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***Prizes Mechanism***........................................................................................................................................3 1NC Prizes Shell......................................................................................................................................................3 XTPrizes Solve (1/4)............................................................................................................................................4 Prizes SolveSPS...................................................................................................................................................8 Prizes SolveMars.................................................................................................................................................9 2NC AT: Perm Do the CP..................................................................................................................................10 2NC AT: Links to Politics.....................................................................................................................................11 ***Property Rights Mechanism***.......................................................................................................................12 1NC Property Rights CP.....................................................................................................................................12 XT Property Rights Solve ..................................................................................................................................14 Space Settlement Prize Act Key Government Fails...........................................................................................15 Property Rights KeySpace Commercialization ................................................................................................................................................................................16 Property Rights SolveColonization ...................................................................................................................18 Property Rights SolveSpace Debris...................................................................................................................19 Property Rights SolveInternational Law............................................................................................................20 Property Rights SolveEconomy.........................................................................................................................21 2NC AT: Government First/Delay Perm ..............................................................................................................22 ***Tax Incentives Mechanism***........................................................................................................................23 1NC Tax Incentives CP......................................................................................................................................23 2NC Tax Incentives Solve ....................................................................................................................................24 2NC Tax Solvency Extensions..............................................................................................................................25 2NC AT: Links to Politics ....................................................................................................................................26 2NC AT: Links to Spending .................................................................................................................................27 1NC Liability Insurance CP................................................................................................................................28 2NC Liability Insurance Incentives Solve..........................................................................................................30 ***Generic Privatization Solvency***..................................................................................................................31 1NC Privatization Solves.......................................................................................................................................31 2NC Solvency Privatization Better than NASA.................................................................................................32 2NC Solvency Now Key.....................................................................................................................................37 XT Privatization Solves .....................................................................................................................................38 CP SolvesBetter than NASA.............................................................................................................................40 ***Specific Missions***.......................................................................................................................................42 CP SolvesAsteroids ...........................................................................................................................................42 CP SolvesConstellation .....................................................................................................................................43 CP SolvesExploration........................................................................................................................................44 CP SolvesSPS....................................................................................................................................................45 CP SolvesSPSAT: Private Industry Lacks Tech............................................................................................47 CP SolvesColonization......................................................................................................................................48 CP SolvesMoon Colonization/Mining...............................................................................................................49 CP SolvesMoon Colonization............................................................................................................................50 CP SolvesMoon Exploration..............................................................................................................................51 CP SolvesMars...................................................................................................................................................52 CP SolvesMarsAT: No Interest in Mission...................................................................................................53 CP SolvesISS.....................................................................................................................................................54 CP SolvesHelium-3 Mining...............................................................................................................................55

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CP SolvesLunar Mining.....................................................................................................................................56 CP SolvesSpace Tourism...................................................................................................................................57 CP SolvesSpace Research..................................................................................................................................58 CP SolvesMilitary Satellites..............................................................................................................................59 CP SolvesWeather Satellites..............................................................................................................................60 ***Advantage Areas***........................................................................................................................................61 CP SolvesAerospace Industry............................................................................................................................61 CP SolvesBeating China....................................................................................................................................62 CP SolvesCompetitiveness................................................................................................................................64 CP SolvesEconomy ...........................................................................................................................................65 CP SolvesInnovation .........................................................................................................................................66 CP SolvesInternational Cooperation..................................................................................................................67 CP SolvesPublic Support...................................................................................................................................68 CP SolvesReadiness...........................................................................................................................................69 CP SolvesSpace Leadership...............................................................................................................................70 CP SolvesSTEM................................................................................................................................................72 CP SolvesEarth Sciences...................................................................................................................................73 CP SolvesSpace Shuttle.....................................................................................................................................74 ***AT: Aff Arguments***....................................................................................................................................75 AT: No Private Capacity........................................................................................................................................75 AT: Its Illegal........................................................................................................................................................78 AT: DAs to Privatization......................................................................................................................................79 ***Net Benefits***...............................................................................................................................................83 1NC Politics Net Benefit ...................................................................................................................................83 2NC CP Avoids Politics......................................................................................................................................84 2NC More Popular than NASA..........................................................................................................................86 1NC Spending Net Benefit ................................................................................................................................87 2NC CP Avoids Spending..................................................................................................................................88 1NC Soft Power Net Benefit .................................................................................................................................91 2NC DSCOVR Net Benefit...................................................................................................................................95 ***AFF***............................................................................................................................................................97 AFF No Private Industry Exists..........................................................................................................................97 AFF Privatization Fails.......................................................................................................................................98 AFF Privatization Kills Jobs, Heg ..............................................................................................................................................................................100 AFF Privatization Bad......................................................................................................................................101 AFF NASA Key................................................................................................................................................102 AFF CP Links to Politics..................................................................................................................................103 AFF CP Links to Spending...............................................................................................................................104 AFF CP Doesnt Solve Leadership...................................................................................................................105 AFF SPS Privatization=Normal Means.........................................................................................................106 AFF Lunar Mining Fed Key..........................................................................................................................107

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***Prizes Mechanism*** 1NC Prizes Shell

The United States Federal Government should substantial monetary prizes for [insert mechanism of the plan]. Prizes solve development better than USFGprivate sector takes the risk, USFG takes the benefit Stine, 09 [Deborah D. Stine, Specialist in Science and Technology Policy, June 29, 2009, Federally Funded Innovation
Inducement Prizes, Page 19] In addition, NASA states that Centennial Challenge competitions have spurred the creation of new businesses and products, including innovations in pressure suit gloves and reusable rocket engines.54NASA makes the following assessment of the Centennial Challenge competitions: Prize programs encourage diverse participation and multiple solution paths. A measure of diversity is seen in the geographic distribution of participants (from Hawaii to Maine) that reaches far beyond the locales of the NASA Centers and major aerospace industries. The participating teams have included individual inventors, small startup companies, and university students and professors. An example of multiple solution paths was seen in the Regolith Excavation Challenge. NASA can typically afford one or two working prototypes but at this Challenge event, sixteen different working prototypes were demonstrated for the NASA technologists. All of these prototypes were developed at no cost to the government. The return on investment with prizes is high as NASA expends no funds unless the accomplishment is demonstrated. NASA provides only the prize money and the administration of the competitions is done at no cost to NASA by non-profit allied organizations. For the Lunar Lander Challenge, twelve private teams spent nearly 70,000 hours and the equivalent of $12 million trying to win $2 million in prize money. Prizes also focus public attention on NASA programs and generate interest in science and engineering. During the recent Lunar Lander Challenge, a live webcast had over 45,000 viewers and over 100,000 subsequent downloads. Prizes also create new businesses and new partners for NASA. The winner of the 2007 Astronaut Glove Challenge started a new business to manufacture pressure suit gloves. Armadillo Aerospace began a partnership with NASA related to the reusable rocket engine that they developed for the Lunar Lander Challenge, and they also sell the engine commercially.

10 million dollar prizes solve: precedent, expert consensus Presidents Commission on Implementation of US Space Exploration Policy, 04 (The Commission is made up of
a number of industry and government members, viewable in Appendix D of the liked document, 06/4/04, gd, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/moontomars/docs/M2MReportScreenFinal.pdf) Prizes. The Commission heard testimony from a variety of sources commenting on the value of prizes for the achievement of technology breakthroughs. Examples of the success of such an approach include the Orteig Prize, collected by Charles Lindbergh for his solo flight to Europe, and the current X-Prize for human suborbital flight. It is estimated that over $400 million has been invested in developing technology by the X-Prize competitors that will vie for a $10 million prize a 40 to 1 payoff for technology. The Commission strongly supports the Centennial Challenge program recently established by NASA. This program provides up to $50 million in any given fiscal year for the payment of cash prizes for advancement of space or aeronautical technologies, with no single prize in excess of $10 million without the approval of the NASA Administrator. The focus of cash prizes should be on The Commission recommends NASA aggressively use its contractual authority to reach broadly into the commercial and nonprofit communities to bring the best ideas, technologies, and management tools into the accomplishment of exploration goals. A space industry capable of contributing to economic growth, producing new products through the creation of new knowledge and leading the world in invention and innovation, will be a national treasure. Such an industry will rely upon proven players with aerospace capabilities, but increasingly should encourage entrepreneurial activity. maturing the enabling technologies associated with the vision. NASA should expand its Centennial prize program to encourage entrepreneurs and risk-takers to undertake major space missions. Given the complexity and challenges of the new vision, the Commission suggests that a more substantial prize might be appropriate to accelerate the development of enabling technologies. As an example of a particularly challenging prize concept, $100 million to $1 billion could be offered to the first organization to place humans on the Moon and sustain them for a fixed period before they return to Earth. The Commission suggests that more substantial prize programs be considered and, if found appropriate, NASA should work with the Congress to develop how the funding for such a prize would be provided

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XTPrizes Solve (1/4)

NASA has failed the USPrivate Exploration is needed, prizes solve Hudgins 04, Edward L. Hudgins, director of The Objectivist Center, is the editor of the Cato Institute book, Space: The FreeMarket Frontier, 1/28/04, gd, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2514 The reaction to President Bush's plan for a permanent moon base and a trip to Mars is, "Great! It's about time NASA stopped going around in circles in low Earth orbit and returns to real science and exploration." Unfortunately, there's not a snowball's chance in the sun that the same agency that currently is constructing a downsized version of its originally planned space station, decades behind schedule, at 10 times its original budget, a few hundred miles up in orbit, will be able to build a station several hundred thousand miles away on the moon. If Americans are again to walk on the moon and make their way to Mars, NASA will actually need to be downsized and the private sector allowed to lead the way to the next frontier. The lunar landings of over three decades ago were among the greatest human achievements. Ayn Rand wrote that Apollo 11 "was like a dramatist's emphasis on the dimension of reason's power." We were inspired at the sight of humans at our best, traveling to another world. In announcing NASA's new mission, President Bush echoed such sentiments, speaking of the American values of "daring, discipline, ingenuity," and "the spirit of discovery." But after the triumphs of Apollo, NASA failed to make space more accessible to mankind. There were supposed to be shuttle flights every week; instead, there have been about four per year. The space station was projected to cost $8 billion, house a crew of 12 and be in orbit by the mid-1990s. Instead, its price tag will be $100 billion and it will have only a crew of three. Worse, neither the station nor the shuttle does much important science. Governments simply cannot provide commercial goods and services. Only private entrepreneurs can improve quality, bring down the prices, and make accessible to all individuals cars, airline trips, computers, the Internet, you name it. Thus, to avoid the errors of the shuttle and space station, NASA's mission must be very narrowly focused on exploring the moon and planets, and perhaps conducting some basic research, which also might serve a defense function. This will mean leaving low Earth orbit to the private sector. Thus, the shuttle should be given away to private owners. The United Space Alliance, the joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed-Martin that refurbishes the shuttle between flights, would be an obvious candidate. Let a private owner fly it for paying customers-including NASA, if necessary -- if it is still worth flying. NASA also should give up the money-draining space station, and sooner rather than later. The station might be turned over to international partners or, better still, to the mostly private Russian rocket company, Energia -- and the Western investors who were in the process of commercializing and privatizing the Mir space station before the Russian government brought it down for political reasons. If need be, NASA can be a rentpaying station tenant. NASA centers that drive up its overall budget but do not directly contribute to its mission should be shut down. If the government wants to continue satellite studies of the climate and resources or other such functions, they could be turned over to other agencies, such as EPA and Interior Department. NASA and the rest of the government should contract for launch services with private companies, which would handle transportation to and from low Earth orbit. Contracting with private pilots with private planes is what the Post Office did in the 1920s and 1930s, which helped the emerging civil aviation sector. Further, to facilitate a strong private space sector, the government needs to further deregulate launches, export licensing and remove other barriers to entrepreneurs. Creating enterprise zones in orbit would help make up for government errors of the past. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher proposes a "Zero Gravity, Zero Tax" plan that would remove an unnecessary burden from "out-of-this-world risk-takers." NASA will also need to do business in new, innovative ways. For example, if a certain technology is needed for a moon mission, NASA could offer a cash prize for any party that can deliver it. The federal government used such an approach for aircraft before World War II, modeled after private prizes that helped promote civil aviation. Even if the federal government foots the bill for a moon base, it should not own it. Rather, NASA should partner with consortia of universities, private foundations and even businesses that are interested in advancing human knowledge and commercial activities.

