DA - Space Col - Michigan 7 2023 CPSW

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1NC Space
A. Successful Mars colony by 2050- private space innovation is the key
SciTech Daily 21
(University of New South Wales, https://scitechdaily.com/mars-settlement-likely-by-2050-says-expert-but-not-at-levels-predicted-by-elon-musk/, 3-19)
Robotic mining that can provide water and fuel is the key to developing a colony on the red planet within the next 30 years. Mars will be colonized by humans by the year 2050, as long as autonomous mining processes quickly become more commercially viable. That’s the view of Professor Serkan Saydam from UNSW Sydney in the wake of the amazing landing on Mars by NASA’s Perseverance rover. Perseverance is expected to provide answers about whether forms of life ever existed on the red planet, but it is also designed to help address the challenges of future human expeditions there. Professor Saydam, from the School of Mineral Energy Resources Engineering, says the main focus in terms of creating a colony on Mars is finding water – and being able to extract it and process it using robots before humans land. “Everything is all about water,” Prof. Saydam says. “You use water as a life support, plus also being able to separate out the hydrogen to use as an energy source. “The process for having humans on Mars will be to set up operations, go there and produce water with robots first, and then be able to extract the hydrogen to make the energy ready before people arrive. “Innovation in robotics and autonomous systems are clearly important so that we have the water ready and the hydrogen separated and ready for when human beings land. “At the moment, we don’t have ability to do it. There are significant research efforts, specifically here at UNSW under ACSER (Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research), about the best way to do it, but there is no consensus yet. It also depends on how many people we expect to be living on Mars. Is it five, or 5000, or 50,000, or even more?” M Entrepreneur Elon Musk has claimed he’s confident there will be a city of 1 million on Mars by 2050, transported there by 1000 Starships proposed by his SpaceX venture, with plans for up to three rocket launches per day. Prof. Saydam says that may be unrealistic in the specific timeframe, but admits that demand for travel and a potential colonization of Mars is what’s needed to drive the technological developments required. “I think the technology is ready and we already have the knowledge, but the main problem is having the focus,” says Prof. Saydam, who is organizing an International Future Mining Conference in December 2021 that will feature former NASA astronaut Pamela Melroy and Honeybee Robotics vice-president Kris Zacny. “It’s a bigger question: ‘Why don’t we do that already on earth? Why are we still using human beings for physical work in mining here?’ We have huge experience in mining, but still heavily depend on humans. “One issue is that demand is not there. For companies to get involved in developing products (for Mars missions), they need to be able to produce minerals or something that can be used for manufacturing goods and then sell it. “At the moment, everything is just a cost and there is no revenue for companies.” However, that could be starting to change. United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing who are heavily invested in the rockets used to launch spaceships, has publicly announced they will pay $500 per kilogram for fuel – derived from water – supplied on the moon. That rises to $3000 per kilogram if the fuel is available in a low-earth orbit. “That immediately creates a market,” Prof. Saydam says. “Plus, if Elon Musk does what he says and puts people on the surface of Mars in 20 years, then that also creates a market. “I believe a colony on Mars is going to happen, but between 2040 and 2050 is more feasible. This could be shortened depending on the technological advances that can reduce the costs or from stronger motivation.
