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***Asteroids Case Neg******Asteroids Case Neg***......................................................................................................................................1Strat Sheet................................................................................................................................................................2**Heg Advantage F/L JM module**.......................................................................................................................3A2 Leadership Scn...................................................................................................................................................3

A2 Competitiveness.................................................................................................................................................7***A2 Impact Advantage (jm)***........................................................................................................................10A2 Nuclear Fallout.................................................................................................................................................10A2 Environmental Destruction..............................................................................................................................11***A2 Probability adv***.....................................................................................................................................13***A2 Asteroids Advantage (QQ)***...................................................................................................................14A/2 Heg..................................................................................................................................................................15...............................................................................................................................................................................162NC xt Heg............................................................................................................................................................172NC Competitiveness xt........................................................................................................................................182NC Nuclear Fallout adv.......................................................................................................................................19

2NC Environmental Destruction............................................................................................................................202NC Probability Xt................................................................................................................................................212NC Asteroids Advantage xt.................................................................................................................................222NC Space Weapons Advantage xt.......................................................................................................................23

Ptx Links................................................................................................................................................................24SQUO solves..........................................................................................................................................................26Detect, not Deflect CP...........................................................................................................................................27International CP.....................................................................................................................................................28Aff is Bad Science ................................................................................................................................................29Dual use Link.........................................................................................................................................................34

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Strat SheetLab leaders: I cut bennet. Org/ul coming sundayJM Asteroids:Heg Leadership (they claim NEO detection is uq keybut their ev doesnt back this up) => Thayer

Competitiveness (plan increases, k2 heg,=>Ferguson)Impact

Nuclear Fallout (squo detection wont see it until it is too late, the nuke we fire will radiate earth)Environmental Destruction (laundry list of improbable impx)

Probability---These are really just pre-empts

-big impx o/w probability- solvency deficit to CP means aff vote b/c of big impx

noplanUs key?

Qq:Contention 1:

Probability literature

Some stuff about china. No idea why its there.Contention 2: HegChina will strike (marginal ev)

Econ collapse -> meadNot very strong internal linkwise

Fed key warrant isntPlan: the USFG should develop technologies that detect and deflect Near Earth Objects

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**Heg Advantage F/L JM module**

A2 Leadership Scn

1) Their Young et Al card is the report about a commission advocating the adaptation of the NSS. The

NSS has been implemented, solving leadership.

2) Their Dinerman evidences only warrant is that other countries are slower than the US inimplementation. If we prove that other countries are fielding systems, their fed key warrant does not

apply.

3) Impact empirically denied and TURN: Russia tried plan, increasing risk of Asteroid Impact

Hsu 10(Jeremy Hsu writes for the magazine Popular Science, 1/4/10, gd, http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-01/russia-wants-launch-armageddon-style-mission-deflect-asteroid)

Leave it to Russia to jumpstart the long-debated idea of deflecting killer asteroids that might threaten Earth. A top Russianspace official announced just prior to the New Year that he wants to put together a mission for heading off the space rockApophis, which represents a poster child of sorts for the risk of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs). But NASA astronomerscaution that a failed deflection attempt could simply make matters worse.Anatoly Perminov, head of Russia's Federal SpaceAgency, told Golos Rossi radio that he had heard from a scientist of a possible Apophis collision with Earth in 2036.NASA currently puts the Apophis collision risk during that swingby at just a three-in-a-million chance, or about 1-in-333,000."People's lives are at stake," Perminov said. "We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a systemthat would allow us to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands ofpeople."Perminov did not provide details about how a spacecraft might nudge the 900-foot-long asteroid aside, but did saythat Russia would not use nukes (and presumably also wouldn't enlist a oil rig crew for the job). Scientists and NASAastronauts alike have proposed various schemes, such as gravity tractors, for protecting Earth against an Armageddon orDeep Impact threat. NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office saw Russia's interest as a good sign, even as it emphasizedthat Apophis presents very little risk. But Paul Chodas, a member of that NASA office and an astronomer at NASA's JetPropulsion Laboratory, told SPACE.com that an attempted deflection carries its own risks -- failure might push the spacerock into a more dangerous path.

3) Their Vieru evidence gives no warrant as to why US leadership is KEY, just as to why it is good.

4) Their Leadership Scenario is empirically denied: the US fights Solar flares, and

Solar Flares destroy the economy, knocks out electrical grid, kills thousands all staring in 2013

Vastag 11 (Brian Vastag, June 21, 2011, reporter for the Washington Post Sunburst could be a big blow The Washington Post,

lexis)The sun is waking up. And on June 7, it woke up Michael Hesse. At 5:49 a.m., the solar scientist received an alert on hissmartphone. NASA spacecraft had seen a burst of X-rays spinning out from a sunspot. The burst was a solar flare - and a"notably large one" at that, Hesse said later. The sun has been quiet for years, at the nadir of its activity cycle. But sinceFebruary, our star has been spitting out flares and plasma like an angry dragon. It's Hesse's job to watch these eruptions.If abig one were headed our way, Hesse needed to know, and fast, so he could alert the electric power industry to brace for ageomagnetic storm that could knock some of the North American power grid offline. Hesse gathered his team at theGoddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, where he is chief of the Space Weather Laboratory, and fed the latest data fromfour sun-staring satellites into powerful computers.At 7:49 Hesse got his answer. An animated chart traced the predictedpath of a huge arc of plasma - hot gas - hurtling through the inner solar system. But only the tail of the plume would lickEarth, arriving June 9 and driving a dazzling display of the northern lights from Alaska through Maine.While a video of theeruption captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory showed an enormous plume spraying from the sun, this solartantrum would not be the big one - it would not be the 1859 event all over again.Sept. 1 of that year saw the largest solar

flare on record, witnessed by British astronomer Richard Carrington. While tracing features of the sun's surface, whichCarrington had projected via telescope onto paper, he saw a sudden flash emerge from a dark spot. Although such sunspotshad sparked curiosity for centuries - Galileo famously drew them, too, in the early 1600s - Carrington had no idea what theflash could mean.Within hours, telegraph operators found out. Their long strands of wire acted as antennas for this hugewave of solar energy. As this tsunami sped by, transmitters heated up, and several burst into flames. Observers in Miamiand Havana gaped skyward at eerie green and yellow displays, the northern lights pushed far south. Such a "Carringtonevent" will happen again someday, but our wired civilization will suffer losses far greater than a few telegraphshacks.Communications satellites will be knocked offline. Financial transactions, timed and transmitted via those satellite,will fail, causing millions or billions in losses. The GPS system will go wonky.

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A2 leadership scn [2/]Astronauts on the space station will huddle in a shielded module, as they have done three times in the past decade due to"space weather," the scientific term for all of the sun's freaky activity. Flights between North America and Asia, over theNorth Pole, will have to be rerouted, as they were in April during a weak solar storm at a cost to the airlines of $100,000 aflight. And oil pipelines, particularly in Alaska and Canada, will suffer corrosion as they, like power lines, conduct

electricity from the solar storm.But the biggest impact will be on the modern marvel known as the power grid. And expertswarn that the grid is not ready. In 2008, the National Academy of Sciences stated that an 1859-level storm could knock outpower in parts of the northeastern and northwestern United States for months, even years. Report co-author JohnKappenmann estimated that about 135 million Americans would be forced to revert to a pre-electric lifestyle or relocate.Water systems would fail. Food would spoil. Thousands could die. The financial cost: Up to $2 trillion, one-seventh theannual U.S. gross domestic product.Utilities say they're studying the issue, with an eye toward understanding how toprotect the grid by powering down sections of it during an hours-long solar storm.Their efforts are motivated, in part, by thesun's increasingly frequent outbursts. Every 11 to 12 years, solar activity ramps up. After a quiet season, the sun is nowspitting out flares again, with activity expected to peak in 2013 and 2014, said Dean Pesnell, a solar scientist atGoddard."The sun is not partisan, it doesn't listen to diplomacy, and sanctions don't work," said Peter Huessy, president ofGeoStrategic Analysis. Huessy wants Congress to enact rules that would force power companies to better protect the powergrid. "The sun has its own clock. And we don't know what that clock is, except for once every hundred years or so, it has acoronary."

4) No link to Thayertheir Vieru evidence is about space leadership, Thayer writes about the military.