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XTPrizes Solve (2/4)

Prizes solvereduces risk, allows private sector growth Sterner 10, Eric R. Sterner is a policy analyst at the George C. Marshall Institute, served as Associate Deputy Administrator, Policy
and Planning and Acting Chief of Strategic Communications at NASA, served as the lead policy staffer for the Committee on Armed Services in the U.S. House of Representatives, served on the Committee on Science in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he worked on all major space-related received a bachelor of arts degree in Russian/U.S.S.R. Area Studies and International Studies with School Honors from The American University, a master's degree in Security Policy Studies and a master's degree in Political Science from The George Washington University, gd, April 2010, http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/798.pdf True support for the burgeoning commercial human spaceflight industry would significantly limit the amount of government intervention in the infant marketplace, lest the distortions created by real-, or near-monopsonistic government domination of demand and capital markets swamp free market signals. In the long run, the best approach may be to follow the XPrize model and create an award for the first company that meets certain very simple mission goals, such as carrying three people to the ISS orbit and demonstrating the ability to rendezvous and dock with another space object. Such an approach would theoretically reduce the cost of private capital by improving the possible returns on an investment. At the same time, it would reduce government financial risk by withholding cash until a winner had actually earned the prize. This differs from the COTS program in that the goal of COTS is to meet NASA-unique requirements for access to the space station, which requires intensive government oversight, whereas the prize programs goal is to foster private sector innovation for its own sake, mandating considerably less government oversight. (The FAA would still be involved to regulate safety of passengers and the public.

Prizes Solve Price, Speed, Empirics Davidian 05, Ken Davidian is the director of Research at the FAA, previously asst. Director of Operations for NASA, MS
Mechanical Engineering from Case Western, 09/05, gd, http://sci2.esa.int/Conferences/ILC2005/Manuscripts/DavidianK-01-DOC.pdf Prize competitions throughout history have proven to be cost-effective and efficient means to stimulate technology development in a variety of socially beneficial areas. Review and study of these prize programs has been adopted by NASA to stimulate technology development for the U.S. government. A 1999 report from the National Academy of Engineering, U.S. space policy, the Vision for Space Exploration, and the Aldridge Commission report all encouraged the participation of private industry in the fulfillment of NASAs missions. These factors, plus the influence of prize activities in the private sector (i.e. the X PRIZE) and the government (i.e., the DARPA Grand Challenge), encouraged NASA to create the Centennial Challenges program. Centennial Challenges has divided its competitions into four categories: Flagship, Keystone, Alliance, and Quest. Flagship Challenges encompass entire missions or systems with purses in the tens of millions of dollars. Keystone Challenges focus on simple systems or individual technologies with purses in the ones of millions. Alliance Challenges are smaller versions of Keystone Challenges with purse values in the hundreds of thousands. Quest Challenges focus on outreach and education for the general public of all ages. Within the first year of its creation, Centennial Challenges has announced a number of competitions, including: the Tether Challenge, the Beam Power Challenge, the MoonROx Challenge, and the Astronaut Glove Challenge.

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XTPrizes solve (3/4)

Prizes Solve empirics Contest Design checks back your solvency deficits Davis and Davis 04, Lee Davis is a professor at the Copenhagen Buisness School, Jerome Davis is affiliated with Dalhousie
University, paper was published for the 2004 DRUID conference, 06/14/04, gd, http://www.druid.dk/conferences/summer2004/papers/ds2004-114 The prize systems in our cases represent a variety of motivations and outcomes. The early aviation contests stimulated the innovation of bigger and better aircraft, as fledgling firms competed to achieve ever increasing performance goals (thus a prize to cross the English Channel was followed fifteen years later with a prize for the first trans-Atlantic flight). Thus prizes contributed to the development of two huge industries: aircraft manufacture, and international air service. The prizes for human-powered flight provided no immediate commercial gain, but did stimulate related innovation in environmentally friendly technologies, and provided inputs into military and space programs. Finally, the prize for energy efficient refrigerators is valuable for what it demonstrates about the use of incentives to achieve the most efficient prize outcome (if not for its successful commercialization). What areas of future investigation are suggested by these results? First of all, our findings demonstrate a need to investigate more closely the spillover and reputation signaling effects from prize activities. Whirlpools development of ExacTrack benefited the utilities sponsoring SERP. Dupont reaped sufficient reputational gains from the Gossamer Albatross that it backed MacCreadys later solar powered aircraft. To return to Kremers analysis of the vaccine proposal, the marketing costs of new drugs can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. A biotech firm that wins a widely recognised prize for a anti-AIDS vaccine might reap many millions in saved marketing costs and extra sales, not only for the vaccine concerned but for other products also identified with the prize winning firm. Thus prizes have important positive externalities for their sponsors. For one thing, prizes promote innovative activities of sponsor interest and divert societal resources towards these ends. For another, prizes signal a sponsor profile to the world at large. A major theme in the technology management literature concerns the puzzle of how utilise scarce R&D resources to maximise corporate R&D returns. This literature ignores the possibilities for augmenting existing R&D efforts with prize contests, in a sense "outsourcing" R&D. Through designing contests aimed at noncore R&D activities, a firm can draw on outside resources while reducing internal R&D overheads. Such a strategy might not yield significant R&D savings, but, depending on the nature of the contest design, give the firms R&D managers access24 to a wealth of informative material which otherwise might not be obtainable, even should the prize never be awarded.

Free Market combined with Prizes spurs innovation

Bloch et al 99, Erich Bloch and his colleagues are members of the Steering Committee for the Workshop to Assess the potential for
promoting technological advance through Government-Sponsored Prizes and Contests, submitted and peer reviewed to the national Academy of Engineering, 04/30/99, gd, https://download.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9724 The steering committee recommends that Congress encourage federal agencies to experiment more extensively with inducement prize contests in science and technology competitions designed to foster progress toward or achievement of a specific objective by offering a named prize or awardas a complement to their existing portfolio of science and technology policy instruments. At present the U.S. federal government makes very little use of inducement prizes in science and technology. However, the recent history of inducement prizes, most privately sponsored, and a growing body of research on contests, grants, procurement contracts, and the optimal design of federal R&D programs, suggest that it may make sense for the federal government to make more extensive use of explicit inducement prizes to advance research, technology development, and technology deployment toward specific societal ends. XTPrizes Solve (3/4)

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XTPrizes Solve(4/4)
Prizes stimulate a spectrum of innovation Bloch et all 99, Erich Bloch and his colleagues are members of the Steering Committee for the Workshop to Assess the potential
for promoting technological advance through Government-Sponsored Prizes and Contests, submitted and peer reviewed to the national Academy of Engineering, 04/30/99, gd, https://download.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9724 Inducement prize contests may be used to pursue many different objectivesscientific, technological and societal. In particular, the steering committee believes they might be used profitably to identify new or unorthodox ideas or approaches to particular challenges, to demonstrate the feasibility or potential of particular technologies, to promote the development and diffusion of specific technologies, to address intractable or neglected societal challenges, or to educate the public about the excitement and usefulness of research and innovation. Moreover, prize contests can be designed to stimulate effort across the spectrum of research and innovation efforts, including basic research, technology development, technology deployment and diffusion, and managerial/organizational innovation. To encourage agencies to experiment with inducement prize contests, Congress should consider providing explicit statutory authority and, where appropriate, credible funding mechanisms for agencies to sponsor and/or fund such contests. Congress and federal agencies should approach contest structures and administration flexibly, and consider using a variety of contest models, including contests that are funded and administered by agencies, contests that are initiated and administered by agencies yet privately funded, and contests that are initiated by agencies but privately funded and administered. The design of any such experiment should include mechanisms for appropriating prize money, for flexibly distributing intellectual property rights, and for reducing political influence. Moreover, prize contest rules should be seen as transparent, simple, fair, and unbiased. Contest rewards should be commensurate with the effort required and goals sought. Finally, if such a policy experiment is initiated, it should be time-limited, and the use of prizes and contests should be evaluated at specified intervals by the agencies involved to determine their effectiveness and impact.

Prizes solveCreate incentive for innovation Garmong 04 Robert Garmong writes for the Ann Ryand Institute, Teaches philosophy at Texas A&M, Ph.D in philosophy in 2002
at UT-Austin, 06/27/04, gd, http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/science/space/3763-privatize-space-exploration-the-free-marketsolution-for-america-039-s-space-program.html Nor would it be difficult to spur the private exploration of space--it's been happening, quietly, for years. The free market works to produce whatever there is demand for, just as it now does with traditional aircraft. Commercial satellite launches are now routine, and could easily be fully privatized. The so-called X Prize, for which SpaceShipOne is competing, offers incentive for private groups to break out of the Earth's atmosphere.But all this private exploration is hobbled by the crucial absence of a system of property rights in space. Imagine the incentive to a profit-minded business if, for instance, it were granted the right to any stellar body it reached and exploited.We often hear that the most ambitious projects can only be undertaken by government, but in fact the opposite is true. The more ambitious a project is, the more it demands to be broken into achievable, profit-making steps--and freed from the unavoidable politicizing of government-controlled science. If space development is to be transformed from an expensive national bauble whose central purpose is to assert national pride to a practical industry, it will only be by unleashing the creative force of free and rational minds.We have now made the first steps toward the stars. Before us are enormous technical difficulties, the solution of which will require even more heroic determination than that which tamed the seas and the continents. To solve them, America must unleash its best engineering minds, as only the free market can do.

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Prizes SolveSPS
Prizes solve SPS spurs development NSSO 07, National Security Space Office, October 10,2007, http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/final-sbsp-interimassessment-release-01.pdf, Space Based Solar Power As an Opportunity for Strategic Security, pg c6. DKreus The private sector should be engaged. The new space companies working on reusable launch, space stations and other technologies should be consulted and encouraged as well as the traditional large aerospace companies. Both may have the vision, creativity and drive necessary to help make SBSP happen. Prizes for solutions to specific issues have been shown to be valuable. Appropriate prizes should be funded and publicized. A board of advisors should be created. It should consist of interested parties from a wide variety of industries who are committed to helping to make SBSP a reality.

