet armies would reach the English Channel and the Pyrenees in a few weeks, or massive nuclear strikes would be inflicted by the USSR and the United States on one another, and the war would be over in a few hours, or at most in a few days, with catastrophic consequences.17 After the end of the Cold War, the task of elaborating probable major war scenarios was practically shelved because such a war had become unthinkable in the new political environment. However, strategic thinking on the next high-technology global war apparently continued in secret (and probably not only in Russia). Now, at a time of renewed confrontation between Russia and the West, the fruits of that work are finally seeing the light of day. In all likelihood, the authors of the strategy imagine that over a relatively long period of time—days or weeks—the West would wage a campaign of air and missile strikes against Russia without using nuclear weapons. Russia, in turn, would defend against such attacks and carry out retaliatory strikes with long-range conventional weapons. Notably, in 2016, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu stated that “by 2021, it is planned to increase by four times the combat capabilities of the nation’s strategic non-nuclear forces, which will provide the possibility of fully implementing the tasks of non-nuclear deterrence.”18 In other words, the basic premise is that the U.S.-led campaigns against Yugoslavia in 1999 or Iraq in 1990 and 2003 (which are often cited by experts in this context) may be implemented against Russia—but with different results, thanks to the operations of the Russian Air-Space Forces, the Strategic Rocket Forces, and the Navy against the United States and its allies. The emphasis on defensive and offensive strategic non-nuclear arms does not exclude, but—on the contrary—implies the limited use of nuclear weapons at some point of the armed conflict. Sergei Sukhanov, one of the most authoritative representatives of the defense industries as the constructor general of the Vympel Corporation, which is responsible for designing strategic defense systems, has exposed the whole panorama of Russia’s contemporary strategic logic on the interactions between offensive and defensive systems and between nuclear and non-nuclear systems: If we cannot exclude the possibility of the large-scale use of air-space attacks by the U.S. and other NATO countries (i.e., if we accept that the Yugoslavian strategy might be applied against Russia), then it is clearly impossible to solve the problem by fighting off air-space attacks with weapons that would neutralize them in the air-space theater, since this would require the creation of highly effective air- and missile defense systems across the country. Therefore, the strategy for solving the air-space defense tasks faced in this eventuality should be based on deterring the enemy from large-scale air-space attacks by implementing the tasks facing air-space defense in this eventuality at a scale that would avoid escalation but force the enemy to refrain from further airspace attack.19 (Emphasis added.) In other words, because of the inevitable limitations in Russia’s ability to defend against air-space attacks, Sukhanov argues that Russia may have to resort to the limited use of nuclear weapons in order to compel the United States and its allies into backing down. This basic logic is widely accepted in Russia. Judging by the available information, the United States does not have—and is not expected to have for the foreseeable future—the technological means or the operational plans to wage non-nuclear air-space warfare against Russia. However, the fact that a major war with the United States and NATO is seen in contemporary Russian strategic thinking as a prolonged endeavor involving an integrated technological and operational continuum of nuclear and non-nuclear operations, defensive and offensive capabilities, and ballistic and aerodynamic weapons creates a breeding ground for entanglement. The result could be the rapid escalation of a local non-nuclear conflict to a global nuclear war. The remainder of this chapter discusses how new and emerging military technologies might contribute to such an escalation.
Nuke war causes extinction – it won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 (Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky/card is only parts of the interview directly from Paul Edwards.) “How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate,” EarthSky, September 8, 2017, earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate TDI
We are not talking enough about the climatic effects of nuclear war. The “nuclear winter” theory of the mid-1980s played a significant role in the arms reductions of that period. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reduction of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, this aspect of nuclear war has faded from view. That’s not good. In the mid-2000s, climate scientists such as Alan Robock (Rutgers) took another look at nuclear winter theory. This time around, they used much-improved and much more detailed climate models than those available 20 years earlier. They also tested the potential effects of smaller nuclear exchanges. The result: an exchange involving just 50 nuclear weapons — the kind of thing we might see in an India-Pakistan war, for example — could loft 5 billion kilograms of smoke, soot and dust high into the stratosphere. That’s enough to cool the entire planet by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.25 degrees Celsius) — about where we were during the Little Ice Age of the 17th century. Growing seasons could be shortened enough to create really significant food shortages. So the climatic effects of even a relatively small nuclear war would be planet-wide. What about a larger-scale conflict? A U.S.-Russia war currently seems unlikely, but if it were to occur, hundreds or even thousands of nuclear weapons might be launched. The climatic consequences would be catastrophic: global average temperatures would drop as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) for up to several years — temperatures last seen during the great ice ages. Meanwhile, smoke and dust circulating in the stratosphere would darken the atmosphere enough to inhibit photosynthesis, causing disastrous crop failures, widespread famine and massive ecological disruption. The effect would be similar to that of the giant meteor believed to be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. This time, we would be the dinosaurs. Many people are concerned about North Korea’s advancing missile capabilities. Is nuclear war likely in your opinion? At this writing, I think we are closer to a nuclear war than we have been since the early 1960s. In the North Korea case, both Kim Jong-un and President Trump are bullies inclined to escalate confrontations. President Trump lacks impulse control, and there are precious few checks on his ability to initiate a nuclear strike. We have to hope that our generals, both inside and outside the White House, can rein him in. North Korea would most certainly “lose” a nuclear war with the United States. But many millions would die, including hundreds of thousands of Americans currently living in South Korea and Japan (probable North Korean targets). Such vast damage would be wrought in Korea, Japan and Pacific island territories (such as Guam) that any “victory” wouldn’t deserve the name. Not only would that region be left with horrible suffering amongst the survivors; it would also immediately face famine and rampant disease. Radioactive fallout from such a war would spread around the world, including to the U.S. It has been more than 70 years since the last time a nuclear bomb was used in warfare. What would be the effects on the environment and on human health today? To my knowledge, most of the changes in nuclear weapons technology since the 1950s have focused on making them smaller and lighter, and making delivery systems more accurate, rather than on changing their effects on the environment or on human health. So-called “battlefield” weapons with lower explosive yields are part of some arsenals now — but it’s quite unlikely that any exchange between two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Privatization of space travel makes it politically polarizing and drains public support.