5) Collapse is inevitable the transition to multipolarity will be peaceful if the US accedes

Schweller10 (Robert Schweller is a professor of Poli Sci at OSU, Jan/Feb 10, Lexis: Ennui Becomes Us)The messiness of this state of affairs contradicts a rare consensus in the field of international relations that concentratedpower in the hands of one dominant state is essential to the establishment and maintenance of international order.According to the theory, the demand for international regimes is high but their supply is low because only the leadership ofa hegemonic state can overcome the collective-action problems-mainly the huge start-up costs-associated with the creationof order-producing global institutions. The current world has turned this logic on its head. The problem is the virtualabsence of barriers to entry. Most new treaty-making and global-governance institutions are being spearheaded not by anelite club of great powers but rather by civil-society actors and nongovernmental organizations working with midlevelstates. Far from creating more order and predictability, this explosion of so-called global-governance institutions hasincreased the chaos, randomness, fragmentation, ambiguity and impenetrable complexity of international politics. Indeed,

the labyrinthine structure of global governance is more complex than most of the problems it is supposed to be solving.And countries' views are more rigidly held than ever before. ALAS, AS entropy increases within a closed system, availableor "useful" energy dissipates and diffuses to a state of equal energy among particles. The days of unipolarity are numbered.We will witness instead a deconcentration of power that eventually moves the system to multipolarity and a restoredbalance. It will not, however, be a normal global transition. Great powers will not build up arms and form alliances. Theywill not use war to improve their positions in the international pecking order. They will not seek relative-power advantages.That is because they no longer have to obsess over how others are doing-much less over their own survival, which isessentially assured in today's world of unprecedented peace. States will instead be primarily concerned with doing well forthemselves. What they will do is engage in economic competition. The law of uneven economic growth among states andthe diffusion of technology will cause a deconcentration of global power. Global equilibrium in this new environment is aspontaneously generated outcome among states seeking to maximize their absolute wealth, not military power or politicalinfluence over others. The pace of these diffusion processes has increased during the digital age because what distinguisheseconomies today is no longer capital and labor-now mere commodities-but rather ideas and energy. Information entropy is

creating fierce corporate competition. Our creeping sameness hasn't led us to the mythical natural harmony of interests inthe world that international liberalism seems to take for granted. To the contrary, it's a jungle out there. Globalcommunication networks and rapid technological innovation have forced competitive firms to abandon the end-to-endvertical business model and adopt strategies of dynamic specialization, connectivity through outsourcing and processnetworks, and leveraged capability building across institutional boundaries. They have also caused public policies toconverge in the areas of deregulation, trade liberalization and market liberalization. All of these trends have combined tocreate relentlessly intensifying competition on a global scale.4 So while we may indeed be looking more alike, what

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A2 leadership [3/]precisely are the traits that we share? Sameness in the "flat" world, where the main business challenge is not profitabilitybut mere survival, breeds cutthroat competitors no more likely to live in harmony with each other than the unfortunateinhabitants of Hobbes's state of nature. So, instead of shooting wars and arms buildups, we will see intense corporatecompetition with firms engaging in espionage, information warfare (such as the hiring of "big gun" hackers) and guerillamarketing strategies. IN TERMS of the global balance of power, the rapid diffusion of knowledge and technology is

driving down America's edge in productive capacity and, as a consequence, its overall power position. Indeed, the transferof global wealth and economic power now under way-roughly from West to East-is without precedent in modern history interms of size, speed and directional flow. If these were the only processes at work, then the future of international politicsmight well conform to the benign, orthodox liberal vision of a cooperative, positive-sum game among states operatingwithin a system that places strict limits on the returns to power. But this is not to be because, in a break from old-worldgreat-power politics, there will be no hegemonic war to wipe the international slate clean. We will therefore be stuck withthe bizarre mishmash of global-governance institutions that now creates an ineffectual foreign-policy space. Trying tooverhaul existing institutions to accommodate rising powers and address today's complex issues is an impossible task. Sowhile liberals are correct to point out that the boom in global economic growth over the past two decades has allowedcountries to move up the ladder of growth and prosperity, this movement, combined with a moribund institutionalsuperstructure, creates a destabilizing disjuncture between power and prestige that will eventually make the world moreconfrontational. The question arises, with hegemonic war no longer in the cards, how can a new international order thatreflects these tectonic shifts be forged? Aside from a natural disaster of massive proportions (a cure most likely worse than

the disease itself), there is no known force that can fix the problem. THE PRIMARY cause of these tectonic shifts isAmerican decline. Hegemonic decline is inevitable because unchecked power tends to overextend itself and succumb to thevice of imperial overstretch; because the hegemon overpays for international public goods, such as security, while its free-riding competitors underpay for them; and because its once-hungry society becomes soft and decadent, engaging in self-destructive hedonism and overconsumption. In recent years, the America-in-decline debate of the 1980s and early 1990shas reemerged with a vengeance. Despite the fact that the United States is the lone superpower with unrivaled command ofair, sea and space, there is a growing chorus of observers proclaiming the end of American primacy. Joining the ranks ofthese "declinists," Robert Pape forcefully argued in these pages that "America is in unprecedented decline," having lost 30percent of its relative economic power since 2000.5 To be sure, the macrostatistical picture of the United States is a bleakone. Its savings rate is zero; its currency is sliding to new depths; it runs huge current-account, trade and budget deficits; itsmedium income is flat; its entitlement commitments are unsustainable; and its once-unrivaled capital markets are nowstruggling to compete with Hong Kong and London. The staggering costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, combinedwith the financial bailout and stimulus packages doled out in response to the subprime-mortgage and financial-credit crises,have battered the U.S. economy, opening the door for peer competitors to make substantial relative gains. The current bearmarket ranks among the worst in history, with the Dow and S&P down almost 50 percent from their 2007 peaks. The majorcause of our troubles, both in the short and long term, is debt: the United States is borrowing massively to finance currentconsumption. America continues to run unprecedented trade deficits with its only burgeoning peer competitor, China,which, based on current trajectories, is predicted to surpass the United States as the world's leading economic power by2040. As of July 2009, Washington owed Beijing over $800 billion, meaning that every person in the "rich" United Stateshas, in effect, borrowed about $3,000 from someone in the "poor" People's Republic of China over the past decade.6 Butthis devolution of America's status is truly inevitable because of the forces of entropy. No action by U.S. leaders can provea viable counterweight. AND AS power devolves throughout the international system, new actors will emerge and developto compete with states as power centers. Along these lines, Richard Haass claims that we have entered an "age ofnonpolarity," in which states "are being challenged from above, by regional and global organizations; from below, bymilitias; and from the side, by a variety of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and corporations." Of course, there isnothing especially new about this observation; cosmopolitan liberals have been pronouncing (prematurely, in my view) thedemise of the nation-state-the so-called "hollow state" and a crisis of state power-and the rise of nonstate actors for many

decades. What is new is that even state-centric realists like Fareed Zakaria are now predicting a post-American world, inwhich international order is no longer a matter decided solely by the political and military power held by a single hegemonor even a group of leading states. Instead, the coming world will be governed by messy ad hoc arrangements composed of ala carte multilateralism and networked interactions among state and nonstate actors. One wonders what order and concertedaction mean in a world that lacks fixed and predictable structures and relationships. Given the haphazard and incompletemanner by which the vacuum of lost state power is being filled, why expect order at all? THE MACROPICTURE thatemerges from these global trends is one of historically unprecedented change in a direction consistent with increasing

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A2 leadership scn [4/]entropy: unprecedented hegemonic decline; an unprecedented transfer of wealth, knowledge and economic power fromWest to East; unprecedented information flows; and an unprecedented rise in the number and kinds of important actors.Thus, the onset of this extreme multipolarity or multi-multipolarity will not herald, as some observers believe, a return tothe past. To the contrary, it will signal that maximum entropy is setting in, that the ultimate state of inert uniformity andunavailable energy is coming, that time does have a direction in international politics and that there is no going back

because the initial conditions of the system have been lost forever. If and when we reach such a point in time, much ofinternational politics as we know it will have ended. Its deep structure of anarchy-the lack of a sovereign arbiter to makeand enforce agreements among states-will remain. But increasing entropy will result in a world full of fierce internationalcompetition and corporate warfare; continued extremism; low levels of trust; the formation of nonstate identities thatfrustrate purposeful and concerted national actions; and new nongeographic political spaces that bypass the state, favorlow-intensity-warfare strategies and undermine traditional alliance groupings. Most important, entropy will reduce anddiffuse usable power in the system, dramatically reshaping the landscape of international politics. The United States willsee its relative power diminish, while others will see their power rise. To avoid crises and confrontation, these ongoingtectonic changes must be reflected in the superstructure of international authority. Increasing entropy, however, means thatthe antiquated global architecture will only grow more and more creaky and resistant to overhaul. No one will know whereauthority resides because it will not reside anywhere; and without authority, there can be no governance of any kind. Thealready-overcrowded and chaotic landscape will continue to be filled with more meaningless stuff; and the specter ofinternational cooperation, if it was ever anything more than an apparition, will die a slow but sure death.

