Tournament: any | Round: Finals | Opponent: Any | Judge: Any
FW
The standard is maximizing expected well-being.
Consequentialism SPEC: NEC (necessary enabler consequentialism) – all moral reasons for acts are provided by facts that the acts are necessary enablers for preventing death.
Prefer:
1 - Pleasure and pain are intrinsic value and disvalue.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, “Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies”, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S.
Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines reward. As homeostasis explains the functions of only a limited number of rewards, the principal reason why particular stimuli, objects, events, situations, and activities are rewarding may be due to pleasure. This applies first of all to sex and to the primary homeostatic rewards of food and liquid and extends to money, taste, beauty, social encounters and nonmaterial, internally set, and intrinsic rewards. Pleasure, as the primary effect of rewards, drives the prime reward functions of learning, approach behavior, and decision making and provides the basis for hedonic theories of reward function. We are attracted by most rewards and exert intense efforts to obtain them, just because they are enjoyable 10. Pleasure is a passive reaction that derives from the experience or prediction of reward and may lead to a long-lasting state of happiness. The word happiness is difficult to define. In fact, just obtaining physical pleasure may not be enough. One key to happiness involves a network of good friends. However, it is not obvious how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to an ice cream cone, or to your team winning a sporting event. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure 14. Pleasure as a hallmark of reward is sufficient for defining a reward, but it may not be necessary. A reward may generate positive learning and approach behavior simply because it contains substances that are essential for body function. When we are hungry, we may eat bad and unpleasant meals. A monkey who receives hundreds of small drops of water every morning in the laboratory is unlikely to feel a rush of pleasure every time it gets the 0.1 ml. Nevertheless, with these precautions in mind, we may define any stimulus, object, event, activity, or situation that has the potential to produce pleasure as a reward. In the context of reward deficiency or for disorders of addiction, homeostasis pursues pharmacological treatments: drugs to treat drug addiction, obesity, and other compulsive behaviors. The theory of allostasis suggests broader approaches - such as re-expanding the range of possible pleasures and providing opportunities to expend effort in their pursuit. 15. It is noteworthy, the first animal studies eliciting approach behavior by electrical brain stimulation interpreted their findings as a discovery of the brain’s pleasure centers 16 which were later partly associated with midbrain dopamine neurons 17–19 despite the notorious difficulties of identifying emotions in animals. Evolutionary theories of pleasure: The love connection BO
Charles Darwin and other biological scientists that have examined the biological evolution and its basic principles found various mechanisms that steer behavior and biological development. Besides their theory on natural selection, it was particularly the sexual selection process that gained significance in the latter context over the last century, especially when it comes to the question of what makes us “what we are,” i.e., human. However, the capacity to sexually select and evolve is not at all a human accomplishment alone or a sign of our uniqueness; yet, we humans, as it seems, are ingenious in fooling ourselves and others–when we are in love or desperately search for it. It is well established that modern biological theory conjectures that organisms are the result of evolutionary competition. In fact, Richard Dawkins stresses gene survival and propagation as the basic mechanism of life 20. Only genes that lead to the fittest phenotype will make it. It is noteworthy that the phenotype is selected based on behavior that maximizes gene propagation. To do so, the phenotype must survive and generate offspring, and be better at it than its competitors. Thus, the ultimate, distal function of rewards is to increase evolutionary fitness by ensuring the survival of the organism and reproduction. It is agreed that learning, approach, economic decisions, and positive emotions are the proximal functions through which phenotypes obtain other necessary nutrients for survival, mating, and care for offspring. Behavioral reward functions have evolved to help individuals to survive and propagate their genes. Apparently, people need to live well and long enough to reproduce. Most would agree that homo-sapiens do so by ingesting the substances that make their bodies function properly. For this reason, foods and drinks are rewards. Additional rewards, including those used for economic exchanges, ensure sufficient palatable food and drink supply. Mating and gene propagation is supported by powerful sexual attraction. Additional properties, like body form, augment the chance to mate and nourish and defend offspring and are therefore also rewards. Care for offspring until they can reproduce themselves helps gene propagation and is rewarding; otherwise, many believe mating is useless. According to David E Comings, as any small edge will ultimately result in evolutionary advantage 21, additional reward mechanisms like novelty seeking and exploration widen the spectrum of available rewards and thus enhance the chance for survival, reproduction, and ultimate gene propagation. These functions may help us to obtain the benefits of distant rewards that are determined by our own interests and not immediately available in the environment. Thus the distal reward function in gene propagation and evolutionary fitness defines the proximal reward functions that we see in everyday behavior. That is why foods, drinks, mates, and offspring are rewarding. There have been theories linking pleasure as a required component of health benefits salutogenesis, (salugenesis). In essence, under these terms, pleasure is described as a state or feeling of happiness and satisfaction resulting from an experience that one enjoys. Regarding pleasure, it is a double-edged sword, on the one hand, it promotes positive feelings (like mindfulness) and even better cognition, possibly through the release of dopamine 22. But on the other hand, pleasure simultaneously encourages addiction and other negative behaviors, i.e., motivational toxicity. It is a complex neurobiological phenomenon, relying on reward circuitry or limbic activity. It is important to realize that through the “Brain Reward Cascade” (BRC) endorphin and endogenous morphinergic mechanisms may play a role 23. While natural rewards are essential for survival and appetitive motivation leading to beneficial biological behaviors like eating, sex, and reproduction, crucial social interactions seem to further facilitate the positive effects exerted by pleasurable experiences. Indeed, experimentation with addictive drugs is capable of directly acting on reward pathways and causing deterioration of these systems promoting hypodopaminergia 24. Most would agree that pleasurable activities can stimulate personal growth and may help to induce healthy behavioral changes, including stress management 25. The work of Esch and Stefano 26 concerning the link between compassion and love implicate the brain reward system, and pleasure induction suggests that social contact in general, i.e., love, attachment, and compassion, can be highly effective in stress reduction, survival, and overall health. Understanding the role of neurotransmission and pleasurable states both positive and negative have been adequately studied over many decades 26–37, but comparative anatomical and neurobiological function between animals and homo sapiens appear to be required and seem to be in an infancy stage. Finding happiness is different between apes and humans As stated earlier in this expert opinion one key to happiness involves a network of good friends 38. However, it is not entirely clear exactly how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to a sugar rush, winning a sports event or even sky diving, all of which augment dopamine release at the reward brain site. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure. Remarkably, there are pathways for ordinary liking and pleasure, which are limited in scope as described above in this commentary. However, there are many brain regions, often termed hot and cold spots, that significantly modulate (increase or decrease) our pleasure or even produce the opposite of pleasure— that is disgust and fear 39. One specific region of the nucleus accumbens is organized like a computer keyboard, with particular stimulus triggers in rows— producing an increase and decrease of pleasure and disgust. Moreover, the cortex has unique roles in the cognitive evaluation of our feelings of pleasure 40. Importantly, the interplay of these multiple triggers and the higher brain centers in the prefrontal cortex are very intricate and are just being uncovered. Desire and reward centers It is surprising that many different sources of pleasure activate the same circuits between the mesocorticolimbic regions (Figure 1). Reward and desire are two aspects pleasure induction and have a very widespread, large circuit. Some part of this circuit distinguishes between desire and dread. The so-called pleasure circuitry called “REWARD” involves a well-known dopamine pathway in the mesolimbic system that can influence both pleasure and motivation. In simplest terms, the well-established mesolimbic system is a dopamine circuit for reward. It starts in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the midbrain and travels to the nucleus accumbens (Figure 2). It is the cornerstone target to all addictions. The VTA is encompassed with neurons using glutamate, GABA, and dopamine. The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is located within the ventral striatum and is divided into two sub-regions—the motor and limbic regions associated with its core and shell, respectively. The NAc has spiny neurons that receive dopamine from the VTA and glutamate (a dopamine driver) from the hippocampus, amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex. Subsequently, the NAc projects GABA signals to an area termed the ventral pallidum (VP). The region is a relay station in the limbic loop of the basal ganglia, critical for motivation, behavior, emotions and the “Feel Good” response. This defined system of the brain is involved in all addictions –substance, and non –substance related. In 1995, our laboratory coined the term “Reward Deficiency Syndrome” (RDS) to describe genetic and epigenetic induced hypodopaminergia in the “Brain Reward Cascade” that contribute to addiction and compulsive behaviors 3,6,41. Furthermore, ordinary “liking” of something, or pure pleasure, is represented by small regions mainly in the limbic system (old reptilian part of the brain). These may be part of larger neural circuits. In Latin, hedus is the term for “sweet”; and in Greek, hodone is the term for “pleasure.” Thus, the word Hedonic is now referring to various subcomponents of pleasure: some associated with purely sensory and others with more complex emotions involving morals, aesthetics, and social interactions. The capacity to have pleasure is part of being healthy and may even extend life, especially if linked to optimism as a dopaminergic response 42. Psychiatric illness often includes symptoms of an abnormal inability to experience pleasure, referred to as anhedonia. A negative feeling state is called dysphoria, which can consist of many emotions such as pain, depression, anxiety, fear, and disgust. Previously many scientists used animal research to uncover the complex mechanisms of pleasure, liking, motivation and even emotions like panic and fear, as discussed above 43. However, as a significant amount of related research about the specific brain regions of pleasure/reward circuitry has been derived from invasive studies of animals, these cannot be directly compared with subjective states experienced by humans. In an attempt to resolve the controversy regarding the causal contributions of mesolimbic dopamine systems to reward, we have previously evaluated the three-main competing explanatory categories: “liking,” “learning,” and “wanting” 3. That is, dopamine may mediate (a) liking: the hedonic impact of reward, (b) learning: learned predictions about rewarding effects, or (c) wanting: the pursuit of rewards by