Phillips 20 (Leigh, science writer and EU affairs journalist, author of Austerity Ecology and the Collapse-Porn Addicts.) “We Don’t Need Elon Musk to Explore the Solar System,” May 8, 2021, https://jacobinmag.com/2021/05/elon-musk-space-exploration-mars-colonization TDI
Elon Musk is right to dream of humanity’s future as a multi-planet species. However, the multigenerational, millennia-long project of space colonization will be a public-sector endeavor, or it will not happen. Elon Musk, the third-richest man in the world, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla (and dabbler in online edgelord provocation), issued a strange Twitter post last month in defense of his wealth. “I am accumulating resources to help make life multiplanetary and extend the light of consciousness to the stars,” he declared. And then, this week, the centibillionaire further provoked when he mentioned in an interview about Martian colonization that, while it would be a glorious experience, “a bunch of people will probably die in the beginning.” All this within days of NASA’s Perseverance Mars mission achieving the first helicopter flight on another planet and producing five grams of oxygen from the planet’s carbon dioxide–dominant atmosphere — two major milestones in space exploration. A reasonable critique of Musk’s SpaceX endeavors might begin by noting that, regardless of how noble an aim Musk may have for his centibillions, there simply should not be centibillionaires (or even regular millionaires and billionaires). One might also echo Neil Armstrong’s criticism of private space flight — a criticism that once made Elon cry when 60 Minutes asked him about his hero arguing against the privatization of space. We might note how space exploration during the Cold War, despite the militarist overtones of the Space Race, was explicitly intended to be for all mankind rather than in service of the jollies of ultrarich space tourists. A democratic and public redirection of Elon Musk’s billions might be spent differently. One might further assert that, given the non-identity of the set of all things that are beneficial and the set of all things that are profitable, space colonization will be a public-sector endeavor, or it will not happen — as such a private space travel has no near-term, medium-term, or even long-term prospect of any return on financial investment beyond servicing low-earth, medium-earth, or geostationary orbit. And, finally, we might denounce the union-busting at Musk’s factories or even argue that his “accumulation of resources” is less the product of his own efforts than it is primarily an upward redistribution of value created by his workers. That is to say that there are a raft of progressive critiques of Musk that could be made that nevertheless still value space exploration and, one day, human colonization of the cosmos. Indeed, if one values space exploration and looks forward to the time, as astronomer Carl Sagan put it, “when most human cultures will be engaged in an activity you might describe as a dandelion going to seed,” then a socialist critique is all the more necessary, given the irrational limitations markets impose on human endeavor. There are a raft of progressive critiques of Elon Musk that could be made that nevertheless still value space exploration and, one day, human colonization of the cosmos. But instead, there are thousands of snark-drenched tweets sneering at how crackpot, masculinist, and even childish Elon’s dream is. They argue that space travel is a waste of resources that would be better spent solving problems here on Earth, and that space colonization is a repetition of the colonization of the New World. Even Bernie Sanders responded to Musk by saying: “Space travel is an exciting idea, but right now we need to focus on Earth and create a progressive tax system so that children don’t go hungry, people are not homeless and all Americans have healthcare. The level of inequality in America is obscene and a threat to our democracy.” At the time of writing, the senator’s tweet had received some 95,000 likes. Bernie is, in this case, wrong. Space exploration, including space travel, is one of the grandest tasks humanity has ever set for itself. It is a false dichotomy — and an austerian one at that — to say that we do not have enough money for both a space program and social justice or environmental protection. We can more than afford to do both. NASA’s budget is but a fraction of the Pentagon’s. It should not be difficult to imagine a democratic socialist economy, or even just one a little less neoliberal, that permits much more space and much less war. We can have public health care and science. We can end homelessness and explore the cosmos. We can have unionized, family-supporting jobs for all and, one day, almost certainly some considerable time from now, colonies on other worlds. The Postcolonial Space Programs Let me offer a personal anecdote about how I came to change my mind about this. A few years ago, I was researching the space programs of developing nations in Sub-Saharan Africa and South America for a feature article for a science magazine. While I have always been a cheerleader for space science, I had heard that, in some cases, the states concerned did not really have the capacity for such activities and were doing little more than rebranding British or American satellites launched from Russian spaceports. I thought I would have a nice story of neoliberal regimes wasting what little money these countries had on vanity projects that were of dubious national provenance. So I got in touch with some of the British and American engineers that had worked on these projects and interviewed them off the record. To varying degrees, they conceded that this was more or less what was happening in some places, but not in others, where a country was more advanced and did have at least some of the capacity necessary. Off the record, they told stories of corruption and incompetence, delays and malfunctions. But they also said that there was a learning process and there absolutely was a transfer of skills and knowledge. It was a mixed bag, they said. It is a false dichotomy — and an austerian one at that — to say that we do not have enough money for both a space program and social justice or environmental protection. More than this, what told me that made me completely rethink my attitude toward developing world space programs. They said that, however much they might have questioned the priority given to a space program for a country without functioning roads or sewage systems, everywhere they went, when they said why they were in the country, ordinary people would respond by bursting with pride that their country, too, was going into space. For them, it symbolized that they were just as good as any developed nation, that modernity was coming, and that they, too, could be explorers and pioneers. I put away my story and never wrote it. Instead, I investigated the decline of mathematical training in Africa in the neoliberal era. During the postcolonial era, African socialist