B. Wealth Tax crushes private space enterprise- encourages wasteful government spending on weapons.
Britschgi 21
(CHRISTIAN BRITSCHGI is an associate editor at Reason. https://reason.com/2021/07/12/billionaires-spending-their-own-money-to-go-to-space-has-progressives-howling-for-a-wealth-tax/ , 7-12)
The idea of billionaires launching themselves into space on their own rockets has provoked apoplexy from some progressives, who view the spectacle as an ostentatious display of economic inequality that must be fixed with a wealth tax. Witness the response to Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson's successful journey to the edge of space yesterday on his company's Unity spaceship. The flight—which carried Branson and five other crew members more than 50 miles above the Earth's surface—represents an important milestone for the nascent private space tourism industry. But several commentators were only concerned with what the British billionaire's money could have funded instead. On Twitter, Mother Jones' Clara Jeffery declared it an "advertisement for a wealth tax": Journalist Teddy Schleifer said on CNN that the press should cool its jets when covering billionaires' space travels, saying that "it's impossible to talk about the billionaire's success without talking about the system that creates this in the first place." Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) struck a familiar dyspeptic note: Here on Earth, in the richest country on the planet, half our people live paycheck to paycheck, people are struggling to feed themselves, struggling to see a doctor — but hey, the richest guys in the world are off in outer space! Yes. It's time to tax the billionaires. Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) asked, a few days before Branson's launch, whether that money could be spent on health care and education rather than "space travel fantasies." Should billionaires play out their space travel fantasies, or should we invest in schooling, provide healthcare, and create prosperity for everyone? Khanna doesn't see such a stark trade-off with the government's own resources, given his co-sponsorship of the "Endless Frontiers Act," the initial version of which would have given $100 billion to the National Science Foundation to research such sci-fi ideas as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Surely that money could be spent on health care too? And Khanna is a member of Congress' "NASA Caucus," so he isn't objecting to spending money on space exploration per se. In any case, billionaire-backed space companies—which includes not just Branson's Virgin Galactic but also Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX—can help to eliminate wasteful space spending. That's certainly the case with SpaceX. Back in May 2020, the company's Crew Dragon vehicle ferried NASA astronauts to the International Space Station from American soil for the first time since 2011, when the accident-prone Space Shuttle was retired. To develop and launch Crew Dragon, SpaceX received a $2.6 billion contract from NASA through the agency's Commercial Crew Program. In comparison, the Constellation program run directly by NASA—which had a similar goal of developing a launch system for putting astronauts in low-earth orbit—was estimated to cost closer to $34.5 billion. SpaceX was "effectively doing what the Constellation Program was doing with about the same amount of money, total, that they were burning in a single month," NASA engineer Mike Horkachuck told ArsTechnica's Eric Berger. The billionaire class is going to space decades after government did it first, using surplus resources that should have gone to finance that government but didn't, and then using that dubious achievement as proof that they are more efficient than government. — Anand Giridharadas @ The.Ink (@AnandWrites) July 12, 2021 In time, the competition between these various private ventures will put yet more downward pressure on prices while spurring the development of new, better space technology—helping the government's space efforts as well as the private sector's. Even if you aren't convinced of the value of space travel, given that we've yet to reach a utopia free of poverty, disease, and war here on Earth, there's something to be said for a private space industry soaking up the legions of engineers and other aerospace professionals who might otherwise be spending their careers designing faster-flying missiles for traditional military contractors.
C. Mars colonization is technologically feasible and vital to peace on earth- eliminates myth of scarcity
Zubrin, PhD, 19
(Robert, interviewed by Charles Monroe-Kang https://www.ttbook.org/interview/how-colony-mars-would-change-everything-earth, for the date at the end it says this Original Air Date: May 04, 2019 Post date: February 15, 2022, but its not Feb 15 yet so…)
Fear about the future of the planet keeping you up at night? Aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin has a solution: it’s time to settle Mars. "We’re entirely ready," he said. "We're better prepared today to send people to Mars than we were to go to the moon in 1961. Given a serious decision, we could have people there within 10 years." Zubrin has been trying to get to Mars for a long time. He spent decades with Lockheed Martin and Martin Marietta Astronautics, working on knotty problems in space propulsion and making plans for interplanetary colonization. At 67, he’s putting his hope in Elon Musk’s Space X program. "If it keeps moving forward at the rate it currently is" Zurbin told Charles Monroe-Kane for "To The Best Of Our Knowledge," "I’d say they’ll land before the end of the 2020s." His prediction? It’ll be the best thing that could happen to Planet Earth. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length. Charles Monroe-Kane: What’s in this for Earthlings? Why colonize Mars? Robert Zubrin: A number of reasons. There’s the one NASA gives — for science. There’s the positive stimulus of the challenge, especially for the youth. But here’s the thing: what is the greatest danger humanity faces? What caused the disasters of the 20th century? Bad ideas! In particular, variants of one continuous bad idea, which is that there isn’t enough to go around, so we have to push other people aside and even exterminate them in order to take what there is. I know for a fact — because I've spoken with them — that there are people in the Pentagon who look at the rise of China and say "this has got to be stopped; if they all become middle class, there won’t be enough oil in the world." If that kind of thinking prevails, it will lead to more wars. Human exploration and settlement of Mars is a disproof of this theory. We can open up whole new worlds of resources if we exercise our creativity. It’s the only positive answer.