Rouge, 7 Acting Director, National Security Space Office (Joseph D., 10/9. SpaceBased Solar Power As an Opportunity for
Strategic Security, http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=100&ved=0CE8QFjAJOFo&url=http%3A%2F %2Fwww.nss.org%2Fsettlement%2Fssp%2Flibrary%2Ffinal-sbsp-interim-assessment-release01.pdf&ei=9fIATrqrI83IswbOsOCyDQ&usg=AFQjCNHZbOQGqRh8gMo6OtfDmotWq-XNw&sig2=MHRakSQig4ZDGoYO00OxRg) All previous work on SpaceBased Solar Power, Solar Power Satellites and/or Space Solar Power should be reviewed. Much of that has already been done for this SBSP Architecture Study and C - 5 many of the writers of these reports have contributed valuable feedback, thoughts and advice to this process. An inventory should be created of who (individuals, corporations and organizations) has the expertise related to the various areas discussed in the studies and who is actively working on the research and development needed to make SBSP a reality. Areas where research is needed must be identified and funded. Debates have arisen amongst the contributors as to the value of various competing technologies. More details on the technological criteria need to be explored and tested. These must be compared and the most practical and viable, focused upon. The private sector should be engaged. The new space companies working on reusable launch, space stations and other technologies should be consulted and encouraged as well as the traditional large aerospace companies. Both may have the vision, creativity and drive necessary to help make SBSP happen. Prizes for solutions to specific issues have been shown to be valuable. Appropriate prizes should be funded and publicized. A board of advisors should be created. It should consist of interested parties from a wide variety of industries who are committed to helping to make SBSP a reality.

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Prizes SolveMars
Prizes solve a mission to mars. Hudgins 2001 (Edward L., director of regulatory studies CATO, Cato Handbook for Congress: Policy
Recommendations for the 107th Congress (2001) hss Rather than build their own probes, even if they are carried into space by private launchers, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other NASA or government agencies should allow scientists to purchase data from the private sector. In effect, as part of a builddown of NASA, government science agencies would set a price for certain data and allow privatesector providers to compete with one another to acquire the data in a costeffective manner that would allow them to make a profit. That approach was considered for one of the toughest possible projects. In 1987 88 an interagency U.S. government working group considered the feasibility of offering a one-time prize and a promise to rent to any private group that could deliver a permanent manned Moon base. When asked if such a station was realistic, private-sector representatives answered yes, but only if NASA stayed out of the way and did not force the private providers to use the shuttle or the proposed station. Needless to say, that approach never bore any fruit. It has been revived by Zubrin, who suggests that offering a $20 billion prize might be the best way to fund a manned mission to Mars.

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2NC AT: Perm Do the CP

1) It is severance Our Presidents Commission on Implementation of US Space Exploration Policy evidence indicates that only 10mn dollars would be spend by CP action. The plan funds by normal means, which involves a) Other funding mechanisms than CP actionthis severs out of normal means funding mechanisms Normal means is not substantially prizes Bloch et al 99, Erich Bloch and his colleagues are members of the Steering Committee for the Workshop to Assess the potential for
promoting technological advance through Government-Sponsored Prizes and Contests, submitted and peer reviewed to the national Academy of Engineering, 04/30/99, gd, https://download.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9724 The steering committee recommends that Congress encourage federal agencies to experiment more extensively with inducement prize contests in science and technology competitions designed to foster progress toward or achievement of a specific objective by offering a named prize or awardas a complement to their existing portfolio of science and technology policy instruments. At present the U.S. federal government makes very little use of inducement prizes in science and technology. However, the recent history of inducement prizes, most privately sponsored, and a growing body of research on contests, grants, procurement contracts, and the optimal design of federal R&D programs, suggest that it may make sense for the federal government to make more extensive use of explicit inducement prizes to advance research, technology development, and technology deployment toward specific societal ends.

b) Even if they win that normal means is ONLY prizes, they still need to win that normal means is 10 million dollar prizes. Any more, and they sever out of this additional funding. Current NASA prizes are 2,000 times more than 10 million Hudgins 2001 (Edward L., director of regulatory studies CATO, Cato Handbook for Congress: Policy
Recommendations for the 107th Congress (2001) hss Rather than build their own probes, even if they are carried into space by private launchers, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other NASA or government agencies should allow scientists to purchase data from the private sector. In effect, as part of a builddown of NASA, government science agencies would set a price for certain data and allow privatesector providers to compete with one another to acquire the data in a costeffective manner that would allow them to make a profit. That approach was considered for one of the toughest possible projects. In 1987 88 an interagency U.S. government working group considered the feasibility of offering a one-time prize and a promise to rent to any private group that could deliver a permanent manned Moon base. When asked if such a station was realistic, private-sector representatives answered yes, but only if NASA stayed out of the way and did not force the private providers to use the shuttle or the proposed station. Needless to say, that approach never bore any fruit. It has been revived by Zubrin, who suggests that offering a $20 billion prize might be the best way to fund a manned mission to Mars.

2) It makes plan a moving targetX-apply our Bloch and Hudgins evidence as to how plan was funded in the 1AC. They literally change the plan funding by twenty orders of magnitude 3) The above reasons are voters for fairness

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2NC AT: Links to Politics

The space lobby loves the CP prevents backlash Berger, 06 staff writer for space.com (Brian, 2/27. Space Groups Lobby Congress To Support Entrepreneurs.
http://spacefrontier.org/2010/04/21/obama-champions-private-enterprise-in-space-over-bipartisan-support-for-socialist-nasaprogram/) About 40 members of the grassroots space advocacy group ProSpace are descending on Capitol Hill to promote a

legislative agenda big on prize competitions and other government-backed efforts intended to foster commercial space transportation services. ProSpace has been lobbying Congress every March for the past decade, pushing initiatives meant in one way or another to open space to the average citizen. Prize competitions were featured prominently in ProSpace's 2005 "March Storm" agenda with the group urging lawmakers to give NASA authority to put up cash prizes in excess of $250,000 as a way to foster creative solutions to some of the agency's technological needs. The NASA Authorization Act of 2005, which became law late last year, granted the U.S. space agency $10 million in prizemaking authority and permits the agency to put up even bigger prizes if it first gets approval from its congressional oversight committees. ProSpace wants to see expanded use of prize competitions to spur space innovations. As such, the group is urging lawmakers to give NASA the full $35 million the agency originally envisioned spending on the Centennial Challenges prize-competition program in 2007. The White House budget request, sent to Congress Feb. 6, seeks only $10 million for the program. ProSpace will also be asking members of Congress to support the introduction and passage of legislation creating a new government entity called the National Space Prize Board and give it $100 million a year to sponsor prize competitions that NASA might see no reason to fund. "Centennial Challenges would not have offered the Ansari X Prize because NASA does not need a suborbital crewed spacecraft," ProSpace President Marc Schlather said. "But I don't think you will find anyone in the space industry who doesn't think it was a huge step forward when Burt Rutan won that prize." The National Space Prize Board, as envisioned by ProSpace, would consist of four presidential appointees and the heads of NASA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the departments of Commerce and Transportation. Schlather said the Space Prize Board would offer prizes of up to $250 million, for example, to the first nongovernmental team to conduct an orbital spaceflight with a crew. Another legislative initiative being pushed by ProSpace this year is the establishment of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Center for Entrepreneurial Space Access, or ACES. ProSpace will be encouraging members of the House Armed Services Committee to include language in this year's defense authorization bill establishing the center and giving it an initial $5 million budget. Schlather said the purpose of the center, which it is proposing be located at Wright Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton, Ohio, would be to promote synergy between the Air Force and entrepreneurial space firms working on so-called operationally responsive spaceflight capabilities of interest to the Pentagon. "You only have to look at aviation in the first half of the last century and see how government and industry worked together to advance the state of the art," Schlather said. "Having a similar situation in spaceflight can only be advantageous." Schlather said the same mix of responsiveness and affordability that some of the entrepreneurial launch firms developing suborbital and orbital launch vehicles need to serve commercial markets are the same capabilities the Pentagon is trying to foster through efforts like the Falcon small launch vehicle program. Some of these same entrepreneurial space firms also are interested in helping NASA resupply the space station once the space shuttle retires come 2010. ProSpace volunteers will also be urging lawmakers to fully fund NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) flight-demonstration effort. NASA intends to spend $500 million through 2010 to help bring to market new launch services capable of delivering cargo and eventually crew to the space station. Schlather said keeping this long-sought effort on track is critical. "It is our feeling that should the Congress fail to fund COTS at its full level then it might as well cease flying the space shuttle and the space station program because without COTS the space station program will be untenable after 2010," he said. ProSpace, whose volunteers visited 250 lawmakers' offices last year and hope to visit at least that many again this year, is not the only space enthusiasts group that is walking the halls of the U.S. Congress this year to drum up support for space initiatives. In early February, 14 members of the National Space Society and allied groups visited 23 congressional offices over two days to urge increasing NASA's budget to the levels called for in last year's authorization bill. National Space Society Executive Director George Whitesides said he is working with the Space Exploration Alliance to organize three more lobbying blitzes this year.

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***Property Rights Mechanism*** 1NC Property Rights CP

Counterplan Text: The United States Federal government should pass the Space Settlement Prize Act. Space Settlement Prize Act provides costless framework for private developmentGovernment Fails Infeld et all 11, Samantha Infeld is a Phd in Systems Optimization from Stanford, MS in Aeronautics from Stanford, worked
previously at the jet propulsion Laboratory of NASA, the text is from a non-peer-reviewed website, Dr. Infeld is affiliated with the Space Settlement Institute, 2006, gd, http://www.space-settlement-institute.org/space-settlement-prize-act.html The Space Settlement Prize Act is a draft law proposed by The Space Settlement Institute that would create, at no cost to taxpayers, a multi-billion dollar incentive for private companies to finance and build permanent settlements on the Moon and/or Mars. Included in the legislation is the requirement that these companies build an Earth-Moon or Earth-Mars space line open to all paying passengers. One thing has become very clear in the last 30 years. For the space frontier to be opened in our lifetimes, private enterprise must begin to invest heavily in space development very soon. It is obvious the government cannot, or will not, help humanity settle space - even if their intention were to do so. At best, NASA may help us get there; the rest will be up to the private sector. The only way to interest investors in building space settlements is to make doing so very profitable. No company can throw billions into a project without a huge profit waiting down the line. Even if they could convince investors to do it, the companies that tried would obviously go bankrupt. Building Space Infrastructure Is the Key The problem continues to be that there have been proposed no conceivable ventures in space that would return billions of dollars in any reasonable timeframe. Space solar power, asteroid or Lunar mining, space tourism, and so on will one day be viable businesses. But without the existing space infrastructure, which will cost billions to construct, building a hotel on the Moon right now would be like building a hotel in the Sahara Desert - only it would be a lot harder to get to. Constructing the missing space infrastructure - the gas stations, supply depots, repair shops, and rest stops on the Earth-Moon and Earth-Mars superhighways - that is the enabler for humanity's expansion into the Solar System. There is actually one asset in space that could produce a multi-billion dollar return for investors, if the proper laws were in place to enable ownership. The most potentially valuable asset on the Moon and Mars is the land itself, as real estate. Someday in the future, once there is a true permanent settlement, regular commercial access, and a system of space property rights, Lunar and Martian real estate will acquire a multi-billion dollar value. However, the incentive is obviously needed now, to spark the outward push, not later after settlement has already happened. Enter the Space Settlement Price Act The U.S. needs to promise, now, that when and if anyone succeeds in establishing a permanent, privately funded space settlement and space line, U.S. courts will accept the settlement's claim to ownership of a substantial share of that land. This concept has come to be known as "land claims recognition". (Incidentally, the same incentive would also apply to asteroids and any other object on which a permanent space settlement could be built.) Official recognition by U.S. Courts of a private claim of land on the Moon or Mars (based legally on the occupation and use by a permanent settlement) would allow the settlement to sell deeds to their Lunar land back on Earth. This could begin as soon as - but not before - the actual settlement and space line was built. The settlement company could sell to those who intend to book passage on the settlement's ships and use their land, but also to the much, much larger market of land speculators and investors who hope to make a profit on Lunar land deeds, without ever, themselves, leaving Earth. The Space Settlement Prize Act would cost politicians nothing at all to pass. Not one dime is required from the U.S. budget, and in fact the burgeoning space activity should provide a big boost to certain sectors of the economy. One reason the legislation is not on their radar screen, however, is the contentious nature of the international space laws that currently exist. The good news is that researchers at The Space Settlement Institute have found solutions and legal precedents that address every major objection. The objective now is to find individuals with the necessary connections to bring the legislation from a draft into real law. This is a hugely difficult mandate and help is needed.