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A2 Competitiveness1) Their Huston Chronicle evidence is about NASAthe private sector is beating even China

Musk, 11, Elon Musk is an industrial Entrepreneur, also known for PayPal, and CEO of SpaceX, 5/4/11, gd,http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

Whenever someone proposes to do something that has never been done before, there will always be skeptics. So when Istarted SpaceX, it was not surprising when people said we wouldnt succeed. But now that weve successfully proven

Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Dragon, theres been a steady stream of misinformation and doubt expressed about SpaceXs actuallaunch costs and prices. As noted last month by a Chinese government official, SpaceX currently has the best launch pricesin the world and they dont believe they can beat them. This is a clear case of American innovation trumping loweroverseas labor rates. I recognize that our prices shatter the historical cost models of government-led developments, butthese prices are not arbitrary, premised on capturing a dominant share of the market, or teaser rates meant to lure in aneager market only to be increased later. These prices are based on known costs and a demonstrated track record, and theyexemplify the potential of America's commercial space industry. Here are the facts: The price of a standard flight on a Falcon 9rocket is $54 million.We are the only launch company that publicly posts this information on our website (www.spacex.com).We have signed many legally binding contracts with both government and commercial customers for this price (or less).Because SpaceX is so vertically integrated, we know and can control the overwhelming majority of our costs. This is why Iam so confident that our performance will increase and our prices will decline over time, as is the case with every othertechnology. The average price of a full-up NASA Dragon cargo mission to the International Space Station is $133 million including inflation ,or roughly $115m in todays dollars, and we have a firm, fixed price contract with NASA for 12 missions. This price

includes the costs of the Falcon 9 launch, the Dragon spacecraft, all operations, maintenance and overhead, and all of thework required to integrate with the Space Station. If there are cost overruns, SpaceX will cover the difference. (Thisconcept may be foreign to some traditional government space contractors that seem to believe that cost overruns should bethe responsibility of the taxpayer.) The total company expenditures since being founded in 2002 through the 2010 fiscal year were less than$800 million, which includes all the development costs for the Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Dragon. Included in this $800 millionare the costs of building launch sites at Vandenberg, Cape Canaveral and Kwajalein, as well as the corporate manufacturingfacility that can support up to 12 Falcon 9 and Dragon missions per year. This total also includes the cost of five flights ofFalcon 1, two flights of Falcon 9, and one up and back flight of Dragon. The Falcon 9 launch vehicle was developed from a blanksheet to first launch in four and half years for just over $300 million.The Falcon 9 is an EELV class vehicle that generates roughlyone million pounds of thrust (four times the maximum thrust of a Boeing 747) and carries more payload to orbit than aDelta IV Medium. The Dragon spacecraft was developed from a blank sheet to the first demonstration flight in just over four years for about$300 million.Last year, SpaceX became the first private company, in partnership with NASA, to successfully orbit andrecover a spacecraft. The spacecraft and the Falcon 9 rocket that carried it were designed, manufactured and launched by

American workers for an American company. The Falcon 9/Dragon system, with the addition of a launch escape system,seats and upgraded life support, can carry seven astronauts to orbit, more than double the capacity of the Russian Soyuz,but at less than a third of the price per seat. SpaceX has been profitable every year since 2007, despite dramatic employee growthand major infrastructure and operations investments. We have over 40 flights on manifest representing over $3 billion inrevenues. These are the objective facts, confirmed by external auditors. Moreover, SpaceX intends to make far moredramatic reductions in price in the long term when full launch vehicle reusability is achieved. We will not be satisfied withour progress until we have achieved this long sought goal of the space industry. For the first time in more than threedecades, America last year began taking back international market-share in commercial satellite launch. This remarkableturn-around was sparked by a small investment NASA made in SpaceX in 2006 as part of the Commercial OrbitalTransportation Services (COTS) program. A unique public-private partnership, COTS has proven that under the rightconditions, a properly incentivized contractor even an all-American one can develop extremely complex systems onrapid timelines and a fixed-price basis, significantly beating historical industry-standard costs. China has the fastestgrowing economy in the world. But the American free enterprise system, which allows anyone with a better mouse-trap to

compete, is what will ensure that the United States remains the worlds greatest superpower of innovation.

2) Their Garretson evidence is non-uniqued by private sector advances

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A2 Competitiveness 2/3) No link to Segalinnovation is not needed for plan, 30 million is not nearly enough to trigger the link

anyway. This problem of magnitude is emblematic of the math of competitiveness theorists

Your competitiveness theorists are wrong on their math

Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,March/April 1994, Foreign Affairs,

http://www.pkarchive.org/global/pop.htmlOne of the remarkable, startling features of the vast literature on competitiveness is the repeated tendency of highlyintelligent authors to engage in what may perhaps most tactfully be described as "careless arithmetic." Assertions are madethat sound like quantifiable pronouncements about measurable magnitudes, but the writers do not actually present any dataon these magnitudes and thus fail to notice that the actual numbers contradict their assertions.Or data are presented that aresupposed to support an assertion, but the writer fails to notice that his own numbers imply that what he is saying cannot betrue. Over and over again one finds books and articles on competitiveness that seem to the unwary reader to be full ofconvincing evidence but that strike anyone familiar with the data as strangely, almost eerily inept in their handling of thenumbers. Some examples can best illustrate this point. Here are three cases of careless arithmetic, each of some interest inits own right.

4) Competition theory is flawed: countries economic gains are mutually beneficial

Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,March/April 1994, Foreign Affairs,http://www.pkarchive.org/global/pop.html

Moreover, countries do not compete with each other the way corporations do. Coke and Pepsi are almost purely rivals: onlya negligible fraction of Coca-Cola's sales go to Pepsi workers, only a negligible fraction of the goods Coca-Cola workersbuy are Pepsi products. So if Pepsi is successful, it tends to be at Coke's expense. But the major industrial countries, whilethey sell products that compete with each other, are also each other's main export markets and each other's main suppliersof useful imports. If the European economy does well, it need not be at U.S. expense; indeed, if anything a successfulEuropean economy is likely to help the U.S. economy by providing it with larger markets and selling it goods of superiorquality at lower prices. International trade, then, is not a zero-sum game. When productivity rises in Japan, the main resultis a rise in Japanese real wages; American or European wages are in principle at least as likely to rise as to fall, and inpractice seem to be virtually unaffected. It would be possible to belabor the point, but the moral is clear: while competitiveproblems could arise in principle, as a practical, empirical matter the major nations of the world are not to any significantdegree in economic competition with each other. Of course, there is always a rivalry for status and power -- countries that

grow faster will see their political rank rise. So it is always interesting to compare countries. But asserting that Japanesegrowth diminishes U.S. status is very different from saying that it reduces the U.S. standard of living -- and it is the latterthat the rhetoric of competitiveness asserts.

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A2 competitiveness 3/5) Alt causes solve FergusonEconomic recovery now

Needham 11, (Vicki Needham is a reporter, went to Trinity and Northwestern University, she is writing in The Hill, a high-qualityblog, 7/26/11, gd, http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/801-economy/173603-consumer-confidence-unexpectedly-rises-in-july)

Consumer confidence rose unexpectedly in July despite the stalled economic recovery as long-term expectations for jobsimproved, according to private research group's report on Tuesday.The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index

increased to 59.5 in July, from a revised 57.6 in June, hitting an eight-month low.With a flurry of bad economic indicatorsin recent months, analysts expected to see a drop to 56 in July. A reading of 90 indicates a healthy economy, but that levelhasn't been reached since before the recession started in December 2007."Overall, consumers remain apprehensive aboutthe future, but some of the concern expressed last month has abated," said Lynn Franco, director of The Conference BoardConsumer Research Center.The index measures how consumers feel about business conditions, the job market and the nextsix months.Consumer confidence has fallen since reaching a three-year high of 72 in February.

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***A2 Impact Advantage (jm)***

A2 Nuclear Fallout1) Theres a fundamental disconnect: The only asteroids we NEED time to detect are the ones too small to

do any damage.

