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MARS PIONEER SYSTEM IS NOT A SUICIDE MISSION-Lamb '10



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MARS PIONEER SYSTEM IS NOT A SUICIDE MISSION-Lamb '10

[Gregory; One-way ticket to Mars?; The Christian Science Monitor; 17 November 2010; http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/One-way-ticket-to-Mars; retrieved 30 June 2011]


They propose that, after several unmanned missions drop supplies at a base station on the Red Planet, two spacecraft carrying two humans each would be sent on the six- to eight-month voyage to Mars to begin the first human colony on another planet.

Further missions would continue to supply the first settlers, who would be older, beyond child-bearing age, and - of course - volunteers.

Eventually, as the colonists made more use of Mars' own resources, including water trapped as ice, they would be joined by more migrants from Earth.

"It's not a suicide mission at all," argues Dr. Schulze-Makuch, coauthor of the paper and an associate professor at the school of earth and environmental sciences at Washington State University in Pullman.

Mars, he admits, "will never be a second Earth, you know, our home planet. But it's feasible to have people staying for a long time, and people living there, actually."

PLENTY OF VOLUNTEERS ARE AVAILABLE FOR ONE-WAY TRIPS TO MARS-Lamb '10

[Gregory; One-way ticket to Mars?; The Christian Science Monitor; 17 November 2010; http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/One-way-ticket-to-Mars; retrieved 30 June 2011]


Last spring, President Obama put forth a set of new goals for US space exploration, including sending astronauts into orbit around Mars by the mid-2030s and returning them to Earth. While Mars has a much weaker gravitational field than Earth's, the pull is significant, which would mean that ferrying astronauts to and from the Martian surface would be an additional challenge requiring more resources.

As Schulze-Makuch and Dr. Davies, a professor at Arizona State University, have promoted their idea, many people have stepped forward to volunteer for such a mission, they say.

One-way trips of colonization are common to human history, the authors argue. Most of the early settlers coming by ship to America had little hope of ever returning to Europe.

"They knew that they would never be coming back," Schulze-Makuch says.


ONE WAY SCENARIO IS AKIN TO LANDING ON THE NORMANDY BEACHES IN WORLD WAR TWO OR THE ORIGINAL PLYMOUTH COLONY EXPLORERS-Lamb '10

[Gregory; One-way ticket to Mars?; The Christian Science Monitor; 17 November 2010; http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/One-way-ticket-to-Mars; retrieved 30 June 2011]


Dr. Zubrin has set out his own plan to send humans to Mars - and return them. But he has no problem with a one-way expedition. "Life is a one-way trip," Zubrin says. "If you don't go to Mars, you're going to die on Earth. You're going to die somewhere."

He sees a one-way ticket to Mars as a Plymouth Colony scenario, in which more and more 17th-century English settlers slowly joined the original colonists in Massachusetts Bay.

Or, perhaps colonizing Mars is more akin to hitting the beach at Normandy, Zubrin says, referring to the invasion of Europe in World War II. The rationale would be "no matter what it takes, we'll take the beach," he says. "We may well run into problems, but we'll send more of everything. We're prepared to send more machines, more people, more supplies until the beach is taken."
COLONIES ON MARS WOULD BE A BONANZA FOR RESEARCH-Lamb '10

[Gregory; One-way ticket to Mars?; The Christian Science Monitor; 17 November 2010; http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/One-way-ticket-to-Mars; retrieved 30 June 2011]


Colonist-scientists living on Mars could produce a bonanza in basic research, the authors say. That would include a better understanding of the origin of Earth itself, and perhaps even the discovery of the first extraterrestrial life.
MARS COLONY IS A FIRST STEP TO MOVING AWAY FROM EARTH-Lamb '10

[Gregory; One-way ticket to Mars?; The Christian Science Monitor; 17 November 2010; http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/One-way-ticket-to-Mars; retrieved 30 June 2011]


And in the long term, a Martian colony would be a huge first step toward humans moving away from Earth. Famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has been among those arguing that because of the chance of a disaster on Earth, humans must start moving out into the solar system.