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1NC Property Rights Mechanism

A property right regime will be beneficial for everyone solves the case Wayne N. White, Attorney, speaking at the Colloquium on the Law of Outer Space conference, Real Property Rights in Outer Space, http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/real_property_rights_in_outer_space.shtml, 1997, JPW
Introduction At some point in the future, private entities will begin to appropriate resources and in-habit outer space. Initially, such activities will be risky and expensive. Existing inter-national law provides limited legal protection and little incentive for investment in outer space. This article proposes a regime of real property rights which would provide an element of legal certainty and incentive for private ventures. The concept of real property rights is intimately tied to the sovereignty which nation states exercise over territory. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits states from establishing territorial sovereignty, but authorizes and, in some cases even requires, that states exercise jurisdiction over space objects and personnel. This author therefore proposes a form of property rights which would not require states to establish territorial sovereignty, while remaining within the jurisdictional limitations set forth in the Outer Space Treaty. Why Real Property Rights are Necessary The 1967 Outer Space Treaty[1] does not provide a positive regime for the governance of space development. The 1979 MoonTreaty[2] provides a regime for development, but that regime prohibits real property rights. For that and other reasons, most nations have not signed or ratified the Moon Treaty. A development regime which provides some form of property rights will become increasingly necessary as space develops. Professionals foresee an integrated system of solar power generation, lunar and asteroidal mining, orbital industrialization, and habitation in outer space. In the midst of this complexity, the right to maintain a facility in a given location relative to another space object may create conflict. Such conflicts may arise sooner than we expect, if private companies begin building subsidiary facilities around space stations. Eventually large public facilities will become the hub of private space development, and owners will want to protect the proximity value of their facility location. It also seems likely that at some point national governments and/or private companies will clash over the right to exploit a given mineral deposit. Finally, the geosynchronous orbit is already crowded with satellites, and other orbits with unique characteristics may become scarce in the future. The institution of real property is the most efficient method of allocating the scarce resource of location value. Space habitats, for example, will be very expensive and will probably require financing from private as well as public sources. Selling property rights for living or business space on the habitat would be one way of obtaining private financing. Private law condominiums would seem to be a particularly apt financing model -- inhabitants could hold title to their living space and pay a monthly fee for life-support services and maintenance of common areas. Even those countries which do not have launch capability would benefit from a property regime. Private entities from the developing nations could obtain property rights by purchasing obsolete facilities from foreign entities that are more technologically advanced. A regime of real property rights would provide legal and political certainty. Investors and settlers could predict the outcome of a conflict with greater certainty by analogizing to terrestrial property law. Settlers and developers would also be reassured, knowing that other nations would respect their right to remain at a given location.

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XT Property Rights Solve

Property Incentives SolveEmpirics, Tech spillover Dinkin 4, Sam Dinkin is a columnist and the CEO of SpaceShot, Inc, 04/18/05, gd, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/358/1
3. Establish international coordination, with a threat of unilateral action by a certain date, to establish a Lunar property rights regime.I have been beating the drum for Lunar property rights for nearly a year. (See Property rights and space commercialization, The Space Review, May 10, 2004.) Establishing Lunar property rights would accomplish several things:A market price would be established. Like inflation-indexed bonds, a market price for acreage on the Moon would provide a barometer of how far away settlement is and how viable and valuable it would be.Lunar property rights would bootstrap a default industrial policy that would allow industrialists to buy up lunar property rights if they are cheap. This would allow them to benefit from providing transportation to the Moon the way land grants to railroad companies facilitated the building of the trans-American railroad.Property rights would resolve uncertainty about legality of certain activities, which would make it more likely for business to participate jointly with government in exploration and colonization efforts.The price of establishing property rights is low. The benefit may be high.Lunar property rights can predate settlement by decades and still be very effective at coordinating R&D, investment, business plans, and government policy. If the price of Lunar acreage is zero, then very little regulatory effort is warranted. If the price is bid up to show that settlement is impending, at least at the Apollo sites and the poles, then more legal efforts are warranted, if not a renewed emphasis on private alternatives to NASA transportation and services.The property rights should have no residence or build-out requirements but they should be subject to eminent domain of FAAs Office of Commercial Space Transportation. In addition to real estate, many of the following should be auctioned also: spectrum rights, mineral rights, air space (space space?) and the Lagrange points.The price of establishing property rights is low. The benefit may be high.

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Space Settlement Prize Act Key Government Fails

Space Settlement Prize Act MAKES money, solves treaty conflicts, USFG fails Infeld et all 11, Samantha Infeld is a Phd in Systems Optimization from Stanford, MS in Aeronautics from Stanford, worked
previously at the jet propulsion Laboratory of NASA, the text is from a non-peer-reviewed website, Dr. Infeld is affiliated with the Space Settlement Institute, 2006, gd, http://www.spacesettlement.org/ The settlement of space would benefit all of humanity by opening a new frontier, energizing our society, providing room and resources for the growth of the human race without despoiling the Earth, and creating a lifeboat for humanity that could survive even a planet-wide catastrophe. Unfortunately, it seems clear that, as things stand now, space settlement will not happen soon enough for any of us to see it. But that could be changed! The legislation proposed on this web site would:save NASA and the taxpayers the cost of developing affordable space transport by allowing private enterprise to assume the burden of settling spacemake it possible for ordinary people to purchase tickets and visit the Moon as tourists, scientists, or entrepreneurscreate vast wealth from what is now utterly worthlessSpace development has almost stopped, primarily because no one has a sufficient reason to spend the billions of dollars needed to develop safe, reliable, affordable transport between the Earth and the Moon. Neither Congress nor the taxpayers wants the government stuck with that expense. Private venture capital will support such expensive and risky research and development ONLY if success could mean a multibillion dollar profit. Today, there is no profit potential in developing space transport, but we have the power to change that.We have the power to create a "pot of gold" waiting on the Moon, to attract and reward whatever companies can be the first to assemble and risk enough capital and talent to establish a "space line" and lunar settlement. How? By making it possible for a settlement to claim and own -- and re-sell to those back home on Earth -- the product that has always rewarded those who paid for human expansion: land ownershipLunar and Martian real estate is currently worthless. But that real estate will acquire enormous value after there is a settlement, regular commercial access, and a system of space property rights. Lunar or Martian property ownership could then be bought and sold back on earth, raising billions of dollars. This is a plan to be sure that money is used as an incentive and reward for those who invest in a way to get there and stay there.In the mid 1960's, President Johnson saw he was going to be forced to take money from the space race to fund the Vietnam War. He feared that, if that let the Russians win the race to the Moon, they might claim ownership of the Moon. So he proposed, negotiated, and the U.S. Senate ratified, what became known as the 1967 "Outer Space Treaty." Among other things, this treaty prohibits any claims of national sovereignty on the Moon or Mars, etc. Therefore no nation can claim or "grant" land in outer space.But, quite deliberately, the treaty says nothing against private property. Therefore, without claiming sovereignty, the U.S. could recognize land claims made by private companies, regardless of nationality, that establish human settlements on the Moon or Mars. The U.S. wouldn't be "granting" or giving the land to anyone. It isn't the U.S.'s to give. The settlement itself says "because we are the first to actually occupy this unowned land, WE claim ownership of it" - and the U.S. just "recognizes" - accepts, acquiesces to, decides not to contest - the settlement's claim of private ownership.The proposed legislation would commit the U.S. to granting that recognition if those who have established settlements meet specified conditions, such as offering to sell passage on their ships to anyone willing to pay a fair price. Entrepreneurs could use that promise of U.S. recognition to help raise the venture capital to develop the ships needed to make the claim.The dollar value of a Lunar land claim will only become big enough to be profitable when people can actually get to the land. So Lunar land deeds, recognized by the U.S. under this plan, can be offered for sale only after there is a transport system going back and forth often enough to support a settlement and the land is actually accessible. It will finally be understood to be land in the sky, not pie in the sky.It would take a really large land claim to be worth that huge investment, of course, but there is an amazingly large amount of land out there waiting to be claimed. For example, a claim of 600,000 square miles, about the size of Alaska (just under 1,600,000 square km.) would be only around 4% of the Moon's surface, but would be worth almost 100 billion dollars at only $260 an acre (4047 square meters). At $500 an acre it would be worth $192 billion. Of course the price of the land, especially the best land, might be much more by then.It will be offered for sale after months of worldwide press coverage produced by the race to be the first to settle the Moon. There will be land buyers with business purposes for buying and using land, but there will be a much bigger speculative and investment market. Many people who will never leave Earth will buy Lunar land. Some in hopes of making a profit, others just to be part of the excitement or to leave an acre to their grandchildren, or put their name on a crater.The profits on land sales which take place in the U.S. will, of course, be subject to U.S. taxes, so the Budget Office will score this legislation as a revenue producer, not a cost to the U.S. It sounds strange because we haven't done it yet, but there is growing sentiment for extending private property and the benefits of free enterprise to space.