attributing incentive salience to reward-related stimuli 44. We have evaluated these hypotheses, especially as they relate to the RDS, and we find that the incentive salience or “wanting” hypothesis of dopaminergic functioning is supported by a majority of the scientific evidence. Various neuroimaging studies have shown that anticipated behaviors such as sex and gaming, delicious foods and drugs of abuse all affect brain regions associated with reward networks, and may not be unidirectional. Drugs of abuse enhance dopamine signaling which sensitizes mesolimbic brain mechanisms that apparently evolved explicitly to attribute incentive salience to various rewards 45. Addictive substances are voluntarily self-administered, and they enhance (directly or indirectly) dopaminergic synaptic function in the NAc. This activation of the brain reward networks (producing the ecstatic “high” that users seek). Although these circuits were initially thought to encode a set point of hedonic tone, it is now being considered to be far more complicated in function, also encoding attention, reward expectancy, disconfirmation of reward expectancy, and incentive motivation 46. The argument about addiction as a disease may be confused with a predisposition to substance and nonsubstance rewards relative to the extreme effect of drugs of abuse on brain neurochemistry. The former sets up an individual to be at high risk through both genetic polymorphisms in reward genes as well as harmful epigenetic insult. Some Psychologists, even with all the data, still infer that addiction is not a disease 47. Elevated stress levels, together with polymorphisms (genetic variations) of various dopaminergic genes and the genes related to other neurotransmitters (and their genetic variants), and may have an additive effect on vulnerability to various addictions 48. In this regard, Vanyukov, et al. 48 suggested based on review that whereas the gateway hypothesis does not specify mechanistic connections between “stages,” and does not extend to the risks for addictions the concept of common liability to addictions may be more parsimonious. The latter theory is grounded in genetic theory and supported by data identifying common sources of variation in the risk for specific addictions (e.g., RDS). This commonality has identifiable neurobiological substrate and plausible evolutionary explanations. Over many years the controversy of dopamine involvement in especially “pleasure” has led to confusion concerning separating motivation from actual pleasure (wanting versus liking) 49. We take the position that animal studies cannot provide real clinical information as described by self-reports in humans. As mentioned earlier and in the abstract, on November 23rd, 2017, evidence for our concerns was discovered 50 In essence, although nonhuman primate brains are similar to our own, the disparity between other primates and those of human cognitive abilities tells us that surface similarity is not the whole story. Sousa et al. 50 small case found various differentially expressed genes, to associate with pleasure related systems. Furthermore, the dopaminergic interneurons located in the human neocortex were absent from the neocortex of nonhuman African apes. Such differences in neuronal transcriptional programs may underlie a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders. In simpler terms, the system controls the production of dopamine, a chemical messenger that plays a significant role in pleasure and rewards. The senior author, Dr. Nenad Sestan from Yale, stated: “Humans have evolved a dopamine system that is different than the one in chimpanzees.” This may explain why the behavior of humans is so unique from that of non-human primates, even though our brains are so surprisingly similar, Sestan said: “It might also shed light on why people are vulnerable to mental disorders such as autism (possibly even addiction).” Remarkably, this research finding emerged from an extensive, multicenter collaboration to compare the brains across several species. These researchers examined 247 specimens of neural tissue from six humans, five chimpanzees, and five macaque monkeys. Moreover, these investigators analyzed which genes were turned on or off in 16 regions of the brain. While the differences among species were subtle, there was a remarkable contrast in the neocortices, specifically in an area of the brain that is much more developed in humans than in chimpanzees. In fact, these researchers found that a gene called tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) for the enzyme, responsible for the production of dopamine, was expressed in the neocortex of humans, but not chimpanzees. As discussed earlier, dopamine is best known for its essential role within the brain’s reward system; the very system that responds to everything from sex, to gambling, to food, and to addictive drugs. However, dopamine also assists in regulating emotional responses, memory, and movement. Notably, abnormal dopamine levels have been linked to disorders including Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and spectrum disorders such as autism and addiction or RDS. Nora Volkow, the director of NIDA, pointed out that one alluring possibility is that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a substantial role in humans’ ability to pursue various rewards that are perhaps months or even years away in the future. This same idea has been suggested by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University. Dr. Sapolsky cited evidence that dopamine levels rise dramatically in humans when we anticipate potential rewards that are uncertain and even far off in our futures, such as retirement or even the possible alterlife. This may explain what often motivates people to work for things that have no apparent short-term benefit 51. In similar work, Volkow and Bale 52 proposed a model in which dopamine can favor NOW processes through phasic signaling in reward circuits or LATER processes through tonic signaling in control circuits. Specifically, they suggest that through its modulation of the orbitofrontal cortex, which processes salience attribution, dopamine also enables shilting from NOW to LATER, while its modulation of the insula, which processes interoceptive information, influences the probability of selecting NOW versus LATER actions based on an individual’s physiological state. This hypothesis further supports the concept that disruptions along these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
2 - Death is bad and outweighs –
A - agents can’t act if they fear for their bodily security which constrains every ethical theory.
B - it destroys the subject itself – kills any ability to achieve value in ethics since life is a prerequisite which means it’s a side constraint since we can’t reach the end goal of ethics without life.
3 - Actor spec—governments must use util because they don’t have intentions and are constantly dealing with tradeoffs—outweighs since different agents have different obligations—takes out calc indicts since they are empirically denied.
DA – Space Innovation
Space commercialization drives tech Innovation in the squo – it provides a unique impetus.
Hampson 17 Joshua Hampson 1-25-2017 “The Future of Space Commercialization” https://republicans-science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/TheFutureofSpaceCommercializationFinal.pdf (Security Studies Fellow at the Niskanen Center)Elmer
The size of the space economy is far larger than many may think. In 2015 alone, the global market amounted to $323 billion. Commercial infrastructure and systems accounted for 76 percent of that 9 total, with satellite television the largest subsection at $95 billion. The global space launch market’s 10 11 share of that total came in at $6 billion dollars. It can be hard to disaggregate how space benefits 12 particular national economies, but in 2009 (the last available report), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) estimated that commercial space transportation and enabled industries generated $208.3 billion in economic activity in the United States alone. Space is not just about 13 satellite television and global transportation; while not commercial, GPS satellites also underpin personal navigation, such as smartphone GPS use, and timing data used for Internet coordination.14 Without that data, there could be problems for a range of Internet and cloud-based services.15 There is also room for growth. The FAA has noted that while the commercial launch sector has not grown dramatically in the last decade, there are indications that there is latent demand. This 16 demand may catalyze an increase in launches and growth of the wider space economy in the next decade. The Satellite Industry Association’s 2015 report highlighted that their section of the space economy outgrew both the American and global economies. The FAA anticipates that growth to 17 continue, with expectations that small payload launch will be a particular industry driver.18 In the future, emerging space industries may contribute even more the American economy. Space tourism and resource recovery—e.g., mining on planets, moons , and asteroids—in particular may become large parts of that industry. Of course, their viability rests on a range of factors, including costs, future regulation, international problems, and assumptions about technological development. However, there is increasing optimism in these areas of economic production. But the space economy is not just about what happens in orbit, or how that alters life on the ground. The growth of this economy can also contribute to new innovations across all walks of life. Technological Innovation Innovation is generally hard to predict; some new technologies seem to come out of nowhere and others only take off when paired with a new application. It is difficult to predict the future, but it is reasonable to expect that a growing space economy would open opportunities for technological and organizational innovation. In terms of technology, the difficult environment of outer space helps incentivize progress along the margins. Because each object launched into orbit costs a significant amount of money—at the moment between $27,000 and $43,000 per pound, though that will likely drop in the future —each 19 reduction in payload size saves money or means more can be launched. At the same time, the ability to fit more capability into a smaller satellite opens outer space to actors that previously were priced out of the market. This is one of the reasons why small, affordable satellites are increasingly pursued by companies or organizations that cannot afford to launch larger traditional satellites. These small 20 satellites also provide non-traditional launchers, such as engineering students or prototypers, the opportunity to learn about satellite production and test new technologies before working on a full-sized satellite. That expansion of developers, experimenters, and testers cannot but help increase innovation opportunities. Technological developments from outer space have been applied to terrestrial life since the earliest days of space exploration. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) maintains a website that lists technologies that have spun off from such research projects. Lightweight 21 nanotubes, useful in protecting astronauts during space exploration, are now being tested for applications in emergency response gear and electrical insulation. The need for certainty about the resiliency of materials used in space led to the development of an analytics tool useful across a range of industries. Temper foam, the material used in memory-foam pillows, was developed for NASA for seat covers. As more companies pursue their own space goals, more innovations will likely come from the commercial sector. Outer space is not just a catalyst for technological development. Satellite constellations and their unique line-of-sight vantage point can provide new perspectives to old industries. Deploying satellites into low-Earth orbit, as Facebook wants to do, can connect large, previously-unreached swathes of 22 humanity to the Internet. Remote sensing technology could change how whole industries operate, such as crop monitoring, herd management, crisis response, and land evaluation, among others. 23 While satellites cannot provide all essential information for some of these industries, they can fill in some useful gaps and work as part of a wider system of tools. Space infrastructure, in helping to change how people connect and perceive Earth, could help spark innovations on the ground as well. These innovations, changes to global networks, and new opportunities could lead to wider economic growth.
