2014 NDI 6WS – Fitzmier, Lundberg, Abelkop

DO IT ELSEWHERE COUNTERPLANS

LAND-BASED DRILLING

Neg

1NC CP – Shorter

Text: The United States federal government should increase access and streamline permitting on federal lands for oil and natural gas development.

CP solves aff – offshore development can’t meet energy needs – only onshore solvesPlatts 4/16 (McGraw Hill Financial sub-company - Platts is a leading global provider of energy, petrochemicals, metals and agriculture information, and a premier source of benchmark price assessments for those commodity markets. “US federal gas output lags that of private property: report”, 4/16/14, http://www.platts.com/latest-news/natural-gas/houston/us-federal-gas-output-lags-that-of-private-property-21497888)//WLAlthough overall US natural gas production has dramatically increased each year since 2009, production on federal lands has declined each year over the same period, with much of the decline attributed to a 50% drop in offshore gas production, according to a Congressional Research Service report released Wednesday. "Federal natural gas production has fluctuated from around 30% of total US production for much of the 1980s through the early 2000s (34% of U.S. total in 2003), after which there began a steady decline through 2013," the report states. Although the US Energy Information predicts that the years-long decline in offshore gas output will reverse itself in 2015, "any increase in production of natural gas on federal lands is likely to be easily outpaced by increases on non-federal lands, particularly because shale plays are primarily situated on non-federal lands," the study finds. Industry advocates, however, point to more stringent regulations for leasing and drilling on federal lands as the chief reason why hydrocarbon production on those lands is trailing behind that of private and state-owned lands. The CRS report found that as a result of the shale gas boom, annual US natural gas production rose by about 10.96 Bcf/d, or 19%, between fiscal year 2009 and FY2013, while gas production on federal lands (onshore and offshore) fell by about 28%, from 14.72 Bcf/d to 10.62 Bcf/d. This compares with a 33% increase in gas production on non-federal lands over the same time period. "The big shale gas plays are primarily on non-federal lands and are attracting a significant portion of investment for natural gas development," the report states. EIA estimates US dry gas proved reserves are about 334 Tcf, about a quarter of which lies beneath federal lands, and of that 69 Tcf is

onshore and 16 Tcf offshore . "Nearly all of the offshore proved reserves are located in the Central and Western Gulf of Mexico," according to the report. "Offshore natural gas production is projected to reverse a years-long decline in 2015, with annual

production rising as high as 2.9 Tcf in 2040." Even with these projected increases, offshore gas output

would only account for about a 7.7% share of total US production in 2040, the report states. Currently, there are

113 million acres of onshore federal lands that are open and accessible for oil and gas development while about 166 million federal acres are considered off-limits or inaccessible. The study also finds that in contrast with the gas output

picture, oil production on federal lands has fluctuated over the past five fiscal years. However, as with gas production, oil output has increased dramatically on non-federal lands. Non-federal crude oil production increased by 2.1 million barrels per day between FY2009 and FY2013, causing the federal share of total US crude oil production to fall by nearly 11%, the CRS says. The report shows that "federal land policies are artificially suppressing production, putting Western communities that rely on oil and natural gas development at a disadvantage compared to other

areas of the country," Western Energy Alliance said in a statement. WEA President Tim Wigley placed the blame for the

lackluster energy production from federal lands on the land-use policies of the Obama administration. "The huge success of the oil and natural gas industry increasing energy security and bringing the country out of recession is despite, not because of, the policies of this administration," he said. "The CRS report clearly shows that where the federal government has the most control, on federal lands, it is suppressing development of the energy that all Americans own while preventing job creation and economic prosperity," Wigley said. Julia Bell, a spokeswoman for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said the CRS report "should be a wake-up call for those concerned with energy development on federal lands." She added that independent oil and gas producers "are struggling to overcome immense bureaucratic confusion with a myriad of overlapping jurisdictions and

regulations ," and called on Congress "to increase access and streamline permitting on

federal lands ."

1NC CP – Longer

Text: The United States federal government should increase access and streamline permitting on federal lands for oil and natural gas development.

CP solves aff – offshore development can’t meet energy needs – only onshore solvesPlatts 4/16 (McGraw Hill Financial sub-company - Platts is a leading global provider of energy, petrochemicals, metals and agriculture information, and a premier source of benchmark price assessments for those commodity markets. “US federal gas output lags that of private property: report”, 4/16/14, http://www.platts.com/latest-news/natural-gas/houston/us-federal-gas-output-lags-that-of-private-property-21497888)//WLAlthough overall US natural gas production has dramatically increased each year since 2009, production on federal lands has declined each year over the same period, with much of the decline attributed to a 50% drop in offshore gas production, according to a Congressional Research Service report released Wednesday. "Federal natural gas production has fluctuated from around 30% of total US production for much of the 1980s through the early 2000s (34% of U.S. total in 2003), after which there began a steady decline through 2013," the report states. Although the US Energy Information predicts that the years-long decline in offshore gas output will reverse itself in 2015, "any increase in production of natural gas on federal lands is likely to be easily outpaced by increases on non-federal lands, particularly because shale plays are primarily situated on non-federal lands," the study finds. Industry advocates, however, point to more stringent regulations for leasing and drilling on federal lands as the chief reason why hydrocarbon production on those lands is trailing behind that of private and state-owned lands. The CRS report found that as a result of the shale gas boom, annual US natural gas production rose by about 10.96 Bcf/d, or 19%, between fiscal year 2009 and FY2013, while gas production on federal lands (onshore and offshore) fell by about 28%, from 14.72 Bcf/d to 10.62 Bcf/d. This compares with a 33% increase in gas production on non-federal lands over the same time period. "The big shale gas plays are primarily on non-federal lands and are attracting a significant portion of investment for natural gas development," the report states. EIA estimates US dry gas proved reserves are about 334 Tcf, about a quarter of which lies beneath federal lands, and of that 69 Tcf is

onshore and 16 Tcf offshore . "Nearly all of the offshore proved reserves are located in the Central and Western Gulf of Mexico," according to the report. "Offshore natural gas production is projected to reverse a years-long decline in 2015, with annual

production rising as high as 2.9 Tcf in 2040." Even with these projected increases, offshore gas output

would only account for about a 7.7% share of total US production in 2040, the report states. Currently, there are

113 million acres of onshore federal lands that are open and accessible for oil and gas development while about 166 million federal acres are considered off-limits or inaccessible. The study also finds that in contrast with the gas output

picture, oil production on federal lands has fluctuated over the past five fiscal years. However, as with gas production, oil output has increased dramatically on non-federal lands. Non-federal crude oil production increased by 2.1 million barrels per day between FY2009 and FY2013, causing the federal share of total US crude oil production to fall by nearly 11%, the CRS says. The report shows that "federal land policies are artificially suppressing production, putting Western communities that rely on oil and natural gas development at a disadvantage compared to other

areas of the country," Western Energy Alliance said in a statement. WEA President Tim Wigley placed the blame for the

lackluster energy production from federal lands on the land-use policies of the Obama administration. "The huge success of the oil and natural gas industry increasing energy security and bringing the country out of recession is despite, not because of, the policies of this administration," he said. "The CRS report clearly shows that where the federal government has the most control, on federal lands, it is suppressing development of the energy that all Americans own while preventing job creation and economic prosperity," Wigley said. Julia Bell, a spokeswoman for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said the CRS report "should be a wake-up call for those concerned with energy development on federal lands." She added that independent oil and gas producers "are struggling to overcome immense bureaucratic confusion with a myriad of overlapping jurisdictions and

regulations ," and called on Congress "to increase access and streamline permitting on

federal lands ."

CP solves energy needs without triggering link to environment DABailey 8 (Alan, Petroleum News Reporter, “BLM says 60 percent of land off limits”, 6/8/08, http://www.petroleumnews.com/pntruncate/216890658.shtml)//WLThe U.S. Bureau of Land Management has published an updated version of its inventory of oil and gas resources in federal onshore

land. BLM says that the latest study has estimated that the federal lands hold 31 billion barrels of oil and 231

trillion cubic feet of natural gas . But the inventory has also found that 60 percent of the onshore federal land that has potential for oil and natural gas production is closed to oil and gas leasing, thus rendering 62 percent of the oil and 41 percent of the gas inaccessible for development. The inventory report represents the third of a series of studies mandated by Congress to document federal oil and gas resources and limitations on the development of those resources. “America has abundant energy resources,” said C. Stephen Allred, assistant secretary of the Interior for

land and minerals management. “However, for a variety of reasons, many of these resources are not available for development. At a time when energy prices have reached record levels and Americans are feeling the impact, we must find

ways to develop those key energy resources that are available to us right here at home on our public lands.” “Current technology allows us to develop energy resources without adversely impacting the

environment or permanently diminishing other non-energy resources found on public lands,” said BLM Director Jim Caswell.

2NC Solves – Onshore Reserves

Opening onshore reserves to drilling solves the affRDC 8 (Resource Development Council, “Report offers road map for energy relief”, 2008, http://www.akrdc.org/newsletters/2008/june/roadmaptoenergyrelief.html)//WLWith soaring energy prices threatening the national economy and the standard of living for many Americans, the Bureau of Land Management last month released a study that shows vast untapped oil and natural gas resources beneath public lands. “America has abundant energy resources,” said Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and

Minerals Management Stephen Allred. “However, for a variety of reasons, many of these resources are not available for development. At a time when energy prices have reached record levels and Americans are feeling the

impact, we must find ways to develop those key energy resources that are available to us right here at home, on our public

lands.” The report is the third in a series of congressionally mandated scientific studies of U.S. onshore federal oil and natural gas

resources and limitations on their development. All onshore federal lands throughout the U.S. believed to have energy potential are included in this latest study. These public lands are estimated to contain 31 billion barrels of oil and 221 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Alaska’s North Slope accounts for well over half of the onshore oil potential, but most is inaccessible for development, either as a result of land withdrawals or land use planning decisions. The inventory found that 60 percent of the onshore lands that have potential as domestic sources for natural gas and oil are presently closed to leasing, making 62 percent of the oil and 41 percent of the gas inaccessible for development. An additional 30 percent of onshore oil and 49 percent of onshore gas may only be developed subject to

restrictions and above standard environmental lease terms. The study found that in the inventory areas, just 8 percent of onshore federal oil and 10 percent of the gas are accessible under standard lease terms. In addition, oil shale deposits in the U.S. represent potential reserves that may be twice as large as those in Saudi Arabia. Yet Congress has prohibited BLM from taking the steps necessary to make this vast resource available for development.

2NC Solves – Arctic Presence

CP solves Arctic Presence – current onshore Alaskan Reserves are closed to drillingBailey 8 (Alan, Petroleum News Reporter, “BLM says 60 percent of land off limits”, 6/8/08, http://www.petroleumnews.com/pntruncate/216890658.shtml)//WLAlaska resources In Alaska, the inventory considered federal oil and gas resources in northern Alaska, the Yukon Flats and southern Alaska. The northern Alaska region consists predominantly of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The southern region consists of federal land on the Alaska Peninsula, the Kenai Peninsula and the Gulf of Alaska coastal region. The inventory represents estimates of technically recoverable undiscovered resources and the ultimate reserves growth in existing oil and gas fields. In northern Alaska, the inventory estimated 17 billion barrels of oil and condensate, and 79 trillion cubic feet of gas in federal lands. The gas estimate includes a 2007 U.S. Geological Survey assessment of

coalbed methane. The inventory also says that almost none of the federal land in northern Alaska is accessible under standard BLM lease terms, in part because of restrictions on when during the year exploration activities can occur.

Approximately 70 percent of the land is completely inaccessible for leasing at present, either as a result of land withdrawals or as a result of land use planning decisions. The inventory estimated 149 million barrels of recoverable oil and condensate and 2.7 tcf of natural gas in federal lands in the Yukon Flats, but 99 percent of that land is inaccessible for oil and gas

leasing. In southern Alaska, 98 percent of the federal land is currently inaccessible for leasing . BLM estimates 270 million barrels of recoverable oil and condensate and 394 billion cubic feet of recoverable gas in this region. The preponderance of the oil is thought to exist on the Kenai Peninsula and in Southeast Alaska. The gas resources appear more widely distributed, although the Kenai Peninsula seems to be the most prospective area.

2NC AT: Links to Environment DA

Onshore oil and gas development is substantially safer than offshore drilling - comparative evidenceAnderson 10 (Terry, president of PERC and the John and Jean De Nault Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, “Why It's Safer to Drill in the 'Backyard'”, 6/25/10, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704050804575318591702015252)//WL As oil continues to gush from BP's Macondo well and politicians posture, it is time for us to ask why we are drilling in such risky places when there is oil available elsewhere. The answer lies in the mantra NIMBY—"not in my

back yard." BP was drilling for oil in 5,000 feet of water in the Mississippi Trench, more than 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. The site was leased in March 2008 from the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service. The area is one of an increasingly limited number of places available for oil and gas development in the United States. Because most private lands have been explored, public lands offer the most potential for oil and gas development.

However, the NIMBY principle has significantly restricted development on those lands. According to

2008 Energy Department figures, nearly 80% of potentially oil-rich offshore lands are off limits to oil and gas development, and 60% of onshore lands are. In my backyard, Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester have introduced a bill aimed at halting oil and gas exploration in the Flathead River drainage area near Glacier National Park. They have already pressured Chevron and ConocoPhillips to relinquish their exploration leases on the land, placing 75% of the leases off limits to development. And of course, there is the perennially contentious issue of drilling in ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The government estimates that the area could produce 750,000 barrels of oil per day. Whether more exploration on federal lands would

make the U.S. energy independent is debatable, but more onshore development would certainly be safer . In

early June there was a blowout in western Pennsylvania. Did you see it on the nightly news? No, because it was capped in 16 hours . The Texas Railroad Commission, the state agency that regulates oil and gas production

there, recorded 102 blowouts of oil and gas wells since the start of 2006, resulting in 10 fires, 12 injuries, and two deaths. None of those made the nightly news either. The largest oil spill on Alaska's North Slope in 2006 was from a pipeline leak. It dumped only 6,357 barrels and had no disastrous impacts. Drilling can be done with greater environmental sensitivity onshore . For

many years the Audubon Society actually allowed oil companies to pump oil for its privately owned sanctuaries in Louisiana and Michigan, but did so with strict requirements on the oil companies so that they would not disturb the bird habitat. Explaining the process years ago, one sanctuary manager said, "when the cranes punched in, the hard hats have to punch out." Until the Gulf blowout, Audubon was even considering leasing more land for development on the Louisiana coast under such strict terms. When kids play baseball, there is a risk that windows will get broken. Playing on baseball fields rather than in sand lots, however, lowers the risk considerably. Putting so much onshore land off limits to oil and gas development is like closing baseball parks. More windows will be broken and more blowouts result where they are difficult to prevent and stop. The blowout at BP's well has increased pressure from environmentalists and the Obama administration for greater emphasis on alternative energy sources. Even if they are successful, this will have a trivial impact on our unquenchable thirst for fossil fuel. Enforcement of stricter safety

regulation on deepwater drilling may reduce disasters like the current one in the Gulf. But the only real way to reduce

the risk of catastrophic spills is to say yes to drilling in our backyard.