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Property Rights KeySpace Commercialization

Property Rights ensure commercial development of space Presidents Commission on Implementation of US Space Exploration Policy, 04 (The Commission is made up of
a number of industry and government members, viewable in Appendix D of the liked document, 06/4/04, gd, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/moontomars/docs/M2MReportScreenFinal.pdf) Property Rights in Space. The United States is signatory to many international treaties, some of which address aspects of property ownership in space. The most relevant treaty is the 1967 UN Treaty on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (the Space Treaty), which prohibits claims of national sovereignty on any extraterrestrial body. Additionally, the so-called Moon Treaty of 1979 prohibits any private ownership of the Moon or any parts of it. The United States is a signatory to the 1967 Space Treaty; it has not ratified the 1979 Moon Treaty, but at the same time, has not challenged its basic premises or assumptions. The Commission recommends that Congress increase the potential for commercial opportunities related to the national space exploration vision by providing incentives for entrepreneurial investment in space, by creating significant monetary prizes for the accomplishment of space missions and/or technology developments and by assuring appropriate property rights for those who seek to develop space resources and infrastructure. Because of this treaty regime, the legal status of a hypothetical private company engaged in making products from space resources is uncertain. Potentially, this uncertainty could strangle a nascent spacebased industry in its cradle; no company will invest millions of dollars in developing a product to which their legal claim is uncertain. The issue of private property rights in space is a complex one involving national and international legal issues. However, it is imperative that these issues be recognized and addressed at

Property rights makes commercialization feasible status quo treaties are too unclear San Francisco Chronicle, Final frontier for lawyers property rights in space, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? f=/c/a/2005/10/16/SPACE.TMP&ao=2, 10/16/05, JPW
For space buffs, the stickiest legal issue is property rights in space, the question of whether a private person can lay claim to property where there is no constituted government. And it involves not only land, but also the airless void of space. Entrepreneurship is the driving force. Space enthusiasts look forward to an age of space commercialization on a grand scale, ranging from orbital hotels with zero-gravity swimming pools that float in the middle of a room to lunar factories that mine nuclear fuel for terrestrial fusion reactors. They fear such dreams might be stillborn if the legal niceties -- especially property rights -- aren't worked out in advance. The legal status of property claims in space remains uncertain partly because of the ambivalent wording of the U.N. Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which called space "the province of all mankind." A subsequent U.N. document, the so-called Moon Treaty of 1979, was less ambiguous, as it implied that space resources should be commonly owned by all nations. The United States signed the first treaty but not the second one. Most space fans vehemently opposed the Moon Treaty, believing that its assertion that the moon could not become "property of any state, international intergovernmental or nongovernmental organization" was socialistic and would force space entrepreneurs to share their profits with all nations. In a potentially groundbreaking article on space property rights, space law expert Rosanna Sattler recently argued that an overhaul of current treaties and laws is needed to "stimulate commercial enterprise on the moon, asteroids and Mars." A major corporation "is not going to invest millions and millions of dollars for a communications system on the moon if there's no law up there to protect their assets," said Sattler, whose article, titled "Transporting a Legal System for Property Rights: From the Earth to the Stars," appeared in the summer issue of the University of Chicago Law School's Chicago Journal of International Law. Another lawyer trying to rewrite space law, UC Davis-educated Wayne White of Boulder, Colo., advocates revising space law via a legal theory that he calls "property rights without territorial sovereignty." White, who served on the U.S. State Department's legal subcommittee at a United Nations conference on space exploration in 2003, proposes that the United States pass a domestic law that recognizes the right of individuals to own and operate space industries, as long as they obey a "use it or lose it" provision: If they abandon the industry, they give up rights to it. In this way, he says, the United States could awaken other countries to the necessity for revised space laws and encourage them to negotiate a new international treaty that, he hopes, would clarify the legal status of property rights in space. "Space development and settlement will not happen if it's internationally taxed and controlled," White said. "I think space settlement is a social 'release valve' that we desperately need. ... It's only going to get more crowded here on Earth."

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Property Rights KeySpace Commercialization

Expanded property rights open up space for commercial exploration this solves the case Reinstein, 99 [Ezra J. Reinstein, Associate, Kirkland & Ellis (New York Office), 2000, Northwestern Journal of International
Law & Business, Vol. 20, Issue 1 (Fall 1999), pp. 59-98] The notion that our future in space is reserved to the superpowers, or even to governments, has passed. Private commercial space investment, unforeseen at the inception of the Outer Space Treaty's dominion, has grown apace, while governmental investment has shrunk.25 Commercial activities in space now generate more revenues than government con- tracts.126 The time has come to reject the old space law whose "pro-state, anti- private-enterprise hue.. .darkly colors space activities to this day.'27 I believe that some changes, whether the ones outlined in this essay or others I have not considered, are necessary, if we are to push our species out to the stars. Thanks to the development of a new generation of "single- stageto-orbit" launchers, launch costs may drop by 30 percent in the just next few years.128 Companies are researching opportunities in new uses of the GSO, in mining, even in tourism: a consortium including Lunacorp and Carnegie Mellon University hopes to send two camera-equipped rovers to the moon, not for geological surveying, but to let virtual tourists experience a lunar drive.129 The recent discovery of large quantities of water on our moon might cut the cost of lunar missions in half again: the water, con- verted into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, could satisfy fuel needs for return flights. 30 The moon could even end up as a refueling station for more distant journeys. Space law must take into account private needs and build on private opportunities; to do this, it must embrace the principle of private property. If humanity hands control of the exploitation of space over to an interna- tional political body in an effort to use space development as a wealth- redistribution mechanism, the entire project is likely to fall on its face and there won't be any wealth to redistribute. Humanity will lose out on knowledge, adventure, living room, and resources. In contrast, the greatest good for the greatest number will occur if property rights are expanded and clarified in the ways suggested throughout this essay. One small legal step permitting the private ownership of space territory would be one giant leap for mankind.

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Property Rights SolveColonization

Property rights are key to colonization Alan Wasser, Alan Wasser is a former broadcast journalist at ABC News and CBS News, who then owned and operated a
successful international business, which he sold. He was the Chairman of the Executive Committee (CEO) of the National Space Society. Alan was also a member of the Board of Directors of ProSpace, and is an Advocate of the Space Frontier Foundation. Alan is the originator of the idea of using land claim recognition to make privately funded space settlements potentially profitable, and therefore possible in our lifetime. He is the author of numerous articles on the subject of space property rights, most recently in The Explorers Journal, the official magazine of the Explorers Club, Space News, Ad Astra, Space Governance, Space Times and Space Front among others. Space Governance published a rough draft of the proposed legislation. SMU Law School's Journal of Air Law & Commerce, the oldest and most respected law journal in its field, recently published an article Alan co-wrote with Douglas Jobes, entitled Space Settlements, Property Rights, and International Law: Could a Lunar Settlement Claim the Lunar Real Estate It Needs to Survive?, July 2011, http://www.spacesettlement.org/#02, The Space Settlement Initiative, JPW What is the real purpose of enacting a land claims recognition law? The creation of a legal system of property rights for space is not the long-term objective. The establishment of a property rights regime for space is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. The real purpose is to enable the expansion of the habitat of the human species beyond the Earth by offering a huge financial reward for privately funded settlement. It is the only way to create an economic incentive sufficient to encourage private investment to develop affordable human transport to the Moon and Mars. There are alternative space property rights schemes being proposed by some lawyers that would, instead, make settlement even harder than it would be now. They would require that, if you do pay to develop space transport, you would then have to pay the UN or some other body even more for the land you want to settle. Property rights legislation should be judged by how well it encourages space settlement, not on how elegant the resulting property rights system is. Property laws could be left to evolve after settlement, except that settlement just isn't happening without them, so we need something like this legislation to jumpstart it.

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Property Rights SolveSpace Debris

Property rights solve collisions and debris Wayne N. White, Attorney, speaking at the Colloquium on the Law of Outer Space conference, Real Property Rights in Outer Space, http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/real_property_rights_in_outer_space.shtml, 1997, JPW
Under a regime of functional property rights, title would arise on the basis of a principle entirely different from traditional property rights. Conferral of title would not depend upon a government's control over a specific area, but rather upon its control over the space objects and personnel at that location. Once conferred, these rights would, nevertheless, be almost identical to terrestrial property rights. On Earth the exclusion of others from the use and enjoyment of a given area is the principal right associated with real property ownership. In space first-come, first-served occupation, and the prohibition against harmful interference with other states' activities provides states with a similar, albeit less clearly defined, right of exclusion. Property rights legislation would extend this right to a state's citizens. Functional property rights would be subject to the limitationsof Article VIII jurisdiction. These rights would terminate if activity were halted, as for example, if a space object was abandoned or returned to Earth. Finally, rights would be limited to the area occupied by the space object, and to a reasonable safety area around the facility. Hence, orbital property rights would extend only to the moving "envelope" occupied by a facility, and not to its entire orbital path. In other respects a real property regime could be structured at a state's discretion. States would determine the conditions necessary to establish and maintain property rights. They could follow the example of the United States' Homesteading Acts, and require owners to maintain a facility (and/or conduct certain activities) in a fixed location, for a specified period of time (e.g. one to five years), to establish a property right. The regime would have to specify the period of inactivity or abandonment necessary to extinguish a property right, and the permissible deviation of an orbital facility from its proper location. In outer space, requiring facility owners to maintain a fixed orbit offers several advantages. First, it will reduce the probability of collision. It seems likely that some sort of "space traffic control" will evolve to track and direct space objects; plotting titled orbital locations as constants would permit controllers to concentrate on space vehicles and satellites in less stable orbits. Facility owners would benefit from this arrangement if non-titled space objects (or space objects exceeding their parameters) were held presumptively liable in a collision. Secondly, fixed orbits discourage indiscriminate dumping of debris, because debris can be more easily tracked to plotted, fixed points of origin. Hence, courts would sometimes be able to assess liability for debris-caused damage. Functional property rights permit free access to all areas of outer space and celestial bodies because they do not necessitate territorial sovereignty and its consequent appropriation of large areas of space. Safety zones may extend to a reasonable distance around a facility, and exist only for the security of the facility and to promote safe navigation in its vicinity. The regime is attractive because it is so easy to implement. Nations can unilaterally enact legislation, and they can tailor that legislation to conform to their existing property laws. The regime will cost states virtually nothing to implement, yet it will encourage citizens to enter what promises to be a very lucrative field.

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Property Rights SolveInternational Law

Property rights stimulate space developmentLimited legal framework solves ILAW Dinkin 4, Sam Dinkin is a columnist and the CEO of SpaceShot, Inc, 05/04/04, gd, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/141/1
In order to facilitate commercialization and colonization, there needs to be a property rights regime established. There are some impediments to private property in space, but they may not be insurmountable. The Outer Space Treaty says some things that the US and other signatories cannot do. The US cannot stake a sovereign claim in outer space. This effectively limits the property rights that the US can grant to its citizens. The Treaty does, however, ask that the US and other signatories closely monitor non-governmental activities, The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty. The Outer Space Treaty demands that we do this. Depending on how we regulate activities of US entities, we can bootstrap a private property regime by only granting a single US entity the right to exploit a certain tract on Mars. We will be expanding an American way of doing business into space. In the United States, we have always monitored and supervised activities using a capitalist system. Here on Earth, we have property rights regimes for real estate, intellectual property, mineral rights, water rights, spectrum rights and airport takeoff and landing slots among myriad property rights that are bought and sold. I propose that we extend that regime into the heavens. A property right is a right to exclude someone from doing something. By excluding US citizens and corporations from doing certain things, the US can create pseudo property rights in outer space for other US citizens and corporations that are not excluded from doing so. These pseudo property rights in outer space would be just like the rights afforded by patents in the US patent system. By filing a patent, a company can exclude all other rocket companies from using a certain novel process or technique. But an outer space pseudo property right is also just like the title deed to a housethe deed gives me the right to exclude others from using my house. Excluding others from using something is creating a right that is tangible and valuable even if it is not technically a property right. While it is not really a property rightsince those are forbiddenthese pseudo property rights would have the same effect as one if only US entities were in space. If there are two US non-governmental entities that both want to use a particular plot of land or a particular slice of radio spectrum in space, they need to obtain authorization from the United States. If the US only authorizes one of the entities to do so, that authorization could create a transferable property right that could be bought and sold like a US spectrum license or a piece of real estate. That authorization would have the force of law. Specifically, the US should recognize individual and corporate pseudo property rights. There are a couple of ways the property rights can work. One way is like title deeds that entitle the property holder to non-interference from the United States and all of its citizens in perpetuity. Another way is more like water rights, mineral rights or spectrum licenses that entitle the holder to lease for a specific use for a specific amount of time and require the licensee to undertake development of the lease within a set amount of time or lose the lease. The US should begin to regulate these pseudo property rights. We should register them. We should hold hearings on them. We should auction them off in some cases where there is contention just like for spectrum licenses or government land. We should hold the money in trust until the international community decides who should get it. The President should establish a property rights regime by executive order that is later written into law by Congress.

