Squo solves for Mars colonization



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Squo solves for Mars colonization.


Bronner 15

(Danielle Wiener, news reporter and correspondant for Fusion news, 10-9, “Here’s NASA’s three-step plan to colonize Mars”, Fusion, http://fusion.net/story/212121/nasa-three-step-plan-colonize-mars/ 7-31)



On Thursday, NASA released a three-step plan to bring humans to Mars sometime in 2030. It’s simple! Sort of. In a report outlining the plan, the space agency did not hesitate to classify this as a colonial mission. “Like the Apollo Program, we embark on this journey for all humanity,” NASA noted, adding, “Unlike Apollo,we will be going to stay… We are developing the capabilities necessary to get there, land there, and live there.” The agency’s recent confirmation that there is liquid water on Mars is a good thing for those who want to set up camp on the red planet, but it doesn’t mean living on Mars will be easy. For one thing, the water is not drinkable—scientists will still need to figure out a way to use it as a resource that could support life. For another, the challenges that make a hypothetical journey to Mars so dangerous, like sustained exposure to dangerous radiation, remain. But NASA isn’t stepping away from the goal of a manned mission, and it sees three phases on the path to achieving it. The first phase, where we are now, is described by NASA as “Earth Reliant.” Per the agency: Earth Reliant exploration is focused on research aboard the ISS. On the space station, we are testing technologies and advancing human health and performance research that will enable deep-space, long-duration missions. This, the agency explains, includes developing and testing communication systems, researching human health, investigating life support systems for Mars, 3D printing and more. The next phase, “Proving Ground,” is when “NASA will learn to conduct complex operations in a deep space environment that allows crews to return to Earth in a matter of days.” NASA explains that most of these missions—the first of which is set to launch in 2018—will take place in “cislunar space,” or somewhere between the Earth and the Moon. This “Proving Ground” step includes the Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission, slated for 2020, which will allow astronauts to test material from a near-Earth asteroid, and developing ways to cut down on resupply missions. The final phase, “Earth Independent,” is when NASA hopes to put humans on Mars. From the report: Earth Independent activities build on what we learn on ISS and in cislunar space to enable human missions to the Mars vicinity, including the Martian moons, and eventually the Martian surface. Once on Mars, the plan is to: “harvest Martian resources to create fuel, water, oxygen and building materials,” and “leveraging advanced communication systems to relay data and results from science and exploration excursions with a 20-minute delay .” Excellent plan.

Solvency

China doesn’t have the tech or desire to go to Mars.


Hester 14 (Zack, Hesters serves both public and private sector clients as a consultant with a focus in business transformation. He is a recent graduate of the George Washington University Space Policy Institute master's program where his interests and studies include policy, strategy, and procurement within the space sector. Zack also holds bachelor degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Political Science, “No Case for a U.S.-China Space Race”, Space News, pg online @http://spacenews.com/41561no-case-for-a-us-china-space-race/ accessed 7-26 //tw

You may have seen recent headlines that read, “China Has U.S. in a Space Race” and “Will China Restart the Space Race?” Of course, the term “space race” is a tagline to any competitive space story these days, from the “space race” between private companies to reviving the “space race” between the United States and Russia. No doubt it’s a catchy headline, hence why I used it here. 

However, most of these race analogies fail to establish a clear finish line between the competitors in question. 

On the topic of China, such headlines and articles sometimes invoke thoughts of American astronauts landing on Mars only to find a Chinese flag firmly planted on the surface, without any proper context of China’s current space programs. These articles tend to play upon the memories of the 1960s, when Americans were anxiously left wondering what the Soviet Union’s Politburo with its mysterious “Chief Designer” would launch next over their heads.