Strong innovation solves extinction.
Matthews 18 Dylan Matthews 10-26-2018 “How to help people millions of years from now” https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/26/18023366/far-future-effective-altruism-existential-risk-doing-good (Co-founder of Vox, citing Nick Beckstead @ Rutgers University)Re-cut by Elmer
If you care about improving human lives, you should overwhelmingly care about those quadrillions of lives rather than the comparatively small number of people alive today. The 7.6 billion people now living, after all, amount to less than 0.003 percent of the population that will live in the future. It’s reasonable to suggest that those quadrillions of future people have, accordingly, hundreds of thousands of times more moral weight than those of us living here today do. That’s the basic argument behind Nick Beckstead’s 2013 Rutgers philosophy dissertation, “On the overwhelming importance of shaping the far future.” It’s a glorious mindfuck of a thesis, not least because Beckstead shows very convincingly that this is a conclusion any plausible moral view would reach. It’s not just something that weird utilitarians have to deal with. And Beckstead, to his considerable credit, walks the walk on this. He works at the Open Philanthropy Project on grants relating to the far future and runs a charitable fund for donors who want to prioritize the far future. And arguments from him and others have turned “long-termism” into a very vibrant, important strand of the effective altruism community. But what does prioritizing the far future even mean? The most literal thing it could mean is preventing human extinction, to ensure that the species persists as long as possible. For the long-term-focused effective altruists I know, that typically means identifying concrete threats to humanity’s continued existence — like unfriendly artificial intelligence, or a pandemic, or global warming/out of control geoengineering — and engaging in activities to prevent that specific eventuality. But in a set of slides he made in 2013, Beckstead makes a compelling case that while that’s certainly part of what caring about the far future entails, approaches that address specific threats to humanity (which he calls “targeted” approaches to the far future) have to complement “broad” approaches, where instead of trying to predict what’s going to kill us all, you just generally try to keep civilization running as best it can, so that it is, as a whole, well-equipped to deal with potential extinction events in the future, not just in 2030 or 2040 but in 3500 or 95000 or even 37 million. In other words, caring about the far future doesn’t mean just paying attention to low-probability risks of total annihilation; it also means acting on pressing needs now. For example: We’re going to be better prepared to prevent extinction from AI or a supervirus or global warming if society as a whole makes a lot of scientific progress. And a significant bottleneck there is that the vast majority of humanity doesn’t get high-enough-quality education to engage in scientific research, if they want to, which reduces the odds that we have enough trained scientists to come up with the breakthroughs we need as a civilization to survive and thrive. So maybe one of the best things we can do for the far future is to improve school systems — here and now — to harness the group economist Raj Chetty calls “lost Einsteins” (potential innovators who are thwarted by poverty and inequality in rich countries) and, more importantly, the hundreds of millions of kids in developing countries dealing with even worse education systems than those in depressed communities in the rich world. What if living ethically for the far future means living ethically now? Beckstead mentions some other broad, or very broad, ideas (these are all his descriptions): Help make computers faster so that people everywhere can work more efficiently Change intellectual property law so that technological innovation can happen more quickly Advocate for open borders so that people from poorly governed countries can move to better-governed countries and be more productive Meta-research: improve incentives and norms in academic work to better advance human knowledge Improve education Advocate for political party X to make future people have values more like political party X ”If you look at these areas (economic growth and technological progress, access to information, individual capability, social coordination, motives) a lot of everyday good works contribute,” Beckstead writes. “An implication of this is that a lot of everyday good works are good from a broad perspective, even though hardly anyone thinks explicitly in terms of far future standards.” Look at those examples again: It’s just a list of what normal altruistically motivated people, not effective altruism folks, generally do. Charities in the US love talking about the lost opportunities for innovation that poverty creates. Lots of smart people who want to make a difference become scientists, or try to work as teachers or on improving education policy, and lord knows there are plenty of people who become political party operatives out of a conviction that the moral consequences of the party’s platform are good. All of which is to say: Maybe effective altruists aren’t that special, or at least maybe we don’t have access to that many specific and weird conclusions about how best to help the world. If the far future is what matters, and generally trying to make the world work better is among the best ways to help the far future, then effective altruism just becomes plain ol’ do-goodery.
Commercial space innovation stops extinction.
Charles Beames 18, Chairman of the SmallSat Alliance, Executive Chairman of York Space Systems, former Principal Director of Space and Intelligence in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (OUSD(ATandL)), Col. (ret.) in the USAF where he served 23 years in space and intelligence leadership positions around the world, 8/8/18, “Op-ed | SmallSat Alliance is on a path toward a new space horizon,” https://spacenews.com/op-ed-smallsat-alliance-is-on-a-path-toward-a-new-space-horizon/
We find ourselves still at the dawn of a new space century, mindful of the victories and setbacks of our past, eager to pass the torch to the next generation of space visionaries, scientists, engineers, and enthusiasts. We look to the future not just to see how much bigger, faster, or higher we can reach, but also how the United States, and specifically the U.S. space community, can again inspire the nations of the world to align with us, as it did in the 20th century. The SmallSat Alliance is an alliance of companies developing, producing, and operating in all segments of the ‘next generation’ space economy; championing renewed U.S. leadership in the burgeoning commercial space economy, and advocating for the transformation of government-led space capabilities. We are experienced space professionals who have chosen to join with others leveraging our decades of hard-won experience, to develop smarter ways to explore space in the 21st century. A wonderful outgrowth of the legacy space program is the commercial, entrepreneurial, and job-creating commercial space business that it bequeathed. These next-generation enterprises range from multi-million-dollar startups providing rideshare opportunities or components for small satellites to multi-billion-dollar space data-analytic platforms reinventing urban car service and agricultural production. The early returns of this economic revolution are already on our doorstep: space data capabilities are exponentially growing elements of the 21st century world economy. Beginning with the dreams and funding by successful tech entrepreneurs, enormous venture investments are already delivering wondrous benefits to the world. Commercial Space – Profit and Non-Profit There are really two major categories in the commercial sector, the profit driven and the non-profit. The classic for-profit companies include not only those designing, building, launching, and operating satellites but also the tech sector that is turning that raw space data into gold through machine-learning analytics. Since for-profit companies are no longer dependent upon the revenues generated by the Cold War space race culture of a bygone era, this new generation of space companies is able to more efficiently capitalize on Moore’s Law, the nonstop exponential growth in chip density, and the associated networking technology co-evolving with it. This new generation is building profitable businesses helping to clean up our oceans of garbage and debris with satellite surveillance, reconnoitering to assist in enforcing laws that protect our oceans from illegal, unregulated, unlicensed fishing, something that is rapidly depleting the world’s most valuable and essential lifeforms. It’s leading in the innovative use of low-cost satellite constellations to produce ubiquitous remote-sensing data, enabling small business owners to be more profitable and less wasteful. For example, precise timing signals from space are already optimizing transportation of people, goods, and services, with even further gains anticipated with the introduction of artificial intelligence to assist drivers, perhaps even someday replacing them entirely. The non-profit sector is the other side of commercial space, concerned more for the general welfare of society, but every bit as integral to this new space enterprise. Much like every century before it in human history, ours is not without its unique challenges, some of which have been a consequence of the last, and all of which the space data domain can be leveraged to help solve. Examples are endless, but one challenge that this new space community is uniquely well-adapted for is to further inform worldwide resource allocation for the 21st century and beyond. These two primary resources are sustainable water and the materials needed for adequate housing for an ever-increasing human population. As cities and urbanization continue to expand, governmental planning challenges such as transportation design optimization for goods and services are only the beginning. Additionally, through using inexpensive remote sensing technologies, some members are designing space data analytics to mitigate human suffering from plagues, contain outbreaks, and combating illegal poaching. Some are connecting with other non-profits to curtail human trafficking for the sex trade or forced labor for migrant debt repayment. Still others are helping non-governmental organizations in their work to expose the use of children as soldiers. Addressing these challenges has little to do with resuscitating dreams conceived by long deceased science-fiction writers and much more to do with turning “swords back into plowshares” to solve real threats to humanity. Other non-profit initiatives include pursuing an even more foundational understanding of who we are and how to be the best custodians of our environment. Much as exploring and monitoring the world’s oceans has advanced civilization through a better understanding of human life and the planet, so too does exploring and monitoring from space. Low Earth orbit (LEO) provides a unique vantage point to look back on the planet and understand what is happening, anticipate what might happen and prepare for the future. In addition to better understanding Earth, responsible and rapid exploitation of the low Earth orbit domain will enhance the understanding of the solar system and the rest of the universe. Small satellites already offer low-cost platforms to study and explore what lies beyond the Earth. Other members are pioneering the use of zero-carbon, hydrogen-based reusable propulsion systems to ensure we don’t worsen our atmosphere using kerosene-fueled rockets for the coming tsunami of satellite launches. Finally, a mission ensuring the general welfare and planet survival for the next thousand years is finally confronting the existential threat that asteroids and comets pose to humanity. These extra-terrestrial, deep-space threats are passing dangerously close to our planet, and today we have no solar map of them and no defense.