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Property Rights SolveEconomy

Property Incentives create economic efficiency unobtainable with public sector, allowing for development Scheraga 87, Joel D. Scheraga is a visiting asst. Prof Economics at Princeton, Asst. Prof of Economics at Rutgurs, Winter 1987
edition of the Cato journal, gd, http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj6n3/cj6n3-10.pdf The argument for establishing property rights in outer space is an application of what McCloskey (1985,p. 330) has called Adam Smiths generalization: If transactions costs are low, the assignment and voluntary exchange of rights to scarce resources will result in an efficient allocation. Conversely, the failure to assign property rights to the scarce resources will inevitably lead to an inefficient use of the resources. 3 The problem is a common one in economics. Consider, for example, the overhunting ofthe buffalo on the Great Plains. The opportunity cost of hunting the buffalo, in terms of yet-to-be-born buffalo, was zero. They were overhunted and killed almost to the point of extinction because no one owned them. The few remaining buffalo survived only because laws that established property rights to the remaining buffalo and their unborn offspring finally protected them (McCloskey 1985, pp. 33031). As applied to outer space, Smiths generalization implies that an efficient use of scarce orbital slots will result once property rights are assigned unambiguously to a particular country (or coalition of countries) and free exchange is permitted so that the country can sell the property rights for whatever the market will offer. A common counterargument is that the nations of the world, operating in their own selfinterests, will conserve the orbital slots even in the absence ofwell-defined property rights. But this argument is mistaken: if the price of an orbital slot is zero and the orbital paths are not owned by anyone, the opportunity cost to any one nation of occupying these locations is lower than if property rights were assigned. Orbital paths for geosynchronous sate]lites will be overused by individual countries and congestion problems will worsen. External costs to firms and nations that may want subsequently to occupy these orbits will not be fully taken into account. The problem is one of ownership

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2NC AT: Government First/Delay Perm

Cant wait property rights must be resolved as a prerequisite to substantial private development Ty Twibell, J.D. Candidate, 1998, University of Missouri- Kansas City School of Law, B.S., Public Admin istration, Southwest
Missouri State University, 1994, Space Law: Legal Restraints on Commercialization and Development of Outer Space, 65 UMKC L. Rev. 589, pg. 610, published in 1997, JPW Currently, most ventures are performed in the vacuum of space with little or no question regarding celestial property rights, at least so long as the principles of maritime jurisdiction remain in tact. n188 Celestial property issues will not arise or be answered after the advent of colonization on the Moon or Mars and the mining of asteroids and comets. Rather, they must be answered before the beginning of such ventures. While space ventures are already expensive, high risk also exists for investors uncertain as to whether the mined material, mining operations, or colonies will remain the investor's property, or if it must be equally shared with the international community standing idly by. As a result, the motivation to invest is significantly reduced. Heidi Keefe articulates her universal understanding of human motivation and the weakness of international space law as follows: [Space law does not] really take into account the human need to be fairly certain of the task required, and to be rewarded for what is accomplished, which may be the downfall of the current corpus juris spatialis. Without incentive, most individuals will not grow beyond what is absolutely necessary to their lives. The capitalist (or pseudo-capitalist) notions that dominate the economics of the developed world attempt to provide reward based on individual effort. Through this system of rewards for successes, we are ingrained with the notion that there is always an underlying reason for everything that we do. The underlying reason always ends up being money. n189 The rewards for commercial space activities, accordingly, should be certain and predictable. Investors must be guaranteed that the material they mine is their own to profit and use, the colonies built will remain under a particular nation's sovereignty, and the ship or colony built of mined material from unclaimed celestial bodies will not fall under the control of other.

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***Tax Incentives Mechanism***

1NC Tax Incentives CP

Text: The United States federal government should pass the Zero Gravity, Zero Tax Act for private companies to [insert plan mechanism]. Well clarify. 1) Solvency- passage of the Zero Gravity, Zero Tax Act would spur private development of space Whittington 10 (Mark R. Whittington is a writer, Newspaper writer, author, and researcher with a BA in History, gd/al,09/17/10,
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5803020/zero_taxes_zero_gravity_a_better_way.html?cat=15) The debate raging about how best to support the growth of a commercial space sector seems to focus around how much money should be spent on subsidies for commercial space firms. But perhaps the tax code provides a better answer. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, ironically one of the few members of Congress from either party who supports the Obama administration plan to spend nearly $6 billion in subsidies to private space firms such as SpaceX to build commercial space craft, once advocated a slightly different method of supporting commercial space. Rohrabacher proposed giving commercial space companies tax breaks to enable their development. In the last Congress, the bill was HR 5310 The Zero Gravity, Zero Tax Act of 2008. The bill died in that Congress and has not, so far as anyone can tell, been introduced in the current Congress. However, it is illuminating to look at what the bill proposed to do. According to the summary: "Amends the Internal Revenue Code to: (1) exclude from gross income space-related income from products or articles produced, or services provided, in or from outer space; (2) allow an investment tax credit for the purchase of stock in a space company that has average annual gross receipts not exceeding $100 million and that derives more than 70 percent of its gross receipts from space-based business; and (3) exclude from gross income gain from the sale or exchange of any stock of certain space corporations." "Zero Gravity, Zero Taxes" would, in effect, turn outer space into an enterprise zone, excluding from taxes, for example, the Bigelow private space station. It would furthermore provide tax breaks for investment in private space firms, freeing up sources of private capital. Beyond certain guidelines of what constitutes a "space company," the United States government would not be in the business of picking winners and losers. Contrast this approach to the Obama approach. Under the Obama "commercial" space policy, the government would not only promise launch contracts to the International Space Station for those firms able to fulfill them, but would provide funding to subsidize the development of private space craft. The Obama plan does not lift a finger to assist in the development of private sources of capital for space firms or the development of private markets. Any such would happen despite, rather than because, of the Obama plan, as with the recent deal between Boeing and Space Adventures to take paying customers on Boeing's proposed space craft. The fight over how and how much the government should spend to support commercial space enterprises should allow for a step back and a reexamination of how that should be accomplished. The Bush era COTS program, which limited the amount of money paid out to space firms to help develop private space craft, and demanded that the same firms meet certain milestones was more sensible and more hands-off than the Obama plan. Under the COTS program, companies that failed, such as RP/Kistler, were allowed to fail. Under the Obama plan, as NASA administrator Charles Bolden is reported to have told Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan, the government would spend what it takes to make the selected space firms succeed. Perhaps a better way to enable a commercial space industry would be a combination of the Bush era COTS program and "Zero Gravity, Zero Taxes." With the Republicans on the verge of taking over at least the House, but perhaps the Senate as well, this may be a way to place their own stamp on commercial space policy and answer the calumnies that they are somehow anti-commercial space for opposing the Obama plan. Sources: H.R. 5310: Zero Gravity, Zero Tax Act of 2008, GovtrackUS Why Obama's Commercial Space Initiative is Not Commercial, Mark R. Whittington, Associated Content, September 6th, 2010 Commercial Space Deal Between Space Adventures and Boeing to Be Announced, Mark R. Whittington, Associated Content, September 10th, 2010

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2NC Tax Incentives Solve

Solvency- NASA has failed the USPrivate Exploration by tax incentives is needed Hudgins 04, Edward L. Hudgins, director of The Objectivist Center, is the editor of the Cato Institute book, Space: The FreeMarket Frontier, 1/28/04, gd, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2514 The reaction to President Bush's plan for a permanent moon base and a trip to Mars is, "Great! It's about time NASA stopped going around in circles in low Earth orbit and returns to real science and exploration." Unfortunately, there's not a snowball's chance in the sun that the same agency that currently is constructing a downsized version of its originally planned space station, decades behind schedule, at 10 times its original budget, a few hundred miles up in orbit, will be able to build a station several hundred thousand miles away on the moon. If Americans are again to walk on the moon and make their way to Mars, NASA will actually need to be downsized and the private sector allowed to lead the way to the next frontier. The lunar landings of over three decades ago were among the greatest human achievements. Ayn Rand wrote that Apollo 11 "was like a dramatist's emphasis on the dimension of reason's power." We were inspired at the sight of humans at our best, traveling to another world. In announcing NASA's new mission, President Bush echoed such sentiments, speaking of the American values of "daring, discipline, ingenuity," and "the spirit of discovery." But after the triumphs of Apollo, NASA failed to make space more accessible to mankind. There were supposed to be shuttle flights every week; instead, there have been about four per year. The space station was projected to cost $8 billion, house a crew of 12 and be in orbit by the mid-1990s. Instead, its price tag will be $100 billion and it will have only a crew of three. Worse, neither the station nor the shuttle does much important science. Governments simply cannot provide commercial goods and services. Only private entrepreneurs can improve quality, bring down the prices, and make accessible to all individuals cars, airline trips, computers, the Internet, you name it. Thus, to avoid the errors of the shuttle and space station, NASA's mission must be very narrowly focused on exploring the moon and planets, and perhaps conducting some basic research, which also might serve a defense function. This will mean leaving low Earth orbit to the private sector. Thus, the shuttle should be given away to private owners. The United Space Alliance, the joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed-Martin that refurbishes the shuttle between flights, would be an obvious candidate. Let a private owner fly it for paying customers-including NASA, if necessary -- if it is still worth flying. NASA also should give up the money-draining space station, and sooner rather than later. The station might be turned over to international partners or, better still, to the mostly private Russian rocket company, Energia -- and the Western investors who were in the process of commercializing and privatizing the Mir space station before the Russian government brought it down for political reasons. If need be, NASA can be a rentpaying station tenant. NASA centers that drive up its overall budget but do not directly contribute to its mission should be shut down. If the government wants to continue satellite studies of the climate and resources or other such functions, they could be turned over to other agencies, such as EPA and Interior Department. NASA and the rest of the government should contract for launch services with private companies, which would handle transportation to and from low Earth orbit. Contracting with private pilots with private planes is what the Post Office did in the 1920s and 1930s, which helped the emerging civil aviation sector. Further, to facilitate a strong private space sector, the government needs to further deregulate launches, export licensing and remove other barriers to entrepreneurs. Creating enterprise zones in orbit would help make up for government errors of the past. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher proposes a "Zero Gravity, Zero Tax" plan that would remove an unnecessary burden from "out-of-this-world risk-takers." NASA will also need to do business in new, innovative ways. For example, if a certain technology is needed for a moon mission, NASA could offer a cash prize for any party that can deliver it. The federal government used such an approach for aircraft before World War II, modeled after private prizes that helped promote civil aviation. Even if the federal government foots the bill for a moon base, it should not own it. Rather, NASA should partner with consortia of universities, private foundations and even businesses that are interested in advancing human knowledge and commercial activities. NASA could simply be a tenant on the base. Or consider a radical approach proposed by former Rep. Bob Walker. The federal government wouldn't need to spend any taxpayer dollars if it gave the first business to construct a permanent lunar base with its own money a 25-year exemption from all federal taxes on all of its operations, not just those on the Moon. Think of all the economic activity that would be generated if a Microsoft or General Electric decided to build a base! And the tax revenue from that activity probably would offset the government's revenue losses from such an exemption. If we're true to our nature, we will explore and settle planets. But only individuals with vision, acting in a free market, will make us a truly space-faring civilization.