D. Inevitable extinction outweighs earth impacts- must become multiplanetary to survive
Dorrier 16
(Jason is editorial director of Singularity Hub. He researched and wrote about finance and economics before moving on to science and technology. https://singularityhub.com/2016/10/19/elon-musk-is-right-well-avoid-extinction-by-colonizing-space/ 10-19)
Why blow billions of dollars on space exploration when billions of people are living in poverty here on Earth? You’ve likely heard the justifications. The space program brings us useful innovations and inventions. Space exploration delivers perspective, inspiration, and understanding. Because it’s the final frontier. Because it’s there. What you haven’t heard is anything to inspire a sense of urgency. Indeed, NASA’s struggle to defend its existence and funding shows how weak these justifications sound to a public that cares less about space than seemingly more pressing needs. Presumably, this is why SpaceX founder Elon Musk, in a fascinating interview with Ross Andersen, skipped all the usual arguments in favor of something else entirely. Space exploration, he says, is as urgent as easing poverty or disease—it’s our insurance policy against extinction. As we extend our gaze back through geologic time and out into the universe, it’s clear we aren’t exempt from nature’s carelessly terrifying violence. We simply haven’t experienced its full wrath yet because we’ve only been awake for the cosmological blink of an eye. Musk says an extinction-level event would, in an existential flash, make our down-to-earth struggles irrelevant. “Good news, the problems of poverty and disease have been solved,” he says, “but the bad news is there aren’t any humans left.’” We’ve got all our eggs in one basket, and that’s a terrible risk-management strategy. We should diversify our planetary portfolio to insure against the worst—and soon. Musk’s line of reasoning isn’t completely novel. It’s what led science fiction writer Larry Niven to say, “The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program.” And it drives Ed Lu’s quest to save humanity from a major asteroid hit. But while we may spot and potentially derail asteroids, not every cosmic threat can be so easily predicted or prevented—a blast from a nearby supernova; a gamma ray burst aimed at Earth; a period of extreme volcanism. Any of these could wipe us out. Musk says he thinks a lot about the silence we’ve been greeted with as our telescopes scan the sky for interstellar broadcasts from other civilizations. seti-fermi-paradoxGiven the sheer number of galaxies, stars, and planets in the universe—it should be teeming with life. If even a tiny percent of the whole is intelligent, there should be thousands of civilizations in our galaxy alone. So where are they? This is known as the Fermi Paradox, and Musk rattles off a few explanatory theories (there are many). But he settles on this, “If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilizations, and I mean strange in a bad way. It could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilizations.” That something strange might be an evolutionary self-destruct button, as Carl Sagan theorized. We developed modern rockets at the same time as nuclear weapons. But the Fermi Paradox and its explanations, while philosophically captivating, haven’t settled the question of intelligent life. SETI’s Seth Shostak cautions, “The Fermi Paradox is a big extrapolation from a very local observation.” That is, just because we don’t see compelling evidence of galactic colonization around here doesn’t mean there is none. But even without the Fermi Paradox, our planet’s geologic record is enough to show that, as Sagan phrased it, “Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.” So, if you buy Musk’s argument—what next? Well, he didn’t start SpaceX to boost telecommunication satellites into orbit or shuttle astronauts to low-Earth orbit. SpaceX is Musk’s vehicle to another planet, and he isn’t shy saying so.
