Colonize Mars 1ac contention 1: Inherency
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- Only Mars colonization can prevent technological stagnation and ensure technological growth Zubrin, 1994
- Frontier expansion towards Mars is the only hope for free societies Zubrin, 1994
AIDS IMPACTAIDS is the most devastating disease in world history, creating mass suffering and death while risking extinction. Mathiu, Journalist for Africa News, 2k (Mutuma, AFRICA NEWS, July 15, 2000, online) Every age has its killer. But AIDs is without precedent. It is comparable only to the Black Death of the Middle Ages in the terror it evokes and the graves it fills. But unlike the plague, AIDs does not come at a time of scientific innocence: It flies in the face of space exploration, the manipulation of genes and the mapping of the human genome. The Black Death - the plague, today easily cured by antibiotics and prevented by vaccines - killed a full 40 million Europeans, a quarter of the population of Europe, between 1347 and 1352. But it was a death that could be avoided by the simple expedient of changing addresses and whose vector could be seen and exterminated. With AIDs, the vector is humanity itself, the nice person in the next seat in the bus. There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Every human being who expresses the innate desire to preserve the human genetic pool through the natural mechanism of reproduction is potentially at risk. And whereas death by plague was a merciful five days of agony, HIV is not satisfied until years of stigma and excruciating torture have been wrought on its victim.The plague toll of tens of millions in two decades was a veritable holocaust, but it will be nothing compared to the viral holocaust: So far, 18.8 million people are already dead; 43.3 million infected worldwide (24.5 million of them Africans) carry the seeds of their inevitable demise - unwilling participants in a March of the Damned. Last year alone, 2.8 million lives went down the drain, 85 per cent of them African; as a matter of fact, 6,000 Africans will die today. The daily toll in Kenya is 500. There has never been fought a war on these shores that was so wanton in its thirst for human blood. During the First World War, more than a million lives were lost at the Battle of the Somme alone, setting a trend that was to become fairly common, in which generals would use soldiers as cannon fodder; the lives of 10 million young men were sacrificed for a cause that was judged to be more worthwhile than the dreams - even the mere living out of a lifetime - of a generation. But there was proffered an explanation: It was the honour of bathing a battlefield with young blood, patriotism or simply racial pride. AIDS, on the other hand, is a holocaust without even a lame or bigoted justification. It is simply a waste. It is death contracted not in the battlefield but in bedrooms and other venues of furtive intimacy. It is difficult to remember any time in history when the survival of the human race was so hopelessly in jeopardy. Only Mars colonization can prevent technological stagnation and ensure technological growth Zubrin, 1994 (Robert, former Chairman of the National Space Society, PhD Nuclear Engineering, President of Mars Society & Pioneer Astronautics, “The Significance of the Martian Frontier”, Ad Astra Sept/Oct, http://www.nss.org/settlement/mars/zubrin-frontier.html) Without the opening of a new frontier on Mars, continued Western civilization faces the risk of technological stagnation. To some this may appear to be an outrageous statement, as the present age is frequently cited as one of technological wonders. In fact, however, the rate of progress within our society has been decreasing and at an alarming rate. To see this, it is only necessary to step back and compare the changes that have occurred in the past 30 years with those that occurred in the preceding 30 years and the 30 years before that. Between 1903 and 1933 the world was revolutionized: Cities were electrified; telephones and broadcast radio became common; talking motion pictures appeared; automobiles became practical; and aviation progressed from the Wright Flyer to the DC-3 and Hawker Hurricane. Between 1933 and 1963 the world changed again, with the introduction of color television, communication satellites and interplanetary spacecraft, computers, antibiotics, scuba gear, nuclear power, Atlas, Titan, and Saturn rockets, Boeing 727's and SR-71's. Compared to these changes, the technological innovations from 1963 to the present are insignificant. Immense changes should have occurred during this period, but did not. Had we been following the previous 60 years' technological trajectory, we today would have videotelephones, solar powered cars, maglev trains, fusion reactors, hypersonic intercontinental travel, regular passenger transportation to orbit, undersea cities, open-sea mariculture and human settlements on the Moon and Mars. Instead, today we see important technological developments, such as nuclear power and biotechnology, being blocked or enmeshed in political controversy — we are slowing down. Now, consider a nascent Martian civilization: Its future will depend critically upon the progress of science and technology. Just as the inventions produced by the "Yankee Ingenuity" of frontier America were a powerful driving force on worldwide human progress in the 19th century, so the "Martian Ingenuity" born in a culture that puts the utmost premium on intelligence, practical education and the determination required to make real contributions will make much more than its fair share of the scientific and technological breakthroughs that will dramatically advance the human condition in the 21st. A prime example of the Martian frontier driving new technology will undoubtedly be found in the arena of energy production. As on Earth, an ample supply of energy will be crucial to the success of Mars settlements. The Red Planet does have one major energy resource that we currently know about: deuterium, which can be used as the fuel in nearly waste-free thermonuclear fusion reactors. Earth has large amounts of deuterium too, but with all of the existing investments in other, more polluting forms of energy production, the research that would make possible practical fusion power reactors has been allowed to stagnate. The Martian colonists are certain to be much more determined to get fusion on-line, and in doing so will massively benefit the mother planet as well. Frontier expansion towards Mars is the only hope for free societies Zubrin, 1994 (Robert, former Chairman of the National Space Society, PhD Nuclear Engineering, President of Mars Society & Pioneer Astronautics, “The Significance of the Martian Frontier”, Ad Astra Sept/Oct, http://www.nss.org/settlement/mars/zubrin-frontier.html) Western humanist civilization as we know and value it today was born in expansion, grew in expansion and can only exist in a dynamic expanding state. While some form of human society might persist in a non-expanding world, that society will not feature freedom, creativity, individuality, or progress, and placing no value on those aspects of humanity that differentiate us from animals, it will place no value on human rights or human life as well. Such a dismal future might seem an outrageous prediction, except for the fact that for nearly all of its history most of humanity has been forced to endure such static modes of social organization, and the experience has not been a happy one. Free societies are the exception in human history — they have only existed during the four centuries of frontier expansion of the West. That history is now over. The frontier opened by the voyage of Christopher Columbus is now closed. If the era of western humanist society is not to be seen by future historians as some kind of transitory golden age, a brief shining moment in an otherwise endless chronicle of human misery, then a new frontier must be opened. Mars beckons. Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 481.88 Kb. Share with your friends:
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