CP solves the aff without triggering link to environment DA (in 1NC longer)Bailey 8 (Alan, Petroleum News Reporter, “BLM says 60 percent of land off limits”, 6/8/08, http://www.petroleumnews.com/pntruncate/216890658.shtml)//WLThe U.S. Bureau of Land Management has published an updated version of its inventory of oil and gas resources in federal onshore

land. BLM says that the latest study has estimated that the federal lands hold 31 billion barrels of oil and 231

trillion cubic feet of natural gas . But the inventory has also found that 60 percent of the onshore federal land that has potential for oil and natural gas production is closed to oil and gas leasing, thus rendering 62 percent of the oil and 41 percent of the gas inaccessible for development. The inventory report represents the third of a series of studies mandated by Congress to document federal oil and gas resources and limitations on the development of those

resources. “America has abundant energy resources,” said C. Stephen Allred, assistant secretary of the Interior for

land and minerals management. “However, for a variety of reasons, many of these resources are not available for development. At a time when energy prices have reached record levels and Americans are feeling the impact, we must find

ways to develop those key energy resources that are available to us right here at home on our public lands.” “Current technology allows us to develop energy resources without adversely impacting the

environment or permanently diminishing other non-energy resources found on public lands,” said BLM Director Jim Caswell.

2NC Alaskan Specific Environment NB

Alaskan Spills are far safer onshore than offshoreBaker Institute 13 (John Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, “Does Drilling in ANWR Make More Sense than the Alaskan Offshore?”, 2013, http://bakerinstitutealaska.tumblr.com/post/28374130615/does-drilling-in-anwr-make-more-sense-than-the-alaskan)//WLOil Spills An oil spill is always possible and some experts argue that this would make drilling in ANWR preferable to doing so offshore. While a large blowout would be serious anywhere, its impact offshore could be catastrophic. Arctic Researcher Henry Huntington believes that “if you’re gonna spill oil, do it on land… It’s containable and it’s sort of limited. The land doesn’t move.” (See video for more). In fact, the thirteen largest oil spills in history have all occurred in water. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout served

as a reminder of how devastating an offshore spill can be. Cleaning up an offshore spill in the Arctic would be more difficult, as the climate and logistical concerns pose a series of unique challenges for oil producers. A recent report by the GAO argues that despite improvements in technology in recent years, Arctic ice still presents challenges for Shell or other offshore Arctic operators. The effects of a late season spill could be exacerbated by icy conditions that would make containment more difficult. Equipment such as the capping stack placed underwater could be damaged by ice that floats near the sea floor. Logistical concerns may also make cleanup more difficult. If a spill were to occur, personnel would have to be moved to the site, which would take time and delay a response. The Arctic’s climate would make transporting staff more difficult. Because of the lack of North Slope production, there is very little equipment available if a spill were to occur. Shell has acknowledged these existing concerns and produced what it believes is an effective spill response plan. It has shortened its drilling season so that there would be enough time to drill a relief well before surface ice develops. Shell placed much of its equipment such as the wellhead and blowout preventer underwater to prevent collisions with sea ice. It also has its own icebreakers and containment to make up for the absence of spill response material in the area. Lt. Governor Treadwell maintains that Shell has “very strong prevention techniques” and has made “significant improvements in oil spill containment.” Still, some are unsure if Shell’s plan is adequate if a spill were to occur. Many fear that the technology is not as effective one may expect. “The spill response… just won’t work,” argues Arctic scientist Rick Steiner. (See video for more on Steiner’s concerns). Others are concerned that since the spill response equipment has not been tested in Arctic waters, we cannot be sure that it would effectively work. Offshore drilling carries some inherent risks. And the Arctic itself,

as Sierra Club representative Lindsey Hadjuk explains, very well may be “the riskiest place you may possibly want to drill.” (See video for more) Drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas will present unique offshore challenges.

OCS Drilling comparatively worse than onshore Alaskan DrillingMedred and Burke 10 (Craig and Jill, Reporters at the Alaska Dispatch News, “FIRE AND ICE: Will the Gulf oil spill slow offshore plans in Alaska's Arctic?”, 4/27/10, http://www.adn.com/article/fire-and-ice-will-gulf-oil-spill-slow-offshore-plans-alaskas-arctic)//WLThat argument doesn't sell particularly well in Alaska's North Slope Borough. It has backed onshore drilling at Prudhoe Bay and in the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska and grown wealthy from taxes on the former. But borough officials have big reservations about drilling on the outer continental shelf. " Don't drill in the

OCS . Drill onshore. Drill in ANWR (the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge). Drill in NPRA. Don't go offshore. That has always been our position and it hasn't changed for 30 years," said Harold Curran, the borough's chief administrative officer. The borough has fought offshore drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort in every way it can, including taking the government to court, but it recognizes the futility of trying to influence a Congress and White House under pressure from politically influential environmentalists adamant that drilling in ANWR must never happen. The borough thinks onshore drilling anywhere is safer than offshore , but recognizes neither the Congress nor the White House appears to be listening to

its argument. Given that, Curran said, the borough will do all it can to try to shape offshore plans to protect the environment.

ANWR drilling is extremely safe compared to OCS drillingHopfinger 12 (Tony, editor and co-founder of Alaska Dispatch, “Arctic Ocean vs. ANWR: Was there ever a choice for oil drillers?”, 9/9/12, http://www.adn.com/article/arctic-ocean-vs-anwr-was-there-ever-choice-oil-drillers)//WL

Which brings up an interesting question: How did the wildcatters, the state, the environmentalists, Congress, and anybody

else who cares about oil and Arctic ecosystems decide to give up drilling on land in the far north and instead head dozens of miles into the Arctic Ocean to hunt for oil? Should there have been a choice between the two? In far northern Alaska, there are no deepwater ports, no nearby pipelines to those offshore oil prospects, no fully staffed offices for regulators to keep watch -- there’s nothing resembling the oil-spill response infrastructure you’d find elsewhere in the United States. Meantime, on state land at

Prudhoe Bay and other North Slope oil fields, there is a maze of infrastructure, along with a 40-year-plus history of managing onshore oil development. And not so far away from all of this sits an undeveloped oil patch estimated to hold billions of barrels of crude. And it’s on land -- not 60 miles offshore. It is called the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and it’s managed by the feds, just like the waters where Shell is drilling in the Arctic Ocean. There was a time when drilling on ANWR’s coastal plain was among the biggest environmental debates of our time. It spawned a cottage industry that grew around either protecting or developing that tundra. Americans were inundated, sometimes deceptively, with images of the “last untouched wilderness,” caribou running free against the backdrop of snow-capped mountains. There are actually no snow-capped mountains in the area where drilling would happen in ANWR. And the caribou that migrate where onshore drilling is currently taking place to the west have not seemed to be hurting. Most important is that ANWR sits on solid ground (actually covered in snow a good part of the year) where an oil spill would be comparatively easy to handle than out at sea. In contrast, a spill in the Arctic Ocean would be a devastating mess, no matter what Shell executives say they’ve done to prevent such a disaster or their plans to respond to such a scenario. Environmental groups have tried to prevent drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. But compared to their decades-long ANWR battle, this fight has seemed anemic. Perhaps the groups knew that offshore Arctic drilling was inevitable. Or perhaps the fight doesn’t provide for the kind of picturesque-fundraising that has done so well for them for so many years in the ANWR battle. Or maybe they were too focused on ANWR and too late in waging an offshore war. The drill bit is turning in the Chukchi Sea, so the question is probably just theoretical. But if we could roll back the clock, how would we manage Arctic oil development today in a post-Deepwater Horizon world? If politicians, oil executives and environmentalists were asked today to make a choice between drilling in ANWR or in the Arctic Ocean, which would they choose? Alaskans, which would you choose? It's your back yard. Did anybody ever ask you?

Aff

2AC OCS deposits larger

OCS reserves are substantially larger than onshore onesLieberman 8 (Ben, NY Post reporter “OIL: OPEN UP FEDERAL LANDS”, 6/8/08, http://nypost.com/2008/06/08/oil-open-up-federal-lands/)//WLThe more we look for oil and natural gas in the United States, the more we find. If only we were allowed to go and get it. According to the Department of the Interior (DOI), huge onshore deposits of energy can be found on federal lands. Yet much of this energy is either explicitly off-limits or hampered by regulatory constraints that effectively make it so. Part of the solution to high oil and natural gas prices lies right under our feet, but Congress won’t change the laws that keep this domestic energy locked up. Federal lands are critical to the energy policy debate because most of America’s onshore energy is located in the West and in Alaska, where more than half the land is under federal control. Such lands, DOI estimates, “contain 31 billion barrels of oil and 231 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.” Thirty-one billion barrels of oil represents 50 years of current imports from Saudi Arabia and 231 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is enough to supply all of America’s households for 46 years. However, “just 8 percent of onshore Federal oil and 10 percent of onshore Federal gas are accessible under standards lease terms,” DOI notes. The rest is either restricted outright or subject to considerable amounts of red tape. Among the former: Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil lies beneath a few thousand acres at the edge of this nearly 20 million acre refuge. Granted, few Americans want unrestricted oil and natural gas wells in our treasured National Parks or other areas of scenic, environmental or historical significance. However, the drilling restrictions on federal land far surpass such reasonable limits. This is especially true given the advances in drilling technology that have dramatically reduced both the above-ground environmental footprint and the risk of spills. Even more energy lies offshore. Some 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are beneath America’s waters, DOI says. Of those amounts, 19.1 billion

barrels of oil and 83.9 trillion cubic feet of gas lie in federally-controlled territorial waters that are completely off-limits to leasing and development . The actual volumes of onshore and

offshore energy could be far greater – DOI’s initial energy estimates tend to be low. This is especially true of the off-limits areas, which haven’t been thoroughly explored. Many anti-energy activists and politicians insist that America’s untapped oil and gas reserves are merely a “drop in the bucket” and therefore not worth the bother. But these DOI estimates put the lie to this claim. As Congress once again addresses energy issues, it shouldn’t ignore the significant amount of energy right here in America. It’s time to make this energy available to the American people.

2AC Doesn’t Solve

Decreasing regulations won’t solve – workforce shortages and industry leasing practicesBleizeffer 11 (Dustin, Executive Editor of Wyofile.com, Bleizeffer is a reporter with 12 years’ experience covering energy in Wyoming, “Drilling to Energy Independence: Can the West Save Us from Foreign Oil Imports?” 12/6/11, http://web.stanford.edu/group/ruralwest/cgi-bin/drupal/energy/drilling-to-energy-independence-can-the-west-save-us-from-foreign-oil-imports)//WLBut, clearly, it’s not federal regulatory delays alone that impede efforts to drill all available leases

on public lands in the West. Sgamma concedes the industry is currently short on rigs and workers. The industry

has launched workforce training programs, but America just doesn’t have 30,666 workers qualified to go to work in the industry in a short amount of time. Nevertheless, in the face of those problems, people in the industry express confident optimism. “The drilling industry would meet it and exceed it,” said Patrick Hladky. And if all onshore rigs are busy, “We’d just build new ones,” he said. Hladky, president of Gillette-based Cyclone Drilling, said in September that all 28 of his rigs were in operation — most of them in North Dakota where the Bakken oil play is putting a strain on the U.S. rig fleet. If you called to move a rig to a new location in the West, you would have to wait at least six months,

he said. As for the skeptics, environmental groups often note the fact that thousands of applications for permit to drill on federal minerals in the West are issued every year that are not drilled within the 2-year permit term — and many are never drilled. Central to the energy development on public lands debate is this; the industry nominates, and the BLM sells, oil and gas leases that companies never develop. According to the BLM, some 75,192 leases on 57.6 million acres of federal minerals have been leased since 1969. These lease totals are higher than the actual acreage that BLM manages in Wyoming (BLM manages more than 17 million surface acres and 42 million mineral acres in Wyoming) because the figures reflect the fact that many federal lands are leased over and over again. Yet only 6.5 percent of the leases sold and 5.3 percent of the acreage was actually developed into production, according to a recent

BLM environmental assessment (page 8). Industry critics say it’s not regulation that holds the leasing-to-development ratio down so low, but rather operators historically lease more minerals than they intend to develop in order to explore and hold a position in case the markets rise.

Opening public land won’t shift drilling habits – most accessible resources are on private landsGoad 13 (Jessica, Manager of Research and Outreach for the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, “Despite Industry Efforts To Blame Administration, There’s A Geologic Reason Most Drilling Occurs On Nonfederal Lands”, 3/6/13, http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/06/1677051/geology-drilling-public-land/)//WLThe United States is in the midst of an energy boom, seen for example in the rise of U.S. oil production to its highest level in 20 years. But this hasn’t stopped the oil and gas industry from clamoring for more access to public lands for drilling, and from criticizing the Obama administration for “[putting] in place more obstacles” and setting public lands “off-limits” to development. For example, Senator David Vitter (R-LA), Ranking Member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, even went so far as to state, “There’s no disputing the fact that our nation’s domestic energy production on federal lands has been stymied by this administration.” But a new report released today by the Denver-based Center for Western Priorities called “Follow the Oil” shows that putting the blame on the president and his administration is nothing more than conservative messaging . Much of today’s boom in oil and natural gas is from unconventional shale “plays,” areas that have only recently been opened through new technology. And, as the report notes: Nationwide, 90 percent of all current shale gas plays exist on nonfederal lands, with only 10 percent located on federal lands. Even starker, almost all shale oil resources exist on non-federal lands. Only 7 percent of current shale oil and mixed plays are found on federally-owned lands with the remaining 93 percent on nonfederal lands. This map shows what those findings look like across the country, and where the industry is “following the oil”: Additionally, economics are playing a role in driving drilling from public lands to nonfederal lands. As the report states, “rapid development increased the supply of natural gas, driving down prices, and sending companies searching for other drilling locations and revenue sources.” In other words, the oil and gas industry has met the enemy, and it is itself. The release of this report comes at a very opportune time, considering that Sally Jewell, nominee to be the next Secretary of the Interior, will have

her confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this week And as expected, key members of the committee are preparing to ask her questions about how the administration is stifling drilling on public lands. For example, Energy and Environment Daily reports that Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) will ask Jewell “where she stands on domestic energy development, job creation and federal regulations.” Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), the Ranking Member on the committee, said she told Jewell in a meeting last week about “resource potential in Alaska, off-shore and in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the limitations to access.” And Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) released a statement after Jewell’s nomination announcement that “The [Interior Department’s] approach has hurt our economy, killed jobs, and prevented states like Utah from generating critical revenue,” so questions about energy on public lands are also likely to come from him. The report released today shows that, despite all of the questions Jewell may get on drilling on public lands, the industry in the end is “following the oil” to nonfederal lands.