governments had been committed to developing a cadre of professionals schooled in advanced mathematics and science, sometimes with the assistance of the Soviet Union, sometimes with aid from the United States or France, depending on the contingencies of the Cold War. But the indifference that followed the end of the Cold War and the advent of neoliberalism had gutted such training, and now, in many countries, the aging, mathematically trained professionals were retiring or dying with no one to replace them. Such training is essential not just for scientific research but for civil engineering, national budgeting, and enterprise planning. Thankfully, a celebrated physicist, Neil Turok — also the son of the man who crafted the South African ANC’s armed struggle strategy, Ben Turok — had started a new institute expressly committed to reviving Africa’s mathematical capacity. I wrote about that instead. We can today spend on both space exploration and mathematics education — and we could have in the 1960s. We don’t only need charity, but we need vaulting ambition as well: not just social programs but science. Or, put another way: we want bread, but we want roses, too. How Venus Helped Us Understand Global Warming But even if Bernie made an unwittingly neoliberal argument by imagining there is not enough wealth in America to afford both an ambitious space program and luxuriant social programs, he did at least state that he thought space travel was exciting. It was a matter of prioritization rather than outright opposition. There were others, however, who attacked the very idea of going into space, not least at a time of climate emergency. We should focus on this living planet rather than unfathomably distant dead ones, they said. This is not a one-off; Left critics of space programs repeatedly issue calls for a focus on the environmental challenges Earth faces instead of going to space. But this is a second false dichotomy. Space science, in so many respects, is Earth science. NASA is perhaps the premier Earth science research agency in the world. Its Landsat program, originally named the Earth Resources Technology Satellite and dating back to 1972, is the longest running effort to deliver satellite imagery of the planet. Its latest iteration, Landsat 8, launched in 2013 and delivers millions of images free of charge to researchers or any member of the public, tracking forest loss and degrowth, glacier and icecap melt, land-use change and agricultural water use. Left critics of space programs repeatedly issue calls for a focus on the environmental challenges Earth faces instead of going to space. But space science, in so many respects, is Earth science. Then there is AIRS, the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, on NASA’s Aqua satellite, which gathers infrared energy emitted from Earth’s surface and atmosphere and measurements of temperature and water vapor that are used to assess the accuracy of climate models, detect volcanic plumes, and forecast droughts. The Geostationary Carbon Observatory (GeoCarb), yet to launch, will monitor greenhouse gas emissions, and the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission will measure ice-sheet elevation, sea-ice thickness, and tree-canopy height to track changes in Greenland and Antarctica ice and assess changes in the total mass of the world’s vegetation. As of 2021, there are some forty different current and soon-to-launch Earth science missions performed by NASA. When we send missions to other worlds, again, learning about them teaches us as much about Earth as they do about the Moon, Mars, Venus, Europa, Titan, or Enceladus. Let’s remember that climatologist James Hansen — whose 1988 congressional testimony on global warming was one of the main catalysts of early public and political awareness of the climate emergency — had his start studying the transfer of radiation through the Venusian atmosphere. It was his work investigating Venus — a planet with a runaway greenhouse effect — that led him to work on climate change on Earth. Indeed, the study of the atmospheres of both Venus and Mars is a key part of the story of how we discovered global warming. Robots vs. Humans One might respond that all of this is unmanned space exploration. Surely steady advances in robotics and miniaturization have weakened the case for manned spaceflight. Robots like the Perseverance rover (nicknamed Percy), which recently landed in Jezero Crater on Mars aiming, among other goals, to search for evidence of ancient microbial life, are much more able to access extreme environments inhospitable to humans and at a much lower cost. But while there are many things robots can do that humans cannot, there are also many things humans can do that robots cannot and will never be able to (at least until the advent of artificial general intelligence). As British planetary scientist Ian Crawford argues, humans have the advantage over robots with respect to on-the-spot decision-making and flexibility and thus increased probability of making serendipitous discoveries. There is also greater efficiency of sample collection and return with humans (382 kg of moon rocks returned by Apollo vs the 0.32 kg from the sample returns of the Soviet Union’s robotic Luna missions), and greater potential for large-scale exploratory activity, deployment, and maintenance of complex equipment. But it is the universal problem-solving capability of humans that is key. Crawford quotes Steve Squyres, the principal investigator for the Mars exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity, who concluded in 2005: “The unfortunate truth is that most things our rovers can do in a perfect sol a Martian day a human explorer can do in less than a minute.” An artist’s rendering of the Perseverance rover on Mars. (Tim Tim / Wikimedia Commons) And we see this in the scientific literature. Comparing the number of refereed publications resulting from the Apollo moon missions (the only human exploration missions) with those from robotic missions to the Moon and Mars, Crawford finds the former has produced a much greater volume. Dividing the cumulative number of publications by days of fieldwork on the surface, Crawford gauges that the Apollo project was three orders of magnitude more efficient in producing scientific papers per day than its unmanned counterparts, while being about one or two orders of magnitude more expensive. He notes that the next most productive missions are the Luna sample return missions. This shows how important sample return is, and indeed, one of Percy’s goals is to collect rock and regolith (“soil”) samples that, at some point in the early 2030s, will be retrieved by a “fetch rover” mission and sent back to Earth via a Mars Ascent Vehicle, a miniature rocket whose design has yet to be agreed. One of the main reasons robotic missions have been cheaper is that they do not return. The return mission thus bumps up the cost. But the quantity and diversity of samples will not be as high as a human mission could deliver. He is keen to stress that none of this should downplay