DA – Mining
Private companies are set to mine in space – new tech and profit motives make space lucrative.
Gilbert 21, (Alex Gilbert is a complex systems researcher and PhD student in Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines, “Mining in Space is Coming”), 4-26-21, Milken Institute Review, https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/mining-in-space-is-coming MNHS NL
Space exploration is back. after decades of disappointment, a combination of better technology, falling costs and a rush of competitive energy from the private sector has put space travel front and center. indeed, many analysts (even some with their feet on the ground) believe that commercial developments in the space industry may be on the cusp of starting the largest resource rush in history: mining on the Moon, Mars and asteroids. While this may sound fantastical, some baby steps toward the goal have already been taken. Last year, NASA awarded contracts to four companies to extract small amounts of lunar regolith by 2024, effectively beginning the era of commercial space mining. Whether this proves to be the dawn of a gigantic adjunct to mining on earth — and more immediately, a key to unlocking cost-effective space travel — will turn on the answers to a host of questions ranging from what resources can be efficiently. As every fan of science fiction knows, the resources of the solar system appear virtually unlimited compared to those on Earth. There are whole other planets, dozens of moons, thousands of massive asteroids and millions of small ones that doubtless contain humungous quantities of materials that are scarce and very valuable (back on Earth). Visionaries including Jeff Bezos imagine heavy industry moving to space and Earth becoming a residential area. However, as entrepreneurs look to harness the riches beyond the atmosphere, access to space resources remains tangled in the realities of economics and governance. Start with the fact that space belongs to no country, complicating traditional methods of resource allocation, property rights and trade. With limited demand for materials in space itself and the need for huge amounts of energy to return materials to Earth, creating a viable industry will turn on major advances in technology, finance and business models. That said, there’s no grass growing under potential pioneers’ feet. Potential economic, scientific and even security benefits underlie an emerging geopolitical competition to pursue space mining. The United States is rapidly emerging as a front-runner, in part due to its ambitious Artemis Program to lead a multinational consortium back to the Moon. But it is also a leader in creating a legal infrastructure for mineral exploitation. The United States has adopted the world’s first spaceresources law, recognizing the property rights of private companies and individuals to materials gathered in space. However, the United States is hardly alone. Luxembourg and the United Arab Emirates (you read those right) are racing to codify space-resources laws of their own, hoping to attract investment to their entrepot nations with business-friendly legal frameworks. China reportedly views space-resource development as a national priority, part of a strategy to challenge U.S. economic and security primacy in space. Meanwhile, Russia, Japan, India and the European Space Agency all harbor space-mining ambitions of their own. Governing these emerging interests is an outdated treaty framework from the Cold War. Sooner rather than later, we’ll need new agreements to facilitate private investment and ensure international cooperation. Back up for a moment. For the record, space is already being heavily exploited, because space resources include non-material assets such as orbital locations and abundant sunlight that enable satellites to provide services to Earth. Indeed, satellite-based telecommunications and global positioning systems have become indispensable infrastructure underpinning the modern economy. Mining space for materials, of course, is another matter. In the past several decades, planetary science has confirmed what has long been suspected: celestial bodies are potential sources for dozens of natural materials that, in the right time and place, are incredibly valuable. Of these, water may be the most attractive in the near-term, because — with assistance from solar energy or nuclear fission — H2O can be split into hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket propellant, facilitating in-space refueling. So-called “rare earth” metals are also potential targets of asteroid miners intending to service Earth markets. Consisting of 17 elements, including lanthanum, neodymium, and yttrium, these critical materials (most of which are today mined in China at great environmental cost) are required for electronics. And they loom as bottlenecks in making the transition from fossil fuels to renewables backed up by battery storage. The Moon is a prime space mining target. Boosted by NASA’s mining solicitation, it is likely the first location for commercial mining. The Moon has several advantages. It is relatively close, requiring a journey of only several days by rocket and creating communication lags of only a couple seconds — a delay small enough to allow remote operation of robots from Earth. Its low gravity implies that relatively little energy expenditure will be needed to deliver mined resources to Earth orbit. The Moon may look parched — and by comparison to Earth, it is. But recent probes have confirmed substantial amounts of water ice lurking in permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles. Further, it seems that solar winds have implanted significant deposits of helium-3 (a light stable isotope of helium) across the equatorial regions of the Moon. Helium-3 is a potential fuel source for second and third-generation fusion reactors that one hopes will be in service later in the century. The isotope is packed with energy (admittedly hard to unleash in a controlled manner) that might augment sunlight as a source of clean, safe energy on Earth or to power fast spaceships in this century. Between its water and helium-3 deposits, the Moon could be the resource stepping-stone for further solar system exploration. Asteroids are another near-term mining target. There are all sorts of space rocks hurtling through the solar system, with varying amounts of water, rare earth metals and other materials on board. The asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter contains most of them, many of which are greater than a kilometer in diameter. Although the potential water and mineral wealth of the asteroid belt is vast, the long distance from Earth and requisite travel times and energy consumption rule them out as targets in the near term. The prospects for space mining are being driven by technological advances across the space industry. The rise of reusable rocket components and the now-widespread use of off-the-shelf parts are lowering both launch and operations costs. Once limited to government contract missions and the delivery of telecom satellites to orbit, private firms are now emerging as leaders in developing “NewSpace” activities — a catch-all term for endeavors including orbital tourism, orbital manufacturing and mini-satellites providing specialized services. The space sector, with a market capitalization of $400 billion, could grow to as much as $1 trillion by 2040 as private investment soars.
Private entity appropriation is key to sustained space exploration.
Brehm 15, Andrew. (Andrew R. Brehm is a litigator who focuses his practice on a broad range of legal issues for clients in the transportation and recreation industries. Mr. Brehm litigates a variety of disputes including those involving catastrophic injury, disfigurement and wrongful death, commercial contracts, and construction defects. Mr. Brehm also represents clients on labor employment related issues in class action and FLSA collective action cases. Mr. Brehm’s complex litigation work frequently involves litigation that addresses independent contractor issues and other labor and employment issues impacting the transportation industry. PROFILE Mr. Brehm is actively involved in the various local and regional bar associations. Prior to joining Scopelitis. Garvin, Light, Hanson and Feary, Mr. Brehm spent two years as a judicial clerk for The Honorable Rebecca F. Dallet and the Honorable Christopher R. Foley of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court. While in law school, Mr. Brehm’s note on private property rights in outer space was selected for publication by the Wisconsin International Law Journal. Mr. Brehm served as managing editor for the law journal.) "Private Property in Outer Space: Establishing a Foundation for Future Exploration." University of Wisconsin Law School Digital Repository, 2015, repository.law.wisc.edu/s/uwlaw/media/77012.JQ
In modem times, space exploration has consistently been viewed as a vehicle for societal advancement in terms of technology, science, and knowledge of our universe. Until recently, however, we have been almost entirely unaware of the economically and commercially valuable resources in outer space. Now, through years of increasingly advanced space exploration and scientific research, we have begun to gain an understanding of the true value of these resources. For example, asteroids are rich in ruthenium, rhodium, osmium, iridium, and platinum.' These elements are extremely rare on Earth and are important materials in developing electronics? As such, each of these platinum group elements draws a high market price, creating incentives to explore space for entrepreneurs and investors alike.'
