Atlanta Urban Debate League jv and Varsity Updates
Sample 1NC – NASA Disadvantage
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Sample 1NC – NASA DisadvantageGlobal cooperation is necessary to solve terrorism, disease pandemics, and nuclear proliferation Armitage and Nye, 07 ( Richard Armitage, president of Armitage International, and Joseph Nye, distinguished service professor at Harvard. Published in 2007. Available at http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/071106_csissmartpowerreport.pdf) Despite America’s status as the lone global power and concerns about the durability of the current international order, America should renew its commitment to the current order and help find a way for today’s norms and institutions to accommodate rising powers that may hold a different set of principles and values. Furthermore, even countries invested in the current order may waver in their commitment to take action to minimize the threats posed by violent non-state actors and regional powers who challenge this order. The information age has heightened political consciousness, but also made political groupings less cohesive. Small, adaptable, transnational networks have access to tools of destruction that are increasingly cheap, easy to conceal, and more readily available. Although the integration of the global economy has brought tremendous benefits, threats such as pandemic disease and the collapse of financial markets are more distributed and more likely to arise without warning. The threat of widespread physical harm to the planet posed by nuclear catastrophe has existed for half a century, though the realization of the threat will become more likely as the number of nuclear weapons states increases. The potential security challenges posed by climate change raise the possibility of an entirely new set of threats for the United States to consider. The next administration will need a strategy that speaks to each of these challenges. Whatever specific approach it decides to take, two principles will be certain: First, an extra dollar spent on hard power will not necessarily bring an extra dollar’s worth of security. It is difficult to know how to invest wisely when there is not a budget based on a strategy that specifies trade-offs among instruments. Moreover, hard power capabilities are a necessary but insufficient guarantee of security in today’s context. Second, success and failure will turn on the ability to win new allies and strengthen old ones both in government and civil society. The key is not how many enemies the United States kills, but how many allies it grows. States and non-state actors who improve their ability to draw in allies will gain competitive advantages in today’s environment. Those who alienate potential friends will stand at greater risk. China has invested in its soft power to ensure access to resources and to ensure against efforts to undermine its military modernization. Terrorists depend on their ability to attract support from the crowd at least as much as their ability to destroy the enemy’s will to fight. ***Negative Articles***Negative Article: “House Republicans Question NASA Funding”by Kevin Diaz, Washington Bureau reporter for the San Antonio Express-News. Published September 14, 2014. Available at http://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/House-Republicans-question-NASA-funding-5755385.php A House bill mandating a moon-first focus was introduced a year ago with the support of Houston Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee, a sign of at least partial earthly bipartisanship. “Space is the world's ultimate high ground,” the bill's mostly Republican authors said, “returning to the Moon and reinvigorating our human space flight program is a matter of national security.” The die was cast after the Obama White House's decision in 2010 to cancel the financially troubled Constellation program. The Bush-era project was intended to replace the aging space shuttle fleet and return astronauts to the moon. “I understand that some believe we should attempt a return to the surface of the moon first, as previously planned,” Obama said at the time. “But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We've been there before ... there's a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do.” With that, NASA embarked on the Space Launch System, using some of the same hardware to build heavy-lift rockets that could expand human presence beyond low-Earth orbit, where manned space travel has been stuck since the days of the historic Apollo moon missions. Amid the dispute about NASA's next step, critics have dubbed the Space Launch System a program without a mission, or, more derisively, a “rocket to nowhere.” “It was a system that was imposed on NASA before it had a mission to carry out,” space historian Andrew Chaikin says. “The central issue is how are we going to explore space, with humans as well as robots, in a way that is sustainable, and from everything I've seen about the Space Launch System it doesn't look very sustainable from an economic standpoint.” Some analysts see too many similarities between the giant rocket program and the old Apollo days, when Cold War rivalries with the Soviet Union meant that as far as NASA budgets were concerned, the sky was the limit. Those days are over. Now the Russians ferry U.S. astronauts into space, a fact that has become increasingly embarrassing amid simmering economic sanctions and geopolitical conflict over the Ukraine. Some Republicans blame the current predicament with Russia on Obama's decision to cancel the Constellation program. “Simply because it had George Bush's name on it,” said Houston Republican John Culberson, who serves on an appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA. “Had Obama not canceled Constellation, we would be able to reach the space station in the next eight months. Instead, we're relying totally on ... the Russians.” Lawmakers in both parties would like the dependence on Russia to end, even if NASA says the relationship continues to go well. Smith and his committee pressed Bolden for assurances this summer that the Space Launch System is on track and able to explore space from American shores. Critics still see too little innovation in NASA's marquee programs, which to some resemble the old ones. And while Obama has embraced commercial space companies like SpaceX, which are developing cost-cutting design alternatives, NASA backers worry about siphoning off resources to a shadow space industry. There is no longer any question that the Space Launch System and the Orion crew capsule, which rolled out of the hangar this week, remain at the core of U.S. space exploration policy. “Basically, what it comes down to is, do you want to have an exploration program or not?” said Doug Cooke, who spearheaded the Space Launch System as the former associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA. Whether the future mission is the Moon, an asteroid or Mars, NASA needs a big rocket that can send heavy payloads deep into space, he said. That has brought annual funding for the Space Launch System into sharper focus this month. While NASA assures Congress that the program is on a solid glide path, Cooke worries a sloppy budget fight in the coming weeks could set it back. Obama's 2015 budget request for NASA was $17.46 billion, a 1 percent cut from the $17.6 billion Congress gave the agency for fiscal year 2014, which ends Sept. 30. That includes some $1.7 billion for the Space Launch System — and another $133 million for the controversial asteroid mission, which has run into renewed skepticism in Congress, particularly if it stretches dollars thin for development of the Space Launch System. Smith sounded the alarm again in July when the Government Accountability Office concluded NASA's funding plan for the Space Launch System was $400 million short of what it needs to launch by 2017. But the immediate hitch is that Congress is nowhere near passing a 2015 NASA budget, with the most likely scenario being a stopgap funding measure. According to Cooke, Congress is very likely to increase NASA funding over the president's request. But until a final budget is passed, he said, the space agency likely will operate programs at the lower levels requested by the White House, slowing their pace. 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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