2AC Links to NB

CP links to NB – Onshore drilling is just as bad as offshore drillingWilderness Society 10 (Organization dedicated to preserving the wilderness, “Onshore drilling is not the answer to off-shore drilling spills” 6/15/10, http://wilderness.org/blog/onshore-drilling-not-answer-shore-drilling-spills)//WLFollowing the Gulf spill, proponents of the fossil fuel status quo have called for more onshore drilling as a safer alternative to offshore drilling. Don’t let them fool you. Drilling can have devastating environmental impacts for both our waters and our lands. Take, for example, today’s Chevron oil leak of 500 barrels (or about 17,000 gallons) into a Salt Lake City creek. At least 100 birds were covered in oil, and

water quality has certainly been affected. Oil is not the only fossil fuel that poses risks—so does the supposedly safe fuel, natural gas. For example, just as there were few (or at least unenforced) regulations of

Deepwater Horizon’s drilling process, there are few regulations on hydro-fracking, a natural gas drilling process that is unregulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, despite regular and serious reports of it polluting drinking water in local communities. Just earlier this month in Dish, Texas, a study found that the groundwater contained high levels of poisonous chemicals like arsenic and lead (up to 21 times above safe levels). Members of the community attribute this to the many natural gas wells nearby, especially considering that their water quality changed visibly after companies began to drill in their town. Because of a stipulation in the 2005 Energy Bill, drillers do not need to disclose which chemicals they use, nor do they need to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act. This has been named the Halliburton loophole (after the company that invented the process), which effectively strips the EPA of any authority to regulate fracking. Fear of making natural gas uneconomical may have pushed the recent withdrawal of an amendment to the Safe Drinking Water Act requiring disclosure of chemicals. The oil and gas industry has fought such initiatives, claiming that the chemicals are proprietary secrets and that the process is safe. Yet recent accidents show how unsafe drilling can be. Toxic chemicals are not the only dangers. Take for example just last week when three fracking accidents killed one person and injured at least 7 others in three different states. In West Virginia on June 7, seven workers were injured after hitting a pocket of methane during natural gas drilling. A column of fire shot up into the air, just as it did later in the day at a Texas natural gas line (where one person was killed). This is called a blowout, wherein pressurized oil or gas erupts, which is what happened on June 3 in Pennsylvania. Interestingly, this same problem began the leak at BP’s Gulf of Mexico well. Hopefully, lawmakers will wake up and regulate onshore oil and gas production. Proposed legislation, like the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act, which aims to close the Halliburton loophole, may gain in popularity in the wake of this series of blowouts. You do not need to feel helpless, watching the numbers of gallons of oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico. You can tell your representatives to support initiatives to regulate onshore drilling (or to increase renewable energy development to ease our addiction to fossil fuels), and you can help stop other related disasters. Tighter restrictions on offshore drilling should not mean loosening them for onshore drilling.

2AC ANWR doesn’t solve

Drilling in ANWR doesn’t solve – it would be barely a drop in the bucketLavelle 8 (Marianne, US News and World Report Reporter, “Arctic Drilling Wouldn't Cool High Oil Prices”, 5/23/08, http://www.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2008/05/23/arctic-drilling-wouldnt-cool-high-oil-prices)//WLDrilling for oil beneath the pristine tundra of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would do little to ease world oil prices, the federal government's energy forecasters said in a new report issued in a week that saw oil surpass $130 per barrel for the first time. Congress has fought bitterly for years over whether to allow oil companies access to the Alaska refuge's 1.5 million-acre coastal plain, a habitat for seabirds, caribou, and polar bears. Oil company executives, called to Capitol Hill for a grilling over high oil prices, pointed to the untapped resources of ANWR and off the U.S. coastlines as evidence that Congress was as much to blame for the tight global supplies of crude as the petroleum industry. But the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an independent statistical agency within the Department of Energy, concluded that new oil from ANWR would lower the world price of oil by no more than $1.44 per barrel—and possibly have as little effect as 41 cents per barrel—and would have its largest impact nearly 20 years from now if Congress voted to open the refuge today. EIA produced the analysis in response to a request by Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who noted that the last time the agency had taken a look at the economics of ANWR production was in 2000, when oil was $22.04 a barrel. Higher world oil prices don't necessarily mean that oil companies could pull more crude out of ANWR, the EIA said. Some advanced methods of extraction may be limited by the features of the Alaska North Slope; for example, steam injection could endanger some of the permafrost, the EIA noted. The agency pointed out, however, that higher prices would make it more attractive to go after small fields that are near the larger fields that would be the first targets for development, and some advanced, expensive techniques of extraction could become more attractive in the later years if oil prices stay high. However, EIA predicted these high-tech methods wouldn't have an impact until after 2030, beyond the horizon of the agency's forecast of the global energy situation. So EIA assumed little change—and in fact, a slight decline—in ANWR's productive capacity since 2000, when it projected that the production in the refuge could reach 650,000 to 1.9 million barrels per day. In the new analysis, EIA says that production could range from 510,000 barrels to 1.45 million barrels per day. If Congress approved development in 2008, it would take 10 years for oil production to commence, EIA said. With production starting, then, in 2018, EIA said the most likely scenario is that oil would peak at 780,000 barrels per day in 2027 and decline to 710,000 barrels per day in 2030. Currently, the United States consumes about 20 million barrels of oil per day. EIA said its projection is that ANWR oil production would amount to 0.4 percent to 1.2 percent of total world oil consumption in 2030. The figure is low enough that

OPEC could neutralize any price impact by decreasing supplies to match the additional production from Alaska, EIA noted. New oil from Alaska would, however, reduce foreign oil dependence slightly, EIA said. With the United States currently on track to get 54 percent of its oil from overseas by 2030, EIA said, if ANWR were opened, the share of oil from foreign countries would drop to 48 percent in the best-case scenario or 52 percent if ANWR turns out to produce at the lower end of the range of projections. That would mean that U.S. spending on foreign oil between 2018 and 2030 would be reduced by $135 billion to $327 billion. EIA noted the uncertainty in its predictions, which are based on the oil productivity of the geological formations elsewhere in Alaska, including neighboring Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field ever discovered in the United States. "There is little direct knowledge regarding the petroleum geology of the ANWR region," said the report, titled "Analysis of Crude Oil Production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge." The agency stuck with the U.S. Geological Survey's 1998 estimate that the amount of oil in the portion of ANWR being considered for development is 10.4 billion barrels.

SPACE-BASED ENERGY

Neg

1NC

The United States federal government should increase its investment in space based solar power.

Space Based Solar power is feasible Wood 3/6/14 (Daniel Wood is the Data Visualization and Cartographic Specialist in the Office of Public Affairs at the Department of Energy. He develops creative and interactive ways of viewing the Energy Department’s vast array of data. “Space-Based Solar Power” <http://energy.gov/articles/space-based-solar-power>)You can’t collect solar power at night. Well, at least not on Earth. Since it’s Space Week, we thought it'd be appropriate to look at one promising, but futuristic, idea that could change the face of solar power generation: Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP). While the Energy Department is not actively researching SBSP, we hope you’ll take a moment to learn about this far out concept. The idea of capturing solar power in space for use as energy on Earth has been around since the beginning of the space age. In the last few years, however, scientists around the globe -- and several researchers at the Energy Department’s own Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) -- have shown how recent technological developments could make this concept a reality. On earth, solar power is greatly reduced by night, cloud cover, atmosphere and seasonality. Some 30 percent of all incoming solar radiation never makes it to ground level. In space the sun is always shining, the tilt of the Earth doesn't prevent the collection of power and there’s no atmosphere to reduce the intensity of the sun’s rays . This

makes putting solar panels into space a tempting possibility. Additionally, SBSP can be used to get reliable and clean energy to people in remote communities around the world, without relying on the traditional grid to a large local power plant. How does it work? Self-assembling satellites are launched into space, along with reflectors and a microwave or laser power transmitter. Reflectors or inflatable mirrors spread over a vast swath of space, directing solar radiation onto solar panels. These panels convert solar power into either a microwave or a laser, and beam uninterrupted power down to Earth. On Earth, power-receiving stations collect the beam and add it to the electric grid. The two most commonly discussed designs for SBSP are a large, deeper space microwave transmitting satellite and a smaller, nearer laser transmitting satellite. Microwave transmitting satellites orbit Earth in geostationary orbit (GEO), about 35,000 km above Earth’s surface. Designs for microwave transmitting satellites are massive, with solar reflectors spanning up to 3 km and weighing over 80,000 metric tons. They would be capable of generating multiple gigawatts of power, enough to power a major U.S. city. The long wavelength of the microwave requires a long antenna, and allows power to be beamed through the Earth’s atmosphere, rain or shine, at safe, low intensity levels hardly stronger than the midday sun. Birds and planes wouldn’t notice much of anything flying across their paths. The estimated cost of launching, assembling and operating a microwave-equipped GEO satellite is in the tens of billions of dollars. It would likely require as many as 40 launches for all necessary materials to reach space. On Earth, the rectenna used for collecting the microwave beam would be anywhere between 3 and 10 km in diameter, a huge area of land, and a challenge to purchase and develop. Laser transmitting satellites, as described by our friends at LLNL, orbit in low Earth orbit (LEO) at about 400 km above the Earth’s surface. Weighing in in at less than 10 metric tons, this satellite is a fraction of the weight of its microwave counterpart. This design is cheaper too; some predict that a laser-equipped SBSP satellite would cost nearly $500 million

to launch and operate. It would be possible to launch the entire self-assembling satellite in a single rocket, drastically reducing the cost and time to production. Also, by using a laser transmitter, the beam will only be about 2 meters in diameter, instead of several km, a drastic and important reduction. To make this possible, the satellite’s solar power beaming system employs a diode-pumped alkali laser. First demonstrated at LLNL in 2002 -- and currently still under development there -- this laser would be about the size of a kitchen table, and powerful enough to beam power to Earth at an extremely high efficiency, over 50 percent. While this satellite is far lighter, cheaper and easier to deploy than its microwave counterpart, serious challenges remain. The idea of high-powered lasers in space could draw on fears of the militarization of space. This challenge could be remedied by limiting the direction that which the laser system could transmit its power. At its smaller size, there is a correspondingly lower capacity of about 1 to 10 megawatts per satellite. Therefore, this satellite would be best as part of a fleet of similar satellites, used together. You could say SBSP is a long way off or pie in the sky (puns intended) -- and you'd largely correct. But many technologies already exist to make this feasible, and many aren't far behind. While the Energy Department isn't currently developing any SBSP technologies specifically, many of the remaining technologies needed for SBSP could be developed independently in the years to come. And while we don't know the future of power harvested from space, we are excited to see ideas like this take flight (okay last pun, I promise).

2NC: Feasible

SPS is feasible- capable of energy productionMcduffee 3/17/14 (Allen McDuffee reports on national security for Wired and is currently working on a book about the influence of think tanks in Washington. “The Navy’s Plan to Beam Down Energy From Orbiting Solar Panels” < http://www.wired.com/2014/03/space-solar/>) For decades, the Pentagon has been the world’s largest oil consumer, and as global petroleum prices continue to rise, the military has been searching for feasible energy alternatives. Now they’re looking in space. The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is building technology that will allow the military to capture solar power in orbit and project it back down to Earth. Not only would space solar potentially save the Pentagon buckets of cash, but it could simplify military deployments. Fuel tankers would no longer have to reach remote or volatile areas, and missions could run longer without having to return to base to refuel. So far, NRL has built and tested two different prototypes of what they call a “sandwich” module, named for a design innovation that packs all the electrical components between two square panels. The top side is a photovoltaic panel that absorbs the Sun’s rays. An electronics system in the middle converts the energy to a radio frequency, and the bottom is an antenna that transfers the power toward a target on the ground. Ultimately, the idea is to assemble many of these modules in space by robots — something the NRL’s Space Robotics Groups is already working on — to form a one kilometer, very powerful satellite. A second design, a “step” module, modifies the sandwich design by opening it up, which allows it to receive more sunlight without overheating, thereby making it more efficient. “Launching mass into space is very expensive,” said Paul Jaffe, a spacecraft engineer leading the Navy’s project, in a statement. It’s expected that space solar will be able to produce more energy than ground-based collectors because it can soak up rays around the clock, and regardless of the weather below. Private industry is interested in similar technology. California utility company Pacific Gas & Electric has a contract to buy space solar power from Solaren by 2016. And the Shimizu Corporation of Japan has recently proposed to build a 11,000-mile solar strip across the Lunar equator to capture and transfer the sun’s energy.Not everyone is so confident that such an ambitious project can be completed, but, as Jaffe put it, “Hard to tell if it’s nuts until you’ve actually tried.”“People might not associate radio waves with carrying energy, because they think of them for communications, like radio, TV, or cell phones,” said Jaffe. “They don’t think about them as carrying usable amounts of power.”