There is little doubt that the private space race is underway. Even with much uncertainty surrounding private property rights and international space law, the discovery of valuable resources in outer space has led to the emergence of various private companies seeking to capitalize in an untapped market. In 2012, a group of billionaire investors, including Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Hollywood director James Cameron, and Ross Perot, Jr., announced the launch of Planetary Resources, a private company that intends to mine resource-rich asteroids.' In addition to the valuable platinum group elements contained in asteroids, Planetary Resources hopes to mine hydrogen fuels from the asteroids that can be used to launch deeper space expeditions.5 In January 2013, Deep Space Industries formed with a similar mission to extract and harvest materials from asteroids, and an end goal of using the materials to support outer space communities and fuel further exploration.6 In 2011, Microsoft billionaire Naveen Jain announced the creation of Moon Express, a private space exploration entity that plans to mine for platinum and titanium on the Moon.7
Additionally, in 2011, venture start-up Shackleton Energy Company launched fund-raising efforts, ultimately seeking to mine the Shackleton Crater in the Moon's south pole for fuels to propel deeper space expeditions.8 Other private space mining start-ups have followed suit.9
Each of these private entities has the potential to propel space exploration and technological advances in the pursuit of a deeper understanding of our cosmos. Further, the short-term benefit of private space expeditions is exponential in terms of lowering the cost of electronics, lessening the taxpayer burden of funding space activities, and incentivizing more advanced levels of space exploration.1° Without a clear system of private property acquisition in outer space, however, the private space race is not likely to get far off of the ground. The celestial resources that have incentivized numerous space-mining start-ups have little or no value to investors if mining companies cannot establish legal rights to the resources mined. Without the legal right to use water and hydrogen mined from celestial bodies, and to alienate platinum group elements, the potential profitability of private space expeditions collapses along with the goals of deeper space exploration and settlement. Now more than ever, the issue of private property rights in outer space has significant real-world implications.
Squo private companies are willing to invest, but the plan crosses a perception barrier which destroys investment.
Shaw 13 - Lauren E, J.D. from Chapman University School of Law, ”Asteroids, the New Western Frontier: Applying Principles of the General Mining Law of 1872 to Incentive Asteroid Mining”, JOURNAL OF AIR LAW AND COMMERCE, Volume 78, Issue 1, Article 2, https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1307andcontext=jalc recut MNHS NL
To some, the mining of asteroids might sound like the premise of a science fiction novel' or the solution to the heartwrenching, fictional scenario depicted in the film Armageddon.2 To others, it evokes a fantastical idea that may come to fruition in a distant reality. However, impressively funded companies have plans to send spacecraft to begin prospecting on asteroids within the next two years.' The issues associated with the mining of asteroids should be addressed before these plans are set in motion. Much has been written about the issues that might arise from allowing nations to own these space bodies and the minerals they contain; one such issue is the impact on international treaties.4 However, little has been written about the applicability of preexisting mining laws-which provide a basic property right scheme for the private sector-such as the General Mining Law of 1872 (Mining Law) to the management of asteroid mining.' The literature to date on how to legally address asteroid mining is minimal.' The articles that do address it propose the creation of different systems, such as a "property rights-based system that relies on the doctrine of first possession"7 or an international authority that would regulate mining operations.' Implementing a scheme that offers ownership of extracted resources without bestowing complete sovereignty is necessary to avoid an impending legal limbo-that is, an outer space "Wild West" equivalent where there is neither certainty nor security in who owns what.9 If private sector miners of asteroids know this right already exists, they will have more incentive to extract resources.' 0 This, in turn, would increase the chances of successful missions, resulting in numerous scientific and explorative benefits, along with the potential replenishment of key elements that are becoming increasingly depleted on Earth yet are still needed for modern industry. Scientists speculate that key elements needed for modern industry, including platinum, zinc, copper, phosphorus, lead, gold, and indium, could become depleted on Earth within the next fifty to sixty years." Many of these metals, such as platinum, are chemical elements that, unlike oil or diamonds, have no synthetic alternative.12 Once the reserves on Earth are mined to complete depletion, industries will be forced to recycle the existing supply of minerals, which will result in increased costs due to increased scarcity.' 3 However, evidence is accumulating that asteroids only a few hundred thousand miles away from Earth may be composed of an abundance of natural resources-including many of the minerals being mined to depletion on Earth-that could lead to vast profits." Most of the minerals being mined on Earth, including gold, iron, platinum, and palladium, originally came from the many asteroids that hit the Earth after the crust cooled during the planet's formation.'
Commercial mining solves extinction from scarcity, climate, terror, war, and disease.
Pelton 17—(Director Emeritus of the Space and Advanced Communications Research Institute at George Washington University, PHD in IR from Georgetown).. Pelton, Joseph N. 2017. The New Gold Rush: The Riches of Space Beckon! Springer. Accessed 8/30/19.
Are We Humans Doomed to Extinction? What will we do when Earth’s resources are used up by humanity? The world is now hugely over populated, with billions and billions crammed into our overcrowded cities. By 2050, we may be 9 billion strong, and by 2100 well over 11 billion people on Planet Earth. Some at the United Nations say we might even be an amazing 12 billion crawling around this small globe. And over 80 of us will be living in congested cities. These cities will be ever more vulnerable to terrorist attack, natural disaster, and other plights that come with overcrowding and a dearth of jobs that will be fueled by rapid automation and the rise of artifi cial intelligence across the global economy. We are already rapidly running out of water and minerals. Climate change is threatening our very existence. Political leaders and even the Pope have cautioned us against inaction. Perhaps the naysayers are right. All humanity is at tremendous risk. Is there no hope for the future? This book is about hope. We think that there is literally heavenly hope for humanity. But we are not talking here about divine intervention. We are envisioning a new space economy that recognizes that there is more water in the skies that all our oceans. Th ere is a new wealth of natural resources and clean energy in the reaches of outer space—more than most of us could ever dream possible. There are those that say why waste money on outer space when we have severe problems here at home? Going into space is not a waste of money. It is our future. It is our hope for new jobs and resources. The great challenge of our times is to reverse public thinking to see space not as a resource drain but as the doorway to opportunity. The new space frontier can literally open up a “gold rush in the skies.” In brief, we think there is new hope for humanity. We see a new a pathway to the future via new ventures in space. For too long, space programs have been seen as a money pit. In the process, we have overlooked the great abundance available to us in the skies above. It is important to recognize there is already the beginning of a new gold rush in space—a pathway to astral abundance. “New Space” is a term increasingly used to describe radical new commercial space initiatives—many of which have come from Silicon Valley and often with backing from the group of entrepreneurs known popularly as the “space billionaires.” New space is revolutionizing the space industry with lower cost space transportation and space systems that represent significant cost savings and new technological breakthroughs. “New Commercial Space” and the “New Space Economy” represent more than a new way of looking at outer space. These new pathways to the stars could prove vital to human survival. If one does not believe in spending money to probe the mysteries of the universe then perhaps we can try what might be called “calibrated greed” on for size. One only needs to go to a cubesat workshop, or to Silicon Valley or one of many conferences like the “Disrupt Space” event in Bremen, Germany, held in April 2016 to recognize that entrepreneurial New Space initiatives are changing everything 1 . In fact, the very nature and dimensions of what outer space activities are today have changed forever. It is no longer your grandfather’s concept of outer space that was once dominated by the big national space agencies. The entrepreneurs are taking over. The hopeful statements in this book and the hard economic and technical data that backs them up are more than a minority opinion. It is a topic of growing interest at the World Economic Forum, where business and political heavyweights meet in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss how to stimulate new patterns of global economic growth. It is even the growing view of a group that call themselves “space ethicists.” Here is how Christopher J. Newman, at the University of Sunderland in the United Kingdom has put it: Space ethicists have offered the view that space exploration is not only desirable; it is a duty that we, as a species, must undertake in order to secure the survival of humanity over the longer term. Expanding both the resource base and, eventually, the habitats available for humanity means that any expenditure on space exploration, far from being viewed as frivolous, can legitimately be rationalized as an ethical investment choice. (Newman) On the other hand there are space ethicists and space exobiologists who argue that humans have created ecological ruin on the planet—and now space debris is starting to pollute space. Th ese countervailing thoughts by the “no growth” camp of space ethicists say we have no right to colonize other planets or to mine the Moon and asteroids—or at least no right to do