Certainly, there are very legitimate concerns in regards to China in terms of anti-satellite weapon capabilities and under what circumstances the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would launch such weapons. However, in regards to China’s human spaceflight activities and objectives, one need not be so left in the dark. China has clearly laid out its strategic plan for the next six to 10 years and there is little indication that it will deviate from it. In fact, it’s the same long-term vision and strategy for manned spaceflight that China has employed over the past 10 years, and no, it does not include crash programs to launch manned missions to the Moon or Mars. 

While estimates of China’s annual space budget vary, most sources agree that China has been increasing its allocations across various space related civilian and defense programs. Its space program serves to promote China’s economy, national pride and international prestige. However, it is also accepted that the United States still far exceeds China — and most of the rest of the world, for that matter — in space funding. 

It should also be noted that China’s space activities are primarily divided between two different agencies and are not encompassed under a NASA-equivalent agency. Human spaceflight missions reside under the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), which is part of the PLA’s General Armaments division. Robotic missions reside under the China National Space Administration (CNSA), which is part of the civilian Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. 

The two are not mutually exclusive, but what’s key here is that CNSA, not CMSA, operates and develops the recently highly publicized robotic lunar missions like the Chang’e-3 lander and the Yutu lunar rover. While such technologies may one day have dual use for a manned landing, CNSA is currently not setting the stage for manned follow-on missions, but is rather focused on its own Moon strategy, which next calls for a lunar sample-return mission set for 2017. 

CMSA’s objectives are laid out in a three-step strategy that has been in place since its inception in the 1990s. 

The first step: Achieve manned spaceflight. This was achieved with the successful launch of the Shenzhou 5 craft in 2003. 

The second step: Develop a space laboratory in low Earth orbit. This was achieved when the Tiangong-1 lab module was successfully launched and placed into orbit followed by a three-person crew onboard the Shenzhou 10 spacecraft who successfully docked with the module in 2013. 

The third and final step: Develop a manned space station in low Earth orbit designed to remain operational over a 10-year lifespan by the early 2020s. This is the capstone that CMSA is aiming toward. The station was officially approved in 2010 after years of planning and predevelopment. Additionally, the Chinese may look to incorporate other countries to take part in the space station, including developing nations, as a way to assure the station’s peaceful use, spread out costs and create geopolitical capital with developing countries or regional allies.

While a manned Moon landing or an ambitious attempt at a first Mars landing would bring tremendous prestige to China, current human and robotic endeavors have brought sufficient world standing to China as a space power and serve its geopolitical objectives. 

CMSA and its Chinese aerospace suppliers still face numerous technological challenges and bureaucratic hurdles to implement a Moon mission or a crash program to Mars anytime soon. CMSA officials have stressed that they still have a long way to go to achieve China’s space station aspirations, the third step in China’s current strategy.

Even with rapid economic growth, China is also not immune to the struggles faced by its spacefaring Western counterparts in regards to weighing the opportunity costs that come with expensive and high-risk endeavors in human spaceflight. So will Chinese leaders abandon the current and successful three-step strategy and risk their young space program’s reputation on such a high-stakes, high-risk manned mission to the Moon or Mars now? History and all current indications tell us no. 

Maybe in the mid-2020s China will reach a point in its space program to start executing development of an ambitious manned mission to the Moon or Mars, and the “race” will be underway. However, such long-term predictions in human spaceflight often prove to be overly optimistic. 

So the next time you see a headline declaring a “space race” after a successful lunar robotic mission or progress on a Chinese space station, don’t be surprised. When it comes to manned spaceflight, the Chinese have left little to the imagination. 

Private sector colonizing Mars now but it and the aff will fail because of tech, biological barriers.