2) No link to ONeillWe have other technologypeople arent that stupid3) Their ignoring of Timeframe and Probablity for Magnitude should be rejected

Rescher 83 (Nicholas, Professor of Philosophy at University of Pittsburgh, Risk: A Philosophical Introduction to the Theory ofRisk Evaluation and Management, Page 50)

The "worst possible case fixation" is one of the most damaging modes of unrealism in deliberations about risk in real-lifesituations. Preoccupation about what might happen "if worst comes to worst" is counterproductive whenever we proceedwithout recognizing that, often as not, these worst possible outcomes are wildly improbable (and sometimes do not deserveto be viewed as real possibilities at all).

4) Your impact wont happen for 500,000 years

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A2 Environmental Destruction1) Dont buy their hypea large asteroid hit in 1908, and everyone forgot about it

Lyne and Tauber 95 ( J.E. Lyne is asst Prof Aerospace Engineering @ U Tennessee, Micheal Tauber is a consulting prof ofaeronautics and astronautics @Stanford, 6/22/95, gd, http://web.utk.edu/~comet/papers/nature/TUNGUSKA.html)

More recent work has suggested that the object was a stony asteroid perhaps 60 meters in diameter.1 In contrast, Turco etal3concluded that the meteor was of cometary origin with an effective density of 0.003 gm/cm3 and a diameter of 1200

meters. The atmospheric trajectory of a meteor is influenced by mass loss due to ablation and fragmentation caused byenormous aerodynamic loads. The equations of motion for such a body have been described elsewhere.1,2An essentialaspect of modeling the entry involves accurately calculating the radiation-dominated aerodynamic heating. This can beapproximated using the Stefan-Boltzmann relation:

Asteroids wont hit

Bennett 10 (James T. Bennett, Dpt of Economics at GMU, The Doomsday Lobby: Hype and panic from sputniks, martians, andmarauding meteors, ISBN 978-1-4419-6684-1, 2010, gd)

From the fossil record, scientists believe that over the last 570 million years there have been five distinct episodes of massextinction, the most recent occurring 65 million years ago, as the Cretaceous period gave way to the Tertiary period. (Theprevious four episodes were the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, and Triassic.) None is believed to have killed off everyform of life on Earth, though the PermianTriassic event seems to have led to the disappearance of as high as 95% of all

species. During the KT Extinction, as it is known (K being the first letter of Kreidezeit, the German word for Cretaceous),the marine reptiles, the flying reptiles, and both orders of dinosaurs died out, in the words of the most noted modernexplainers of this fact. Dramatic extinctions occurred among the microscopic floating animals and plants as well, thoughsnakes, land plants, mammals, crocodiles, and various invertebrates survived, especially those smaller mammals that fed oninsects and decaying vegetation. In all, about half of the genera living at that time perished during the extinctionevent.11 What killed the dinosaurs? is one of those seemingly eternal scientific questions that engage the specialist, thegeneralist, the intelligent reader, and even children. The answers over the years have ranged from a drop in sea level tomassive volcanic eruptions and consequent blockage of sunlight, but for the last three decades the most commonlyaccepted, if still disputed, hypothesis is that an asteroid done it. In a sense, the current vogue for doomsday scenarios wasborn of a seminal paper by Luis W. Alvarez, Walter Alvarez, Frank Asaro, and Helen V. Michel in the June 6, 1980,number of Science. Titled Extraterrestrial Cause for the CretaceousTertiary Extinction, the article amounted to aparadigm shifter. Luis Alvarez was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, his son was a geologist, and the other two authorswere chemists. The paper adduced physical evidence for an extinction event that was quite literally out of this world.

Alvarez et al. discovered that iridium, an element common in meteorites but rare on earth, was found at uncommonly highlevels in rock strata of 65 million years ago. They hypothesized that the dinosaur-killing bodys impact threw rock upwards,and since what goes up must come down (except a portion of the ejecta that was hurled into space) it rained down upon thedinosaurs, killing all but the burrowed smaller creatures, many of which starved to death since most plant life was burnedoff the earth. Upon impact, the pulverized rock 60 times the objects mass12 would have been blasted into thestratosphere, where it blotted the sun and blocked photosynthesis. The forests burned, and the soot, too, blocked the healthyrays of our local star. The KT event created so thunderous a sonic boom that Any creatures within a thousand miles thatsurvived the initial impact were quite deaf once the thunderclap reached them.13 The authors describe it this way: ourhypothesis suggests that an asteroid struck the earth, formed an impact crater, and some of the dust-sized material ejectedfrom the crater reached the stratosphere and was spread around the globe. This dust effectively prevented sunlight fromreaching the surface for a period of several years, until the dust settled to earth. Loss of sunlight suppressed photosynthesis,and as a result most food chains collapsed and the extinctions resulted.14 (The likeliest crater caused by this hypothesizedKT extraterrestrial killer is the Chicxulub off the Yucatan Peninsula, which has been dated at 65 million years old. Thereare more than 100 terrestrial impact craters, or craters dug out on Earth by impacts. The most famous, and the firstrecognized as such, is Meteor, aka Barringer, Crater in Arizona.) It should be noted that the Alvarez et al. hypothesis wasnot universally accepted. As Peter M. Sheehan and Dale A. Russell wrote in their paper Faunal Change Following theCretaceousTertiary Impact: Using Paleontological Data to Assess the Hazards of Impacts, published in Hazards Due toComets & Asteroids (1994), edited by Tom Gehrels, many paleontologists resist accepting a cause and effect relationshipbetween the iridum evidence, the Chicxulub crater, and the mass extinction of 65 million years ago.15 For instance, DennisV. Kent of the LamontDoherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University, writing in Science, disputed that a highconcentration of iridium is necessarily associated with an extraordinary extraterrestrial event and that, moreover, a large

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A2 Environmental Destruction 2/asteroid is not likely to have had the dire consequences to life on the earth that they propose.16 Briefly, Kent argues thatthe Alvarez team mistakenly chose the 1883 Krakatoa eruption as the standard from it extrapolated the effects ofstratospheric material upon sunlight. Yet Krakatoa was too small a volcanic eruption from which to draw any suchconclusions; better, says Kent, is the Toba caldera in Sumatra, remnant of an enormous eruption 75,000 years ago. (Acaldera is the imprint left upon the earth from a volcanic eruption.) The volume of the Toba caldera is 400 times as great as

that of Krakatoa considerably closer to the effect that an asteroid impact might have. Yet the sunlight attenuation factor[for Toba] is not nearly as large as the one postulated by Alvarez et al. for the asteroid impact. Indeed, the Toba eruption isnot associated with any mass extinctions, leading Kent to believe that the cause of the massive extinctions is not closelyrelated to a drastic reduction in sunlight alone.17 Reporting in Science, Richard A. Kerr wrote that Many geologists,paleontologists, astronomers, and statisticians find the geological evidence merely suggestive or even nonexistent and thesupposed underlying mechanisms improbable at best. Even the iridium anomalies have been challenged: Bruce Corliss ofthe Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute argues that the major extinctions associated with the KT event were notimmediate and catastrophic but gradual and apparently linked to progressive climate change.18 Others argue that amassive volcanic event predating the Alvarezian killer asteroid created an overwhelming greenhouse effect and set thedinosaurs up for the knockout punch. A considerable number of scientists believe that gradually changing sea levels werethe primary cause of the KT Extinction. If either of these hypotheses is true and a substantial number of geologists holdthese positions then the killer asteroid is getting credit that it does not deserve.

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***A2 Probability adv***1) Your impact has NEVER HAPPENED to a human, and WILL NOT HAPPEN for another 500,000

years. It is not systemic, it is ridiculous.

Morrison and Chapman 92 (David Morrison works for NASA Ames Research Center, also the Chair of NASA;s internationalNEO detection workshop, Clark Chapman works for the planetary science institute, 1/25/92,gd,http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1992LIACo..30..223M&db_key=AST&page_ind=0&data_type=GIF&type=SCREEN_VIEW&classic=YES)

If this estimate is correct, then the chances of an asteroid catastrophe happening in the near futurewhile very low isgreater than many other threats to life that our society takes very seriously. For purposes of discussion, we adopt the onice-in-500,000 year estimate for the globally catastrophic impact. It is important to keep in mind that the frequency could begreater than this, although probably not by more than a factor of three. The frequency could equally well be a factor of threesmaller. Because the risk is very low of such an impact happening in the near future, the nature of the impact hazard isunique in our experience. Nearly all hazards we face in life actually happen to someone we know, or we read about themhappening in the newspapers, whereas no large impact has taken place within the total span of human history.