New innovations make low-cost and possibleMirzadeh 3/20/14 (Farhad is a student from the University of North Texas where he is pursuing a double major in political science and history with a focus in international relations and Middle Eastern studies. He previously worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis where he worked on their online publications and collaborated on various studies. “Space Based Solar Power – A Promising Technology” <http://www.americansecurityproject.org/space-based-solar-power-a-promising-technology/>)The world’s largest consumer of fossil fuels is turning to alternative energies to meet its demands. The Department of Defense spends billions of dollars a year on fuel costs. As traditional sources of power have steadily increased in price, the military is forced to search for new solutions to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Renewable energy for military purposes is

nothing new. Solar, wind, geothermal, have all been used by the military in a variety of capacities. However, a new method of collecting solar energy for military use is being developed by the U.S Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). This method involves building technology that sends a sandwich-like module into space with photovoltaic panels on one side to collect energy from the sun’s rays. From there, an electronics system in the middle of the module converts the energy into a radio frequency that is then transferred to an antenna on the bottom of the module which then transfers the energy to earth. Otherwise known as space-based solar power, this method of collecting energy can provide limitless military and civilian applications. Such technology has long been talked about but the capital costs and technological requirements to have a solar satellite rotating around earth have proven difficult barriers to overcome. Current research is focused on reducing the weight of the modules so that the cost of launching the modules into space is low cost. Furthermore, scientists are looking into the logistics of how to turn multiple modules into an array of solar panels in space. Currently, the International Space Station stretches about the size of a football field whereas an array of panels would be about nine times that. One solution to this, which requires more research, is to send the modules into space separately and then have them assembled by robots. There is still some work to be done but current research looks promising. The International Academy of Astronautics recently stated that space-based solar power would be viable within 30 years. Moreover, private companies have been created to build space solar power. Solaren Corp, for example, made an agreement in 2009 with California Utility Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to sell the power generated from the space solar arrays to the electric company by 2016. Hopefully, these types of private investments can create further incentives for the development and deployment of space-based solar power technology. The benefits of this method over traditional forms of solar power are readily apparent. For example, the satellites are constantly collecting the sun’s rays whereas ground-based solar panels don’t collect as much of the sun’s rays because of weather conditions. In November 2011, a proposal for Space Based Solar Power was discussed at ASP. We know that the military would benefit immensely from this

technology. First, it would save billions in fuel costs since bases could easily be supplied with energy collected from these satellites rather than conventional fuel sources. Second, it grant the military ultimate flexibility because space-based solar power can be redirected anywhere on the planet. It would allow for power in bases that are far off or secluded and eliminate the need for long supply lines. The promise is there, but will the technology and costs meet the challenge?

2NC: Energy

Key to stop climate change and oil conflicts Berger 10/12/07 (Brian Berger is a space news staff writer. “Report Urges U.S. to Pursue Space-Based Solar Power” <http://www.space.com/4478-report-urges-pursue-space-based-solar-power.html>)WASHINGTON – A Pentagon-chartered report urges the United States to take the lead in developing space platforms capable of capturing sunlight and beaming electrical power to Earth. Space-based solar power, according to the report, has the potential to help the United

States stave off climate change and avoid future conflicts over oil by harnessing the Sun's power to provide an essentially inexhaustible supply of clean energy. The report, "Space-Based Solar Power as an Opportunity for Strategic Security," was undertaken by the Pentagon's National Security Space Office this spring as a collaborative effort that relied heavily on Internet discussions by more than 170 scientific, legal, and business experts around the world. The Space Frontier Foundation, an activist organization normally critical of government-led space programs, hosted the website used to collect input for the report. Speaking at a press conference held here Oct. 10 to unveil the report, U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Paul Damphousse of the National Space Security Space Office said the six-month study, while "done on the cheap," produced some very positive findings about the feasibility of space-based solar power and its potential to strengthen U.S. national security. "One of the major findings was that space-based solar power does present strategic opportunity for us in the 21st century," Damphousse said. "It can advance our U.S. and partner security capability and freedom of action and merits significant additional study and demonstration on the part of the United States so we can help either the United State s develop this, or allow the commercial sector to step up." Specifically, the report calls for the U.S. government to underwrite the development of space-based solar power by funding a progressively bigger and more expensive technology demonstrations that would culminate with building a platform in geosynchronous orbit bigger than the international space station and capable of beaming 5-10 megawatthajts of power to a receiving station on the ground. Nearer term, the U.S. government should fund in depth studies and some initial proof-of-concept demonstrations to show that space-based solar power is a technically and economically viable to solution to the world's growing energy needs . Aside from its potential

to defuse future energy wars and mitigate global warming , Damphousse said beaming power down from space could also enable the U.S. military to operate forward bases in far flung, hostile regions such as Iraq without relying on vulnerable convoys to truck in fossil fuels to run the electrical generators needed to keep the lights on. As the report puts it, "beamed energy from space in quantities greater than 5 megawatts has the potential to be a disruptive game changer on the battlefield. [Space-based solar power] and its enabling wireless power transmission technology could facilitate extremely flexible 'energy on demand' for combat units and installations across and entire theater, while significantly reducing dependence on over-land fuel deliveries." Although the U.S. military would reap tremendous benefits from space-based solar power, Damphousse said the Pentagon is unlikely to fund development and demonstration of the technology. That role, he said, would be more appropriate for NASA or the Department of Energy, both of which have studied space-based solar power in the past. The Pentagon would, however, be a willing early adopter of the new technology, Damphousse said, and provide a potentially robust market for firms trying to build a business around space-based solar power. "While challenges do remain and the business case does not necessarily close at this time from a financial sense, space-based solar power is closer than ever," he said. "We are the day after next from being able to actually do this." Damphousse, however, cautioned that the private sector will not invest in space-based solar power until the United States buys down some of the risk through a technology development and demonstration effort at least on par with what the government spends on nuclear fusion research and perhaps as much as it is spending to construct and operate the international space station. "Demonstrations are key here," he said. "If we can demonstrate this, the business case will close rapidly." Charles Miller, one of the Space Frontier Foundation's directors, agreed public funding is vital to getting space-based solar power off the ground. Miller told reporters here that the space-based solar power industry could take off within 10 years if the White House and Congress embrace the report's recommendations by funding a robust demonstration program and provide the same kind of incentives it offers the nuclear power industry. Military applications The Pentagon's interest is another important factor. Military officials involved in the report calculate that the United States is paying $1 per kilowatt hour or more to supply power to its forward operating bases in Iraq. "The biggest issue with previous studies is they were trying to get five or

ten cents per kilowatt hour, so when you have a near term customer who's potentially willing to pay much more for power, it's much easier to close the business case," Miller said. NASA first studied space-based solar power in the 1970s, concluding then that the concept was technically feasible but not economically viable. Cost estimates produced at the time estimated the United States would have to spend $300 billion to $1 trillion to deliver the first kilowatt hour of space-based power to the ground, said John Mankins, a former NASA technologist who led the agency's space-based solar power research and now consults and runs the Space Power Association. Advances in computing, robotics, solar cell efficiency, and other technologies helped drive that estimate down by the time NASA took a fresh look at space-based solar power in the mid-1990s, Mankins said, but still not enough justify the upfront expense of such an undertaking at a time when oil was going for $15 a barrel. With oil currently trading today as high as $80 a barrel and the

U.S. military paying dearly to keep kerosene-powered generators humming in an oil-rich region like Iraq, the economics have change significantly since NASA pulled the plug on space-based solar power research in around 2002. On the technical front, solar cell efficiency has improved faster than expected. Ten years ago, when solar cells were topping out around 15 percent efficiency, experts predicted that 25 percent efficiency would not be achieved until close to 2020, Mankins said, yet Sylmar, Calif.-based Spectrolab – a Boeing subsidiary – last year unveiled an advanced solar cell with a 40.7 percent conversion efficiency. One critical area that has not made many advances since the 1990s or even the 1970s is the cost of launch. Mankins said commercially-viable space-based solar power platforms will only become feasible with the kind of dramatically cheaper launch costs promised by fully reusable launch vehicles flying dozens of times a year. "If somebody tries to sell you stock in a space solar power company today saying we are going to start building immediately, you should probably call your broker and not take that at face value," Mankins said. "There's a lot of challenges that need to be overcome." Mankins said the space station could be used to host some early technology validation demonstrations, from testing appropriate materials to tapping into the station's solar-powered electrical grid to transmit a low level of energy back to Earth. Worthwhile component tests could be accomplished for "a few million" dollars, Mankins estimated, while a space station-based power-beaming experiment would cost "tens of millions" of dollars. Placing a free-flying space-based solar power demonstrator in low-Earth orbit, he said, would cost $500 million to $1 billion. A geosynchronous system capable of transmitting a sustained 5-10 megawatts of power down to the ground would cost around $10 billion, he said, and provide enough electricity for a military base. Commercial platforms, likewise, would be very expensive to build. "These things are not going to be small or cheap," Mankins said. "It's not like buying a jetliner. It's going to be like buying the Hoover Dam." While the upfront costs are steep, Mankins and others said space-based solar power's potential to meet the world's future energy needs is huge. According to the report, "a single kilometer-wide band of geosynchronous earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today."

SBSP is key to future energyMajor 9/21/12 (James Major is a writer for Discovery News and an expert in solar energy. “Space Energy: Is Space Solar Power Feasible?” <http://news.discovery.com/space/beaming-down-earths-energy-120921.htm>)It’s always sunny in low-Earth orbit, so what better place to look for a source of solar energy? With the end of “cheap oil” rumored to be rapidly approaching (if not already upon us), not to mention the effects of fossil fuel use upon the environment and climate, sources of alternate, clean and renewable energy appear to be the unavoidable wave of the future. But the key factor in all these ventures is efficiency — how to get the most “bang for the buck” in the harnessing, creation and distribution of energy. Oil and coal must be extracted, shipped, refined and burnt, contributing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Wind needs to be 1) present, and 2) converted to energy with turbines, and water requires the construction of dams, which are not only expensive but also radically change the ecosystem of the river they are built upon. Even ground-based solar panels are subject to weather and the Earth’s day/night schedule . Enter the concept of space solar power — using orbiting solar panels that

constantly collect energy from the sun, unfiltered and uninterrupted, and “beam” it back

down to Earth where it can be sent along the grid for use by communities. The sun is constantly putting out incredibly vast amounts of radiant energy in all directions. (About the equivalent of 2 billion power plants’ worth of yearly energy every second!) Earth receives only a fraction of this output, yet capturing it has the potential of providing renewable and virtually pollution-free energy — especially in places where access to conventional power grids is limited or impossible. The video below, created by Mafic Studios, Inc. for the National Space Society and the National Security Space Office in Washington, D.C., shows how such an orbiting structure would work. Basically, large sets of solar cells would gather the sun’s energy and send it

wirelessly down to ground-based receptor/transformer stations, which would then distribute the electricity for use. The process would create no hazardous waste or emissions. Mark Hopkins, Senior Vice President of the National Space Society, stated “As the United States makes decisions now to answer the energy challenges of the next 50 years, space-based solar power must be a part of the answer. The NSSO-led study charts the path forward. While the technical challenges are real, significant investment now can build Space Solar Power into the ultimate energy source: clean, green, renewable, and capable of providing the vast amounts of power that the world will need. Congress, federal agencies and the business community should begin that investment immediately.” Now, over four years later, we have yet to see any significant development on the space solar power concept… meanwhile, the nations of the world continue to discuss how best to combat the undeniable and increasing complications of climate change. Although space solar power is currently far from ready, requiring plenty of research and engineering (and thus funding) to become a reality anytime soon, the technology is feasible… given the existence of affordable launch vehicles and in-orbit support operations. Still, isn’t it best to start development and testing sooner rather than later, when we will be under even more pressure to clean up our energy act? The future is coming, whether we’re ready or not. We need to be prepared for the energy needs of an ever-growing population, and even if space solar power won’t replace conventional energy anytime soon it may offer a supplemental source of power — with little negative impact on the environment.

More power than all oil reserves PHILIPKOSKI 10/11/07 (KRISTEN PHILIPKOSKI is a write for Wired.com, citing a credible souce. “Report: Space-Based Solar Power Could Slow Climate Change, Ease Oil Dependence” <http://www.wired.com/2007/10/report-space-ba/>)A kilometer-wide geosynchronous solar panel could collect as much energy in one year as the

amount contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today , according to a report commissoined by the Pentagon. Space.com’s Brian Berger has a thorough article on the report, saying the cost of getting a solar power unit into space is likely the biggest barrier: One critical area that has not made many advances since the 1990s or even the 1970s is the cost of launch. Mankins said commercially-viable space-based solar power platforms will only become feasible with the kind of dramatically cheaper launch costs promised by fully reusable launch vehicles flying dozens of times a year. One source says it would cost between $500,000 and $1 billion. That’s just a little more than one day’s worth of Iraq war expenditures. I’m just sayin.

Possible and key to clean energy Wood 5/30/13 ( Leet W. Wood is a PhD student in political science at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. “Projecting power: The security implications of space-based solar power” http://thebulletin.org/2012/january/projecting-power-security-implications-space-based-solar-power>) Space-based solar power is a system for delivering a potentially limitless supply of clean energy to a world desperately searching for alternatives to fossil fuels. However, while the system offers the promise of unlimited, “green” electrical power, it also has immense

potential as a geopolitical tool. For example, t his new power source could be used to support

troops, rebels, or international aid workers virtually anywhere in the world . Space solar power research has recently experienced something of a renaissance, but so far there has been very little discussion about the security implications of this potentially transformative technology. While it will be at least a decade, if not two, before the infrastructure for deploying a full-scale system exists, developing policies and norms—international and national—capable of effectively engaging such a technically and politically complex issue can itself require years of work. Policy makers and political scientists should begin debating the security impacts of space-based solar power now, lest technological development outpace the ability of governments and international institutions to meaningfully assimilate it.

2NC: Best Energy

SBSP is the BEST form of alternative energyFaure 11 (Jamie Faure is a writer for the Young Scientist Journal, and is from the King’s School Canterbury. “Can space based solar power save the climate?” <http://www.butrousfoundation.com/ysj/wp-content/uploads/Issue09/Can-space-based-solar-power-save-the-planet.pdf>) IntroductionHow shall we tackle climate change? This is still a unresolved question. Here, I will put forward an idea and argue its case Burning fuels creates carbon dioxide, which thicken the atmosphere. Consequently, an increasing amount of the Sun's heat is trapped. So, to tackle climate change, we must stop burning fuels. However, fuel I needed for energy. Therefore, we need to find other sources of energy that do not adversely impact the environment Space-based Solar Power. What I think has the most potential in reducing global warming is Space-based Solar Power (SBSP) [Figure 1 ]. This technology involves placing solar satellites in space, where their energy production is unaffected by seasons, weather, the day and night cycle, and the filtering effect of the Earth's atmosphere . The Sun's energy for us is virtually unlimited (around 5 billion years to go).''> In addition, the satellites are placed nearer to the Sun in space than to the Earth, so they receive more of the Sun's energy. The satellite then transmits power to the Earth using a laser or microwave beam.121 Transmission by microwaves has already been tested by NASA, and proven possible . In space, solar irradiance is 144% higher than in the Earth,'2' which means there is a lot more power available up there! Japan has already been working on this idea for 30 years and invested over 20 billion dollars, hoping to finish their project by 2030.'3' The Americans and the Russians are also at the breach. working on a similar idea. The problem with this solution is that we would need to make sure the laser or microwave beam is perfectly orientated toward its receptor on Earth, and would not hit planes or other satellites. Further development is needed before this method is actually feasible. On 19 November 2009, two astronauts went into space to begin the installation of solar cells on the International Space Station (ISS). The two astronauts were part of the crew of the shuttle Discovery. More outings like this are scheduled to take place in the next few years, providing the space station with a greater supply of power. Soon, the station would be able to host not only three, but six astronauts permanently.'4| The Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) wants to buy 200 MW of power in space from the firm Solaren. Solaren has been planning for 7 years to send a satellite to space, which is designed to

gather power. A PG&E representative says, "We are convinced this technology is to be taken very seriously. It is astounding to see how much energy is available in space".'51 Another company called Space Energy is also developing this technology. There is also the option of placing solar cells on our only natural satellite, the Moon. This idea involves building a solar plant on the moon using resources found locally. The stations would be built on the two quarters of the moon that are visible to us, as one of them is always facing the sun. Energy is retransmitted to Earth using microwaves or laser, but this only works when the solar cells are in a direct line with the station on Earth.