Planetary Defense Affirmative

Observation 1. Inherency
A. CONGRESS HAS MANDATED DISCOVERY OF ALL LARGE NEOS BUT NOT PROVIDED ADEQUATE FUNDING-Shapiro et al ‘10

[Irwin; Chair of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Defending Planet Earth:Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies; 2011; http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12842; retrieved 21 Jun 2011]


Congress has mandated that NASA discover 90 percent of all near-Earth objects 140 meters in diameter or greater by 2020. The administration has not requested and Congress has not appropriated new funds to meet this objective. Only limited facilities are currently involved in this survey/discovery effort, funded by NASA’s existing budget.

The current near-Earth object surveys cannot meet the goals of the 2005 George E. Brown, Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey Act directing NASA to discover 90 percent of all near-Earth objects 140 meters in diameter or greater by 2020.


B. THERE IS NO GOVT OR DOD PLAN TO DEAL WITH NEO THREAT-Garretson & Kaupa ‘08

[Lt. Colonel Peter and Major Douglas; Potential Mitigation Roles of the Department of Defense; Air and Space Power Journal; September 2008; http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj08/fal08/garretson.html; retrieved 05 Jul 2011]


Planetary defense may seem an abstract and unreal national security risk. however, it proved quite a serious problem for the dinosaurs,who previously inhabited our planet,and it poses no less a threat today. no matter how remote some people might think the chances of having rocks fall on their heads, they should at least be concerned that no government or DOD contingency plan exists to counter an impact or mitigate its consequences.
Observation2. Harms
A. NASA ESTIMATES THAT THERE ARE AS MANY AS 20,000 HAZARDOUS COMETS AND ASTEROIDS-Easterbrook ‘08

[Gregg; contributing editor; The Sky Is Falling; The Atlantic; June 2008; http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/06/the-sky-is-falling/6807/1/; retrieved 27 Jun 2011]


In 1980, only 86 near-Earth asteroids and comets were known to exist. By 1990, the figure had risen to 170; by 2000, it was 921; as of this writing, it is 5,388. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, part of NASA, keeps a running tally at www.neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats. Ten years ago, 244 near-Earth space rocks one kilometer across or more—the size that would cause global calamity—were known to exist; now 741 are. Of the recently discovered nearby space objects, NASA has classified 186 as “impact risks” (details about these rocks are at www.neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk). And because most space-rock searches to date have been low-budget affairs, conducted with equipment designed to look deep into the heavens, not at nearby space, the actual number of impact risks is undoubtedly much higher. Extrapolating from recent discoveries, NASA estimates that there are perhaps 20,000 potentially hazardous asteroids and comets in the general vicinity of Earth.

B. EVEN A RELATIVELY SMALL IMPACT COULD SO FUNDAMENTALLY ALTER THE ECOSYSTEM SO DRASTICALLY AS TO CAUSE MASS EXTINCTION-Morrison ‘06

[David; senior scientist @ NASA Astrobiology Institute; Asteroid and Comet Impacts: The Ultimate Environmental Catastrophe; Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences; Aug 2006; pp.2041-2054]


From the perspective of the current impact hazard, the most revolutionary insight of the Alvarez paper was that even small impacts (on a geological or astronomical scale) could severely damage the terrestrial ecosystem (Chapman k Morrison 1994). The K-T impactor had a mass one billion times less than that of the Earth, yet the ensuing extinction fundamentally redirected the course of biological evolution. In the two decades since this discovery, considerable work has been done to understand the mechanisms of mass extinction and to evaluate the ways that environmental stress might depend on the energy of the impact.
C. AN ASTEROID IMPACT ON LAND WOULD ALTER THE WORLD’S ECOSYSTEMS AND LEAD TO CATASTROPHIC LOSS OF LIFE-Koplow ‘05

[Justin; JD Candidate, Georgetow Law School; Assessing The Creation Of A Duty Under International Customary Law Whereby The United States of America Would Be Obligated To Defend A Foreign State Against The Catastrophic But Localized Damage Of An Asteroid Impact; Georgetown International Environmental Law Review; Winter 2005]


The disaster of an asteroid impact on land would only partially stem from actual impact. As Alvarez theorized, the asteroid would kick up dust and debris sufficient to choke out sunlight for years. Photosynthesis could not occur and with the death of vegetation the world's food chains would break, effectively [*278] ending the majority of life on Earth. n13 Yet, more likely, as the Earth is over seventy percent water, the asteroid would hit one of Earth's oceans. The impact would produce tsunamis of up to one hundred meters in height; n14 waves that, if from an Atlantic Ocean impact, would break against the Shenandoah Mountains. n15 The impact would generate wind and heat resulting in massive storm fronts that would flood large parts of the world and alter world ecosystems with catastrophic loss of life.
D. EVEN IF THE ODDS ARE INCREDIBLY LOW, THE POTENTIAL IMPACT IS THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE-Easterbrook ‘08