the importance of robotic Martian sample return, which is necessary until humans can safely be sent to Mars and back. The point is to correct the erroneous notion that manned space missions are merely white elephants servicing national pride in contests with geopolitical rivals such as the USSR or China but have no real scientific purpose. Even though the priority should be, and very much is, on robotic exploration, we will learn more if we do both over time than if we depend upon robotic exploration alone. Robots enhance rather than replace human exploration. The Prison of the Possible One might then argue, nevertheless, that, given the exorbitant cost of space travel, whether by human, robot, or satellite (a robot of a sort), we should still, as Bernie’s tweet stated, focus instead on hunger, homelessness, and health care on Earth. Prioritization of spending will always be necessary, but a strictly utilitarian approach that demands we cannot spend on large scientific endeavors until poverty and inequality are eradicated would likewise have to rule out other big-ticket but curiosity-driven science efforts such as the Large Hadron Collider. Indeed, it also follows that any scholarship that is not applied research with a demonstrably near-term human benefit should be halted until all other problems are solved, expensive or not. Of course, applied research would sooner or later come to a halt as well under such a utilitarian research regime as, by definition, applied research is an application of basic research. Those in the seventeenth century who thought, “Isn’t it kind of neat and weird that when I rub a piece of amber against a cat’s fur, the amber can pick up a feather? I wonder why this is,” had no notion that any investigation into the phenomenon of what we now call electricity would one day result in applications that power much of the world. And the demand that we only engage in activities with clear utility requires that all resources allocated to art and music be shifted elsewhere. How like the university administration philistines we see today slashing humanities funding to deliver more to STEM subjects, mothballing language courses and classics programs!
AC – Solvency
The United States federal government should end commercial space exploration and tourism by private entities, ruling that they violate its non-appropriation obligations under the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and its succeeding treaties.
To clarify: This results in the banning of space colonization and exploration from private companies
Cooper 8 Cooper, Nikhil D. "Circumventing Non-Appropriation: Law and Development of United States Space Commerce." Hastings Const. LQ 36 (2008): 457. TDI
The latest piece of congressional legislation regulating the commercial space industry was the Commercial Space Launch Act (CSLA) 77 that was spurred on in part by the host of new technologies capable of commercially exploiting space. 78 The CSLA streamlined the earlier space-launch bureaucracy and mandated the DOT to issue licenses for all commercial space launch programs, 79 regulate forms of space tourism8 and space advertising, 8 ' impose minimum liability insurance and financial responsibility requirements, and82 provide for administrative and judicial review of DOT Secretariat decisions.83 Il. A Legal System? The CSLA represents the most recent and comprehensive United States space commerce legislation; but, in the years since its passage, no one has seriously questioned its consistency with United States international obligations of "non-appropriation." The issue is especially apt now, however, because the current and future capacities of commercially exploiting space seem primed to challenge non-appropriation as the guiding theme in space commerce. Therefore, the question we must ask now is whether or not the United States is circumventing the intent of non-appropriation by encouraging and protecting private commercial expansion into space. A. Treaties Versus Congressional Acts Whether the regulatory regime outlined in the CSLA conflicts with the national non-appropriation principle, as outlined in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and in its succeeding treaties, is an issue that could be reviewed by the federal judiciary under its constitutional grant of subject-matter jurisdiction over cases "arising under" treaties.8 4 The judiciary's power to interpret treaties is a power distinct from the treaty-making authority delegated to the executive and legislative branches. Article II of the United States Constitution authorizes the president to ratify treaties with the consent of two-thirds membership of the Senate. 5 Treaties entered into in this manner are the supreme law of the United States and bind state constitutions, legislatures, and judiciaries.8 6 Generally, courts employ distinct methods of interpretation when called on to perform the separate but related tasks of interpreting treaties and resolving treaty-statutory disputes. As to the former, courts generally will liberally construct a treaty "to give effect to the purpose which animates it" and will prefer that liberal construction "even where a provision of a treaty fairly admits of two constructions, one restricting, the other enlarging of rights which may be claimed under it."87 A preference for broad construction, however, is not a license for courts to impose any interpretation they deem appropriate. For example, although courts have a greater ability to construct treaties more broadly than private contracts, they are still precluded from interpreting a treaty beyond the "apparent intent and purport" of its language.88 in this way, determining a treaty's "intent" delineates the boundaries of how broadly or narrowly the court may interpret a treaty's provision. Courts obviously have a much easier time determining a treaty's intent where the treaty language is unambiguous. In these instances, courts expressly forbid looking beyond the language of the treaty to supply the intent of the parties at the time the treaty was drawn.89 When the language of the treaty is ambiguous, however, the court will attempt to effectuate the drafter's intent through a broader inquiry into "the letter and spirit of the instrument," and may take into account "considerations deducible from the situation of the parties; and the reasonableness, justice, and nature of the thing, for which provision has been made." 90 The United States Supreme Court summarized its interpretive process in the case Eastern Airlines Inc., v. Floyd: When interpreting a treaty, begin "with the text of the treaty and the context in which the written words are used." 91 When confronted with difficult or ambiguous passages, the Court provided that other general rules of construction may be brought to bear. And it finally noted that treaties are construed more liberally than private agreements, and to ascertain their meaning we may look beyond the written words to the history of the treaty, the negotiations, and the practical construction adopted by the parties. 