AT: Nuclear

Better than nuclear energy Faure 11 (Jamie Faure is a writer for the Young Scientist Journal, and is from the King’s School Canterbury. “Can space based solar power save the climate?” <http://www.butrousfoundation.com/ysj/wp-content/uploads/Issue09/Can-space-based-solar-power-save-the-planet.pdf>) Nuclear Other "less good" options include nuclear energy, which provides a reliable source of power that does not contribute to climate change and is relatively cheaper. However, it could be dangerous if the plant is not properly run. The nuclear waste produced as a side product is very radioactive but we have not found a way to safely dispose of this highly dangerous material yet. Moreover, the waste can be used to make nuclear weapons. If terrorists targeted nuclear power plants, catastrophic consequences would result. In addition, nuclear energy is non-renewable and the "ingredient" for nuclear power, Uranium, would run out sometime soon.

AT: Biofuels

Biofuels failFaure 11 (Jamie Faure is a writer for the Young Scientist Journal, and is from the King’s School Canterbury. “Can space based solar power save the climate?” <http://www.butrousfoundation.com/ysj/wp-content/uploads/Issue09/Can-space-based-solar-power-save-the-planet.pdf>) Biofuels Biofuels are preferable to petroleum but they still emit harmful greenhouse gases, though a lot less than petrol. In addition, there are too many petrol-only cars on the road to switch to biofuels and there are not many petrol stations that have a pump suited to biofuels. Biofuels have low energy efficiency as the level of energy they generate is much less than the amount needed to grow the crops. Another problem is that switching 5% of the nation's petrol needs to biofuels would involve diverting 60% of the existing crops for biofuels' production.171

AT: Wind

Wind energy is unreliable and fails Faure 11 (Jamie Faure is a writer for the Young Scientist Journal, and is from the King’s School Canterbury. “Can space based solar power save the climate?” <http://www.butrousfoundation.com/ysj/wp-content/uploads/Issue09/Can-space-based-solar-power-save-the-planet.pdf>) Wind power has certain benefits. Resides the fact that it is a renewable source of energy, the wind turbines can be built on farmland, leaving the land below available for farming, and they can be used as tourist attractions. However, in my opinion, it does not help matters enough .

Wind power is unreliable as wind is not always available . Wind turbines are expensive to

build and many people find them ugly . They are usually noisy when operating and can

possibly affect television reception. Moreover, they can be harmful to birds. New wind turbine projects include M.A.R.S. or the Magenn Air Rotor System [Figure 2]. This is an easily transportable

helium-filled balloon placed at an altitude of 300 m. The contraption is a sort of cylinder, which spins under the influence of wind, facilitated by the flaps on the sides.'8' There is no need to mention that the cables could be a nuisance, as the high-tension cables would get tangled up easily. Storms or lightning could also be very dangerous for objects on the ground, as the wires connect the balloon to the ground. Another idea is being developed by Makani Power and Kite Gen [Figure 3]. This involves a kite that collects energy in three steps. Firstly, the kite rises, unraveling a cable that is connected to a generator on the ground. This process generates electricity in the generator. Once the cable is fully unraveled, the kite tilts, so it no longer catches the wind. Lastly, the cable is rewound, bringing the kite back to the ground. This step only uses up 12% of the power generated in step one. Like M.A.R.S., the cable could be dangerous, and storms are to be watched out for. Also, if more than one kite is flying in a certain area, the cables may get mixed up and cause inconvenience. What is the craziest thing one can do with a wind turbine? Sending the contraption into the jet stream. Although it seems unbelievable, it is being considered by Sky Wind Power. Four rotors, connected to each other, make up the wind turbine. The device rises into the jet stream like a helicopter, where it tilts and starts collecting energy. Electricity is conveyed back to the ground level via a 10 km cable.191 Along the same lines, Joby Energy has developed the same sort of idea, but with 96 inter-connected rotors, 175 m long, and weighing 100 tonnes. It is estimated to be capable of producing up to 30 MW of power.'10'These two projects are not developed yet and would definitely encounter some problems like the immense tension the 10 km cable would have to withstand, especially when there are powerful storms in the jet stream and wind speeds can reach 400 km/hour. Controlling the ascent would also be incredibly difficult. Yes, there is also the problem of cables getting tangled up and the danger of lightning.

AT: Hydroelectric

Hydroelectric is tooooooooooooooo riskyFaure 11 (Jamie Faure is a writer for the Young Scientist Journal, and is from the King’s School Canterbury. “Can space based solar power save the climate?” <http://www.butrousfoundation.com/ysj/wp-content/uploads/Issue09/Can-space-based-solar-power-save-the-planet.pdf>) Hydroelectric Hydroelectric power is already producing over 20% of the world's electricity.'11' The generators in the dams can produce electricity constanptly. No pollution is caused and water can be stored above the dam, in wait for peaks in demand. The disadvantages of these dams are the high construction costs and that they could flood large areas upstream which would affect wildlife and the local population. Moreover, finding a suitable site to build a dam can be difficult. If the dam breaks, floods can be very dangerous to the people living in downstream areas.

AT: Tidal Power

Tidal power fails – SBSP is the only sufficient sourceFaure 11 (Jamie Faure is a writer for the Young Scientist Journal, and is from the King’s School Canterbury. “Can space based solar power save the climate?” <http://www.butrousfoundation.com/ysj/wp-content/uploads/Issue09/Can-space-based-solar-power-save-the-planet.pdf>) Tidal There are three main ways of harnessing tidal power: offshore turbines, tidal barrages and tidal reefs. The advantages are that once a station is built, power is free and can be produced reliably. Also, tides are easily predictable. Offshore turbines are underwater "propellers" out at sea that rotate due to tides and subsequently generate power. The problems with these are that the turbine has to be joined to the floor so that it does not move, and therefore, is only suitable in shallow waters . In addition, they are expensive to build and may cause harm to

marine life. Tidal barrages are like hydroelectric dams, except that they are placed across an estuary and harness tidal power instead of gravitational potential energy. The disadvantages are that they are expensive to build, may disrupt the tides, and stop fish and boats passing through. Tidal reefs are like tidal barrages, except that sections can be opened to allow ships and fish to pass through. They affect the tides much less than tidal barrages. However, they are more expensive than tidal barrages. Tides can only be harnessed for 10 hours each day, when the tides are moving in or out.

Aff

2AC: Not feasible

Never feasible – too many technical problems and not cost effective Nelder 09 (Chris Nelder is an Energy analyst, journalist, consultant, and investor. I have written two books on investing and energy: Profit from the Peak and Investing in Renewable Energy, both of which were published in 2008, and is a major contributer to the energy field. “Outer Space Solar Power Is Pure Fantasy” < http://www.businessinsider.com/outer-space-solar-power-is-pure-fantasy-2009-4>) Wild Claims And Hard RealitiesThen there are all the other niggling questions about how exactly the power transmission to earth works without, for example, inadvertently frying a plane that happened across its path, or running the risk of destruction on the ground should anything go awry with the system. Or how the company is so confident that we can deploy as-yet unproven technology at a scale far beyond man’s most ambitious space program to date, and do it by 2016. Oh and I almost forgot to mention: Solaren’s director of energy services Cal Boerman claims that after four rocket launches to place the equipment into space, it would not require assembly by astronauts, but instead would unfold on its own. Anyone who has watched the evolution of cutting edge space projects like the Hubble Telescope and indeed, the International Space Station itself, knows of the many problems they have faced with systems that didn’t work according to plan. Now Solaren wants us to believe that they can make something 240 times bigger than the ISS with no astronauts needed? The best comment I found on the Solaren project was from the Motley Fool: “As far as technology commercialization timelines go, space-based solar is likely somewhat ahead of nuclear fusion powered by a rare fuel that’s mined on

the moon.” The whole plan is pure fantasy as far as I’m concerned . But it’s

sexy space energy technology , so people just gobble it up. Those inclined to excitement about such developments view PG&E’s proposed contract as verification that there is something real about the project. But I have an alternate interpretation. PG&E is desperate to contract for enough renewable energy to meet the state’s renewable portfolio standard, which currently requires it to produce 20% of its electricity from clean sources by 2010, with a possible new standard of 33% by 2020 in the offing. However, the available supply of renewable energy is nowhere close to that, nor is it growing nearly quickly enough to meet such an ambitious target in an environment of tight credit. My guess is the utility would be

willing to sign a contract with space aliens in pink tutus at this point, if they would guarantee in writing that they would deliver megawatt-hours of clean power before 2020. Mark Toney, head of The Utility Reform Network watchdog group, called the Solaren announcement “remote” and “an act of desperation,” preferring that PG&E spend “more time on proven technologies closer to home that we can really count on.” For all the doubts surrounding it, there are a few things about space based solar power that I can virtually guarantee. One, if the Solaren project fails to round up financing, which is already a problem for earth-based utility-scale systems, or is deployed but fails to meet expectations, no one will publish its failure in big, bold headlines. Two, it will never scale or be cost-effective on par with existing ground-based solar technology. Three, if it ever gets off the ground, it will be plagued with technical problems, and in a post-fossil fuel world, it will become impossible to maintain. Four, the net energy of the whole project will be ridiculously low, and the energy payback period on it will be measured in decades. Five, it will consume a vast amount of gullible techno-utopian capital. The Profitable Solar Reality While that capital is chasing pipe dreams with visions of solar satellites dancing in their heads, the real money will be made by those who have the savvy to invest in the most realistic, functional, scalable, cheap, and high net energy systems on the ground today. I’m talking about companies like Phoenix Solar AG (FRA: PS4), an

international systems integrator of PV systems who builds and operates large solar plants and wholesales specialized parts for power plants. Or Acciona SA (MCE: ANA), a Spanish holding company whose subsidiary Acciona Energy deployed a 46-MW solar PV power plant in Portugal last December for $348 million ($7,565 per kW). Or privately-held Ausra, Inc. of Palo Alto, California, a pioneering provider of utility-scale CSP plants with operations in the US and Australia. Companies like these will be the real contenders in our race against time to scale up renewable energy and leave fossil fuels behind before they leave us. While the SBSP dreamers are still working on their first hundred megawatts, these leaders will be working on their next hundred gigawatts.

SBSP takes too long and too many problems Bansal 11 (Gaurav Bansal is a correspondent for Ecofriend, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Space Based Solar Energy” http://www.ecofriend.com/entry/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-space-based-solar-energy/) The Bad 1. High costs and long gestation period : Development cost for solar panels of that

magnitude would be very large and will also take long time to manufacture as even the first space-based solar project passed California State also has gestation period of 7 long years. Similarly, costs to operationalize even a single large panel is very high, which makes it even more difficult for poor nations to do so. such pilot project by Japan also even runs into more than 20 billions of dollars even before operationalization. 2 . Satellite traffic will increase : A large number of such projects can lead to overcrowding of space in the geosynchronous orbit. This may lead to a mishap like the one collision that happened between the Iridium Satellite LLC-operated satellite and the Russian Cosmos-2251 military satellite occurred at about 485 miles above the Russian Arctic on Feb, 2009. The Ugly 1.Potential damage to Atmosphere: Till now microwave and other transmission methods that are adopted for all over the world are for communication and broadcast purposes only. However, for energy transmission, the wavelength has to very high which can be potentially dangerous to our atmosphere and will increase the risk of leukemia and cancer among humans. Suggested concentration and intensity of such microwaves at their center would be of 23 mW/cm2 and at periphery would be 1 mW/cm2 , which compares to the current United States Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) workplace exposure limits for microwaves. Similarly very high frequency used for such long distance propagation can be very dangerous and may lead to increase in radioactivity in earth’s environment. 2.Laser beam penetration: Transmission of energy through atmosphere has not yet been done at a large scale and its successful commercial utilization is still under question. The ionosphere, the electrically charged portion of the atmosphere, will be a significant barrier to transmission.