2) We are tracking the Asteroids that Matter

Stokes, Evans and Larson 02 (Grant Stokes and Jenifer Evans are at MIT, Stephen Larson is at UofA, In a $95 book,Asteroids III, December 1, 2002, gd, http://www.lpi.usra.edu/books/AsteroidsIII/pdf/3037.pdf)

In March 1998, the search system started operating in an asteroid search role as the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Researchproject (LINEAR) (Stokes, 2000) and has since provided 70% of the worldwide asteroid discovery rate. 3. SEARCHOBJECTIVES AND MOTIVATION Efforts to find and catalog asteroids over the past 200 years were initially inspired byscientific curiosity and a desire to understand the structure of the solar system. More recently these efforts have beenspurred by the NASA search goal and as part of the International Spaceguard effort. The NASA goal, mandated by the USCongress, is to discover 90% of all potential impactors with diameters in excess of 1 km by the year 2008 (NASA, 1998).One-kilometer-diameter asteroids are thought to mark the threshold size for globally catastrophic consequences in acollision, and various models indicate there are between 500 and 2100 such objects (Morrison et al., 1992; Rabinowitz etal., 2000; Bottke et al., 2000; Stuart, 2000)

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***A2 Asteroids Advantage (QQ)***1) Your Tracton 11 evidence is plain wrong. The asteroid will burn up, doing no damage to the earth.

This misrepresentation of a benign threat is par for the course in the realm of asteroid fear mongering.

Sutherland 11 (Paul Sutherland, a reporter (the evidence quotes some pHD), 06/23/11, gd,http://www.skymania.com/wp/2011/06/incoming-new-asteroid-will-scrape-past.html)

Asteroid 2011 MD is estimated to be between 10 yards and 50 yards wide. UK asteroid expert Dr Emily Baldwin, of Astronomy Now

magazine, told Skymania News: We are certain that it will miss us, but if it did enter the atmosphere, an asteroid this sizewould mostly burn up in a brilliant fireball, possibly scattering a few meteorites.

2) Your impact has NEVER HAPPENED to a human, and WILL NOT HAPPEN for another 500,000

years. It is not systemic, it is ridiculous.

Morrison and Chapman 92 (David Morrison works for NASA Ames Research Center, also the Chair of NASA;s internationalNEO detection workshop, Clark Chapman works for the planetary science institute, 1/25/92,gd,http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1992LIACo..30..223M&db_key=AST&page_ind=0&data_type=GIF&type=SCREEN_VIEW&classic=YES)

If this estimate is correct, then the chances of an asteroid catastrophe happening in the near futurewhile very low isgreater than many other threats to life that our society takes very seriously. For purposes of discussion, we adopt the onice-in-500,000 year estimate for the globally catastrophic impact. It is important to keep in mind that the frequency could be

greater than this, although probably not by more than a factor of three. The frequency could equally well be a factor of threesmaller. Because the risk is very low of such an impact happening in the near future, the nature of the impact hazard isunique in our experience. Nearly all hazards we face in life actually happen to someone we know, or we read about themhappening in the newspapers, whereas no large impact has taken place within the total span of human history.

3) Your ONeill evidence misses the point. The reason nobody spotted the asteroid is because nobody

cares about themthey just burn up in the atmosphere. We are tracking the big ones.

We are tracking the Asteroids that Matter

Stokes, Evans and Larson 02 (Grant Stokes and Jenifer Evans are at MIT, Stephen Larson is at UofA, In a $95 book,Asteroids III, December 1, 2002, gd, http://www.lpi.usra.edu/books/AsteroidsIII/pdf/3037.pdf)

In March 1998, the search system started operating in an asteroid search role as the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Researchproject (LINEAR) (Stokes, 2000) and has since provided 70% of the worldwide asteroid discovery rate. 3. SEARCH

OBJECTIVES AND MOTIVATION Efforts to find and catalog asteroids over the past 200 years were initially inspired byscientific curiosity and a desire to understand the structure of the solar system. More recently these efforts have beenspurred by the NASA search goal and as part of the International Spaceguard effort. The NASA goal, mandated by the USCongress, is to discover 90% of all potential impactors with diameters in excess of 1 km by the year 2008 (NASA, 1998).One-kilometer-diameter asteroids are thought to mark the threshold size for globally catastrophic consequences in acollision, and various models indicate there are between 500 and 2100 such objects (Morrison et al., 1992; Rabinowitz etal., 2000; Bottke et al., 2000; Stuart, 2000)

3) Their ignoring of Timeframe and Probablity for Magnitude should be rejected

Rescher 83 (Nicholas, Professor of Philosophy at University of Pittsburgh, Risk: A Philosophical Introduction to the Theory ofRisk Evaluation and Management, Page 50)

The "worst possible case fixation" is one of the most damaging modes of unrealism in deliberations about risk in real-life

situations. Preoccupation about what might happen "if worst comes to worst" is counterproductive whenever we proceedwithout recognizing that, often as not, these worst possible outcomes are wildly improbable (and sometimes do not deserveto be viewed as real possibilities at all).

4) Your Easterbrook evidence about asteroid finds is meaninglessthese asteroids are in the Kuiper Belt.

They will never hit earth. They might as well be arguing that Jupiter will strike Earth.

5) Their NRCNA evidence is NOT an inditeit makes no casual claims of any type

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A/2 HegChina wont be aggressive in space

Jia Cheng, a daily Chinese tabloid produced under the auspices of the official Chinese Communist Party newspaper, the People's

Daily,[1] focusing on international issues , Global Times, July 13, 2011 China opposed to space arms racehttp://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/665946/China-opposed-to-space-arms-race.aspx

China dismissed a report that said its space development aims to deter the US from using aircraft carriers in any future conflict, sayingChina is opposed to an arms race in space. According to Reuters, the Journal of Strategic Studies is set to publish a report that Chinamay already be able to match the US ability to image a known, stationary target and will likely surpass it in the flurry of launcheswhich are planned over the next two years. China has always adhered to the peaceful development of outer space, and is opposed to itsmilitarization, which would trigger an arms race. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Tuesday that space should onlybe used for peaceful purposes. China also asserts the need for international cooperation in space. It is willing to work with relevantparties to promote the peaceful development of space, Hong added. Stressing the potential threat of China's space developments to theUS, the report said China's strategically disquieting application of reconnaissance satellites is a targeting and tracking capability insupport of the anti-ballistic missile, which could hit US carrier groups. The report exaggerates China's military forces, Gu Guo liangdirector of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the GlobalTimes, adding that there is still a gap of military development between China and the US, evidenced by the differences in militaryspending of the two countries. US defense spending stands at $700 billion a year, dwarfing China's 800 billion yuan ($123.6 billion).Meanwhile, Reuters reported that China could begin testing its first aircraft carrier within weeks, sparking concerns about it

expanding military clout amid rows over the South China Sea. Ni Feng, deputy director of American Studies at the Chinese Academyof Social Sciences, told the Global Times that the advances of China's military and space technologies are within the scope of itsdevelopment needs, and China would not be able to challenge US forces simply by building its own aircraft carrier. The report cameas Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen began a visit to China from Saturday. Tuesday, Mullen observed an anti-terror drill and visited an air force base of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Shandong Province, the Xinhua News Agencyreported. Gu said that Mullen's visit to China aimed to enhance mutual trusts between the militaries, and overcome suspicion. The visito an airforce base showed that China is seeking to become more transparent in its military affairs, Gu added. He Xin and agenciescontributed to this story

Space Mil is a Terrible Idea: Destroys relations, Prompts 1 st strikes, Starts Arms race, Not governed by

WMD, Would be destroyed militarily

(Vasiliev 08, Victor Vasiliev is a part of the Permanent Mission of Russia to the UN in Geneva, 4-01-08, gd,

http://www.unidir.org/pdf/articles/pdf-art2822.pdf)

So, why do we need a PPWT? First, because without such a treaty it would be diffi cult to predict the development of thestrategic situation in outer space and on Earth due to the global operating range of space weapons. It would be impossible toclaim that space weapons were not targeted at a given nation. Moreover, space weapons will enable actors to discreetlytamper with outer space objects and disable them. Second, because the international situation would be seriouslydestabilized due to a possibility of unexpected, sudden use of space weapons. This alone could provoke pre-emptive actsagainst space weapons and, consequently, the spiral of an arms race. Third, because space weapons, unlike weapons ofmass destruction, may be applied selectively and discriminately, they could become real-use weapons. Fourth, because theplacement of weapons in outer space would arouse suspicions and tensions in international relations and destroy the current147 climate of mutual confi dence and cooperation in exploration of outer space. Fifth, because attaining monopoly ofspace weapons would be an illusionary goal, all kind of symmetrical and asymmetrical responses would inevitably follow,which in substance would constitute a new arms race, which is exactly what humankind wants to avoid.