[Gregg; contributing editor; The Sky Is Falling; The Atlantic; June 2008; http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/06/the-sky-is-falling/6807/1/; retrieved 27 Jun 2011]


A generation ago, the standard assumption was that a dangerous object would strike Earth perhaps once in a million years. By the mid-1990s, researchers began to say that the threat was greater: perhaps a strike every 300,000 years. This winter, I asked William Ailor, an asteroid specialist at The Aerospace Corporation, a think tank for the Air Force, what he thought the risk was. Ailor’s answer: a one-in-10 chance per century of a dangerous space-object strike.

Regardless of which estimate is correct, the likelihood of an event is, of course, no predictor. Even if space strikes are likely only once every million years, that doesn’t mean a million years will pass before the next impact—the sky could suddenly darken tomorrow. Equally important, improbable but cataclysmic dangers ought to command attention because of their scope. A tornado is far more likely than an asteroid strike, but humanity is sure to survive the former. The chances that any one person will die in an airline crash are minute, but this does not prevent us from caring about aviation safety. And as Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer of Microsoft, put it, “The odds of a space-object strike during your lifetime may be no more than the odds you will die in a plane crash—but with space rocks, it’s like the entire human race is riding on the plane.”


E. THE IMPACT HAZARD FROM AN NEO STRIKE EXCEEDS ANY KNOWN NATURAL OR MAN-MADE THREAT-Chapman ‘07

[Clark; Senior Scientist Southwest Research Institute, Dept. of Space Studies; Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society, 2007; pgs. 145-161]


The unique threat from the skies, however, is the very small but finite chance that a large asteroid or comet, 2 km or more across, will slam into the Earth at 100 times the speed of a jetliner, instantly producing a global environmental crisis unprecedented in human history and threatening the future of civilization as we know it. Half-a-dozen times since the beginning of the Cambrian Period half-a-billion years ago, when large, fossilizable life forms evolved on our planet, giant asteroids or comets 10 or 20 km across have struck Earth, producing a global holocaust that killed almost everything alive and transformed the biosphere. Human civilization is one result of such a mass-extinction, which ended the Cretaceous Period (when dinosaurs reigned) 65 million years ago. Such a mass-extinction could conceivably happen again, although the chance of it happening during our lives is extraordinarily small. In this sense, the impact hazard exceeds any other known natural or man-made threat to civilization's or even our species' future. It is the ultimate low-probability high-consequence hazard.
Plan: The USFG should fund and develop a space-based survey of NEOs.
Observation 3. Solvency
A. A SPACE-BASED SURVEY IN SOLAR ORBIT IS THE BEST WAY TO DISCOVER NEO THREAT-David ‘10

[Leonard; columnist; Experts Push for a NASA Asteroid-Hunting Spacecraft; Space.com; 21 Dec 2010; http://www.space.com/10526-experts-push-nasa-asteroid-hunting-spacecraft.html?; retrieved 27 Jun 2011]


Named after the late congressman, the George E. Brown, Jr., Near-Earth Object Survey section of the 2005 NASA Authorization Act called upon the space agency to detect, track, catalogue and characterize the physical characteristics of at least 90 percent of potentially hazardous NEOs larger than roughly 460 feet (140 meters) in diameter by the end of the year 2020.

But blue-ribbon panels of experts looking into the matter for the National Research Council reported in back-to-back reports in 2009 and 2010 that a lack of cash and political muscle make it "infeasible" that such a NEO census can be accomplished by 2020.

"If we seriously want to find all the asteroids which could be an impact hazard to the Earth, as well as find the asteroids which would be good destinations for human spaceflight, then a space-based survey telescope in solar orbit interior to Earth's would be the most rapid way to do that," NASA's Lindley Johnson told SPACE.com. Johnson is the space agency's NEO Observations Program Executive in the planetary science division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

B. THE UNITED STATES NEEDS MORE THAN HOPE, BUT A SPECIFIC AGENCY IN CHARGE OF PREVENTING A DISASTER THAT COULD THREATEN THE SURVIVAL OF OUR SPECIES-Seamone ‘02

[Evan; Articles Editor, Iowa Law Review; Masters in Public Policy, UCLA; When Wishing on a Star Just Won't Do: The Legal Basis for International Cooperation in the Mitigation of Asteroid Impacts and Similar Transboundary Disasters; Iowa Law Review; March 2002]


Because several organizations are currently empowered to deal with environmental harm less devastating than the harm posed by asteroids, n231 nations should develop a similar organization to address all transboundary megadisasters.