2NC Uniqueness
Starship advances make Musk’s colonization plans possible
Ashraf 7-9-23
(Anan, https://www.benzinga.com/news/23/07/33159201/elon-musk-says-starship-will-provide-the-meaning-of-life-heres-why-the-space-entrepreneur-has-high-h)
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, on Sunday, termed its Starship ‘the meaning of life' and said that it will have three more engines. What Happened: Musk shared a picture of a Starship showing its six raptor engines and said, "3 more engines for the meaning of life." SpaceX's Starship, composed of the super heavy rocket and the starship spacecraft, aims to create a fully reusable transportation system for crew and cargo missions to Earth's orbit, the Moon and Mars. According to the SpaceX website, the super heavy will be powered by 33 Raptor engines and Starship by 6. However, as per Musk's latest update, the Starship will now have 9 engines. "Looks like we can increase Raptor thrust by ~20% to reach 9000 tons (20 million lbs) of force at sea level," Musk said. He added in a later tweet that the Starship could deliver 200 tons of payload to a useful orbit, meaning they could enable over a megaton of payload to orbit per year if 50 rockets flew every 3 days on average. According to the CEO, that would suffice to build a self-sustaining city on Mars. Why It Matters: SpaceX conducted the first test launch of Starship on April 20. The rocket exploded in less than four minutes after take-off. Late last month, SpaceX said that Ship 25, the prototype that will make the second flight test, has completed a six-engine static fire test at Starbase; a key milestone before the second test flight. In a discussion with journalist Ashlee Vance, Musk said that significant changes have been made since the first test flight and he now estimates a 60% probability for the next flight to reach orbit, contingent on the success of stage separation. He then predicted the second flight test to occur in six weeks. Musk has talked about adding more engines to at least some Starship vehicles before as well. In 2021, Musk said that the Starship is being upgraded to nine engines. Starship is key to realizing Musk's dreams of making life "multi-planetary". In 2020, he said that he would send a million people to Mars by 2050 aboard Starship and that it is the key to "protecting the light of consciousness."
SpaceX Rocket advances enable Mars Colonization
Cuthbertson 7-10-23
(Anthony, https://news.yahoo.com/spacex-smashes-reusable-rocket-record-105359373.html)
SpaceX has broken its own record for launching reused rockets after successfully completing a mission to deliver its Starlink satellites into orbit. The company launched 22 of its internet satellites aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Sunday night, before landing the first stage booster on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the 16th launch and landing for the B1058 Falcon 9 rocket booster, with SpaceX hoping it can achieve another four launches before finally being scrapped. The Starlink satellites were deployed into low-Earth orbit roughly one hour after lift-off, further boosting SpaceX’s space-based internet network. There are now more than 4,000 active Starlink satellites in orbit around Earth, delivering high-speed internet to users. The latest Starlinks are V2 Minis, which despite the name are larger than SpaceX’s previous generation Starlinks. The upgraded satellites include “4x more capacity per satellite than earlier iterations”, according to SpaceX. They are “mini” versions of the V2 Starlink satellites, which are set to launch aboard SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket as soon as it is operational. SpaceX recently completed a six engine static fire test of its Starship rocket at its Starbase facility in Texas, having failed in its first ever orbital mission earlier this year. The private space company has already secured multi-billion dollar contracts with Nasa to use the rocket as part of its Artemis lunar program, while SpaceX plans to use a fleet of the rockets to establish a permanent human colony on Mars before 2050. Shortly after the latest satellites were deployed, SpaceX boss Elon Musk provided an update for its next-generation space craft, which is the biggest rocket ever built. “Looks like we can increase Raptor thrust by ~20 per cent to reach 9,000 tons (20 million lbs) of force at sea level... And deliver over 200 tons of payload to a useful orbit with full and rapid reusability,” he wrote on Twitter. “Fifty rockets flying every three days on average enables over a megaton of payload to orbit per year – enough to build a self-sustaining city on Mars.” There is no fixed date for the next major orbital flight test of the Starship rocket, though Mr Musk has previously said that it will likely take place before September.
2NC Link Block
Wealth tax crushes private investment needed to sustain space efforts and solve climate change
Whittington 22
(Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? , as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond and, most recently, Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudg

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