Anthony 14 (Sebastian, Anthony was Sebastian was ExtremeTech's senior editor from 2011 through the end of 2014. His areas of expertise are Emerging technology, consumer technology, science and space, “The First Mars One Colonist will Suffocate, Starve and be Incinerated, According to MIT”, ExtreameTech, pg online@ http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191862-the-first-mars-one-colonists-will-suffocate-starve-and-be-incinerated-according-to-mit accessed 7-31 //tw)

In the 2020s, Mars One — essentially a Dutch-made extraplanetary reality TV show — will send amateur astronauts on a one-way trip to Mars. Their attempts to colonize the Red Planet will be televised — which, according to a new report by aerospace researchers at MIT, might make for particularly morbid viewing. The MIT researchers analyzed the Mars One mission plan and found that the first astronaut would suffocate after 68 days. The other astronauts would die of starvation, dehydration, or incineration in an oxygen-rich atmosphere. The analysis also concludes that 15 Falcon Heavy launches — costing around $4.5 billion — would be needed to support the first four Mars One crew. In short, the colonization of Mars will make for some seriously compelling TV. Following the announcement of its one-way mission to Mars in 2012, some 200,000 people registered their interest on the Mars One website. That number has now been whittled down to 705 candidates — a fairly even mix of men and women from all over the world (but mostly the US, of course!) Several teams of four astronauts (two men, two women) will now be assembled, and training will begin. The current plan is to send a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the first team of four to Mars in 2022 — just eight years from now. The whole thing will be televised as a reality TV show. In the interim, a number of precursor missions — supplies, life-support units, living units, and supply units — will be sent to Mars ahead of the human colonizers. More colonists will be sent fairly rapidly thereafter, with 20 settlers expected by 2033. The technology underpinning the mission is rather nebulous, though — and indeed, that’s where the aerospace researchers at MIT find a number of potentially catastrophic faults. Basically, while we kind of have the technology to set up a colony on Mars, most of it is at a very low technology readiness level (TRL) and untested in a Mars-like environment. Mars One will rely heavily on life support and in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) — squeezing water from Martian soil and oxygen from the atmosphere — but these technologies are still a long way off large-scale, industrial use by a nascent human colony on Mars. NASA’s next Mars rover will have an ISRU unit that will make oxygen from the Red Planet’s atmosphere of CO2 — but that rover isn’t scheduled to launch until 2020, just two years before the planned launch of Mars One. Read: Musk’s million man march to Mars After 68 days, oxygen levels will spike after the first wheat crop reaches maturity — and then all hell will break loose The paper prepared by the MIT researchers [PDF] is rather damning. Basically, due to the difficulty of shipping supplies to Mars, the colonists will mostly live off the land. The problem is, plants produce a lot of oxygen — and in a closed environment, too much oxygen is a bad thing (things start to spontaneously explode). So, you have to vent the oxygen — but we don’t yet have the technology to vent oxygen without also venting the nitrogen, which is used to pressurize the various Mars One pods. As a result, air pressure will eventually get so thin that the colonists can’t breathe — with the first one dying of hypoxia after 68 days. Other potential modes of death are: starvation (the current Mars One plan simply doesn’t contain enough calories for the colonists); dehydration; CO2 poisoning; and death by spontaneous immolation due to a rich oxygen atmosphere. Read: NASA’s Space Launch System is officially all systems go for Mars and Moon landings The researchers also note that Mars One’s plan of sending more colonists after the original four is a bad, bad idea. Not only will this exacerbate any technological issues, but there’ll be an ever-increasing demand on resources like food and water, and faster wear-and-tear that will require more replacement parts. All of these factors will increase the number of resupply craft, pushing the total cost of the project into tens of billions of dollars. Breakdown of the first few cargo missions as part of the Mars One colonization. Note the growing percentage of ECLSS (life support) spare parts. It is expected that stuff will break down a lot on Mars, and new parts have to be flown in from Earth. (Or 3D-printed in-situ, but we’re not there yet.) In short, the MIT researchers find a lot of problems with the current plans laid out by Mars One. Dutch entrepreneur and CEO of Mars One, Bas Lansdorp, disputes the contents of the MIT report, saying “oxygen concentrators” already exist — and if oxygen levels and air pressure can be kept stable, then many of MIT’s other assertions about dehydration and starvation are moot.

Traveling to and terraforming Mars is impossible.