In the final analysis, regardless of our efforts to combat unknown environmental threats, "just as avoiding an all-out nuclear exchange becomes a first priority of superpowers, so avoiding general environmental [*1139] collapse becomes a first priority of all responsible states." n232 Collisions with Earth pose serious questions that perhaps only a diverse group of committed policymakers are capable of addressing successfully. n233 By realizing the general principle of cooperative preservation and the need for proactive and anticipatory action to mitigate transnational disasters, we can begin to answer the legal questions relating to asteroid or comet impacts. Perhaps, these very principles will inform our understanding of the legal obligations related to other low probability, high consequence transnational crises.



Congressman Burton's fears about the U.S. government's role during the time of the Skylab crisis illustrate the concerns expressed in this Note: "I think I know what NASA is doing. They know they cannot control this, and they are scared to death. They don't know what to do. They will just do nothing and keep their fingers crossed, and maybe it will end up in the Indian Ocean." n234 In other words, when Earth faces its next space-body collision crisis, let us hope and pray that there exists a functioning organization in which we can place our faith, rather than merely wishing on a star, for the survival of our species.
C. HUMANS HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY TO PREVENT IMPACTS. WE JUST NEED THE READINESS AND ACTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY-Schweickart et al ‘08

[Russell; Chairman Association of Space Explorers Near-Earth Object Committee; ASTEROID THREATS: A CALL FOR GLOBAL RESPONSE; 25 Sep 2008; http://www.space-explorers.org/committees/NEO/ASE_NEO_Final_Report_excerpt.pdf; retrieved 05 Jul 2011]


Humankind possesses the first two of the elements necessary for impact prevention: search telescopes and a proven spaceflight technology. The missing third element is the readiness and determination of the international community to establish decision-making capacities. This commitment to trigger timely action must be embodied in the form of a coordinated, pre-established international NEO decision-making process. This process must include deflection criteria and campaign plans which the international community can implement rapidly and with little debate. In the absence of an agreement on a decision-making process, we may lose the opportunity to act against a NEO in time, leaving evacuation and disaster management as our only response to a pending impact. A single such missed opportunity will add painful fault-finding to the devastating physical effects of an impact. The international community must begin work now on forging all three impact prevention elements (warning, deflection technology, and a decision-making process) into an effective defense against a future collision. The purpose of this document is to initiate a process at the United Nations level leading to the establishment of a decision-making framework for prevention of an asteroid impact. The framework should include an agreed-upon set of criteria, policies, and responsibilities, which can be applied without delay in the case of a specific asteroid threat.
D. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY, WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY TO PREVENT COSMIC COLLISIONS. WE SIMPLY NEED TO BEGIN THE PROCESS NOW-Schweickart et al ‘08

[Russell; Chairman Association of Space Explorers Near-Earth Object Committee; ASTEROID THREATS: A CALL FOR GLOBAL RESPONSE; 25 Sep 2008; http://www.space-explorers.org/committees/NEO/ASE_NEO_Final_Report_excerpt.pdf; retrieved 05 Jul 2011]


Faced with such a threat, we are far from helpless. Astronomers today can detect a high proportion of Near Earth Objects and predict potential collisions with the Earth. Evacuation and mitigation plans can be prepared to cope with an unavoidable impact. For the first time in our planet's 4.5-billion-year history, the technical capacities exist to prevent such cosmic collisions with Earth. The keys to a successful outcome in all cases are preparation, planning, and timely decision-making. Efforts to deflect a NEO will temporarily put different populations and regions at risk in the process of eliminating the risk to all. Questions arise regarding the authorization and responsibility to act, liability, and financial implications. These considerations make it inevitable that the international community, through the United Nations and its appropriate organs, will be called upon to make decisions on whether or not to deflect a NEO, and how to direct a proposed deflection campaign. Because of the substantial lead time required for a deflection, decisions will have to be taken before it is certain that an impact will occur. Such decisions may have to be made as much as ten times more often than the occurrence of actual impacts. Existing space technology makes possible the successful deflection of the vast majority of hazardous NEOs. However, once a threatening object is discovered, maximizing the time to make use of that technology will be equally important. Failure to put in place an adequate and effective decision-making mechanism increases the risk that the international community will temporize in the face of such a threat. Such a delay will reduce the time available for mounting a deflection campaign. Therefore, timely adoption of a decision-making program is essential to enabling effective action.
Underview