92 Treaty interpretation as described above is important when determining whether the treaty conflicts with an act of Congress. Each being the supreme law of the land, treaties and congressional acts are governed by the last-in-time rule: when they conflict, courts must privilege the last enacted treaty or congressional act over the other. 93 Still, federal courts often avoid finding such conflicts between congressional acts and treaty obligations. As Justice Marshall opined in 1804: An act of Congress ought never to be construed to violate the law of nations if any other possible construction remains, and consequently can never be construed to violate neutral rights, or to affect neutral commerce, further than is warranted by the law of nations as understood in this country. 94 Supreme Court jurisprudence since has largely followed the same presumption and, therefore, courts are inclined to harmonize treaties and congressional legislation that are seemingly antithetical to one another. 95 In the event that a congressional act were to supplant United States treaty obligations, courts would look for unambiguous evidence appearing “clearly and distinctly" in the text of the statute or treaty provision. 96 In other words, repeals of prior statutes or treaty provision must likely be made express. In contrast, "repeals by implication" are generally disfavored "unless the last statute is so broad in its terms and so clear and explicit in its words as to show that it was intended to cover the whole subject, and, therefore, to displace the prior statute. 97 B. CSLA Versus the Outer Space Treaty Both being duly enacted, the CSLA and the Outer Space Treaty are considered the supreme law of the land. If there is a conflict between the United States space commerce provisions as outlined in the CSLA and the Outer Space Treaty, a reviewing court would first be called upon to interpret the intent of the treaty itself. Recall that in the context of treaty interpretation, a court would be at liberty to give the treaty a broad construction to effectuate its intent. The key provision of the Outer Space Treaty at issue would be the language of Article II which forecloses "national appropriation" of space by claims of sovereignty, means of use, occupation, or any other means.98 Black's Law Dictionary defines "appropriation" as "the exercise of control over property, a taking of possession." 99 If defined broadly enough, the joint enterprise nature of the United States space commerce, as implemented in the CSLA, might violate the "spirit" of non-appropriation as outlined in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. The best argument one could make against the CSLA's provisions is to advocate the court to broadly interpret the "appropriation" principle of the Outer Space Treaty. The proponent of this argument would urge that in so doing, a court should look beyond the words of the treaty and examine the history, negotiations, and practical considerations at the time of the treaty's negotiation to determine its true intent. 100 One would also want to argue that the space commerce industry violates perhaps not the "letter" of the treaty, but circumvents entirely its "spirit" if a court were taking into account "considerations deducible from the situation of the parties; and the reasonableness, justice, and nature of the thing, for which provision has been made."' 01 One who attacked the CSLA's general legitimacy in this way could argue that the United States is effectively "appropriating" space through its protection and encouragement of private industry. Such an appropriation would take place not by realizing a "sovereign" right to space property or the uses of space as expressly proscribed in the Outer Space Treaty, but, instead, through the effective use of government power, services, and contracts to encourage and support the rapid development of the private space commerce industry in the United States. In essence, the result of such government encouragement might not amount to wholesale sovereign appropriation, but, at the very least, a kind of sovereign and private space activity that would cast doubt on whether the non-appropriation principle is actually being respected. Therefore, one arguing that such activities were tantamount to sovereign appropriation would highlight the interrelatedness of government and private industry and argue for a broad interpretation of "appropriation" that encompassed the practical effects of such a relationship. In addition to the regulatory interaction between the CSLA and private space commerce industries, the interrelatedness between government and private industry is clearly illustrated by the interaction between CSLA and the 1972 Liability Convention. Recall that the Outer Space Treaty and its progeny envision a "state-oriented" system of responsibility 10 2 where each member state is responsible for all actions in outer space undertaken by the state and its nationals. 10 3 The Liability Convention further binds member states by holding each strictly liable for its actions or the actions of its nationals within outer space and permits only member states to petition for remuneration under the terms of the treaty. 1 04 In its text, the CSLA cites to such international obligations,'0 5 while also mitigating the United States' liability under the Liability Convention. 0 6 The CSLA licensing program ensures overall safety of private space ventures, 0 7 raises the funds necessary to pay "potential treaty claims through its liability insurance requirement,' 10 8 and limits the United States' joint and several liability exposure through restricting private use of foreign launch and reentry facilities.'09 These provisions effectively allow the United States to pass on the financial cost and recover from their private entities the amount of damages for which they are internationally liable. 110 In this way, the government is limiting its international liability exposure by passing on the cost to the private sector. When highlighting the further interrelatedness between government and private industry, one could also note that the United States government holds something of a monopoly in launch services and currently requires that decisions regarding commercial space-launch must be approved through the CSLA. 1' In addition, one making this argument would want to highlight the highly interdependent nature of investment flowing from government to private space commerce: in a February 4, 2008 press release, NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale justified the agency's 2009 budget request of $17.6 billion by claiming that "the development of space simply cannot be 'all government all the time' . . . . NASA's budget for fiscal year 2009 provides $173 million for entrepreneurs-from big companies or small ones-to develop commercial transport capabilities. . . and NASA is designating $500 million toward the development of this commercial space capability." 2
A public-private partnership solves none of the aff – market dynamics and hiring competition mean the two sectors are zero sum.