Regis 15

(Ed, is an American philosopher, educator and author. He specializes in books and articles about science, philosophy and intelligence. His topics have included nanotechnology, transhumanism and biological warfare , September 21, “Let’s Not Move to Mars”, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/opinion/lets-not-move-to-mars.html, 7-31)



Unfortunately, this Mars mania reflects an excessively optimistic view of what it actually takes to travel to and live on Mars, papering over many of the harsh realities and bitter truths that underlie the dream. First, there is the tedious business of getting there. Using current technology and conventional chemical rockets, a trip to Mars would be a grueling, eight- to nine-month-long nightmare for the crew. Nine months is a long time for any group of people to be traveling in a small, closed, packed spacecraft. (We’re not talking about the relatively comfy confines of a habitable satellite like the International Space Station.) Tears, sweat, urine and perhaps even solid waste will be recycled, your personal space is reduced to the size of an S.U.V., and you and your crewmates are floating around sideways, upside down and at other nauseating angles. Crew members are in microgravity for the entire trip, with consequent health problems: Your bone mass wastes away, your teeth become more susceptible to cavities, your body’s muscles, including your heart, and even the small muscles that control your eye movements, atrophy and lose mass, and your immune, digestive, vascular and pulmonary systems function at impaired levels. In addition, there will be persistent mechanical noise and vibration, sleep disturbances, unbearable tedium, trance states, depression, monotonous repetition of meals, clothing, routines, conversations and so on. Every source of interpersonal conflict, and emotional and psychological stress that we experience in ordinary, day-to-day life on Earth will be magnified exponentially by restriction to a tiny, hermetically sealed, pressure-cooker capsule hurtling through deep space. To top it all off, despite these constraints, the crew must operate within an exceptionally slim margin of error. As with any cutting-edge technology, there will be continuous threats of equipment failures, computer malfunctions, power interruptions and software glitches. And getting there is the easy part. Mars is a dead, cold, barren planet on which no living thing is known to have evolved, and which harbors no breathable air or oxygen, no liquid water and no sources of food, nor conditions favorable for producing any. For these and other reasons it would be accurate to call Mars a veritable hell for living things, were it not for the fact that the planet’s average surface temperature is minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit. Given the hostile conditions on the Martian surface, human inhabitants would have to produce all of the necessities of life for themselves. Consider the challenge of producing something as basic as an air supply. Since the atmosphere of Mars is 95 percent carbon dioxide, and since indefinitely large stocks of air cannot be brought from Earth, air must be synthesized from a collection of separate ingredients, as in a chemistry lab or factory. Oxygen on Mars exists as a constituent of water — the O in H2O. Thus, one way to get this essential component of air is to first obtain an adequate store of water. However, there being no proven liquid water reserves on Mars, water, too, must be produced from raw material sources, specifically from the soil. One plan calls for digging up the soil and placing it into a heater that will evaporate off any water within it. The water vapor is then condensed into a liquid. Oxygen, in turn, can be separated from the hydrogen in the water by means of electrolysis, and then stockpiled. The nitrogen component of air could be “mined” from the thin Martian atmosphere. With these two constituents in hand, and then combined, we finally have a breath of air (although not “fresh” air). These are only a few of the many serious challenges that must be overcome before anyone can put human beings on Mars and expect them to live for more than five minutes. The notion that we can start colonizing Mars within the next 10 years or so is an overoptimistic, delusory idea that falls just short of being a joke.

No solvency—Humans will take their self-destructive nature with them.