A. THE CATASTROPHIC IMPACT OF A MAJOR NEO STRIKE MANDATES A MORAL OBLIGATION TO DEVELOP A MITIGATION STRATEGY NO MATTER THE LEGAL OR POLICY OBJECTIONS-Bostrom ‘02

[Nick; Professor of Philosophy, Oxford University; Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards; Journal of Evolution and Technology; Volume 9, No.1; 2002; http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html; retrieved 27 Jun 2011]


Our approach to existential risks cannot be one of trial-and-error. There is no opportunity to learn from errors. The reactive approach – see what happens, limit damages, and learn from experience – is unworkable. Rather, we must take a proactive approach. This requires foresight to anticipate new types of threats and a willingness to take decisive preventive action and to bear the costs (moral and economic) of such actions.

We cannot necessarily rely on the institutions, moral norms, social attitudes or national security policies that developed from our experience with managing other sorts of risks. Existential risks are a different kind of beast. We might find it hard to take them as seriously as we should simply because we have never yet witnessed such disasters.[5] Our collective fear-response is likely ill calibrated to the magnitude of threat.

Reductions in existential risks are global public goods [13] and may therefore be undersupplied by the market [14]. Existential risks are a menace for everybody and may require acting on the international plane. Respect for national sovereignty is not a legitimate excuse for failing to take countermeasures against a major existential risk.

If we take into account the welfare of future generations, the harm done by existential risks is multiplied by another factor, the size of which depends on whether and how much we discount future benefits [15,16].

B. THE OBLIGATION TO PROMOTE NATIONAL AND GLOBAL PRESERVATION TRUMPS ANY INTERNATIONAL LEGAL EFFORT TO MITIGATE ASTEROID PREVENTION-Seamone ‘02

[Evan; Articles Editor, Iowa Law Review; Masters in Public Policy, UCLA; When Wishing on a Star Just Won't Do: The Legal Basis for International Cooperation in the Mitigation of Asteroid Impacts and Similar Transboundary Disasters; Iowa Law Review; March 2002]


The legal approaches below rest on a principle requiring global cooperation for the preservation of individual nations within a collective disaster response effort (hereinafter cooperative preservation). At the most basic level, all nations are bound to a well-recognized duty of self-preservation. n137 Cooperative preservation extends this duty by recognizing that some threats are so significant as to require a nation to participate in a group addressing the problem before it can successfully fulfill its obligation of self-preservation. n138 By this token, if preplanning is the only way to limit harm to a nation - and, by virtue of such necessities as massive international evacuation, the nation is forced to cooperate with other nations - the duty to collaborate trumps the sovereign right to limit joint mitigation efforts.

International mitigation of an asteroid or comet impact depends on the existence of a global right to survival and the correlative international duty [*1120] of nations to enforce that right. At the most basic level, two components serve as building blocks for this right. First, nations must recognize their active roles in intervening to protect their citizens. Early jurists, such as Vattel, codified the principle of international law underlying this duty:

The end or object of civil society is to procure for the citizens whatever they stand in need of for the necessities, the conveniences, the accommodation of life, and, in general, whatever constitutes happiness, - with the peaceful possession of property, a method of obtaining justice with security, and, finally, a mutual defense against all external violence... .

In the act of association, by virtue of which a multitude of men form together a state or nation, each individual has entered into engagements with all, to promote the general welfare; and all have entered into engagements with each individual, to facilitate for him the means of supplying his necessities, and to protect and defend him. It is manifest that these reciprocal engagements can not otherwise be fulfilled than by maintaining the political association. The entire nation is then obliged to maintain that association; and as their preservation depends on its continuance, it thence follows that every nation is obliged to perform the duty of self-preservation.

This right is not negative in nature, but positive. n140 In other words, the government is not obligated strictly by morality, but, rather, by the need to sustain itself, which guarantees the existence of its sovereignty.
INHERENCY: CONGRESS IS INADEQUATELY FUNDING



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