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Tax Incentives have empirically aided aerospace Wallace 04, James Wallace writes for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the 7E7 is an early designation of the 787, 10/27/04, gd,
http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Boeing-Tax-breaks-no-bargaining-chip-1157806.php His comments came in response to a question during The Boeing Co.'s conference call with analysts and the media to report on third quarter earnings. "As to whether or not the tax incentives in Washington state are a subsidy or not is something that will be argued long and hard, as we consider it nothing more than lowering the cost of doing business in the state of Washington and is general to aerospace," Stonecipher said. The long-running dispute between Boeing and Airbus over subsidies escalated earlier this month when the United States filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization over direct jetliner launch aid that Airbus gets from France, Germany and Britain. The United States also unilaterally pulled out of a 1992 bilateral agreement that allows Airbus to receive government loans of up to 33 percent of the costs of developing new or derivative jetliners. In a counter claim with the WTO, the European Union cited the Washington state incentives for Boeing. To help persuade Boeing to build its new 7E7 jetliner in Everett, the state last year approved an incentive package, including tax breaks, worth about $3.2 billion over 20 years.

Tax credits solve private sector development avoids government risk standards Raymond Keating, chief economist for the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, October 2004, Has a new era of space
venture arrived?, http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/has-a-new-era-of-space-venture-arrived/ More important, though, were the three other proposals. If a real economy is going to flourish in space, then taxation, regulation, and property rights must be addressed. The commissions report started down this path. It called for tax incentives, including perhaps making profits from space investment tax free until they reach some pre-determined multiple (e.g., five times) of the original amount of the investment. The value of regulatory relief was also recognized. The commission pointed out: A key issue in the private space flight business is liability. There is a pressing need for a change in liability laws to set a reasonable standard for implied consent. . . . [I]t is not reasonable to impose governmental risk standards on people who are willing and eager to undertake dangerous or hazardous activities. The commission also suggested reviewing occupational and environmental laws to make sure that the government is not burdening new space industry unduly with irrelevant or unobtainable compliance requirements. Finally, the importance of property rights was acknowledged. The report noted that the 1967 UN Treaty on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which the U.S. government signed, prohibits claims of national sovereignty on any extraterrestrial body. Moreover, the 1979 Moon Treaty disallows any private ownership on the moon. The commission reported that the United States has not ratified the 1979 Moon Treaty, but at the same time, has not challenged its basic premises or assumptions. As a result, the legal status of a hypothetical private company engaged in making products from space resources is uncertain. The commissioners observed: Potentially, this uncertainty could strangle a nascent space-based industry in its cradle; no company will invest millions of dollars in developing a product to which their legal claim is uncertain. The report concluded that if property rights are not addressed appropriately, there will be little significant private sector activity associated with the development of space resources, one of our key goals.

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2NC AT: Links to Politics

Tax Incentives solve, popular with republicans Davis 03, Brett Davis is a writer for Aerospace Daily, 06/13/03, B urns: Senate should consider tax incentives for space,
Aerospace Daily Vol. 206, No.53,gd, Factiva. The U.S. Senate should consider tax incentive bills to spur investment in space, Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), said . Burns, a (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Science Committee's space subcommittee, has been pushing tax incentives to promote commercial investment in space (DAILY, ). Burns did not mention specific proposals the Senate might consider. Burns also said that NASA should start consulting with lawmakers on its return to flight, even though the board investigating the . loss of the shuttle Columbia hasn't finished its report. "I know they [NASA] have an idea what it's going to look like," he said. If NASA begins talking with lawmakers now about the report, oversight hearings on the return to flight could begin sooner, Burns said. "... Maybe we could move those oversight hearings up a little bit, we could accelerate that," Burns said. " ... We ought to be going through the consulting phase now." Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) already has recommended that NASA use advanced non-destructive testing techniques on the shuttle's carbon panels (DAILY, ). CAIB plans to release its final report before the congressional recess.

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2NC AT: Links to Spending

Tax incentives cost nothing and stimulate private sector Presidents Commission on Implementation of US Space Exploration Policy, 04 (The Commission is made up of
a number of industry and government members, viewable in Appendix D of the liked document, 06/4/04, gd, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/moontomars/docs/M2MReportScreenFinal.pdf) . Tax Incentives. A time-honored way for government to encourage desired behavior is through the creation of incentives in the tax laws. In this case, an increase in private sector involvement in space can be stimulated through the provision of tax incentives to companies that desire to invest in space or space technology. As an example, the tax law could be changed to make profits from space investment tax free until they reach some pre-determined multiple (e.g., five times) of the original amount of the investment. A historical precedent to such an effort was the use of federal airmail subsidies to help create a private airline industry before World War II. In a like manner, corporate taxes could be credited or expenses deducted for the creation of a private space transportation system, each tax incentive keyed to a specific technical milestone. Creation of tax incentives can potentially create large amounts of investment and hence, technical progress, all at very little expense or risk to the government.

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1NC Liability Insurance CP

CP Text: The United States federal government should sponsor liability insurance for private ventures to [insert plan action]. The CP solves incentives spur private space exploration Jakhu and Buzdugan 08 (Ram and Maria, Professor Kakhu is the chairman of the legal and regulatory committee of international association for the
advancement of space safety and a member of the board of the international institute of the space law international astronautical federation, Maria Buzdugan is a member of the institute of air and space law, Development of the Natural Resources of the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies: Economic and Legal Aspects, http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a905076663)

The path of gradual commercialization of current space applications, such as launch services, satellite communication services, direct broadcasting services, satellite remote sensing and navigation services, and satellite weather monitoring services, will most likely be followed by future activities of use of space resources. Ventures, like mining the natural resources of the Moon and asteroids, are likely to become technologically feasible in the near future. The question is what would be the most appropriate approach to address the future needs of exploitation of space resources: should it remain the exclusive province of state governments; should the private sector take over such space activities; or should a public-private partnership type of venture be encouraged? As state governments are becoming constrained by budget deficits, an increased reliance on private sector involvement in space activities involving the extraction and use of space resources is to be expected. When deciding whether to invest in commercial ventures of resource use exploitation, any potential private investor will be faced with the issues of economic costs, risks, and perceived regulatory barriers. This study argues that the perceived regulatory barriers, i.e., the licensing requirement, the common heritage of mankind principle of international space law, and protection of intellectual property rights, are not obstacles to economic development. Governments should provide both policy and regulatory incentives for private sector participation in the area of space natural resource use by funding basic research and development and by sponsoring liability insurance for private ventures among other incentives.

Liability insurance solves the aff facilitates space exploration Fought 89 Bonnie Fought is a Candidate for J.D. 1989, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley; A.B. 1982,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, published in 1989 law review, gd, http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals/btlj/articles/vol3/fought.html Several problems have been identified in the area of domestic regulation of liability and insurance for the commercial launch industry. [FN270] The Launch Act grants authority to the Secretary of Transportation to establish insurance levels for private launch companies utilizing Government facilities and requires that operators of launch services obtain liability insurance at the required levels. [FN271] To date, the OCST has not issued regulations in this area. This is an area ripe for action by the OCST. [FN272] In developing its regulations, the OCST should, at a minimum, address the liability of private enterprises to the Government for damages which result from their use of Government facilities. The establishment of reasonable limits in this area would assist the private launch companies by lowering the costs of obtaining launch insurance, as well as bounding their potential liability. [FN273] While private launch companies should be held responsible for their own negligence and willful misconduct, the Government should assume responsibility for the negligence and willful misconduct of its employees and subcontractors. Most of the functions to be carried out by the Government are "routine industrial and technical functions in which the Government has every opportunity to maintain full control over its operations." [FN274] Holding the company liable for damages resulting from Government actions will not increase safety if the Government, and not the private company, has control over these operations. Furthermore, placing this type of liability risk on the domestic launch industry will only stifle its growth. In addition, new regulations should be issued to cap the liability of the launch company for damage to Government property. Such a proposal is set forth in the Space Policy which calls for a limit on the commercial launch operator's liability for damages to Government property to the insurance levels established by the OCST. [FN275] If the property losses of the Government exceed the maximum insured amount, it would waive its right to recover additional losses. [FN276] In the event losses to the Government are less than the insured level, it would waive its right to recover for damages caused by its own willful misconduct or reckless disregard. [FN277] This proposal is similar to agreements between NASA and commercial users of the shuttle. [FN278] Countering both of these proposals is an argument that holding the Government liable for damages when it is forced to act to protect the safety of lives and property (for example, during a vehicle test or launch) is unreasonable. [FN279] Because of the importance of these split-second decisions, it is argued, they should not be clouded by concern over potential liability imposed with the gift of hindsight. [FN280] Thus it is suggested that it may be necessary to create an exception to this rule of Government

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liability in emergency public safety situations. [FN281] While this type of exemption may be necessary to preserve the interests of public safety, in general, the private launch companies' liability should exclude liability for damages which result from acts of negligence or willful misconduct committed by the Government or its agents. In addition to the potential liability of private launch companies to the Government, there is the problem of the launch company's and its customer's liability to third parties. [FN282] Foreign launch services, against which the domestic launch industry is competing, have Government-sponsored third party liability insurance at little or no added cost which covers both the launch provider and the user. [FN283] To remain competitive, American launch providers must be able to offer similar benefits to their customers and to their own operations. One potential solution would be for the Government to limit the liability exposure of launch companies to third parties. Such a cap would place a limit on the amount of coverage the company would need to secure for any launch and thus would make it easier for companies to obtain insurance because the insurance companies would have a fixed amount of liability. Moreover, a liability cap would limit the total overall exposure of the company and eliminate the necessity of putting the company on the line for each launch. The Space Policy endorses a partial cap on third party liability, by suggesting a $200,000 maximum on noneconomic damages to third parties. [FN284] While this assists the companies by limiting liability for punitive damages, it still leaves the company with unlimited potential liability for non-punitive damages. Recent legislation before Congress proposes a cap on the third party liability of private launch companies equal to the lesser of $500 million or the maximum liability insurance available on the open market. [FN285] Adoption of such proposals would not mark the first time the Government has shared third party liability risks with industry. A similar allocation of risk was adopted under the Price-Anderson Act [FN286] to encourage the commercial development of the nuclear power industry in this country. The United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of this limitation on liability noting that such limitations were rationally related to the Congressional purpose of promoting private-sector development in the new area of nuclear power. [FN287] Similarly, it would be within Congress' power to provide for this type of liability limitation to promote the development of the commercial launch industry.