McDonald 6-10

(Coby, correspondant and analysis of space exploration for Popular Science, “THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE TO MARS COLONIZATION MAY BE OBSOLETE HUMANS”, Popular Science, http://www.popsci.com/biggest-obstacle-to-mars-colonization-may-be-us, 7-31)



Wherever you go, there you are--even if it happens to be Mars. That's the gist of an essay recently published in the journal Space Policy. Colonizers of Mars may very well escape the grind of terrestrial life, but they likely won't escape the darker sides of their own natures, the authors suggest. This could lead to all sorts of interpersonal strife, legal quandaries, political chaos, and even existential crises, all of which could doom a fledgling colonial community. The authors, an interdisciplinary team from the University of Information, Technology and Management in Rzeszow, Poland, argue that attention needs to be given to the challenges that will undoubtedly arise in the "new Martian ecological niche." The first astronauts on Mars will be under unique psychological stress, they write, which logically leads to the first ethical issue the authors believe astronauts might face on their voyage: what to do with the body of a crew member that dies on the trip over. Jettison the body to float eternally in space? The Weekend at Bernie's approach? There's no simple answer. Over the next century, numerous nations may become interested in starting their own Martian colonies, which could lead to murky political and legal waters. Whose laws will apply where and to whom? What happens if rival colonies go to war? And what if the colonists decide to throw off the yoke of earthly oppression? How will Earth handle a Martian uprising? The authors ask these questions and more. "We suggest that the best situation could be the artificial acceleration of the biological evolution of the astronauts before they start their space deep mission." At the heart of the essay's argument is the human tendency to do bad stuff to one another. In small "in-group" situations, like what you'd see in early Martian settlements, natural selection favors egoists and defectors over cooperators and altruists, the authors point out. Basically, jerks will rule on Mars. They will put the "ass" in astronaut, as it were. Kids born on Mars may lack the sense of duty and lust for adventure of their astronaut parents. "Generations born on Mars will require specific pedagogical model," they write. "We suppose that a good cultural tool could be a new Martian religion." Religion, say the authors, could help those born on Mars gain a sense of purpose and quell any existential dread they might feel due to the fact that they live on a planet that is entirely hostile to their very existence. What effect religion might have on the colonists' aforementioned white-hot lust for conflict, the authors don't say. The essay ends with a rather bold proclamation: "We suggest that the best situation could be the artificial acceleration of the biological evolution of the astronauts before they start their space deep mission." That's the final sentence of the essay, so one can only wonder whether they are referring to a selective breeding program, gene therapy, or something else. But the suggestion is clear: human beings as we are today, with all our belligerence and egotism, just weren't built for life on Mars. The authors' most lucid suggestion may have come earlier in the essay when they write that given all that could go wrong and the tremendous expense, the colonization of Mars might be too risky to justify. "Perhaps it would be better to focus on increasing the chances of survival on the Earth and for preventing the climate change." That said, the establishment of a Martian colony would no doubt provide the basis for some truly great reality television. And given all the problems we face here on earth, it could prove cathartic.

Colonization of mars is impossible – gut bacteria requires a soil ecosystem.


Chorost 13 [Michael, his article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. As a freelance science writer he has written for Wired, The Washington Post, Technology Review, and The Scientist, among others. He sits on external advisory boards for neuroscience research at Northwestern and Brown. He has given over 150 lectures at institutions such as Google, MIT, Stanford, Brown, the Brookings Institute, and the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. 6/6/13, http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/06/mars_colonization_may_require_earth_soil.html, “Our Guts May Hate Mars” Accessed 7/27/16 ]DG