Multiple technical barriers for both kinetic and laser weaponsTheresa Hitchens, Vice President of the Center for Defense Information, 2002. Weapons in Space: SilverBullet or Russian Roulette? http://www.cdi.org/missile-defense/spaceweapons.cfm

Indeed, the technical barriers to development and deployment of space-based weapons cannot be overestimated, even for theU.S. military. There are serious, fundamental obstacles to the development of both kinetic kill weapons and lasers both for useagainst targets in space and terrestrial targets not to mention the question of the staggering costs associated with launch andmaintaining systems on orbit. Problems with lasers include power generation requirements adding to size, the need for largequantities of chemical fuel and refueling requirements, and the physics of propagating and stabilizing beams across longdistances or through the atmosphere. Space-based kinetic energy weapons have their own issues, including achieving proper

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orbital trajectories and velocities, the need to carry massive amounts of propellant, and concern about damage to own-forces

A/2 Heg 2/

from debris resulting from killing an enemy satellite. Space-based weapons also have the problem of vulnerability, for example,predictable orbits and the difficulty of regeneration. A detailed discussion of technology challenges is beyond the scope of this paper, but acomprehensive primer on the myriad problems with developing space-based weapons is a September 1999 paper by Maj. William L. Spacy II, "Does theUnited States Need Space-Based Weapons?" written for the College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education at Air University, Maxwell Air ForceBase, Ala.

Countermeasures would overwhelm space weapons

Captain David Hardesty, U.S. Navy, teaches at Naval War Colleges Strategy and Policy Department, 2005.Space Based Weapons: Long Term Strategic Implications and Alternatives, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA521114&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

In general, space-basing weapons would offer an enemy a number of interesting targeting options. Even a small number ofkinetic weapons could have a devastating effect on space-launch or satellite-control facilities, large warships in port, andsensors involved in space and missile defense. Large numbers of conventional submunitions could attack military andeconomic targets across the continental United States. If the attack were preemptive, the chances of defeating it orpreventing extensive damage would be very low.

Brilliant Pebbles fails: will not work in an ideal world

Jeffrey Lewis, 7/20/05, researcher for DefenseTech, Brilliant Pebbles Returns, http://defensetech.org/2005/07/20/brilliant-pebblesreturns/

Long-time space-based missile defense advocate Lowell Wood, officially a scientist at Lawrence Livermore NationalLaboratory, has been talking up the Brilliant Pebbles concept that he pushed during the better part of my elementary schoolyears. Wood was at the Capitol Hill Club for an event sponsored by the American Foreign Policy Council and the MarshallInstitute. Sharon Weinberger at Defense Daily summarizes Woods talk (subscription only, I am afraid). Woodspresentation was entitled Ballistic Missile Defense in an Ideal World. Woods ideal world is one, presumably, wherethe laws of physics are substantially relaxed. One of his slides caught my eye: Total life-cycle cost to the Nation to own theBrilliant Pebbles defensive system was $11 B $11 B (89 $) CAIG-validated, DoD-certified-to-Congress cost estimate Tightconsensus of 3 from the bottom up cost-estimation projects All RDT&E, all production-&-deployment; 2 decades ops Totaldeployed constellation of 2000 Pebbles Worst-case GPALS threat: Typhoon salvo-launching off Bermuda Clearly metReagans ..impotent and obsolete.. spec for the SDI Higher cost estimates come from critics-&-opponents Manifestly,professional nafs ?Will you believe this?!? Whatever you think of the critics, the American Physical Society and

Congressional Budget Office (1996, 2002 and 2004) are not staffed by professional nafs. Of all people to hurl this charge,Dr. Wood is not the person with the most credibility. His days pimping the X-Ray laser remain a source of controversy.Worse, in my view, the technically savy Dr. Wood encrypted his .pdf file something that took me three seconds to defeatwith Elcomsoft. Lets hope Brilliant Pebbles fares better than Woods encryption when dealing with adversarycountermeasures

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2NC xt Heg

1) Their advantage is Non-uniquethe NSS has already been implemented

2) Russia had a plan to deflect, but it (a) didnt increase Heg (b) would have resulted in MORE impacts,

not less. Thats Hsu3) The US has already taken the lead in fighting threats against the EarthSolar flares. Their leadership

scenario is non-unique. Thats Vastag.

4) Their impact is too vaguethere is no indication that space leadership leads to conventional military

dominance.

5) Collapse is inevitable, because our Nation does not have the resources of other countries, but plan will

make the transition violent. That is Schweller.

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2NC Competitiveness xt1) The private sector is the most cost-efficient space explorer todaywe can get stuff into space for less

than anyone else, even China. Thats Musk

2) Their plan does not cost nearly enough to trigger the link. It is orders of magnitude too little, this is not

an isolated incident of faulty math, but emblematic of the faulty math present everywhere in their case.

Thats Krugman3) Competition is wrongeconomics are not 0-sum. Thats also Krugman.

4) The economy is in the middle of a long recovery nowtheir evidence assumes that the economic

decline of the past will continue. Thats Needham

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2NC Nuclear Fallout adv1) There are two types of asteroidsthe kind too small to do damage, or the big ones. We only need

nuclear weapons for the big ones, which we will see in time to mitigate fallout damage.

2) People are rationalnobody would intentionally bake the earth in radiation

3) Extend Reschertheir fixation on large impacthurts policymaking because what they say will never

happen.4) Their timeframe is ridiculousit will not happen for 500 years

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2NC Environmental Destruction

1) Extend Lyne and Taubertheir impact happened, and did not lead to anything memorable. Why do

we care?

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2NC Probability Xt1) Their impact HAS NEVER HAPPENED AND WILL NOT HAPPEN FOR HALF A MILLION

YEARS. Science says that their worries are ridiculousthats Morrison and Champman

2) The only Asteroids that could cause an impact are being tracked nowthats Stokes, Evans and

Larson.

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2NC Asteroids Advantage xt1) Dont buy their specifc scenariosit wont hit us. This is just another case of fearmongeringextend

Sutherland

2) Their impact HAS NEVER HAPPENED AND WILL NOT HAPPEN FOR HALF A MILLION

YEARS. Science says that their worries are ridiculousthats Morrison and Champman3) The only asteroids we are not tracking are the ones we do not care aboutthe only ones that matter

are the big ones, and we are tracking them.

4) Extend Reschertheir fixation on large impacthurts policymaking because what they say will never

happen.

5) They try to tell you that there are asteroids in space. There are. They are millions of miles away. They

will never hit us.

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2NC Space Weapons Advantage xt1) Their fear mongering is not truethe only Chinese that want to militarize space are the irrelevant

hardliners

2) Extend our evidence from the Russian delegation to the UNVasilev. Space Mil is a Terrible Idea

because it tanks soft power, Prompts 1st strikes, Starts a space Arms race, and nobody cares if they are

useda so-called real use weapon.3) Their tech simply cannot happenthere is no way to maintain kinetic or laser weapons. That is

Hitchens. Their plan does not solveit is spaceflight, not detection technology, that is the problem.

4) Space weapons are really easy to stopcountermeasures are cheap and easy to deploy. Space weapons

are nothing but an expensive ways to destroy decoy balloons.

5) Brilliant Pebbles was cancelled because it was a bad idea that wasted money and could never work.

Thats Lewis.

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Ptx Links

Increasing Defense Spending in Space would devastate negotiations between Obama and Republicans,

current compromise proves.

