Impact Turn – Space Good: A2: Space Bad – Counterbalancing

Impact Turn – Space Good: A2: Space Bad – Counterbalancing

[Samuel] Huntington implies that other nations would only enter an arms race to preserve the balance of power. But what if that balance of power was already overwhelming in favor of one side to begin with? Currently the United States has no peer in the world either economically or militarily. The United States has become the world's sole remaining superpower. If the United States added space weapons to its already massive arsenal of weapons, would this change the balance of power sufficiently to require other nations to respond? This is doubtful. Any other nation -- China, Russia, France, and others -- would have to simultaneously develop a robust terrestrial military capability while at the same time engaging in an arms race in space. Having the ability to control space without at least a minimally effective force on the ground would be impractical. The Russians and the Chinese currently are the closest competitors to the United States when it comes to military power. The collapse in 1989 of the Soviet Union demonstrated to the world that entering an enormously expensive arms race (which space weapons would certainly be) would have catastrophic results for a nation. No nation today has the combined military or economic wherewithal to enter an arms race in space with the United States.

DOLMAN: Nonetheless, we have a different system today and, as Karl has pointed out, it may be that if the United States were to unilaterally militarize space – and I am not advocating that necessarily, but it is an option – that it could in fact prevent an arms race. The trillions of dollars that would have to be spent to dislodge the United States from space, if it were to quickly seize control of the low-earth orbit, might be seen as not worthwhile to another state. However, if we wait fifteen or twenty years until a state is able to challenge the United States in space, then we will have a space race. By putting weapons in space to enhance its military capabilities the United States today is saying to the world that in this period of American hegemony, it is not going to wait for problems to develop overseas until they bubble over into its area of interest, and then massively and forcefully fix that problem. No. The American way of war today, based on precision and on space capabilities, is to engage early using less force, using more precise force and more deadly force in a specific area, but with far less collateral damage. That is the new American way of war and we really cannot get out of it.

Impact Turn – Space Good: A2: Space Bad – Debris

Debris is inevitable and has no impact.
Dinerman 7 (Taylor. "Sticky airbags and grapples: kinetic ASATs without the debris." The Space Review. January 22, 2007, http://spacedebate.org/argument/2597)KM

Dangerous space debris is both man-made and natural, in the latter case in the form of micrometeoroids. Confusing the two is a great way to make the issue into more of a problem than it already is. The environment around Earth is certainly filled with space junk, but if this was as dangerous as has been claimed, spacecraft would be breaking up on an almost weekly basis. Space junk is a problem and always will be. The international agreements designed to mitigate the dangers have been useful, but cannot halt the creation of more debris any more than recycling laws halt the production of garbage. The trend has been moving in the right direction, at least until our Chinese friends decided to make a statement.
Debris doesn’t outweigh military objectives – prefer our impacts.
Dinerman 7 (Taylor. "Sticky airbags and grapples: kinetic ASATs without the debris." The Space Review. January 22, 2007, http://spacedebate.org/argument/2597)KM

Whatever happens the US should be wary of making too big a deal out of the orbital debris issue. All man-made activity in space produces debris. If the US or its allies worry too much about this question instead of simply deciding to live with it, the enemy will find ways of using this concern against the US, like in the case of the “collateral damage” question, where Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and others learned the lesson that when they kill civilians, they win, and when the US kills civilians, they win. If America’s space warriors concentrate on their primary mission, which is to defeat the enemy, destroy his space assets, and protect our own, all will be well. If, on the other hand, we end up concentrating on limiting the creation of space debris while avoiding the primary mission, we will hand the enemy a tool they will use to frustrate our goals. War is a dirty, messy business and cannot be waged cleanly, not in Baghdad nor in outer space.

Tech solves the impact – weapons can be developed with anti-debris capabilities.
Dinerman 7 (Taylor. "Sticky airbags and grapples: kinetic ASATs without the debris." The Space Review. January 22, 2007, http://spacedebate.org/argument/2597)KM

Fortunately, a few years ago a proposal was floated for as class of weapons that would destroy target spacecraft without directly creating any debris. This type of "co-orbital" ASAT would approach its target and envelop it with an airbag covered in a type of sticky substance. It would then fire a thruster so that the conjoined satellites would burn up in the atmosphere. If it worked as designed, no debris would be created. In practice it would be no easy task to design, test, and operate such a weapon, but it is not beyond the state of the art and would not create any debris. Figuring out what kind of sticky material is right for such a system would, by itself, be a fascinating project. The substance might have applications in other military and perhaps civil space systems. If the sticky airbag solution proves too difficult, the same goals might be reached using an ASAT equipped with grappling arms that would grasp the target before pushing down towards the atmosphere. The challenges of such a system are evident, not the least of which would be the need for some sort of decision-making software that would choose the best places to seize the enemy satellite during the final moments before contact.

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