No technical viability in SBSPDay 08 (Dwayne Day is a writer at the Space Review. “Knights in shining armor” < http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1147/1>) The reason that SSP has gained nearly religious fervor in the activist community can be attributed to two things, neither having to do with technical viability. The first reason is increased public and media attention on environmentalism and energy coupled with the high price of gasoline. When even Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are advertised with a global warming

message, it’s clear that the issue has reached the saturation point and everybody wants to link their pet project to the global warming discussion. SSP, its advocates point out, is “green” energy, with no emissions—other than the hundreds, or probably thousands, of rocket launches needed to build solar power satellites. The second reason is a 2007 study produced by the National Security Space Office (NSSO) on SSP. The space activist community has determined that the Department of Defense is the knight in shining armor that will deliver them to their shining castles in the sky. Space activists, who are motivated by the desire to personally live and work in space, do not care about SSP per se. Although all of them are impacted by high gasoline prices, many of them do not believe that global climate change is occurring; or if they do believe it, they doubt that humans contribute to it. Instead, they have latched on to SSP because it is expedient. Environmental and energy issues provide the general backdrop to their new enthusiasm, and the NSSO study serves as their focal point. Many people now claim that “the Department of Defense is interested in space solar power.” But it is not true. The NSSO study is remarkably sensible and even-handed and states that we are nowhere near developing practical SSP and that it is not a viable solution for even the military’s limited requirements. It states that the technology to implement space solar power does not currently exist… and is unlikely to exist for the next forty years. Substantial technology development must occur before it is even feasible. Furthermore, the report makes clear that the key technology requirement is cheap access to space, which no longer seems as achievable as it did three decades ago (perhaps why SSP advocates tend to skip this part of the discussion and hope others solve it for them). The activists have ignored the message and fallen in love with the messenger. But in this case, the activists touting the NSSO study do not understand where the NSSO fits into the larger military space bureaucracy. The National Security Space Office was created in 2004 and “facilitates the integration and coordination of defense, intelligence, civil, and commercial space activities.” But any office that “facilitates” the activities of other organizations has limited influence, especially when those other organizations are much bigger and have their own interests and connections to the senior leadership. The NSSO has a minimal staff and budget and does not command any assets—it does not fly any satellites, launch any rockets, or procure any hardware, all of which are measures of power within the military space realm. Simply put, the NSSO exists essentially as a policy shop that is readily ignored by the major military space actors such as Strategic Command, Air Force Space Command, and the National Reconnaissance Office whenever it suits them. As one former NSSO staffer explained, the office consists of many smart, hardworking people who have no discernible influence on military space at all. In fact, for several years there have been persistent rumors that the NSSO was about to be abolished as unnecessary, irrelevant, and toothless. Add to this the way in which the NSSO’s solar power satellite study was pursued—the study itself had no budget. In Washington, studies cost money. If the Department of Defense wants advice on, say, options for space launch, they hire an organization to conduct the study such as the RAND Corporation, or they employ one of their existing advisory groups such as the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. All of this requires money to pay for the experts to perform the work. Even if the study is performed by a committee of volunteers, there are still travel, printing, staff support, overhead, and other expenses. Costs can vary widely, but at a minimum will start in the many tens of thousands of dollars and could run to a few million dollars. In contrast, the NSSO study of space solar power had no actual funding and relied entirely upon voluntary input and labor. This reflects the seriousness by which the study was viewed by the Pentagon leadership. It is nonsensical for members of the space activist community to claim that “the military supports space solar power” based solely on a study that had no money, produced by an organization that has no clout. If all this is true, why is the space activist community so excited about the NSSO study? That is not hard to understand. They all know that the economic case for space solar power is

abysmal. The best estimates are that SSP will cost at least three times the cost per kilowatt hour of even relatively expensive nuclear power. But the military wants to dramatically lower the cost of delivering fuel to distant locations, which could possibly change the cost-benefit ratio. The military savior also theoretically solves some other problems for SSP advocates. One is the need for deep pockets to foot the immense development costs. The other is an institutional avatar—one of the persistent policy challenges for SSP has been the fact that responsibility for it supposedly “falls through the cracks” because neither NASA nor the Department of Energy wants responsibility. If the military takes on the SSP challenge, the mission will finally have a home. But there’s also another factor at work: naïveté. Space activists tend to have little understanding of military space, coupled with an idealistic impression of its management compared to NASA, whom many space activists have come to despise. For instance, they fail to realize that the military space program is currently in no better shape, and in many cases worse shape, than NASA. The majority of large military space acquisition programs have experienced major problems, in many cases cost growth in excess of 100%. Although NASA has a bad public record for cost overruns, the DoD’s less-public record is far worse, and military space has a bad reputation in Congress, which would never allow such a big, expensive new program to be started. Again, this is not to insult the fine work conducted by those who produced the NSSO space solar power study. They accomplished an impressive amount of work without any actual resources. But it is nonsensical for members of the space activist community to claim that “the military supports space solar power” based solely on a study that had no money, produced by an organization that has no clout.

2AC: No energy

SBSP won’t be viable in the energy market – too many other alternative energiesStrauss 09 (Stephen Strauss is a science writer with over 30 years of experience in the Canadian media. He covered science over a 25 year period for Globe and Mail and since leaving there has written a regular column for the CBC’s website. Stephen is also an accomplished author and speaker with numerous awards and fellowships. “Space-based solar power is a cool idea, but it's out of reach” < http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/space-based-solar-power-is-a-cool-idea-but-it-s-out-of-reach-1.832993>) What the telegraph story says to me is that space-based power is increasingly more likely to fail than to succeed. It's the market-timing paradox . When the telegraph line was put in, its only competition was the transmission of information using ships. Sailing across the Atlantic took the better part of two weeks and led to the newspapers of the time often featuring stories with the attribution "a recently arrived boat passenger has reported." Conversely, once the telegraph line was actually functional in the 1860s, it could transmit Morse-coded accounts of events in minutes. What this leap in the speed of information transmission meant is that there was effectively no competition for a telegraph. Accordingly, customers were charged $5 a word for the initial transmissions. To put this in modern context for you, when inflation is taken into consideration, that would translate into a 140-character internet tweet costing upwards of $4,000. There in lies the fundamental problem with space-based solar power: it isn't different

from any other kind of electricity . Toasters or computers or the internet won't run faster or smoother or better when powered by solar energy from space. And this means that space solar power is — in price, reliability, availability and reduction of global warming — in competition with every other form of alternative and conventional energy. It is as if laying telegraph cables existed in a world where primitive forms of radio transmissions and cellphones and internet signals were also developing. In this complex marketplace, price isn't set by a monopoly medium but by all media in competition. The most optimistic of scenarios today has space-based solar costing five to 10 times as much as traditional energy sources. Prohibitive cost The argument that proponents make is that a variety of technological advances could bring this cost down. However, there is a root problem in this. The same pressure to provide sustainable, environmentally friendly energy sources is at work through out the power industry. And Earth-based technologies have an intrinsic advantage in what is called "the learning curve." Jonathan Koomey, who co-authored in 2007 an article called "The Risk of Surprise in Energy Technology Costs," points out that when developing something like a better wind power generator, errors teach you things. "You learn what went wrong, correct it and build another one," Koomey said from Yale University, where he is a visiting professor. But space construction bedevils any simple learning feedback. Simply getting to where the problem exists to determine the problem and fix it is a huge issue. A single space shuttle flight costs about $1 billion. Even cheap launch vehicles envisaged for the future are estimated to cost around $78 million a flight. How can you be nimble and do quick redesigns with this kind of overhead? I don't think you can. And thus the paradox: if SBSP gets better but its competitors do as well, space power might never be good enough to compete in the energy marketplace. So, what the transatlantic telegraph tells me is a great irony for proponents of space solar power. Despite all its recent

activity and advances, SBSP seems today more likely to fail because external circumstances mean other energy alternatives are more likely to succeed.

SPACE-BASED EXPLORATION

Neg

NotesMix and match the evidence to your pleasing to solve aff exploration advantages – the net benefit is any ocean/aff specific DA – be that environment or something else.

1NC CP TextText: The United States federal government should substantially increase its deep space exploration.

CP Key

Current Deep Space budget is insufficient – hardly any projects are receiving fundingAchenbach 13 (Joel, writes on science and politics for the Post's national desk, “To go boldly (and on budget)”, 12/25/13, http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2013/12/25/to-go-boldly-and-on-budget/)//WLThe Cassini spacecraft is in splendid shape as it circles Saturn. Conceived in the 1980s, launched in 1997, Cassini arrived at the gas-giant planet in 2004 and has continued to deliver stunning images of the jewel of the solar system. The unmanned probe scored a major discovery in 2005 when it found geysers erupting from what appears to be a subsurface sea on the moon Enceladus that scientists believe could harbor some form of exotic life. Cassini also mapped the surface of the huge moon Titan, which has a dense atmosphere, and lakes, and rivers, though there’s no water — the liquid is made of hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane, as if the place had been designed by the oil and gas industry. Fuel is running low on Cassini, but there’s enough for another four years of maneuvering. Technicians at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., have mastered the art of using Titan’s gravity to steer Cassini into new, interesting orbits. NASA hopes to send the spacecraft diving inside the majestic rings of Saturn to study their composition. The extended mission would cost about $60 million a year. But that money has not materialized in the NASA budget. If there is no funding, NASA will have to end the Cassini mission next year. For robotic spacecraft, the greatest hazard in the solar system turns out to be the NASA budget. The mere possibility that such luxury-class missions could be shut down reveals the budgetary stress at NASA and calls into question whether the agency in coming years will be able to go forward with some of the big, ambitious exploratory programs that scientists have made their top priority. NASA cannot simply abandon Cassini, because it could crash someday into Enceladus and could contaminate the hypothetical biosphere with Earth microbes that are lurking aboard it. Instead, the navigators at JPL would be forced to aim the $3.5 billion spacecraft directly at Saturn, which is presumably lifeless, and let it disintegrate as it enters the atmosphere. “I think it would be the height of folly to terminate such a profoundly successful mission when we’re not done yet,” said Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., and the leader of the imaging team for Cassini. The bet within NASA is that the Obama administration and Congress will find a way to keep Cassini flying. And it’s virtually certain that they will scrape together the money to extend the operation of the Curiosity rover on Mars. But earlier this month, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden popped into a meeting of a NASA science advisory committee and made an unexpected announcement: There will be no new flagship-class missions. Those are projects that cost $1 billion-plus. Flagships include Cassini, Curiosity, the Hubble Space Telescope and such legendary spacecraft as Viking and Voyager. Bolden’s comments, first reported by space policy reporter Marcia Smith, landed in a delicate period in which the agency’s fiscal 2015 budget is being drafted by the president’s Office of Management and Budget, in consultation with NASA. Will Cassini get funding? Will other high-priority programs? The scientists who depend on this funding are anxious. They have made their to-do list for the coming decade, and it includes some multibillion-dollar proposals. For example, scientists are eager to send a probe to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, another potential abode of extraterrestrial life. NASA officials tried to settle everyone down a few days later by disseminating a new statement from Bolden saying that “NASA remains committed to planning, launching and operating flagship

missions.” The gist is that NASA cannot start a new flagship mission right now, but perhaps the fiscal situation will improve in the future. The Obama administration argues that NASA is being forced to fit 20 pounds of programs into a 10-pound bag. Officials note that Congress began squeezing NASA’s budget in 2010, and then the sequester trimmed it further, leaving the agency about $2 billion short of where it had been in 2009. NASA had to find a way to absorb those cuts, even as cost overruns on certain science missions made officials wary of the jumbo, multibillion-dollar projects. The administration essentially wants to go back to the “faster, better, cheaper” philosophy that had been the NASA mantra in the 1990s. Agency officials emphasize that they continue to push forward with a long list of science missions, most of them costing less than a billion dollars. They include the Maven probe that is on its way to study the atmosphere of Mars and the Osiris REx spacecraft that is supposed to fly to an asteroid, grab a tiny sample and bring it back to Earth. Among already approved flagships are the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for a 2018 launch, and a 2020 Mars rover that will be a virtual duplicate of Curiosity. But the space science community, which includes astrophysicists and Earth scientists, feels it is facing a new era of limits even as the universe itself is screaming to be explored. One of the biggest space stories of the year was the announcement in November, based on an extrapolation from observations by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, that our Milky Way galaxy alone is likely to have about 40 billion planets that are roughly the size of the Earth and in orbits that could potentially allow water to exist at the surface. But even as scientists feel optimistic that the galaxy hosts a multitude of habitable worlds, NASA is struggling to come up with the money for exploration, whether through telescopes, robotic probes or human spaceflight. Space beckons, but it is a hostile and unforgiving environment, with fierce head winds.

STEM

Increased space exploration is key to building future interest in NASANRC 11 [National Research Council for the National Academy of Sciences, Recapturing a Future for Space Exploration: Life and Physical Sciences Research for a New Era, 2011, http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13048]During its more than 50-year history, NASA’s success in human space exploration has depended on the agency’s ability to effectively address a wide range of biomedical, engineering, physical science, and related obstacles—an achievement made possible by NASA’s strong and productive commitments to life and physical sciences research for human space exploration, and by its use of human space exploration infrastructures for scientific discovery. This partnership of NASA with the research community reflects the original mandate from Congress in 1958 to promote science and technology, an endeavor that requires an active and vibrant research program.* The committee acknowledges the many achievements of NASA, which are all the more remarkable given budgetary challenges and changing directions within the agency. In the past decade, however, a consequence of those challenges has been a life and physical sciences research program that was dramatically reduced in both scale and scope, with the result that the agency is poorly positioned to take full advantage of the scientific opportunities offered by the now fully equipped and staffed ISS laboratory, or to effectively pursue the scientific research needed to support the development of advanced human exploration capabilities. Although its review has left it deeply concerned about the current state of NASA’s life and physical sciences research, the Committee for the Decadal Survey on Biological and Physical Sciences in Space is nevertheless convinced that a focused science and engineering program can achieve successes that will bring the space community, the U.S. public, and policymakers to an understanding that we are ready for the next significant phase of human space exploration. The goal of this report is to lay out steps whereby NASA can reinvigorate its partnership with the life and physical sciences research community and develop a forward-looking portfolio of research that will provide the basis for recapturing the excitement and value of human spaceflight—thereby enabling the U.S. space program to deliver on new exploration initiatives that serve the nation, excite the public, and place the United States again at the forefront of space exploration for the global good. This report examines the fundamental science and as the following examples illustrate: • An effective countermeasures program to attenuate the adverse effects of the space environment on the health and performance capabilities of astronauts, a development that will make it possible to conduct prolonged human space exploration missions.

We can’t train the next generation of scientists and engineers without thatAIAA 09 [American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., “Recapturing American Leadership in Space Life and Physical Sciences,” An AIAA Information Paper, pg. http://pdf.aiaa.org/downloads/publicpolicypositionpapers//LifeandPhysicalSciencesWhitePaper.pdf]The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the American Society for Gravitational and Space Biology (ASGSB) are working jointly to restore a program of fundamental life and physical sciences in NASA. Without restoration, the U.S. will not realize the gains in economic and health issues from the 100 billion dollar investment in the

International Space Station. We are a diverse group of scientists, engineers and students from universities, government, and industry who exchange ideas that bridge basic and applied research in space and gravitational sciences. This research is conducted on the ground in US laboratories, analog environments and specialized facilities such as centrifuges and in flight in parabolic aircraft, sounding rockets, suborbital vehicles and low Earth orbit in the Space Shuttle, Russian biosatellites, U.S. free flyers and the International Space Station. This community generates and disseminates fundamental knowledge about how physical elements and living organisms respond to gravity and the spaceflight environment. This knowledge provides understanding into physical and physiological processes that cannot be derived using traditional experimental approaches on Earth. Microgravity is a tool for innovative technological and biomedical discoveries to enable human exploration of space and improve the quality of life for the general public. Our goals include education and outreach to the public, students and teachers, Congress, NASA and other governmental agencies and industry. We encourage students to pursue careers in the life and physical sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics. Our research environments provide the venues for training the next generation of engineers and scientists. Today, these activities have essentially stopped due to a lack of a fundamental life and physical sciences program in NASA’s portfolio. The community of life and physical scientists advocated and provided the science justification for the ISS platform to enable research on long term exposure to microgravity and the spaceflight environment. Funding authorized by Congress to outfit ISS for research and to support ground and flight programs was siphoned off into spacecraft engineering under the guise of redirecting it to higher priority research directed toward implementing the "Vision for Space Exploration". This action crippled participation of the biological and physical space sciences research community and generated lingering mistrust of NASA to follow through on its commitments. In the 2005 timeframe, nearly $1B annually was devoted to Biological and Physical Science Research. NASA is asking other federal science agencies to support this research, but no transition plan, budget and agency have been identified to continue stewardship. Years of U.S. invested research and intellectual capital are being abandoned without proper vetting. Now is not the time to abandon the investment in fundamental gravitation and space biology research and miss the opportunity to utilize the ISS for its intended purpose. Other nations are capitalizing on US investment in the ISS, including over 3,000 European Space Agency (ESA) scientists as well as Canadian, Japanese, Russian and Malaysian scientists who have both access and funding to conduct ISS experiments. Due to the lack of funds and flight equipment, U.S. scientists are being forced to beg time and specimens from their international colleagues or turn their scientific interests away from space.