Andy Sullivan; Correspondent, political and general news, (Reuters) 1/12/2011:http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/12/us-usa-poll-spending-idUSTRE70B38620110112

Some 71 percent of those surveyed oppose increasing the borrowing authority, the focus of a brewing political battle overfederal spending. Only 18 percent support an increase The poll underscores the tough task ahead for U.S. lawmakers as thedebt nears its current ceiling of $14.3 trillion. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner last week warned that a failure to raisethe borrowing limit in the coming months could lead to "catastrophic economic consequences". Republicans, who woncontrol of the House of Representatives in November on a promise to scale back government, hope to pair any debt-ceilinghike with a commitment from President Barack Obama to reduce long-term spending. Republicans have vowed to slash $60billion from the budget as soon as March, but many of those cuts are not likely to be popular with the public. WHAT TOCUT? Only 24 percent say the country can afford to cut back on education spending, a likely Republican target, and 21percent support cuts to law enforcement. With the Pentagon fighting wars inAfghanistanand Iraq, 51 percent supportedcutbacks to military spending. Less than half, 45 percent, support an expected Republican effort to pare environmental

enforcement. Some 53 percent support cutting the budgets of financial regulators like the Securities and ExchangeCommission, in spite of the widespread consensus that a laxregulatory atmosphere contributed to the devastating financialcrisis of 2007-2009. And 47 percent support cutbacks to national parks, which were shuttered for several weeks during thebudget battles of 1995 and 1996. Expensive benefit programs that account for nearly half of all federal spending enjoywidespread support, the poll found. Only 20 percent supported paring Social Security retirement benefits while a mere 23supported cutbacks to the Medicare health-insurance program. Some 73 percent support scaling back foreign aid and 65percent support cutting back on tax collection. The poll of 1,021 U.S. adults was conducted between Friday and Monday. Ithas a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/12/us-usa-poll-spending-idUSTRE70B38620110112http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/12/us-usa-poll-spending-idUSTRE70B38620110112http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/12/us-usa-poll-spending-idUSTRE70B38620110112http://www.reuters.com/places/afghanistanhttp://www.reuters.com/places/afghanistanhttp://www.reuters.com/places/afghanistanhttp://www.reuters.com/finance/deals/regulatoryhttp://www.reuters.com/finance/deals/regulatoryhttp://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/12/us-usa-poll-spending-idUSTRE70B38620110112http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/12/us-usa-poll-spending-idUSTRE70B38620110112http://www.reuters.com/places/afghanistanhttp://www.reuters.com/finance/deals/regulatory


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Ptx 2/

New Spending creates massive backlash amongst majority of Republicans who want to cap spending

limits, destroys any chance of passing Debt Ceiling.Tina Korbe, Conservative Columnist and commentator; in the Center for Media and Public Policy 4/13/2011 -

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/04/13/sen-ron-johnson-debt-ceiling-debate-should-net-spending-cap/

While some members of Congress still attempt to unscramble all the details of the six-month spending dealstruck byleadership last week, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said hes already steeling himself for the next big debate.This whole CRskirmish and thats about all it is is just setting us up for what I think is the really big fight and thats over the debtceiling, Johnson said yesterday at The Bloggers Briefing.Speaking at Heritage shortly before his maiden Senate speech,the freshman senator from Oshkosh said the upcoming discussion about the debt ceiling offers spending-consciousmembers of Congress an unparalleled opportunity to negotiate major cuts and necessary spending caps.I think ourmaximum of leverage really is around that debt ceiling, he said. The Democrats in the Senate theyre going to beforced to vote for that debt ceiling increase or theyre going to shut the government down. The only way theyre going toget support from the Republicans like me is if they establish those hard spending caps.Known for hisbusiness backgroundand private-sector perspective, Johnson prides himself on his true status as a citizen-legislator. He said the presidentsweak position throughout the spending debate has evoked a certain realism in him.If we had a president right now whowas leading, he said, we could maybe accomplish something in the next year and a half. I havent seen that. Im notnecessarily confident thats going to happen. So, unfortunately, unless we get enough Senate Democrats to go along with usto establish hard spending caps, this is going to be kicked down to the 2012 election and thats what that election is going tobe about.Johnson personally favors a constitutional amendment to limit the size of spending in relation to GDP, in additionto a statute to do the same. Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) has introduced such an amendment, while Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) hasproposed legislation to statutorily reduce spending.But whatever the mechanism, Johnson said, spending caps are essentialto solve the debt problem the big picture that most preoccupies Johnson.The absolute first step has to be establishingthat hard spending cap, he said. To me, deficits, out-of-control spending, high unemployment, a sluggish economy those are all symptoms of the root cause. To me, the root cause absolutely is the size, the scope Im talking about all thethings the government is involved in that it never should have gotten involved in, all the regulatory overreach and thecost of government. Im looking for hard spending caps that actually address and attack that root cause.

Republicans are on board debt ceiling raise due to budget cuts spending would devastate support

BryanYurcan

. Journalist @ Christian Post.House to Vote on Spending Bill in Debt Row. July 19, 2011http://www.christianpost.com/news/house-to-vote-on-tea-party-inspired-spending-bill-52497/>] AC

The House of Representatives is sett o day to vote on a spending plan that would raise the debt ceiling another $2.4 trillionbut also require deep and immediate spending cuts. Republican Leaders will present the cut, cap, and balance plan, whichwould allow the federal government to borrow an additional $2.4 trillion to pay its debts, in exchange for $111 billion inspending cuts in the upcoming budget year,which begins Oct. 1.The deal will also require another $6 trillion in cuts overthe coming decade, proponents of the bill have said.

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http://blog.heritage.org/2011/04/13/sen-ron-johnson-debt-ceiling-debate-should-net-spending-cap/http://www.foundry.org/2011/04/13/morning-bell-read-before-you-vote/http://www.foundry.org/2011/04/13/morning-bell-read-before-you-vote/http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13952456http://ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/multimedia?ContentRecord_id=58676dcd-336a-44ec-bc28-870f6c295f3bhttp://ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/multimedia?ContentRecord_id=58676dcd-336a-44ec-bc28-870f6c295f3bhttp://ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/abouthttp://ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/abouthttp://ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/abouthttp://mikepence.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3946&Itemid=109http://corker.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=News&ContentRecord_id=b8aed8a6-5c9f-45f0-a1c6-48f6488b39de&ContentType_id=b94acc28-404a-4fc6-b143-a9e15bf92da4&Group_id=650e2033-9317-4405-a8df-47cdd1c9d515http://corker.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=News&ContentRecord_id=b8aed8a6-5c9f-45f0-a1c6-48f6488b39de&ContentType_id=b94acc28-404a-4fc6-b143-a9e15bf92da4&Group_id=650e2033-9317-4405-a8df-47cdd1c9d515http://ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/multimedia?ContentRecord_id=58676dcd-336a-44ec-bc28-870f6c295f3bhttp://ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/multimedia?ContentRecord_id=58676dcd-336a-44ec-bc28-870f6c295f3bhttp://blog.heritage.org/2011/04/13/sen-ron-johnson-debt-ceiling-debate-should-net-spending-cap/http://www.foundry.org/2011/04/13/morning-bell-read-before-you-vote/http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13952456http://ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/multimedia?ContentRecord_id=58676dcd-336a-44ec-bc28-870f6c295f3bhttp://ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/abouthttp://ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/abouthttp://mikepence.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3946&Itemid=109http://corker.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=News&ContentRecord_id=b8aed8a6-5c9f-45f0-a1c6-48f6488b39de&ContentType_id=b94acc28-404a-4fc6-b143-a9e15bf92da4&Group_id=650e2033-9317-4405-a8df-47cdd1c9d515http://ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/multimedia?ContentRecord_id=58676dcd-336a-44ec-bc28-870f6c295f3b


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SQUO solvesSQUO solvestech that will prevent impact is coming far before your impacts.

Lamb 10 (Robert Lamb has a BA from UTenn-Knoxville, and writes for howstuffworks, 5/5/10, gd,http://science.howstuffworks.com/stop-an-asteroid.htm)

With an estimated global nuclear arsenal of 22,300 warheads, humanity certainly has the nuclear weaponry to carry out astandoff explosion [source:]. As for moving them into position, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous-Shoemaker probe

successfully flew past an asteroid in 1997, orbited one in 2000 and became the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid in2001 [source:The key would be identifying the threat early enough to stage the mission. A number of additional asteroidmitigation tactics may become more feasible in the future. Scientists believe that robotic landers could be used to deflectasteroids, either via mounted thrusters or solar flares. The flares would reflect solar radiation, gradually nudging theasteroid away in the process. One proposed technique even calls for the use of an enormous spacecraft as a "gravitytractor," using its own mass to tug the deadly NEO away from Earth. Explore the links on the next page to learn more abouthow even a coat of white paint could help to save the world.

Squo destruction doesnt solveonly detectionBennett 10 (James T. Bennett, Dpt of Economics at GMU, The Doomsday Lobby: Hype and panic from sputniks, martians, andmarauding meteors, ISBN 978-1-4419-6684-1, 2010, gd)

By contrast, such threats as infectious diseases and nuclear war present a more real and immediate danger to Americans,

and to earthlings in general. Perhaps money would be better spent addressing those matters? Absent a panic, the lack of anypopular support for Earth defense vexes the Earth-savers. One lesson of human history, say Robert L. Park of theAmerican Physical Society, Lori B. Garver of the National Space Society, and Terry Dawson of the U.S. House ofRepresentatives, is that societies will not sustain indefinitely a defense against an infrequent and unpredictable threat.There is almost no popular constituency for asteroid defense, and it is sheer hubris to believe that any defense we arecapable of designing today will be of anything more than historical interest to our descendants a century or a millenniumhence.57 We are not the alpha and the omega. Our most sophisticated weapons will be to our distant descendants as spearsare to us.