so until we can prove we can sustain life here on Earth for the longer term. However, for most who are planning for the new space economy the opinion of space philosophers doesn’t really fl oat their boat. Legislators, bankers, and aspiring space entrepreneurs are far more interested in the views of the super-rich capitalists called the space billionaires. A number of these billionaires and space executives have already put some very serious money into enterprises intent on creating a new pathway to the stars. No less than five billionaires with established space ventures—Elon Musk, Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos, Sir Richard Branson, and Robert Bigelow—have invested millions if not billions of dollars into commercializing space. They are developing new technologies and establishing space enterprises that can bring the wealth of outer space down to Earth. This is not a pipe dream, but will increasingly be the economic reality of the 2020s. These wealthy space entrepreneurs see major new economic opportunities. To them space represents the last great frontier for enterprising pioneers. Th us they see an ever-expanding space frontier that offers opportunities in low-cost space transportation, satellite solar power satellites to produce clean energy 24h a day, space mining, space manufacturing and production, and eventually space habitats and colonies as a trajectory to a better human future. Some even more visionary thinkers envision the possibility of terraforming Mars, or creating new structures in space to protect our planet from cosmic hazards and even raising Earth’s orbit to escape the rising heat levels of the Sun in millennia to come. Some, of course, will say this is sci-fi hogwash. It can’t be done. We say that this is what people would have said in 1900 about airplanes, rocket ships, cell phones and nuclear devices. The skeptics laughed at Columbus and his plan to sail across the oceans to discover new worlds. When Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Purchase from France or Seward bought Alaska, there were plenty of naysayers that said such investment in the unknown was an extravagant waste of money. A healthy skepticism is useful and can play a role in economic and business success. Before one dismisses the idea of an impending major new space economy and a new gold rush, it might useful to see what has already transpired in space development in just the past five decades. The world’s first geosynchronous communications satellite had a throughput capability of about 500 kb / s. In contrast, today’s state of the art Viasat 2 —a half century later— has an impressive throughput of some 140 Gb/s. Th is means that the relative throughput is nearly 300,000 greater, while its lifetime is some ten times longer (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2 ). Each new generation of communications satellite has had more power, better antenna systems, improved pointing and stabilization, and an extended lifetime. And the capabilities represented by remote sensing satellites , meteorological satellites , and navigation and timing satellites have also expanded their capabilities and performance in an impressive manner. When satellite applications first started, the market was measured in millions of dollars. Today commercial satellite services exceed a quarter of a billion dollars. Vital services such as the Internet, aircraft traffi c control and management, international banking, search and rescue and much, much more depend on application satellites. Th ose that would doubt the importance of satellites to the global economy might wish to view on You Tube the video “If Th ere Were a Day Without Satellites?” 2 . Let’s check in on what some of those very rich and smart guys think about the new space economy and its potential. (We are sorry to say that so far there are no female space billionaires, but surely this, too, will come someday soon.) Of course this twenty-fi rst century breakthrough that we call the New Space economy will not come just from new space commerce. It will also come from the amazing new technologies here on Earth. Vital new terrestrial technologies will accompany this cosmic journey into tomorrow. Information technology, robotics, artificial intelligence and commercial space travel systems have now set us on a course to allow us humans to harvest the amazing riches in the skies—new natural resources, new energy, and even totally new ways of looking at the purpose of human existence. If we pursue this course steadfastly, it can be the beginning of a New Space renaissance. But if we don’t seek to realize our ultimate destiny in space, Homo sapiens can end up in the dustbin of history—just like literally millions of already failed species. In each and every one of the five mass extinction events that have occurred over the last 1.5 billion years on Earth, some 50–80 of all species have gone the way of the T. Rex, the woolly mammoth, and the Dodo bird along with extinct ferns, grasses and cacti. On the other hand, the best days of the human race could be just beginning. If we are smart about how we go about discovering and using these riches in the skies and applying the best of our new technologies, it could be the start of a new beginning for humanity. Konstantin Tsiokovsky, the Russian astronautics pioneer, who fi rst conceived of practical designs for spaceships, famously said: “A planet is the cradle of mankind, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.” Well before Tsiokovsky another genius, Leonardo da Vinci, said, quite poetically: “Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” The founder of the X-Prize and of Planetary Resources, Inc., Dr. Peter Diamandis, has much more brashly said much the same thing in quite diff erent words when he said: “The meek shall inherit the Earth. The rest of us will go to Mars.” The New Space Billionaires Peter Diamandis is not alone in his thinking. From the list of “visionaries” quoted earlier, Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX; Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Galactic; and Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft and the man who financed SpaceShipOne, the world’s first successful spaceplane have all said the future will include a vibrant new space economy. Th ey, and others, have said that we can, we should and we soon shall go into space and realize the bounty that it can offer to us. Th e New Space enterprise is today indeed being led by those so-called space billionaires , who have an exciting vision of the future. They and others in the commercial space economy believe that the exploitation of outer space may open up a new golden age of astral abundance. They see outer space as a new frontier that can be a great source of new materials, energy and various forms of new wealth that might even save us from excesses of the past. Th is gold rush in the skies represents a new beginning. We are not talking about expensive new space ventures funded by NASA or other space agencies in Europe, Japan, China or India. No, these eff orts which we and others call New Space are today being forged by imaginative and resourceful commercial entrepreneurs. Th ese twenty-fi rst century visionaries have the fortitude and zeal to look to the abundance above. New breakthroughs in technology and New Space enterprises may be able to create an “astral life raft” for humanity. Just as Columbus and the Vikings had the imaginative drive that led them to discover the riches of a new world, we now have a cadre of space billionaires that are now leading us into this New Space era of tomorrow. These bold leaders, such as Paul Allen and Sir Richard Branson, plus other space entrepreneurs including Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Blue Origin, and Robert Bigelow, Chairman of Budget Suites and Bigelow Aerospace, not only dream of their future in the space industry but also have billions of dollars in assets. These are the bright stars of an entirely new industry that are leading us into the age of New Space commerce. These space billionaires, each in their own way, are proponents of a new age of astral abundance. Each of them is launching new commercial space industries. They are literally transforming our vision of tomorrow. These new types of entrepreneurial aerospace companies—the New Space enterprises—give new hope and new promise of transforming our world as we know it today. The New Space Frontier What happens in space in the next few decades, plus corresponding new information technologies and advanced robotics, will change our world forever. These changes will redefi ne wealth, change our views of work and employment and upend almost everything we think we know about economics, wealth, jobs, and politics. Th ese changes are about truly disruptive technologies of the most fundamental kinds. If you thought the Internet, smart phones, and spandex were disruptive technologies, just hang on. You have not seen anything yet. In short, if you want to understand a transition more fundamental than the changes brought to the twentieth century world by computers, communications and the Internet, then read this book. There are truly riches in the skies. Near-Earth asteroids largely composed of platinum and rare earth metals have an incredible value. Helium-3 isotopes accessible in outer space could provide clean and abundant energy. There is far more water in outer space than is in our oceans. In the pages that follow we will explain the potential for a cosmic shift in our global economy, our ecology, and our commercial and legal systems. These can take place by the end of this century. And if these changes do not take place we will be in trouble. Our conventional petro-chemical energy systems will fail us economically and eventually blanket us with a hydrocarbon haze of smog that will threaten our health and our very survival. Our rare precious metals that we need for modern electronic appliances will skyrocket in price, and the struggle between “haves” and “have nots” will grow increasingly ugly. A lack of affordable and readily available water, natural resources, food, health care and medical supplies, plus systematic threats to urban security and systemic warfare are the alternatives to astral abundance. The choices between astral abundance and a downward spiral in global standards of living are stark. Within the next few decades these problems will be increasingly real. By then the world may almost be begging for new, out of- the-box thinking. International peace and security will be an indispensable prerequisite for exploitation of astral abundance, as will good government for all. No one nation can be rich and secure when everyone else is poor and insecure. In short, global space security and strategic space defense, mediated by global space agreements, are part of this new pathway to the future.
DA – Internet
Internet is open to massive vulnerabilities now.