STEM Solves Economy

Science and tech are the building blocks for US economic leadership. Once lost, they can never be regainedCOSEPUP 07 – Joint unit of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine that conducts studies by special interdisciplinary panels comprising the nation's best scientific and engineering expertise.. [Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, Rising above the gathering storm : energizing and employing America for a brighter economic future, 2007]Having reviewed trends in the United States and abroad, the committee is deeply concerned that the scientific and technological building blocks critical to our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are gathering strength. We strongly believe that a worldwide strengthening will benefit the world’s economy—particularly in the creation of jobs in countries that are far less well-off than the United States. But we are worried about the future prosperity of the United States. Although many people assume that the United States will always be a world leader in science and technology, this may not continue to be the case inasmuch as great minds and ideas exist throughout the world. We fear the abruptness with which a lead in science and technology can be lost—and the difficulty of recovering a lead once lost, if indeed it can be regained at all. The committee found that multinational companies use such criteria3 as the following in determining where to locate their facilities and the jobs that result: • Cost of labor (professional and general workforce). • Availability and cost of capital. • Availability and quality of research and innovation talent. • Availability of qualified workforce. • Taxation environment. • Indirect costs (litigation, employee benefits such as healthcare, pensions, vacations). • Quality of research universities. • Convenience of transportation and communication (including language). • Fraction of national research and development supported by government. • Legal-judicial system (business integrity, property rights, contract sanctity, patent protection). • Current and potential growth of domestic market. • Attractiveness as place to live for employees. • Effectiveness of national economic system. Although the US economy is doing well today, current trends in each of those criteria indicate that the United States may not fare as well in the future without government intervention. This nation must prepare with great urgency to preserve its strategic and economic security. Because other nations have, and probably will continue to have, the competitive advantage of a low wage structure, the United States must compete by optimizing its knowledge-based resources, particularly in science and technology, and by sustaining the most fertile environment for new and revitalized industries and the well-paying jobs they bring. We have already seen that capital, factories, and laboratories readily move wherever they are thought to have the greatest promise of return to investors

Sci Dip

Certainty of NASA investment necessary to restore US science credibilitySabathier and Faith 8 (Vincent G. Sabathier, senior associate with the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, G. Ryan Faith, research analyst for the Space Foundation, “Smart Power Through Space,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2008, http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/080220_smart_power_through_space.pdf)In much the same way that the Apollo program and Vietnam War era were then the two most visible displays of soft and hard power, we are now faced with a similar situation. Throughout the entire Cold War, support for soft and hard power use of space was carefully balanced. We must now signal to the world that we are not a nation that lives by use of military force alone. We must increase our support of civil space utilization and exploration to bring it back in line with spending on military and intelligence applications of space. Public opinion is mixed about the prospect of increasing space program funding. An April 2007 Harris poll showed almost half of respondents supported cutting the space program to reduce the deficit; yet in a March 2007 Zogby poll, 71 percent of respondents opposed any cut in NASA funding. Opposition to increased funding must be considered in light of widespread confusion about the current levels of funding for civil space applications versus the historical highs seen during space race. At its height, NASA funding amounted to approximately 0.8 percent of GDP (and this was in the budgetary context of the Vietnam War) as opposed to the current amount of less than one-eighth of 1 percent. Only one in five Americans correctly estimates NASA spending at less than 1 percent of the budget, while a plurality believes that NASA funding accounts for 1 percent to 5 percent of the budget, and roughly one-third believes that NASA consumes more than 10 percent of the total budget. While a simple increase in the level of national support is a clear signal of our interest in broader engagement and a commitment to a rational balance between all of our soft and hard power activities, it also creates an opportunity for a compelling display of U.S. global leadership. A highly visible commitment to civil space exploration and utilization will restore U.S. credibility and allow the United States to assume its traditional global leadership role. More generally, space exploration is a high-payoff, low-risk opportunity for U.S. leadership—in no case has a significant expenditure of political capital in support of civil space activities failed to provide high returns on investment. The most spectacular returns from space exploration have been cases where the initial engagement, and consequently the visibility of U.S. leadership, has been the greatest. Yet even in cases where a given space initiative fell short of expectations, virtually no penalty was incurred. As we approach the 35th anniversary of the retreat from the lunar surface we must carefully balance our priorities—neither neglecting pressing problems at home nor forgetting future generations. A stable balance between the short and long term and between hard and soft power is contingent in large measure on increased support for civil space operations. Over the longer term, we should strongly consider supporting our civil space activities at a minimum of 1 percent of the federal budget, with a long-term goal of supporting our space program at the rate of 25 cents per American per day.

NASA exploration programs solve science diplomacy – cooperative researchKrige 7 (Professor of the history and philosophy of science @ Georgia Tech, “NASA as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy,” in The Societal Impact of Spaceflight, Edited By: Steven J. Dick and Roger D. Launius, 2007)

This paper briefly considers one small, but i think important and often overlooked, corner of this vast panorama: the place of spaceflight in American foreign policy. I do not simply want to insist that NASA’s international programs have had an important impact as instruments of foreign policy. I also want to suggest that today they have a particularly significant political and cultural role to play in projecting a positive image of American power and American democracy abroad. In a world increasingly torn apart by conflicts over values—conflicts which history teaches us can seldom be resolved by force—I believe we overlook the potential of NASA as an instrument for American foreign policy at our peril. International cooperation for peaceful purposes was one of NASA’s important missions from its inception, and those who drafted the Space act that created the organization in 1958 gave it considerable prominence. The range of international activities covered by NASA is truly vast.1 These are partly a response to the nature of space exploration itself, which transcends national boundaries; whether they are launching sounding rockets or astronauts, communicating with satellites or space shuttles, or measuring the properties of the ionosphere or the trajectory of storms, NASA and its sister agencies have to think globally. However, those who implemented NASA’s mandate had a far broader vision of international cooperation than one that was simply subservient to America’s national space needs. From its inception, NASA saw its role as fostering the development of space science and technology in other countries. Its officers, in cosultation with other parts of the administration (notably the State department and the department of defense), sought to use American scientific and technological preeminence to kick-start and even mould space activities in other countries, notably those of the Western alliance. NASA’s international programs were intended to build a world community dedicated to the peaceful exploration of space with American help, under American leadership, and in line with the general objectives of American foreign policy. in brief,as a naSatask force put it in 1987,“[i]nternational cooperation in space from the outset has been motivated primarily by foreign policy objectives.”2 In what follows I shall substantiate these claims by focusing on three space science programs in which U.S. foreign policy has been interwoven, more or less explicitly, with NASA’s international initiatives. What makes these cases interesting is that, a priori, many people tend to believe that science is above politics and that international science is conducted independently of foreign policy concerns. This paper will not simply challenge such views but, by picking what is arguably the most difficult case, scientific collaboration, will alert us to the range of areas—some obvious, some less evident—in which NASA has served as a vector of U.S. foreign policy. My aim is to illustrate NASA’s impact on strengthening the Western alliance not simply by promoting international scientific collaboration, but also by using it as a platform to consolidate the political and cultural solidarity of the free world. And although my examples are drawn from the cold war and its immediate aftermath, the lessons of history apply just as much today, when new and even more fundamental divisions threaten to tear apart the fragile fabric of Western democracy.

Colonization

Budget restoration for deep space exploration key to colonization and survival as a speciesDolan 4/22/14 (Eric W. Dolan has served as an editor for Raw Story since August 2010, and is based out of Sacramento, California. He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and received a Bachelor of Science from Bradley University. *Article cites NASA president “NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we are a multi-planet species” < http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/22/nasa-chief-touts-deep-space-exploration-we-can-only-survive-if-we-are-a-multi-planet-species/>) NASA administrator Charles Bolden said Tuesday that humanity faced certain extinction unless it developed the technology to colonize other planets. “We today are Earth-reliant,” he said at the Humans to Mars Summit 2 014, held at George Washington University in Washington. “We are dependent on being on this planet. We are not a multi-planet species yet. I don’t know whether Buzz [Aldrin] is going to talk about it later, but Buzz and I agree on a number of things — one of them is that only multi-planet species survive for long periods of time.” “Here in the Western world, we think very short-sighted. We think about the time in which we are going to be on this Earth, or in which are kids or grandkids are going to be on this Earth. Many other civilizations think much longer than that, and we need to start thinking that way.” He warned the Sun — like all stars — had a finite lifespan. “If this species is to survive indefinitely we need to become a multi-planet species ,” he continued. “One reason we need to go to Mars is so we can learn a little about living on another planet, so that when Mikaley my granddaughter is ready to move out of the solar system we will know a lot more about living away from this planet than we know today. Mars is a stepping stone in the approach to other solar systems and other galaxies and things that people have always dreamed of but frequently don’t talk about.” The NASA chief said a manned mission to Mars was possible if Congress restored the space agency’s budget . NASA plans to send a manned spacecraft to an asteroid by 2025 and then travel to the red planet in the 2030s.

Aff

Squo Solves Deep Space Exploration

SLS rocket development solves deep space explorationHennigan 14 (WJ, LA times reporter, “NASA approves rocket for deep-space travel”, 7/3/14, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-boeing-mars-rocket-20140703-story.html)//WLNASA gave the go-ahead to start full production on the most powerful rocket ever. The rocket, known as Space Launch System, is set to blast beyond low-Earth orbit this decade to explore the deep reaches of space, including near-Earth asteroids, the moon and, ultimately, Mars. Boeing Co., prime contractor on the rocket, announced Wednesday that it had completed a critical design review and finalized a $2.8-billion contract with NASA. The last time the space agency made such an assessment of a deep-space rocket was the mighty Saturn V, which took astronauts to the moon. We're ready to move forward. This program has the potential to be inspiring for generations. - Frank McCall, Boeing's Space Launch System deputy program manager If all goes well, the rocket's initial test flight from Cape Canaveral, Fla., is expected in 2017. "We're ready to move forward," said Frank McCall, Boeing's Space Launch System deputy program manager. "This program has the potential to be inspiring for generations." The Space Launch System has been the subject of criticism that its goals and timeline are too vague. It also faces additional funding questions from Congress in the years ahead. "We're not operating on the budgets of Apollo missions anymore," McCall said. "But we're not operating on a shoestring budget either." Reaching this milestone has been four years in the making. In 2010, President Obama laid out a new vision for the nation's space ambitions, focusing on future deep-space missions and scrapping a manned moon mission called Constellation. Space Launch System's design called for the integration of existing hardware, spurring criticism that it's a "Frankenstein rocket," with much of it assembled from already developed technology. For instance, its two rocket boosters are advanced versions of the Space Shuttle boosters, and a cryogenic propulsion stage is based on the motor of a rocket often used by the Air Force. The Space Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group and frequent NASA critic, said Space Launch System was "built from rotting remnants of left over congressional pork. And its budgetary footprints will stamp out all the missions it is supposed to carry, kill our astronaut program and destroy science and technology projects throughout NASA." Currently NASA has no way to get its astronauts to the International Space Station other than paying $71 million to Russia for a ride. NASA ultimately wants private companies to take astronauts to the station, but that hardware isn't yet ready. Instead, the space agency wants to focus its attention on deep-space missions aboard Space Launch System, including a mission to land on an asteroid by the mid-2020s. But that plan has failed to gain widespread support, reflecting serious concerns about the billions of federal dollars needed and a lack of detail about the most difficult aspects of the mission. The total cost of the program and which asteroid NASA would visit remain unknown. The Government Accountability Office said in a study of the program that funding remains a top risk. NASA plans to spend about $6.8 billion to develop the rocket in fiscal years 2014 through 2018. Boeing says the advantage of building Space Launch System is that it can carry out a "menu of missions" that include shooting astronauts to the moon and Mars, in addition to far-flung asteroids. The Planetary Society in Pasadena, another space advocacy group, initially came out against the plan to build the rocket because it lacked one specific mission. Now the group says Space Launch System will play an important role because of its versatility. "It has a lot of potential not only for human missions but robotic missions as well," said Casey Dreier, the group's director of advocacy. Work on the 321-foot Space Launch System is spread throughout Southern California, including Boeing's avionics team in Huntington Beach. The rocket's core stage will get its power

from four modified space shuttle main engines built by Aerojet Rocketdyne in Canoga Park. There are two versions of the rocket being designed. One will carry up to 154,000 pounds and a later version will carry up to 286,000 pounds. The rocket is also being designed to carry the capsule-shaped spacecraft Orion, which is built by Lockheed Martin Corp. It can lug up to four astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit on long-duration missions. The first Space Launch System mission in 2017 will launch an empty Orion spacecraft. The second mission is targeted for 2021 and will launch Orion and a crew of NASA astronauts.

Science Diplomacy

Space exploration won’t bolster US leadership – it doesn’t have the international supportSabathier and Faith 6 (Vincent G. Sabathier is a senior fellow and director of the Human Space Exploration Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C, a senior associate with the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, from 2004-2009 he was senior fellow and director for space initiatives at CSIS. He is also senior adviser to the SAFRAN group and consults internationally on aerospace and telecommunications. Ryan Faith is program manager for the Human Space Exploration Initiative at CSIS. “U.S. Leadership, International Cooperation, and Space Exploration” 4/26 Published by the CSIS csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/060426_us_space_leadership.pdf)U.S. Civil Space The United States, of course, remains the dominant player if only in terms of its budget allocated to space, in general, and to civil space, in particular. Further, the United States has a clear mandate to implement the presidential Vision for Space Exploration. Whether or not the United States will be able to attract and lead other nations to return to the moon remains uncertain and is the real question of leadership. For being first without having any followers is not leadership, it is merely being alone What is certain is that the implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration is generating difficulties nationally and internationally. The Western Allies There is the issue of the old allies, Europe and Japan. The traditional relationship between the Western partners of the ISS has changed. The transatlantic relationship, for example, although recovering fast in light of the Iran crisis, is still perceived as weak. Further, in matters of space exploration, it has never been weaker. The trade limitations associated with International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and the uncertainty surrounding the future of the space shuttle and its impact on the ISS have been eroding U.S. leadership in civil space. The recent cuts in the science programs meant to fund the vision, appearing in the FY 2007 budget, are amplifying the trend. It is essential to note that many things have been learned from the ISS. The main lesson is that no one can rely anymore on a single national space transportation vehicle, even less so when this vehicle exists only on paper.