Davenport 2/25 (Christian, Reporter covering NASA and the space industry, Colby College, B.A., American Studies), “As private companies erode government’s hold on space travel, NASA looks to open a new frontier,” February 25, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/25/nasa-space-future-private/ TDI
The four astronauts who will fly on a SpaceX mission by the end of the year will be a bunch of private citizens with no space experience. One’s a billionaire funding the mission; another is a health care provider. The third will be selected at random through a sweepstakes, and the last seat will go to the winner of a competition. In the new Space Age, you can buy a ticket to orbit — no need to have been a fighter pilot in the military or to compete against thousands of other overachievers for a coveted spot in NASA’s astronaut corps. In fact, for this mission, the first composed entirely of private citizens, NASA is little more than a bystander. It does not own or operate the rocket that will blast the astronauts into space or the capsule they will live in for the few days they are scheduled to circle Earth every 90 minutes. NASA has no say in selecting the astronauts, and it will not train or outfit them — that will all be done by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The money to pay for the flight also will not come from NASA — or any other government account. The cost of the project is being borne by a billionaire, Jared Isaacman, who has set it up as a fundraiser for St. Jude’s Research Hospital and a promotional device for his business, Shift4Shop, which helps businesses set up websites and process payments. This is the new look of human space exploration as government’s long-held monopoly on space travel continues to erode, redefining not only who owns the vehicles that carry people to space, but also the very nature of what an astronaut is and who gets to be one. And it comes as NASA confronts some of the largest changes it has faced since it was founded in 1958 when the United States’ world standing was challenged by the Soviet Union’s surprise launch of the first Sputnik into orbit. Now it is NASA’s unrivaled primacy in human spaceflight that is under challenge. Thanks to NASA’s investments and guidance, the private space sector has grown tremendously — no entity more than SpaceX, which according to CNBC is now worth $74 billion. The commercial space industry is taking on ever more roles and responsibilities — flying not just cargo and supplies to the International Space Station, but even NASA’s astronauts there. The private sector will launch some of the major components of the space station NASA wants to build in orbit around the moon, and private companies are developing the spacecraft that will fly astronauts to and from the lunar surface. Space enthusiasts, including NASA, see enormous benefit in the shift — a new era of space exploration that will usher in a more capable and efficient space industry. But the changing dynamic also has left NASA, which for decades has set the pace for the American space project, with an uncertain role, a development NASA’s Safety Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel warns could have consequences for years to come. The growth of companies like SpaceX has "tremendous upside potential — and are accompanied by equally tremendous challenges for managing the risk of human space exploration,” it said in its annual report, released last month. “NASA leadership in human space exploration is still preeminent, but the agency’s role is evolving with critical implications for how risk and safety will be managed.” So far, NASA has done well “as it shifts from principally executing its programs and missions to commercially acquiring significant key elements and services,” it said. But as the agency continues to evolve, “NASA must make some strategically critical decisions, based on deliberate and thorough consideration, that are necessary because of their momentous consequences for the future of human space exploration and, in particular, for the management of the attendant risks.” In an interview, Steve Jurczyk, NASA’s acting administrator, said the agency is well aware of how its identity and role are changing, and he likened the agency’s role to how the U.S. government fostered the commercial aviation industry in the early 20th century. NASA’s predecessor, NACA, or the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, “did research, technology development to initially support defense … but also later on supporting a burgeoning commercial aircraft industry and aviation industry,” he said. “So that may be how we evolve, moving forward on the space side. We’re going to do the research and the technology development and be the enablers for continuing to support the commercial space sector.” NASA has not ceded all ground. It still leads major exploration and science programs that no company could match. Last week, for example, it landed a rover the size of a car on Mars, hitting a precise landing target after traveling nearly 300 million miles. Later this year, it is scheduled to launch the James Webb telescope, which is designed to look back in time to the origins of the universe. And it also recently snagged a sample of rocks and soil from an asteroid 200 million miles from Earth to return them to Earth for study. “NASA works," Rob Manning, the chief engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said after the Perseverance landed safely on Mars. “When we put our arms together and our hands together and our brains together, we can succeed. This is what NASA does.” Those big, daring, push-the-envelope missions is where NASA’s future lies, agency and industry officials agree. Not in looking for financial gain, but blazing the trail and opening new frontiers, and then allowing private industry to take over in the way homesteaders expanded into the West. Within NASA, there is still some resistance to that paradigm shift. “NASA feels like that’s our domain,” said Phil McAlister, NASA’s director of commercial spaceflight. “And my response is, the solar system is a big place. We at NASA should always be doing the next thing, the thing where the profit motive is not as evident and where the barriers to entry are still too high for the private sector to really make a compelling business case.” Jan Worner, the outgoing general director of the European Space Agency, agrees. “I believe space agencies have to change,” he said in an interview. “If you are fixed permanently to the same thing that you did in the past, you will lose.” But NASA officials are concerned that much of the future workforce is going to be attracted to a growing number of commercial companies doing amazing things. There is Planet, for example, which is