Squo solves

Bennett 10 (James T. Bennett, Dpt of Economics at GMU, The Doomsday Lobby: Hype and panic from sputniks, martians, andmarauding meteors, ISBN 978-1-4419-6684-1, 2010, gd)

Thus asteroid deflection, rather than destruction by fragmentation, appears to be the most efficient strategy.47 (Theexception would be for very small bodies, which could be safely pulverized.) This is a tentative conclusion, with an

emphasis on tentative: the problem it seeks to solve may not present itself for another 50 million years. But for now, as ateam of researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences determined, destroying a killer asteroid with nuclear chargespresents an almost certainly insuperable technological problem.48 Because the technologies that might be employed todivert asteroids can be expected to change so rapidly in the coming decades, write Ahrens and Harris, it would bepremature to conduct detailed engineering studies or to build prototypes at this stage. The aerospaceindustrial complexmight demur, but the low probability of impact of hazardous asteroids, the high cost in the face of a low risk factor, andthe rapid changes that are to be expected in defense systems technology combine to make any significant expenditure onasteroid deflection programs at best unwise, at worst a colossal waste of money.49 The current technologies will beovertaken by new ones so quickly as to make any defense system almost instantly obsolete. Moreover, many astronomerswarn against letting fear of an exceedingly remote possibility stampede us into amassing an arsenal to fight the nonexistentthreat.

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http://science.howstuffworks.com/stop-an-asteroid.htmhttp://science.howstuffworks.com/stop-an-asteroid.htm


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Detect, not Deflect CPTEXT: The United States Federal Government should increase funding for deflections of Near Earth

Objects

OUR NET BENEFIT IS STOPPING RADIOACTIVE RAIN :Status quo deflection strategy results in radioactive rain

ONeill 8 (Ian, ONeill is a British solar physics doctor with nearly a decade of physics study and research experience,ApolloAstronaut Highlights Threat of Asteroid Impact, http://www.astroengine.com/2008/11/apollo-astronaut-highlights-threat-of-asteroid-strike/)

Unfortunately, the commonly held opinion is to dispense an incoming asteroid or comet with a few carefully placed atomicbombs (by a generic crew of Hollywood oil drillers). Alas, Armageddon this aint. Even if we were able to get a bomb ontothe surface of an incoming object, there is little hope of it doing any good (whether we get Bruce Willis to drop it off orlaunch it ICBM style or would that be IPBM, as in Interplanetary Ballistic Missile?). What if we are dealing with a near-Earth asteroid composed mainly of metal? A nuclear blast might just turn it into a hot radioactive lump of metal. What ifthe comet is simply a collection of loosely bound pieces of rock? The force of the blast will probably be absorbed as ifnothing happened. In most cases, and if we are faced with an asteroid measuring 10 km across (i.e. a dinosaur killer), itwould be like throwing an egg at a speeding train and expecting it to be derailed. There are of course a few situations where

a nuclear missile might work too well; blowing the object up into thousands of chunks. But in this case it would be likemaking the choice between being shot by a single bullet or a shot gun; its bad if you have one impact with a single lump ofrock, but it might be worse if thousands of smaller pieces make their own smaller impacts all over the planet. If you everwondered what it might be like to be sandblasted from space, this might be the way to find out! There may be a fewsituations where nuclear missiles are successful, but their use would be limited.

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International CPInternational Programs solve: Don Quijote

AFP 06 (The AFP is a newswire. 04/05/06,http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Europe_Sets_Next_Phase_In_Asteroid_Deflection_Project.html)

The European Space Agency (ESA) said it had shortlisted three European consortia to submit proposals for its Don Quijote

project, which seeks to deflect any future asteroid on a collision course with Earth. The teams are respectively led byAlcatel Alenia Space, Qinetiq of Britain and EADS Astrium, each of which has long experience in European spaceprojects, ESA said in a press release on Monday. ESA, helped by an independent panel of experts, will assess theirsubmissions in October, and the outcome will be made public in 2007.The Don Quijote mission will comprise twospacecraft .One of them, called Hidalgo, will smash into the asteroid at relatively high speed, while a second one, Sancho,will arrive earlier at the same asteroid to measure the variation on the asteroid's orbital parameters after the impact. The riskof an asteroid collision with Earth is extremely remote. But if such an event were to occur, and the rock were big, theimmediate devastation could be continent-wide and there could be lasting changes to the planet's weather system. The longreign of the dinosaurs is believed to have come to an abrupt end 65 million years ago when an asteroid or comet smashedinto modern-day Mexico. The collision kicked up so much dust that heat and light from the Sun were diminished,destroying much of Earth's vegetation and the larger species of land animals that depended on it. Deflection is considered asafer bet than blowing up a dangerous asteroid with nuclear bombs. An explosion would break the asteroid into chunks,with the risk these pieces could hit Earth in turn.

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Aff is Bad ScienceThe affirmative is all spin, no factBennett 10 (James T. Bennett, Dpt of Economics at GMU, The Doomsday Lobby: Hype and panic from sputniks, martians, andmarauding meteors, ISBN 978-1-4419-6684-1, 2010, gd)

Carl Sagan admitted, On first hearing about the Asteroid Hazard, many people think of it as a kind of Chicken Littlefable.1 That they do, but Chicken Little, he of the sky is falling! fame, never got the Hollywood treatment in the way

that the asteroid hazard has. The falling sky sells a planets worth of DVDs. If you want to send a message, call WesternUnion, famously said either or both Sam Goldwyn and Jack Warner, the movie moguls who share credit for this quotablequote. And while this may be good advice at the box office, in the late 1990s Hollywood did a send a message about BigScience to the popcorn-munchers in the dark: Be afraid. Be very afraid. The killer asteroids are coming. And as a corollary:Fund asteroid hunters. Your life and the future of the entire planet may depend on it. This message, however distortedthe details were once they hit the screen, was welcomed by one of the newest fields in end-of-the-world-prevention:astronomers who keep watch on comets, asteroids, and other bodies that may, at some time over the next 100 million or soyears, deliver a cosmic concussion (or worse) to the Earth.

The affirmative is a media constructiontheir fact has no basis in reality. Your impact has not

happened for 65 million years

Bennett 10 (James T. Bennett, Dpt of Economics at GMU, The Doomsday Lobby: Hype and panic from sputniks, martians, and

marauding meteors, ISBN 978-1-4419-6684-1, 2010, gd)First, the films, which came out one after the other. Deep Impact (1998) was director Mimi Leders big-budget scareathonabout a killer-comet whose approach to earth can only be stopped by a spaceship crew of young models, with the assistanceof the grizzled veteran Robert Duvall. President of the United States Morgan Freeman declares martial law. Governmentloves emergencies, after all, and as Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said in that endlessly repeatable remark, youshould never waste a good crisis. The coasts are wiped out by tsunamis when a fragment of the comet hits the earth. Thecourageous models in space, however, destroy the major part of the comet, and in a final scene we learn that the federalgovernment has survived and that, really, is the main thing, isnt it? No matter how many millions of workadayAmericans get swamped, as long as the Department of Commerce and the Federal Aviation Administration are stillhumming along, civilization is safe. A rival doomsday film, Michael Bays Armageddon, also released in 1998, was hokeyand entertaining and at a cost of $140 million, it could have covered the cost of all the near-earth object-tracking programsthen extant. The film begins with narrator Charlton Heston rehearsing the tale of the asteroid that caused the CretaceousTertiary extinction and concluding, It happened before. It will happen again. Its just a question of when. When, inArmageddon, is 18 days from the discovery that a rogue asteroid the size of Texas is headed for Earth. Its arrival will markthe end of mankind. We didnt see this thing coming? an agitated President asks the head of NASA, played by BillyBob Thornton. Thortons response is music to real-life asteroid hunters ears. Our object collision budget is a milliondollars, he says. That allows us to track about 3 percent of the sky, and its a big-ass sky. Message received. Boost thatbudget! Or else Earth and everything on it will be pulverized someday by a big-ass asteroid. An oil-rig crew, led by BruceWillis, saves the day by drilling 800 feet into the asteroid and delivering into its belly a nuclear device. They are aided by avessel that was designed for the Mars project a nice example of aeronautics/ astronomy fund-seeking symbiosis!Armageddon was something of a hit, and it is great fun to watch, but it would pale beside the real thing. Then again, therehasnt been a real thing for about 65 million years, so we and the

co asteroids neg ddi11

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