Atlanta Urban Debate League jv and Varsity Updates
Sample 1NC – NASA Disadvantage
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- Sample 1NC – NASA Disadvantage
Sample 1NC – NASA DisadvantageOcean development trades off with NASA funding – they're competing priorities Mangu-Ward, 13 (Katherine Mangu-Ward, managing editor of Reason magazine and a Future Tense fellow at the New America Foundation. Published September 4, 2013. Available at http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/09/sea_vs_space_which_is_the_real_final_frontier.html) Is Hawkes right? Should we all be crawling back into the seas from which we came? Ocean exploration is certainly the underdog, so to speak, in the sea vs. space face-off. There’s no doubt that the general public considers space the sexier realm. The occasional James Cameron joint aside, there’s much more cultural celebration of space travel, exploration, and colonization than there is of equivalent underwater adventures. In a celebrity death match between Captain Kirk and Jacques Cousteau, Kirk is going to kick butt every time. In fact, the rivalry can feel a bit lopsided—the chess club may consider the football program a competitor for funds and attention, but the jocks aren’t losing much sleep over the price of pawns and cheerleaders rarely turn out for chess tournaments. But somehow the debate rages on in dorm rooms, congressional committee rooms, and Internet chat rooms. Damp ocean boosters often aim to borrow from the rocket-fueled glamour of space. Submersible entrepreneur Marin Beck talks a big game when he says, “We can go to Mars, but the deep ocean really is our final frontier,” but he giggles when a reporter calls him the “Elon Musk of the deep sea,” an allusion to the founder of the for-profit company Space X who is rumored to be the real-life model for Iron Man’s Tony Stark. Even Hawkes admits that he “grew up dreaming of aircraft”—though he means planes, not spaceships—but “then I got to look at this subsea stuff and I saw this is where aviation was all those years ago. The whole field was completely backwards, and that’s why I jumped in.”
They needn’t be, says Guillermo Söhnlein, a man who straddles both realms. Söhnlein is a serial space entrepreneur and the founder of the Space Angels Network. (Disclosure: My husband’s a member.) The network funds startups aimed for the stars, but his most recent venture is Blue Marble Exploration, which organizes expeditions in manned submersibles to exotic underwater locales. (Further disclosure: I have made a very small investment in Blue Marble, but am fiscally neutral in the sea vs. space fight, since I have a similar amount riding on a space company, Planetary Resources.) As usual, the fight probably comes down to money. The typical American believes that NASA is eating up a significant portion of the federal budget (one 2007 poll found that respondents pinned that figure at one-quarter of the federal budget), but the space agency is actually nibbling at a Jenny Craig–sized portion of the pie. At about $17 billion, government-funded space exploration accounts for about 0.5 percent of the federal budget. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—NASA’s soggy counterpart—gets much less, a bit more than $5 billion for a portfolio that, as the name suggests, is more diverse. But the way Söhnlein tells the story, this zero sum mind-set is the result of a relatively recent historical quirk: For most of the history of human exploration, private funding was the order of the day. Even some of the most famous examples of state-backed exploration—Christopher Columbus’ long petitioning of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, for instance, or Sir Edmund Hillary’s quest to climb to the top of Everest—were actually funded primarily by private investors or nonprofits. But that changed with the Cold War, when the race to the moon was fueled by government money and gushers of defense spending wound up channeled into submarine development and other oceangoing tech. “That does lead to an either/or mentality. That federal money is taxpayer money which has to be accounted for, and it is a finite pool that you have to draw from against competing needs, against health care, science, welfare,” says Söhnlein. “In the last 10 to 15 years, we are seeing a renaissance of private finding of exploration ventures. On the space side we call it New Space, on the ocean side we have similar ventures.” And the austerity of the current moment doesn’t hurt. “The private sector is stepping up as public falls down. We’re really returning to the way it always was.” Sample 1NC – NASA DisadvantageNASA funding is crucial to American-led global cooperation Friedman, 11 (Lou Friedman, former executive director of the Planetary Society, a space education and advocacy organization founded by Carl Sagan and currently headed by Bill Nye. Published February 14, 2011. Available at http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1778/1) “American Leadership” is a phrase we hear bandied about a lot in political circles in the United States, as well as in many space policy discussions. It has many different meanings, most derived from cultural or political biases, some of them contradictory. The term sometimes arouses antipathy from non-Americans and from advocates of international cooperation. They may find it synonymous with American hubris or hegemony. It is true that American leadership can be used as a nationalistic call to advance American interests at the expense of non-American interests. But more often it may be used as an international call for promoting mutual interests and cooperation. That is certainly true in space, as demonstrated by the International Space Station, Cassini-Huygens, the James Webb Space Telescope, the Europa Jupiter System Mission, Mars 2016/2018 and Earth observing satellites. These are great existing and proposed missions, which engage much of the world and advance the interests of the US and other nations, inspire the public, and promote cooperation among technical and scientific communities worldwide. Yet space exploration and development are often overlooked in foreign relations and geopolitical strategies. Sometimes, the connection between space exploration and foreign relations has even been belittled in the space community. I refer to the NASA administrator’s foray into the Middle East last year, promoting science, math, and technology as a way to reach out to Muslim nations. It is true that he used some unfortunate wording, such as “foremost purpose,” but it was great that the administration wanted the space program to be part of its overarching international efforts to engaging the Muslim community in peaceful pursuits. Apollo and the International Space Station were both accomplishments motivated more by international and geopolitical interests than they were by space enthusiasm. It’s my view that space ventures should be used to advance American engagement in the world. (For example, with China on the space station and Russia in Mars Sample Return.) American leadership in space is much more desired that resented—except when it gets used unilaterally, as in the past Administration’s call for “dominance in cislunar space.” Asian countries (China, Japan, India) are especially interested in lunar landings; Western countries, including the US, much less so. However, cooperating with Asian countries in lunar science and utilization would be both a sign of American leadership and of practical benefit to US national interests. Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin has been a leader advocating such cooperation. At the same time American leadership can be extended by leading spacefaring nations into the solar system with robotic and human expeditions to other worlds. The US can’t do everything alone. Climate monitoring, Earth observation, space weather prediction, and ultimately asteroid deflection are huge and vital global undertakings that require international participation. That is also true with exploration projects sending robots and human to other worlds. American leadership in these areas is welcomed and used by other countries, even as they develop their own national programs. The US government should make more of this and not treat it as an afterthought—or even worse, prohibit American leadership as the House of Representatives is doing this week by banning any China collaboration or cooperation. (The proposed House continuing resolution for fiscal year 2011 prohibits OSTP or NASA funds to be used for anything to do with China.) On a bigger stage I was struck by the demands of the Egyptian protesters over the past few weeks for American leadership and engagement in reforming their country, while at the same time strongly resenting any American interference in their country. This demand for American leadership and opposition to American hegemony may seem inconsistent. It is not: it only emphasizes the need to recognize the difference and use leadership for cooperation and engagement. If we Americans do this in the space program, we will accomplish more in our many Earth, space science, and exploration projects, and we will raise higher the importance of the space program on the national and international political agenda. Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2012 2012 -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? 2012 -> Aa and na members Dying from Tobacco 2012 -> [Baby Crying] 01: 04 [Ching 2012 -> Unit Name / Nom de l’unité uic / ciu dates 2012 -> What We Owe Jehovah’s Witnesses 2012 -> Oceans Challenge Badge 2012 -> Canadian cycling olympians 2012 -> Greg landry, june olkowski and tom lysiak 2012 -> William goldman 2012 -> Does translocation and restocking confer any benefit to the European eel population? A review Download 100.07 Kb. Share with your friends:
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