Griffiths 19 James Griffiths 7-26-2019 "The global internet is powered by vast undersea cables. But they’re vulnerable." https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/25/asia/internet-undersea-cables-intl-hnk/index.html (CNN Analyst)ELmer
Hong Kong (CNN) - On July 29, 1858, two steam-powered battleships met in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There, they connected two ends of a 4,000 kilometer (2,500 mile) long, 1.5 centimeter (0.6 inch) wide cable, linking for the first time the European and North American continents by telegraph. Just over two weeks later, the UK’s Queen Victoria sent a congratulatory message to then US President James Buchanan, which was followed by a parade through the streets of New York, featuring a replica of a ship which helped lay the cable and fireworks over City Hall. In their inaugural cables, Queen Victoria hailed the “great international work” by the two countries, the culmination of almost two decades of effort, while Buchanan lauded a “triumph more glorious, because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror on the field of battle. The message took over 17 hours to deliver, at 2 minutes and 5 seconds per letter by Morse code, and the cable operated for less than a month due to a variety of technical failures, but a global communications revolution had begun. By 1866, new cables were transmitting 6 to 8 words a minute, which would rise to more than 40 words before the end of the century. In 1956, Transatlantic No. 1 (TAT-1), the first underwater telephone cable, was laid, and by 1988, TAT-8 was transmitting 280 megabytes per second – about 15 times the speed of an average US household internet connection – over fiber optics, which use light to transmit data at breakneck speeds. In 2018, the Marea cable began operating between Bilbao, Spain, and the US state of Virginia, with transmission speeds of up to 160 terabits per second – 16 million times faster than the average home internet connection. Today, there are around 380 underwater cables in operation around the world, spanning a length of over 1.2 million kilometers (745,645 miles). Underwater cables are the invisible force driving the modern internet, with many in recent years being funded by internet giants such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon. They carry almost all our communications and yet – in a world of wireless networking and smartphones – we are barely aware that they exist. Yet as the internet has become more mobile and wireless, the amount of data traveling across undersea cables has increased exponentially. “Most people are absolutely amazed” by the degree to which the internet is still cable-based, said Byron Clatterbuck, chief executive of Seacom, a multinational telecommunications firm responsible for laying many of the undersea cables connecting Africa to the rest of the world. “People are so mobile and always looking for Wi-Fi,” he said. “They don’t think about it, they don’t understand the workings of this massive mesh of cables working together. “They only notice when it’s cut.” Network down In 2012, Hurricane Sandy slammed into the US East Coast, causing an estimated $71 billion in damage and knocking out several key exchanges where undersea cables linked North America and Europe. “It was a major disruption,” Frank Rey, director of global network strategy for Microsoft’s Cloud Infrastructure and Operations division, said in a statement. “The entire network between North America and Europe was isolated for a number of hours. For us, the storm brought to light a potential challenge in the consolidation of transatlantic cables that all landed in New York and New Jersey.” For its newest cable, Marea, Microsoft chose to base its US operation further down the coast in Virginia, away from the cluster of cables to minimize disruption should another massive storm hit New York. But most often when a cable goes down nature is not to blame. There are about 200 such failures each year and the vast majority are caused by humans. “Two-thirds of cable failures are caused by accidental human activities, fishing nets and trawling and also ships’ anchors,” said Tim Stronge, vice-president of research at TeleGeography, a telecoms market research firm. “The next largest category is natural disaster, mother nature – sometimes earthquakes but also underwater landslides.” A magnitude-7.0 earthquake off the southwest coast off Taiwan in 2006, along with aftershocks, cut eight submarine cables which caused internet outages and disruption in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines. Stronge said the reason most people are not aware of these failures is because the whole industry is designed with it in mind. Companies that rely heavily on undersea cables spread their data across multiple routes, so that if one goes down, customers are not cut off. How a cable gets laid Laying a cable is a years-long process which costs millions of dollars, said Seacom’s Clatterbuck. The process begins by looking at naval charts to plot the best route. Cables are safest in deep water where they can rest on a relatively flat seabed, and won’t rub against rocks or be at risk of other disturbances. “The deeper the better,” Clatterbuck said. “When you can lay the cable down in deep water you rarely have any problems. It goes down on the bottom of the seabed and just stays there.” Things become more difficult the closer you get to shore. A cable that is only a few centimeters thick on the bottom of the ocean must be armored from its environment as reaches the landing station that links it with the country’s internet backbone. “Imagine a long garden hose, inside of which are very small tubes that house a very, very thin fiber pair,” Clatterbuck said. That hose is wrapped in copper, which conducts the direct current that powers the cable and its repeaters, sometimes up to 10,000 volts. “The fibers are wrapped in urethane and wrapped in copper and wrapped again in urethane,” he said. “If we’re going to have to put that cable on a shoreline that is very shallow and has a lot of rocks, you’re now going to have to armor coat that cable so no one can hack through it.” Cables in less hospitable areas can be far thicker than garden hoses, wrapped in extra plastic, kevlar armor plating, and stainless steel to ensure they can’t be broken. Depending on the coast, cable companies might also have to build concrete trenches far out to sea, to tuck the cable in to protect it from being bashed against rocks. “Before the cable-laying vessels go out they send out another specialized ship that maps the sea floor in the area when they want to go,” said TeleGeography’s Stronge. “They want to avoid areas where there’s a lot of undersea currents, certainly want to avoid volcanic areas, and avoid a lot of elevation change on the sea floor.” Once the route is plotted and checked, and the shore connections are secure, huge cable laying ships begin passing out the equipment. “Imagine spools of spools of garden hose along with a lot of these repeaters the size of an old travel trunk,” Clatterbuck said. “Sometimes it can take a month to load the cable onto a ship.” The 6,600 kilometer (4,000 mile) Marea cable weighs over 4.6 million kilograms (10.2 million pounds), or the equivalent of 34 blue whales, according to Microsoft, which co-funded the project with Facebook. It took more than two years to lay the entire thing. Malicious cuts The blackout came without warning. In February 2008, a whole swath of North Africa and the Persian Gulf suddenly went offline, or saw internet speeds slow to a painful crawl. This disruption was eventually traced to damage to three undersea cables off the Egyptian coast. At least one – linking Dubai and Oman – was severed by an abandoned, 5,400 kilogram (6-ton) anchor, the cable’s owner said. But the cause of the other damage was never explained, with suggestions it could have been the work of saboteurs. That raises the issue of another threat to undersea cables: deliberate human attacks. In a 2017 paper for the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange, British lawmaker Rishi Sunak wrote that “security remains a challenge” for undersea cables. “Funneled through exposed choke points (often with minimal protection) and their isolated deep-sea locations entirely public, the arteries upon which the Internet and our modern world depends have been left highly vulnerable,” he said. “The threat of these vulnerabilities being exploited is growing. A successful attack would deal a crippling blow to Britain’s security and prosperity.” However, with more than 50 cables connected to the UK alone, Clatterbuck was skeptical about how useful a deliberate outage could be in a time of war, pointing to the level of coordination and resources required to cut multiple cables at once. “If you wanted to sabotage the global internet or cut off a particular place you’d have to do it simultaneously on multiple cables,” he said. “You’d be focusing on the hardest aspect of disrupting a network.”
SpaceX satellites are key to internet access.
James Pethokoukis 21 James Pethokoukis, a columnist and an economic policy analyst, is the Dewitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he writes and edits the AEIdeas blog and hosts a weekly podcast, “Political Economy with James Pethokoukis.” He is also a columnist for The Week and an official contributor to CNBC. “Why a SpaceX bankruptcy would hurt the global poor” Faster, Please! November 30, 2021 https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/-why-a-spacex-bankruptcy-would-hurt
I don’t have enough deep knowledge about SpaceX’s business or financials to reliably gauge the actual bankruptcy risk here, and the piece’s reporter is skeptical. I will note, however, that although the company is currently valued at around $100 billion, the bank Morgan Stanley assigns it a valuation “of somewhere between $5bn and $200bn, with uncertainty about its success accounting for the wide range,” according to The Economist. Starship and Starlink are key to that upper bound. (Also: A Morgan Stanley survey of “institutional investors and industry experts” expect SpaceX to become more valuable than Tesla, currently a trillion-dollar company. We’ll see.) So it’s not surprising that Musk emphasizes the importance of the Starlink internet satellite venture here, especially its next incarnation. Now go and Twitter search on the terms “Musk,” “ruining,” and “sky,” and you’ll find plenty of complaints about the Starlink constellation — with currently more than 1,700 satellites in low-Earth orbit. For many of these keyboard critics, Starlink is nothing more than an uberbillionaire's reckless effort to become an even wealthier uberbillionaire. Or maybe it’s just another Muskian vanity project, like building rockets to Mars. Either way, these diehard anti-Muskers see a cluttered sky for visual astronomers, both amateur and professional, as a horrific tradeoff just so the entrepreneur can sell global internet access. Now, the extreme version of this critique is unserious, little more than anti-billionaire emoting. The profit potential of Starlink is unclear, though it seems to be Musk’s goal that the telecom business will one day help fund his Mars ambitions. But the venture isn’t there yet. Last summer, Musk estimated that Starlink would likely need between $20 billion and $30 billion in investment. "If we succeed in not going bankrupt, then that'll be great, and we can move on from there," Musk said. For now, Starlink aims to add another 1,000 satellites a year, even more when Starship is operational. That is, assuming Starship become operational. But the astronomy issue is a real one, as SpaceX has acknowledged. And after astronomer complaints about the brightness of the first group of 