It is not clear whether such a journey could be done safely for $6 billion, or at all. The hazards are numerous. Voyages to Mars will take anywhere between four and 10 months, depending on how much fuel you use. The lack of gravity will make the astronauts’ bones more brittle and prone to breakage. Zero gravity also changes the shape of the eye, harming some astronauts’ vision for reasons that are not fully understood—and in some cases, the changes appear to be permanent. But that’s just the start. Mars itself will be fantastically dangerous. The surface is bathed in solar and cosmic radiation. The temperature rarely gets above freezing. There’s omnipresent dust with toxic chemicals in it. There’s a total lack of breathable air. And if you have a serious medical problem, the nearest emergency room will be at least 34 million miles away. But there’s another, more subtle hazard of Martian homesteading that people have barely begun to think about: the lack of soil. It may be hard to keep people healthy in the long term on Mars without Earth-made soil. Lots of it. During the Humans to Mars conference held in Washington, D.C., in May, several panelists suggested that colonists would grow food hydroponically, in water. That seems logical: Shipping soil from Earth would be expensive, and we’d have to assume until proved otherwise that using Martian soil would be dangerous, because it has a different chemistry than Earth’s. (For example, it has perchlorates, chlorine-based salts that are known to harm the thyroid.) So for the foreseeable future on Mars, hydroponics seems to be the way to go. You can grow a reasonably good tomato in water. But soil is a whole ecosystem, containing bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, insects, and much more—and it supports us in many ways. For one thing, soil bacteria appear to be important for maintaining the proper diversity and balance of microbiota (i.e., bacteria) in the human gut. Scientists say that the bacteria and tiny insects in soil provide ecosystem services to humans and everything else on the planet. They break down the dead and the discarded, purify water, and cycle carbon dioxide into and out of the atmosphere. Justin Sonnenburg, a microbiologist at Stanford, says that soil bacteria also enhance the quality of the foods grown in it. For instance, some of the microbes attack the plants. That may sound like a bad thing, but in fighting off those assaults, the plants generate compounds that are beneficial to human health, such as antioxidants. What it comes down to is this: Among other functions, good soil has bad bacteria that make plants do good things. We may be able to replicate some of these functions with technology, but if we don’t know all of the things that soil does, we may miss something important. Martian colonists could probably live for years on food grown without soil. The question is, could they live on it for decades? Could their children grow up on it? Are there hidden hazards that would not become apparent until much later? To put these questions another way: Can we identify and reproduce the ecosystem services of Earth for a lifetime? Surprisingly, we may already know what some of the long-term health hazards are, and they’re alarming. Microbiologists are linking decreases in gut biodiversity to Western diseases such as allergies, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, and colon cancer. Says Sonnenburg, “[I]n the Western world, we’re living an existence that is somewhat Mars-like in being foreign to humans.” Permanent residents of Mars, and their Mars-born children, could be even more afflicted with these problems than people on Earth. Mars may be both too dirty—in the sense of having toxic dust—and too clean. Simply put, humans need good dirt. The human body harbors 100 trillion bacteria inside and out, and their proper balance is increasingly regarded as vital to human health. But most Westerners eat factory-farm food that is doused in pesticides, antibiotics, and fertilizers. The additives may be killing off the “bad” bacteria (which we don’t know a whole lot about) that make plants produce the stuff that is good for us (which we don’t know a whole lot about, either). That, plus killing off lots of the “good” bacteria too. Unbalanced soil may lead to an unbalanced human gut—and to allergies, asthma, and worse Just getting to Mars could throw the bacterial balance of arriving colonists out of whack. Space does odd things to bacteria. According to Hernan Lorenzi, a biologist at the J. Craig Venter Institute, nasty bacteria like salmonella and pseudomonas become even more virulent when grown in Petri dishes in weightlessness. But what happens inside weightless people? Forty years of research has shown that astronauts’ gut bacteria change during long missions. The studies have been limited, though, because most bugs in the gut can’t be cultured for study. Lorenzi is using newly developed gene-sequencing machines that can identify everything in samples donated by astronauts, whether it’s culturable or not. If he finds a loss of biodiversity and an increase in dangerous bacteria, it will not be surprising. To be sure, health hazards are inevitable in exploration. Sailors on long voyages suffered from scurvy until captains learned to stow limes and other foods rich in vitamin C. But wherever those sailors went, they were still in an ecosystem. For that matter, astronauts in Earth orbit still get regular shipments of food from Earth. On Mars, none of that will apply. Colonists on Mars will be pioneering a long-term experiment in human health away from the ecosystem services of Earth. Could Earth just ship thousands of pounds of good solid Kentucky dirt to Mars, and to hell with the cost? That wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem. Sonnenburg says that unless you can properly maintain a soil ecosystem, which is hard to do in a closed environment, its biodiversity will decrease. Its tendency will be to ratchet down, he says, and once that starts, it’s hard to stop. Until those problems are solved, the best solution may be to send food from Earth to supplement what the colonists manage to grow on Mars. The idea is to get the colonists eating a non-Western diet, with lots of vegetables and fermented foods like yogurt, sauerkraut, kefir, and kimchi. Such foods are laden with healthy bacteria. Customized probiotic pills might also help, if they can be shown to work. That’s going to make for an expensive cup of yogurt, though. Commercial space companies such as SpaceX are aiming to get launch costs down to a mere $1,000 per pound, and that’s not even counting additional postage to Mars. Still, Sonnenburg strikes a note of optimism. If you treat Martian colonists right, he says, their gut bacteria could end up in better shape than those of most Westerners here on Earth. But it’s hard to imagine that canned food and pills—whose microbial quality could decrease after months in transit—will replace all of the ecosystem services we get from Earth. In his recent novel 2312, the science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson suggests that space colonists will have to return to Earth every seven years to replenish their internal microbiota. Robinson has thought more deeply about long-term space habitation than any other science fiction writer, stocking his novels with pages of exposition on how to create healthy bacterial ecologies on terraformed planets and hollowed-out asteroids. But even 300 years from now, Robinson suggests in 2312, we still won’t fully understand the microbial genius of Earth. We will be able to leave it. But maybe not forever.