Obama’s current plan solves – it invests in necessary components of US leadershipMace 11 (Frank, online columnist for Harvard Political Review, 4/7/11 “In Defense of the Obama Space Exploration Plan” http://hpronline.org/united-states/in-defense-of-the-obama-space-exploration-plan/)When the shuttle Endeavour lifts off from central Florida later this month, it will mark the near conclusion of the space shuttle era. Under the command of Mark Kelly, husband of recently wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Endeavour will embark on the second-to-last shuttle mission. It is therefore a ripe time to examine what’s next for NASA. Obama's new flight plan for NASA is the best course for the country. Last April, President Obama unveiled a comprehensive overhaul of NASA’s future and cancelled much of the Bush-era Constellation plan to return to the moon. Obama’s plan looked to add $6 billion to the NASA budget over the next five years, renew the focus on scientific discovery, lengthen the lifespan of the International Space Station, and most importantly, dramatically increase the role of private contractors in NASA missions. Obama rightly prioritized jobs, science, and national inspiration

with his new direction for NASA. This plan drew immediate criticism from, among others, Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong, Apollo 13 Commander James Lovell, and Apollo 17 Commander Eugene Cernan, who jointly wrote in a letter to President Obama: “It appears that we will have wasted our current $10-plus billion investment in Constellation and, equally importantly, we will have lost the many years required to recreate the equivalent of what we will have discarded. For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one second or even third rate stature.” The three commanders, however, overvalue pure nationalism at the expense of the NASA roles in job creation, science, and national inspiration. In today’s economic climate, our first consideration should be jobs. The Obama Plan would add 2,500 more jobs to the American economy than the Bush-era plan. Additionally, the increased private sector involvement in the space program could generate upwards of 10,000 jobs. Conservative critics of Obama’s plan should take note of this increased reliance on the private sector for innovation—after all, a belief in the efficiency of the private sector is a central Republican tenet. Secondly, Obama’s attention to scientific discoveries with tangible benefits is apt. He endorses exploration of the solar system by robots and a new telescope to succeed Hubble and calls for fresh climate and environmental studies. An extended commitment to the International Space Station further displays Obama’s respect for the scientific discoveries being made onboard. His vision of the role for space exploration is based on science, not nationalism. Finally, Obama’s plan deftly prioritizes national inspiration over simple nationalism. He argues “exploration will once more inspire wonder in a new generation—sparking passions and launching careers . . . because, ultimately, if we fail to press forward in the pursuit of discovery, we are ceding our future and we are ceding that essential element of the American character.” And this plan is not lacking in inspiration capability. It calls for innovation to build a rocket at least two years earlier than under the Constellation program. This point alone negates the three astronauts’ criticism that many years will be “required to recreate the equivalent of what we will have discarded.” Crewed missions into deep space by 2025. Crewed missions to asteroids. Crewed missions into Mars orbit by the 2030s. A landing on mars to follow. This plan will truly continue NASA’s history of inspiring the people, especially the youth, of the United States. Armstrong, Lovell, and Cernon assert that the Obama plan will sacrifice American leadership in space. Worthy recipients of the status of national hero, these astronauts nonetheless hail from the space race era. Obama, however, points out that “what was once a global competition has long since become a global collaboration.” I agree with the president that the ambitious nature of his plan will do nothing but “ensure that our leadership in space is even stronger in this new century than it was in the last” as well as “strengthen America’s leadership here on earth.” Obama’s space exploration plan will create jobs, advance science, and inspire a nation, and it will do so not by sacrificing American dominance in space, but by extending that dominance into new areas of research and exploration.

STEM

Space policies won’t inspire students to go into STEM fieldsDelgado 11 (Laura, Space Policy Institute, George Washington University, “When inspiration fails to inspire: A change of strategy for the US space program,” Space Policy 27 (2011) 94e98, Science Direct)If only we could answer the “why space?” question. If only we could come up with a catchy phrase to light up people’s eyes and compel the masses. If only we could inspire the young generations just as the Apollo generation was inspired. Then the space program would see a bigger budget and a more vocal and populous following, the aerospace sector would be fed to satiety with a skilled and passionate workforce for decades to come and US leadership in space, even in the context of a growing number of space actors, would be a sure thing. If only. So the logic goes for those who see the most pressing issues of the US space program as a result of endemic emotional detachment. For these stakeholders, the compelling reasons that drove the country to glory in the most visible “battle” of the Cold War have been either forgotten or ignored. In their wake, the country has implemented space policies that have failed to attach themselves to the minds and hearts of the younger generations, threatening the very survival of the program they were meant to support. To solve this situation, the inspiration argument has been highlighted often in the past couple of years, to the point of predictability. Yet despite its widespread defense, inspiration alone has not reinvigorated support for the space program as proponents argue it would. At the root of the problem is that this logic, constructed out of a memory of the cold war era, is sharply at odds with the interests and sensibilities of the generations it is supposed to reel in. The unpopular but potentially fruitful alternative is to draw attention to the pragmatic aspects of space, and to move away from concepts that made sense decades ago but which may prove counterproductive in the years to come. 1. Looking back: the Apollo myth A number of blue-ribbon panels, Congressional committees, and experts have said that the crucial element lacking not only to sustain US efforts in space but to see them take off again, enlarged and reinvigorated, is that of an inspiring vision. The quotation from the Book of Proverbs in the House Science & Technology Committee room – “where there is no vision, the people perish” – as well as the opening words of President Kennedy’s 1961 “Moon speech” are often cited to support this claim. The thrust of it is that the Apollo program was sustained by that vision, a vision that President Kennedy held and propagated, and that was shared by the American people. This vision rests on the demand not only for a longterm strategy of human expansion to the cosmos, but of one led by the USA, dependent “upon the adventurousness of the American people” [1], and so an ideal of American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny. Simply put: “space is what the Americans do” [2]. While powerful enough, this vision is context-specific and more complex than some proponents seem to think. To begin with, this image of President Kennedy “as a visionary leader committed to expanding the human presence throughout the Solar System” has been repeatedly discredited [3]. As Roger Launius further points out, “there is not a shred of evidence to support this interpretation”. The truth is that President Kennedy was initially unsure about committing to the Space Race; the Apollo decision was all about timing. The impact of the Gagarin flight in 1961 and the embarrassment of the USA in the Bay of Pigs fiasco forced the president to look for ways to uphold the US image internationally. Influential documents circulated at the time linked space activities to national prestige,1and it was in this context that, after being assured of its technical feasibility, President Kennedy was presented with the option of the Moon landing. In contrast to the image of one committed to a long-term vision in space, we find instead a president who saw in a specific

space policy a resource: away to counter the Soviet threat in a public manner that would assuage both national and international concerns over suspected US disadvantage. It was, as John Logsdon writes, “a politically driven response” and “not motivated by a belief in the long-term importance of space exploration” [4]. President Kennedy could not have put it more clearly than when he told NASA Administrator James Webb, “I don’t care about space” [5]. For him, and for the other key players that drew the plan to its fruition, space was seen as an answer to a series of often disparate concerns that had little to do with an active agenda of inspiration. While the inspiring vision certainly helped sell the program, it was not enough to sustain it for long. Behind the scenes, the process was more tumultuous than it seems. While the president’s oft quoted speech successfully won congressional and public support and consolidated what efforts NASA and others had accumulated to make the program a reality, “the Apollo honeymoon ended in 1962” [6]. As the costs of the program escalated (to a total which would be around $150 billion in current dollars) many began to question the wisdom of the commitment. For the first time there arose the ever recurring question of whether it was right for the nation to commit funds in a space program when there were other “more pressing” needs [7]. In the post-Apollo period there have been no more compelling reasons to justify a comparable commitment of resources. Total government space spending, which in 1964 was 5%, has been less than 2% in the past 20 years.2 In retrospect, Apollo was not the beginning of a space program that would from then on indulge in a wealth of resources and seemingly unquestioned commitment. It was instead the outcome of a specific set of circumstances that gave the initial push to a program that would from then on have to fight for its own share of attention and budget.

Public already perceives there is large scale space programLaunius 3 (Roger D. Launius "Public Opinion Polls and Perceptions of US Human Spaceflight." Published in "Space Policy" 19 (2003) pgs 173-174. Online at http://si.academia.edu/RogerLaunius/Papers/93299/_Public_Opinion_Polls_and_Perceptions_of_US_Human_Spaceflight_) One final observation from this review of polling data relates to the level of spending for NASA programs. With the exception of a few years during the Apollo era, the NASA budget has hovered at about one percent to fall money expended by the US treasury. As shown in Fig. 14, with the exception of a few years in the mid-1960s as NASA prepared for Apollo flights to the Moon, stability has been the norm as the annual NASA budget has incrementally gone up or down in relation to that 1-percent benchmark. But the public's perception of this is quite different, as shown in Fig. 15. For example, in 1997 the average estimate of NASA's share of the federal budget by those polled was 20 percent. Had this been true, NASA's budget in 1997 would have been $328 billion. If NASA had that amount of money it would have been able to undertake a program to send humans to Mars. It seems obvious that most Americans have little conception of the amount of funding available to NASA. At a fundamental level, all federal programs face this challenge as Americans are notoriously uninformed about how much and what the federal government spends on its programs. As a result there is a general lack of understanding that NASA has less than one percent of the Federal budget each year, and that its share of the budget has been shrinking since the early 1990s. Most Americans seem to believe that NASA has a lot of money, much more than it annually receives. Turning around those false perceptions of funding is perhaps the most serious challenge facing those who wish to gain public support for space exploration.

Replicating Apollo is impossible – prevents solvency Bormanis 10 (B.S. in Physics from the University of Arizona, and an M.A. in Science, Technology and Public Policy, earned under a NASA Space Grant Fellowship at George Washington University, 10 July 19, Andres, “Critical partnerships for the future of human space exploration”, “The Space Review”, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1667/1)Constellation has been described as “Apollo on steroids.” It replicates many of the systems developed over forty years ago for the first manned Moon landings, with the intention of returning astronauts to the Moon sometime in the next decade. On the face of it, this sounds encouraging for those of us who want to see astronauts resume the journeys beyond Earth orbit that ended so abruptly with Apollo 17. But as NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver has noted, various presidents and congressional leaders have tried to “re-do” Apollo for the last forty years. Clearly they have not succeeded. Understandably, the Apollo program is deeply ingrained in the public psyche, the glorious victory of a bygone era that many wish we could aspire to again. But today’s space advocates often forget that Apollo was a unique program designed to achieve a specific political goal in the 1960s: to demonstrate the social and technological superiority of the American political system over its chief rival, the Soviet Union. The convergence of social, political, and technological forces that made Apollo possible no longer exists, and never will again. Those who decry the Obama Administration’s decision to cancel the Constellation program seem to ignore this fundamental fact. Trying to replicate the Apollo program makes about as much sense as trying to rebuild the pyramids. The emerging Obama space policy offers a new approach that acknowledges the substantial changes that have taken place in the world in the decades since Apollo. Those changes are reflected in three critical partnerships: I. Public/Private Since its inception, NASA has depended on the resources of the private sector to develop the hardware that makes space travel possible. Building on military ICBM technology developed by General Dynamics, Lockheed, Boeing, and others, the Mercury and Gemini programs lofted American astronauts into Earth orbit. The Apollo Saturn V rocket was built, under NASA guidance, by a variety of military contractors for the purely civilian purpose of sending men to the Moon.

Colonization

Long term colonization is infeasible – CP can’t solveLaunius 10 (2010, Roger, PhD, Curator, Planetary Exploration Programs, National Air and Space Museum, expert on Aerospace history, fellow and board member of the American Astronautical Society, “Can we colonize the solar system? Human biology and survival in the extreme space environment,” Endeavour Volume 34, Issue 3, September 2010, Pages 122-129, science direct) Although microbial life might survive the extreme conditions of space, for Homo sapien sapiens the space environment remains remarkably dangerous to life. One space life scientist, Vadim Rygalov, remarked that ensuring human life during spaceflight was largely about providing the basics of human physiological needs. From the most critical – meaning that its absence would cause immediate death, to the least critical – these include such constants available here on Earth of atmospheric pressure, breathable oxygen, temperature, drinking water, food, gravitational pull on physical systems, radiation mitigation, and others of a less immediate nature. As technologies, and knowledge about them, stand at this time, humans are able to venture into space for short periods of less than a year only by supplying all of these needs either by taking everything with them (oxygen, food, air, etc.) or creating them artificially (pressurized vehicles, centrifugal force to substitute for gravity, etc.).10 Spaceflight would be much easier if humans could go into hibernation during the extremes of spaceflight, as did the Streptococcus mitis bacteria.Resolving these issues has proven difficult but not insurmountable for such basic spaceflight activities as those undertaken during the heroic age of space exploration when the United States and the Soviet Union raced to the Moon. Overcoming the technological hurdles encountered during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs were child's play in comparison to the threat to human life posed by long duration, deep space missions to such places as Mars. Even the most sophisticated of those, the lunar landings of Project Apollo, were relatively short camping trips on an exceptionally close body in the solar system, and like many camping trips undertaken by Americans the astronauts took with them everything they would need to use while there. This approach will continue to work well until the destination is so far away that resupply from Earth becomes highly problematic if not impossible if the length of time to be gone is so great that resupply proves infeasible. There is no question that the U.S. could return to the Moon in a more dynamic and robust version of Apollo; it could also build a research station there and resupply it from Earth while rotating crews and resupplying from Earth on a regular basis. In this instance, the lunar research station might look something like a more sophisticated and difficult to support version of the Antarctic research stations. A difficult challenge, yes; but certainly it is something that could be accomplished with presently envisioned technologies.11 The real difficulty is that at the point a lunar research station becomes a colony profound changes to the manner in which humans interact with the environment beyond Earth must take place. Countermeasures for core challenges – gravity, radiation, particulates, and ancillary effects – provide serious challenges for humans engaged in space colonization (Figure 4).