60 satellites launched in 2019, SpaceX developed a work-around to minimize the glare from solar reflection on subsequent launches. Of course, some scientists don’t want to rely on the goodwill of SpaceX and other satellite companies. They see an international regulatory agreement, perhaps a new protocol under the Outer Space Treaty, as a necessity. But as such an add-on is unlikely to happen anytime soon, notes The Economist, “not least because other issues raised by the mega constellations, such as risks from debris, will doubtless seem more pressing.” Here’s one of the many pictures floating around the Internet showing the impact of Starlink satellites — “the 333-second exposure shows at least 19 satellites passing overhead” — on astronomical observations, via the IFLScience website: Of course, framing the trade-off as the above picture vs. “better global internet” doesn’t quite capture the benefits of the latter. And they are considerable. There remains a stark digital divide in global internet access. As the World Economic Forum notes: “Globally, only just over half of households (55 percent) have an internet connection, according to UNESCO. In the developed world, 87 percent are connected compared with 47 percent in developing nations, and just 19 percent in the least developed countries.” It seems pretty clear that broadband internet access brings considerable economic gains, particularly to poorer countries. (Musk has specifically said this is a goal of Starlink.) Here are a few examples from the August 2021 analysis “The Economic Impact of Internet Connectivity in Developing Countries” by Jonas Hjort (Columbia University) and Lin Tian (INSEAD): Quite a few studies convincingly estimate the effect on consumption of specific internet-enabled technologies (rather than internet connectivity itself) through model-based approaches, and a few do so more directly. Jack and Suri (2014) show that access to mobile money decreased consumption poverty by two percentage points in Kenya. In contrast, Couture et al. (2021) finds that expansion of e-commerce in China has little effect on income to rural producers and workers. Different areas of Sub-Saharan Africa got access to basic internet at different times starting in the early 2000s. Exploiting variation arising from the gradual arrival of submarine cable connections and using nighttime satellite image luminosity as a proxy for economic activity, Goldbeck and Lindlacher (2021) estimate that basic internet availability leads to about a two percentage point increase in economic growth. As we briefly discussed in Sub-section 3.1.1, Bahia et al. (2020) show evidence that the gradual roll-out of mobile broadband in Nigeria between 2010 and 2016 increased labor force participation and employment. The paper also shows that household consumption simultaneously increased and poverty decreased. Households that had at least one year of mobile broadband coverage experienced an increase in total consumption of about 6 percent. Masaki et al. (2020) document a similarly striking result. Combining household expenditure surveys with data on the location of fiber-optic transmission nodes and coverage maps of 3G mobile technology, they show that 3G coverage is associated with a 14 percent increase in total consumption and a 10 percent decline in extreme poverty in Senegal. Finally, Bahia et al. (2021) use a similar empirical approach to study the effect of mobile broadband roll-out in Tanzania and find a comparable increase in household consumption and decline poverty in this setting. The eventual endgame here is that there are going to be many tens of thousands more satellites in orbit, enabling total global internet coverage. And they will be joined by all manner of human-occupied installations for tourist, commercial, and scientific endeavors. (You may have missed the late October announcement that Blue Origin, the space company owned by Jeff Bezos, is teaming up with other firms to build a space station in Earth orbit.) Stargazing from Earth will never be the way it used to be. Then again, people still complain about shadows from skyscrapers even as humanity continues to build them. But recall one of the running themes of this newsletter: Technology solves one problem, creates another, then solves that one — rinse and repeat — even as the overall direction is forward. More astronomy in the future will be space based. And if all those space objects and structures make even low-Earth orbit astronomy difficult, more of it will need to be performed further out, as with the James Webb Space Telescope. Or maybe via telescopes on the Moon, such as the proposed Lunar Crater Radio Telescope, which would deploy robots to transform a half-mile wide crater into an observatory by attaching a wire mesh along the crater walls. And once there are lots of satellites around a fully colonized Moon, off to Mars — which might be accessible thanks to Starlink funding Musk’s deep-space ambitions. Meanwhile, there will be a lot less global poverty here on Earth than otherwise.
Internet access checks multiple existential threats.
Eagleman 10 Dr. David; 11/9/2010; PhD in Neuroscience @ Baylor University, Adjunct Professor of Neoroscience @ Stanford University, Former Guggenheim Fellow, Director of the Center for Science and Law, BA @ Rice University; “Six Ways The Internet Will Save Civilization”; https://www.wired.co.uk/article/apocalypse-no
Many great civilisations have fallen, leaving nothing but cracked ruins and scattered genetics. Usually this results from: natural disasters, resource depletion, economic meltdown, disease, poor information flow and corruption. But we’re luckier than our predecessors because we command a technology that no one else possessed: a rapid communication network that finds its highest expression in the internet. I propose that there are six ways in which the net has vastly reduced the threat of societal collapse. Epidemics can be deflected by telepresence One of our more dire prospects for collapse is an infectious-disease epidemic. Viral and bacterial epidemics precipitated the fall of the Golden Age of Athens, the Roman Empire and most of the empires of the Native Americans. The internet can be our key to survival because the ability to work telepresently can inhibit microbial transmission by reducing human-to-human contact. In the face of an otherwise devastating epidemic, businesses can keep supply chains running with the maximum number of employees working from home. This can reduce host density below the tipping point required for an epidemic. If we are well prepared when an epidemic arrives, we can fluidly shift into a self-quarantined society in which microbes fail due to host scarcity. Whatever the social ills of isolation, they are worse for the microbes than for us. The internet will predict natural disasters We are witnessing the downfall of slow central control in the media: news stories are increasingly becoming user-generated nets of up-to-the-minute information. During the recent California wildfires, locals went to the TV stations to learn whether their neighbourhoods were in danger. But the news stations appeared most concerned with the fate of celebrity mansions, so Californians changed their tack: they uploaded geotagged mobile-phone pictures, updated Facebook statuses and tweeted. The balance tipped: the internet carried news about the fire more quickly and accurately than any news station could. In this grass-roots, decentralised scheme, there were embedded reporters on every block, and the news shockwave kept ahead of the fire. This head start could provide the extra hours that save us. If the Pompeiians had had the internet in 79AD, they could have easily marched 10km to safety, well ahead of the pyroclastic flow from Mount Vesuvius. If the Indian Ocean had the Pacific’s networked tsunami-warning system, South-East Asia would look quite different today. Discoveries are retained and shared Historically, critical information has required constant rediscovery. Collections of learning -- from the library at Alexandria to the entire Minoan civilisation -- have fallen to the bonfires of invaders or the wrecking ball of natural disaster. Knowledge is hard won but easily lost. And information that survives often does not spread. Consider smallpox inoculation: this was under way in India, China and Africa centuries before it made its way to Europe. By the time the idea reached North America, native civilisations who needed it had already collapsed. The net solved the problem. New discoveries catch on immediately; information spreads widely. In this way, societies can optimally ratchet up, using the latest bricks of knowledge in their fortification against risk. Tyranny is mitigated Censorship of ideas was a familiar spectre in the last century, with state-approved news outlets ruling the press, airwaves and copying machines in the USSR, Romania, Cuba, China, Iraq and elsewhere. In many cases, such as Lysenko’s agricultural despotism in the USSR, it directly contributed to the collapse of the nation. Historically, a more successful strategy has been to confront free speech with free speech -- and the internet allows this in a natural way. It democratises the flow of information by offering access to the newspapers of the world, the photographers of every nation, the bloggers of every political stripe. Some posts are full of doctoring and dishonesty whereas others strive for independence and impartiality -- but all are available to us to sift through. Given the attempts by some governments to build firewalls, it’s clear that this benefit of the net requires constant vigilance. Human capital is vastly increased Crowdsourcing brings people together to solve problems. Yet far fewer than one per cent of the world’s population is involved. We need expand human capital. Most of the world not have access to the education afforded a small minority. For every Albert Einstein, Yo-Yo Ma or Barack Obama who has educational opportunities, uncountable others do not. This squandering of talent translates into reduced economic output and a smaller pool of problem solvers. The net opens the gates education to anyone with a computer. A motivated teen anywhere on the planet can walk through the world’s knowledge -- from the webs of Wikipedia to the curriculum of MIT’s OpenCourseWare. The new human capital will serve us well when we confront existential threats we’ve never imagined before. Energy expenditure is reduced Societal collapse can often be understood in terms of an energy budget: when energy spend outweighs energy return, collapse ensues. This has taken the form of deforestation or soil erosion; currently, the worry involves fossil-fuel depletion. The internet addresses the energy problem with a natural ease. Consider the massive energy savings inherent in the shift from paper to electrons -- as seen in the transition from the post to email. Ecommerce reduces the need to drive long distances to purchase products. Delivery trucks are more eco-friendly than individuals driving around, not least because of tight packaging and optimisation algorithms for driving routes. Of course, there are energy costs to the banks of computers that underpin the internet -- but these costs are less than the wood, coal and oil that would be expended for the same quantity of information flow. The tangle of events that triggers societal collapse can be complex, and there are several threats the net does not address. But vast, networked communication can be an antidote to several of the most deadly diseases threatening civilisation. The next time your coworker laments internet addiction, the banality of tweeting or the decline of face-to-face conversation, you may want to suggest that the net may just be the technology that saves us.