putting up constellations of small satellites that take an image of Earth every day. Or Relativity Space, which is 3-D printing entire rockets. Or Axiom Space, which is building a commercial space station. Or Astrobotic, which intends to land a spacecraft on the moon later this year. The question NASA faces, then, is an urgent one: “How do you maintain that NASA technical expertise?” Jurczyk said. The agency does not know. “It may mean people are hiring more midcareer from industry or having people come to NASA, then go to industry, and come back. Or a different model where maybe you’re not coming to NASA and staying for your 35-, 40-year career,” he said. “We’re still thinking through that.” The workforce predicament was not on NASA’s mind when it embarked on this road in 2006. That is when it awarded relatively small contracts to see whether the private sector could develop spacecraft capable of taking cargo to the International Space Station. At the time, SpaceX, which won an award, was largely unknown and on the verge of bankruptcy, with just one successful flight to orbit for its Falcon 1 rocket after three failures. Outside of what Musk once called “the weird rebels within NASA,” few thought the program would work. It was not taken seriously by the mainstream aerospace industry or even by NASA’s leadership. “Let’s just give these annoying commercial people enough money so that they can fail, and we can say, ‘That was dumb. We don’t have to do that again,'” Musk once told The Washington Post. But it did work. And now NASA is relying on the private sector not only to deliver supplies and science experiments to the surface of the moon, but also its most precious cargo — its astronauts — there. Turning over human spaceflight to the private sector was a line many thought NASA would never cross. But last year, SpaceX successfully flew two crewed missions to the space station, and Boeing, the other company with the human spaceflight contract, is hoping to fly its first later this year. NASA has been eager to build on that success and hire private-sector companies to build and operate the spacecraft that would take astronauts to and from the surface of the moon. And while NASA’s flagship rocket, the Space Launch System, would be used to fly astronauts to the moon and be the most powerful ever built, it has suffered all sorts of cost overruns and technical delays. A test of its engines that was supposed to last as long as eight minutes was cut short after just one because of a technical problem. And the redo of the test was recently postponed by NASA, which said it was looking into a problem with one of the valves. Recently, the NASA inspector general said the total cost of the rocket would reach $27 billion through 2025. That enormous cost has outraged critics of the space program, who have derided the effort as little more than a jobs program for select congressional districts and dubbed it the “Senate Launch System.” Recently, the Bloomberg editorial board called for the Biden administration to “scrap the Space Launch System,” asking, “Why is the U.S. government building a space rocket?” “No doubt, the era of government spacefaring had its glories,” the editorial read. “But space is now a $424 billion business, with U.S. companies at its forefront. The new administration should embrace this revolution — and bring the power of private enterprise to bear in crossing the next cosmic frontier.” Some high-level NASA officials, including former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, have indicated that if the commercial sector can develop lower-cost alternatives, the space agency would have no choice but to consider those instead. NASA has already shifted one major mission from SLS — recently it announced that a commercial rocket, and not SLS, as Congress had mandated for years, would launch the Europa Clipper spacecraft that would study Jupiter’s moon. That alone would save NASA “over $1.5 billion compared to using an SLS rocket,” according to NASA’s fiscal year 2021 budget request. NASA has always relied on contractors to build its hardware — from the Apollo lunar module built by Grumman to the space shuttle, built largely by North American Rockwell. But NASA defined the precise requirements, took ownership of the spacecraft and operated them. That is not the case with many of its programs today. It works alongside the companies to validate their rockets and spacecraft and ensure they meet the agency’s safety standards. But the hardware and the launch procedures remain in private hands. The private astronaut mission, dubbed Inspiration4, marks the next iteration in this transition. Isaacman, the billionaire founder and chief executive of Shift4Shop, a payments technology company, paid an undisclosed sum for the SpaceX flight. Isaacman, an accomplished pilot, will occupy one of the four seats. Another will go to Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old physician assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The third is to be raffled off as part of a fundraising effort for the hospital. And the fourth seat will go to the winner of a competition among entrepreneurs who use Shift4Shop’s platform. Isaacman has donated $100 million to St. Jude and hopes the fundraising effort will match that. “We will, of course, coordinate this with NASA,” Musk said on a call with reporters earlier this month to discuss the mission. “NASA has been briefed on this and is supportive.” But it will be SpaceX and the crew that will determine the flight parameters and training requirements, not NASA. “Wherever you want to go, we’ll take you there,” Musk said to Isaacman on the call. Meet the people paying $55 million each to fly to the space station That mission will be followed by a second flight made up entirely of civilians — three wealthy business executives, who are each paying $55 million, in addition to the commander, Michael Lopez-Alegria, a former NASA astronaut who now serves as a vice president at Axiom. Instead of spending a few days inside SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, which has about as much interior room as a large SUV, they will fly to the International Space Station. They will spend eight days there before flying back. Ultimately, Axiom’s goal is even bigger — to build a space station of its own. The ISS is getting old and will need to come down at some point. NASA has said that it would eventually get out of the space station business — and outsource that to the private sector as well. Axiom is one of the leading candidates to build the successor. If Axiom is successful, it could then proceed to its ultimate goal: charter missions of private citizens, flying on private rockets to a private space station with little to no involvement from NASA.