Mars Colonization is not possible – MIT study.


Allen 14 [Nick, Nick Allen is the Daily Telegraph's Washington Editor. He was previously US West Coast Editor. Before moving to America, Nick was based in London where he was a member of the award-winning investigative team that reported on MPs' expenses. Nick has been with The Telegraph for nearly a decade. He has covered everything from conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to the World Cup and, most recently, the political rise of Donald Trump, 10/15/14, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/11163395/Mars-colonists-would-die-after-68-days.html, “Mars colonists 'would die after 68 days” Accessed 7/27/16] DG

Humans could only survive on Mars for 68 days according to a new study which throws doubt on ambitions to colonise the Red Planet. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) concluded that with current technology a permanent settlement on Mars is "not feasible". They analysed the Dutch-based Mars One project which is aiming to colonise the planet starting in 2024. Mars One wants to send a group of people on a one-way trip and film the project for a reality television show. The MIT researchers simulated the conditions of living on Mars and identified the main problem as the plan for colonists to grow and eat their own crops, which they said was not practical with current technology. In a 35-page report they said: "The first crew fatality would occur approximately 68 days into the mission. "Some form of oxygen removal system is required, a technology that has not yet been developed for space flight." Scientists also said the amount of spare parts that would have to be brought in to keep the colony functioning could also make the cost prohibitive. Mars is 34 million miles from Earth and it would take at least seven months to get there. The MIT study concluded: "We look forward to the day when humanity becomes an interplanetary species. "We have great respect for the enthusiasm for space exploration that the Mars One program has generated and our goal is not to detract from this, but rather to drive it forward, towards enabling affordable, sustainable Mars colonisation."

Elections

Coop with China over space is massively unpopular for Clinton and Obama- America is afraid that co-op would give China unfair advantages.


Pennington 11 (Matthew, Pennington is a Reporter on US -Asian affairs for The Associated Press, “US Lawmaker Wields Budget Ax Over China Space Ties”, CNS News, pg online@ http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/us-lawmaker-wields-budget-ax-over-china-space-ties accessed 7-27 //tw)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican lawmaker is looking to make the Obama administration pay a price for what he sees as its defiance of Congress in pursuing cooperation with China in science and space technology. A proposal by Rep. Frank Wolf, a fierce critic of Beijing, would slash by 55 percent the $6.6 million budget of the White House's science policy office. The measure was endorsed by a congressional committee this week, but faces more legislative hurdles, and its prospects are unclear. President Barack Obama has sought to deepen ties with China, which underwrites a major chunk of the vast U.S. national debt and is emerging a challenge to American military dominance in the Asia-Pacific region. Among the seemingly benign forms of cooperation he has supported is in science and technology. Last year NASA's administrator visited China, and during a high-profile state visit to Washington by China's President Hu Jintao in January, the U.S. and China resolved to "deepen dialogue and exchanges in the field of space." Wolf, R-Va., argues that cooperation in space would give technological assistance to a country that steals U.S. industrial secrets and launches cyberattacks against the United States. He says Obama's chief science adviser, John Holdren, violated a clause tucked into budget legislation passed this year that bars the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and NASA from technological cooperation with China. He says Holdren did so by meeting twice with China's science minister in Washington during May. "I believe the Office of Science and Technology Policy is in violation of the law," Wolf told The Associated Press, adding that cutting its budget is the only response available to him. Wolf chairs a House subcommittee that oversees the office's budget. The punishment he proposes reflects his deep antipathy toward China, which he accuses of persecuting religious minorities, plundering Tibet and supporting genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan by backing Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. He described the Obama administration's policy toward the Asian power as a failure and railed against the president for hosting Hu at the White House. Caught at the sharp end is Holdren's office, whose mandate is to develop sound science and technology policies by the U.S. government and pursue them with the public and private sectors and other nations. Holdren told a Congressional hearing chaired by Wolf days before his May meetings with Chinese Science Minister Wan Gang that he would abide by the prohibition on such cooperation with China, but then spelled out a rather large loophole: that it did not apply in instances where it affected the president's ability to conduct foreign policy. At another Congressional hearing shortly afterward, Wolf's annoyance was clear. He threatened to "zero out" Holdren's office. Space cooperation between the two world powers like the U.S. and the Soviet Union pursued in the Cold War still seems a long way off. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr. visited China in a little-publicized trip in October and discussed "underlying principles of any future interaction between our two nations in the area of human space flight," but no specific proposals.

Budget CP

Text: The USFG should increase NASA’s budget to fund Mars colonization.

CP solves- NASA’s technology gets us to Mars with budget adjusted for inflation


Wall 15 (Mike, senior writer for Space.com on Mars exploration, exoplanet discoveries, astrophysics and space technology, Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, “A Manned Mission to Mars: How NASA Could Do It,” Space.com, 6-4-15, http://www.space.com/29562-nasa-manned-mars-mission-phobos.html, accessed on 7-28-16)//AF

Price and his team asked the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation to provide a cost estimate for this manned Mars architecture. Price declined to divulge any dollar figures, but he did say that the team's proposed architecture — getting astronauts to Phobos in 2033 and to the Martian surface for a short stay in 2039 and a long stay in 2043 — was found to fit within NASA's annual budget, provided that the budget increases every year to adjust for inflation. (The Mars campaign would slightly exceed the agency's budget for a stretch in the mid-to-late 2020s, Price said; that bump would flatten out if the International Space Station ceased operations in 2024 as opposed to 2028, he added.) "This is just aimed at showing an example that [manned] journeys could be doable using technologies NASA's pursuing, and on a time horizon of interest, without large spikes in the NASA budget," Price said. The California-based Aerospace Corporation also did cost assessments for the U.S. National Research Council's 2014 report, "Pathways to Exploration: Rationales and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Space Exploration." (Congress ordered the NRC to perform the study back in 2010.) The NRC report gives a rough estimate of how much it would cost to get astronauts to Mars. The effort is the equivalent of "perhaps 75-150 'flagship class' robotic exploration spacecraft (assuming an average cost of $1 to $2 billion each)," the authors wrote.


Also, their 1AC evidence says that the reason NASA can’t get to Mars alone is because of a lack of funding- the CP solves. No need to involve China.



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