Colonies in space are sustainable and rely on planetary resources, NASA has a plan
Haynes 19, 5/17, Korey "O’Neill colonies: A decades-long dream for settling space," Astronomy, https://astronomy.com/news/2019/05/oneill-colonies-a-decades-long-dream-for-settling-space
Last week, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos revealed his spaceship company’s new lunar lander, dubbed Blue Moon, and he spelled out a bold and broad vision for humanity’s future in space. Faced with the limits of resources here on Earth, most fundamentally energy, he pointed to life in space as a solution. “If we move out into the solar system, for all practical purposes, we have unlimited resources,” Bezos said. “We could have a trillion people out in the solar system.” And while colonies on other planets would be plagued by low gravity, long distances to Earth (leading to communication delays), and further limits down the road, those weaknesses are avoided if the colonies remain truly in space. To that end, Bezos instead suggested people consider taking up residence in O’Neill colonies, a futuristic concept for space settlements first dreamed up decades ago. “These are very large structures, miles on end, and they hold a million people or more each.” Gerard O’Neill was a physicist from Princeton University who teamed up with NASA in the 1970s on a series of workshops that explored efficient ways for humans to live off-world. Beyond influencing Bezos, his ideas have also deeply affected how many space experts and enthusiasts think about realistic ways of living in space. “What will space colonies be like?” O’Neill once asked the Space Science Institute he founded. “First of all, there’s no point in going out into space if the future that we see there is a sterile future of living in tin cans. We have to be able to recreate, in space, habitats which are as beautiful, as Earth-like, as the loveliest parts of planet Earth — and we can do that.” Of course, neither O’Neill nor anyone since has actually made such a habitat, but in many ways, the concepts he helped developed half a century ago remain some of the most practical options for large-scale and long-term space habitation. While NASA has mostly focused on exploring the moon and Mars in recent years, O’Neill colonies offer an option untethered to any planetary body. Instead, people would live in enormous circular structures in space that would be capable of hosting many thousands of people — or even millions according to Bezos — on a permanent basis. You may have seen these kinds of colonies in science fiction, from Star Trek, to the movie Interstellar. But in real life, researchers have thought up a a few variations: either a sphere, a cylinder, or a ring-shaped torus. All of these are designed to rotate and create a centrifugal force that mimics gravity for the inhabitants. While the sizes and specifications of the colonies vary, there are a few staples. In general, O’Neill colonies were designed to be permanent, self-sustaining structures. That means they would use solar power for electrical energy and for growing crops. The outer walls of an O’Neill colony are generally pictured as a transparent material, so that mirrors can aim sunlight through its walls as needed to provide light and energy – or to allow darkness, a feature humans also need, especially while we sleep. But building these colonies is a challenge beyond any humans have accomplished so far in space, and Bezos acknowledged that. He referred to two “gates” in his announcement, which he clarified as challenges that humans need to overcome. The first, which his company Blue Origin and other space entrepreneurs have been tackling, is to reduce the cost and difficulty of getting to space at all. But the second involves using resources from space, rather than hauling them from Earth. Bezos isn’t alone in such thinking. Most of NASA’s long-term plans for the Moon and Mars involve rely on harvesting materials and manufacturing products locally, using lunar and martian regolith to build and repair structures. And in the shorter term, three of the dozen experiments NASA selected as the first to fly as part of the new lunar program — possibly even by the end of the year — are what NASA terms “resource prospecting instruments.” That pairs well with O’Neill’s vision. These colonies are meant to use resources gathered from space, whether asteroids, the Moon, or even Mars. Doing so avoids the costly effort of heaving materials and goods out of Earth’s deep gravity well. That means they would be built using materials available cheaply in space. The humans and their attendant plants and animals would need to be carried from Earth. But raw materials like oxygen, nitrogen and aluminum are plentiful in the solar system, and mining for resources in space is a common theme across space settlement discussions. Because of their size, the colonies should be able to act as fully independent ecosystems, with plants to cycle air and water and resource cycles not so dissimilar from Earth. Humans are a long way from being able to launch anything like an O’Neill colony in the near future. But it’s somewhat telling that, after 50 years of space exploration and technological achievement, one of the modern leaders in private spaceflight is still espousing an idea from the first days of space exploration.