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Liability reform encourages private exploration Presidents Commission on Implementation of US Space Exploration Policy, 04 - The Commission is made up of
a number of industry and government members, viewable in Appendix D of the liked document, 06/4/04, gd, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/moontomars/docs/M2MReportScreenFinal.pdf . Regulatory Relief. Government regulation of the nascent private sector space industry is ongoing and will be necessary in the future, but it is important to ensure that this industry not become overregulated. A key issue in the private space flight business is liability. There is a pressing need for a change in liability laws to set a reasonable standard for implied consent. People throughout society do dangerous things for fun and profit; it is not reasonable to impose governmental risk standards on people who are willing and eager to undertake dangerous or hazardous activities. In addition, numerous laws covering occupational safety and environmental concerns should be reviewed carefully to make sure that the government is not burdening new space industry unduly with irrelevant or unobtainable compliance requirements. an early stage in the implementation of the vision, otherwise there will be little significant private sector activity associated with the development of space resources, one of our key goals.

Empirics flow neg Liability insurance catalyzes exploration Berger 11, (Eric Berger is the Space reporter for the Houston Chronicle, this text origninally appeared in a blog, but no analysis is
provided outside of direct quotation, 05/11/11, gd, http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2011/05/texas-limits-liability-for-space-tourismproviders/) Texas limits liability for space tourism providersTexas lawmakers have taken a tentative step toward embracing space tourism by passing Senate Bill 115, which limits liabilities for commercial providers of spaceflight in the state.Essentially, if space tourists sign a waiver, unless the company shows gross negligence evidencing willful or wanton disregard for the safety of the space flight participant it is protected from lawsuits. So if a rocket launched from Texas blows up, theres no compensation for ones relatives.Can Texas get a piece of the space tourism business?Lobbyists for the bill included the secretive Blue Origin company, which has facilities in Culberson County, as well as the Texas Space Alliance, an organization formed to promote the Texas space industry.The space alliance, in a news release, acknowledged that it is playing catch-up to other states in the space tourism game:This is the beginning of a new effort on our part to awaken the sleeping giant of Texas when it comes to the emerging commercial space industry, said space alliance president Rick Tumlinson. But we have to move quickly. Other states such as Florida, Virginia and New Mexico are far ahead of us in courting and supporting this potentially multi-billion dollar industry, and if we want a part of it dramatic and determined action will be necessary as the deals are being cut right now that will determine its future for decades.Florida, for example, first passed its liability limitation law in 2008.The space alliance also plans to seek tax exemptions for spaceflight activities performed by space businesses operating in Texas, with the aim of promoting space commerce in the state. It will likely push for such legislation during the next session.With NASAs operations in Texas facing potentially very tough sledding, its a good move for space advocates in Texas to push forward with efforts to bring commercialization activities into the state. But it wont be easy getting the job done.For more on advocacy groups actions, see this recent op-ed from Tumlinson, its founder.

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Private companies/investors are the best actor for space industry development. Henry Gass, Writer for the Ecologist, 7-11-11, The Ecologist, Plans to strip mine the moon may soon be more than just sciencefiction, (http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/962678/plans_to_strip_mine_the_moon_may_soon_be_more_than_just_sciencefict ion.html) . Tietz says theres a great deal of interest out there from potential investors. This will not be funded by any government or any federal agency like NASA. This is all going to be if it ever happens it will all be private investment, continues Tietz. In a June 2009 article in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers magazine Spectrum, Shackleton founder Bill Stone wrote that lunar prospecting could cost as much as $20 billion over a decade. At the moment, no country seems eager to foot the bill, writes Stone. Where governments fail to act on au vitally important opportunity, the private sector can and should step in. Stone outlined that, to save $1 billion during the initial staging of the lunar mining base, the first human team would only take enough fuel to land and establish the basenot enough for a return trip to Earth. This may sound radical, but the human crew who will undertake this mission will do so knowing that their success and survival depend on in situ fuel generation for the return. Should they fail, theirs will be a one-way trip; the risk is theirs to take, writes Stone. For government-sponsored space agencies, such a concept is unthinkable; they cannot tolerate the political risk of failure. Yet it is the only viable business choice. Centuries of explorers made the same hard choice in pushing the limits on land, sea, and air. Its time to carry it forward into space. According to Tietz, governments are at present neither politically inclined nor financially able to carry out prospecting missions in space. Tietz says governments have different priorities most research-oriented they have to fund with limited budgets. Private enterprise, we believe, can move very quickly almost like our internet companies if they have the right funding and the right regulatory environment to go do what they want to do they can go do it very fast and effectively, privately, and are basically only beholden to their Board of Directors and investors, continues Tietz. Governments would then be the beneficiaries of the products that [private industries] would produce if [they] were then successful, says Tietz. Its openly sourced to all of humanity, first-comefirst-serve.

Even NASA acknowledges the private sector would streamline missions Michael Schwartz, journalist for the Inside Business Journal, 2-12-2010, Inside Business, NASA's new direction could lift local
space assets, http://www.insidebiz.com/news/nasas-new-direction-could-lift-local-space-assets Perhaps most promising from a local economic development perspective is the administration's call for increased reliance on commercial industry to help NASA get to space. The logic is to let private industry build the vehicles NASA will use in the future, knowing this can be done more cheaply and likely faster outside government. NASA is fairly unique among federal entities in that it develops, constructs and operates much of its equipment and vehicles, including training and paying personnel. Rockets and astronauts don't come cheap. The Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority and its Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island on the Eastern Shore all of a sudden are in the right place at the right time. The MARS facility has slowly but steadily been growing as a viable commercial launch pad for private industry sending things into space for the government. "This [proposed] NASA budget very much reflects the new recognition of the commercial sector that has been out there believing in its capabilities for the past three decades but hasn't received a lot of support," said Laura Naismith, spokesperson for VCSFA and MARS. "Now our government is saying 'Wow, these commercial space entrepreneurs are on to something. How do we leverage that for our national economy?'"

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NASA empirically fails at rejuvenating space programs commercial organizations are far superior Pelton, 10 Space & Advanced Communications Research Institute, George Washington University (Joseph, May. A new space vision for NASA - And for space entrepreneurs too? Space Policy, Science Direct.)
NASA - now past 50 - is well into middle age and seemingly experiencing a mid-life crisis. Any honest assessment of its performance over the past two decades leads to the inexorable conclusion that it is time for some serious reviewdand even more serious reform. National U.S. Space Study Commissions have been recommending major reform for some years and nally someone has listened. President Obama has had the political and programmatic courage to make some serious shifts in how NASA does its business. It is no longer sufcient to move some boxes around and declare this is the new and improved NASA. One of the key messages from the 2004 Aldridge Commission report, which was quickly buried by NASA, was words to this effect: Let enterprising space entrepreneurs do what they can do better than NASA and leave a more focused NASA do what it does best - namely space science and truly long range innovation [1]. If one goes back almost 25 years to the Rogers Commission [2] and the Paine Commission [3] one can nd deep dissatisfaction with NASA productivity, with its handling of its various space transportation systems, and with its ability to adapt to current circumstances as well as its ability to embark on truly visionary space goals for the future. Anyone who rereads the Paine Commission report today almost aches for the vision set forth as a roadmap to the future in this amazing document. True there have been outstanding scientic success stories, such as the Hubble Telescope, but these have been the exception and not the rule. The rst step, of course, would be to retool and restructure NASA from top to bottom and not just tweak it a little around the edges. The rst step would be to explore what space activities can truly be commercialized and see where NASA could be most effective by stimulating innovation in the private sector rather than undertaking the full mission itself. XPrize Founder Peter Diamandis has noted that we don't have governments operating taxi companies, building computers, or running airlines - and this is for a very good reason. Commercial organizations are, on balance, better managed, more agile, more innovative, and more market responsive than government agencies. People as diverse as movie maker James Cameron and Peter Diamandis feel that the best way forward is to let space entrepreneurs play a greater role in space development and innovation. Cameron strongly endorsed a greater role for commercial creativity in U.S. space programs in a February 2010 Washington Post article and explained why he felt this was the best way forward in humanity's greatest adventure: I applaud President Obama's bold decision for NASA to focus on building a space exploration program that can drive innovation and provide inspiration to the world. This is the path that can make our dreams in space a reality [4]. One of the more eloquent yet haunting calls for change came some six years ago. The occasion was when Space X founder Elon Musk testied before the US Senate in April, 2004 at a Hearing on The Future of Launch Vehicles: The past few decades have been a dark age for development of a new human space transportation system. One multi-billion dollar Government program after another has failed..When America landed on the Moon, I believe that we made a promise and gave people a dream. It seemed then that.someone who was not a billionaire, not an Astronaut with the Right Stuff, but just a normal person, might one day see Earth from space. That dream is nothing but broken disappointment today. If we do not now take action different from the past, it will remain that way [5]. One might think that, since Musk was seeking to develop his own launch capability, he was exaggerating; but a review of the record suggests otherwise. Today nearly 25 years after the Rogers and Paine Commission reports that followed the Challenger disaster, we nd that the recommendations for NASA to develop a reliable and costeffective vehicle to replace the Shuttle is somewhere between being a disappointment and a asco. Billions of dollars have gone into various spaceplane and reusable launch vehicle developments by NASA over the past 20 years. Spaceplane projects have been started by NASA time and again amid great fanfare and major expectations and then a few years later either cancelled in failure or closed out with a whimper. The programs that NASA has given up on now include the Delta Clipper, the HL-20, X-33, the X-34, X-37, X-38, and X-43 after billions of US funds and billions more of private money have been sacriced to the cause [6]. In the eld of space research NASA has a long and distinguished career. In the area of space transportation and space station construction its record over the past 30 years has largely been a record of failure. The Space Shuttle was supposed to have been an efcient space truck that would y every two weeks and bring cargo to orbit at a fraction of the cost of early space transportation systems - perhaps a few thousand dollars per pound to low-Earth orbit. In fact, the fully allocated cost of the Shuttle is over $1 billion a ight and it is by far the most expensive space transportation system ever. After the Columbia accident NASA spent years and billions more dollars to correct serious safety problems with the Space Shuttle and still was never able to fulll the specic recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. Yes, that's correct. After grounding the Space Shuttle for some 2.5 years (from February 2004 to August 2006) and expending $1.75

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billion dollars in the wake of the CAIB report, NASA was not able to correct the identied problems and complete the tasks asked of it. Then, after the foam insulation problem re-emerged with Discovery and STS ight 114, hundreds of millions more dollars were spent to solve the problem again, bringing the grand total to over $2 billion [7]. The rst rendition of a space station was scheduled during the Reagan years to have been completed in 1991 for several billions of dollars. The projected completion date extended to 1994 when the project was redesigned and it became the International Space Station (ISS). Today the ISS is not only late, but its total cost has ballooned to over $100 billion [8]. Project Constellation, with a projected cost of over $100 billion until its recent cancellation by President Obama, seemed to loom as an eerie repetition of the ISS - another mega-project always over budget, always late, and with constantly lowered expectations. Henry Spencer, writing for the New Scientist, has characterized Project Constellation as an Illusion, Wrapped in Denial. His specic observations about the NASA Moon/Mars program were as follows: First, it probably wasn't going to work. Even so early in its life, the programme was already deep into a death spiral of solving every problem by reducing expectation of what the systems would do. Actually reaching the moon would probably have required a major redesign, which wasn't going to be funded [9]. Any private company with NASA's record on the Space Shuttle, the ISS deployment and spaceplane development, would have gone bankrupt decades ago. In all three cases the US Congress has been told by NASA essentially what it wanted to hear rather than the grim facts as to cost, schedule and performance. I personally remember when Congress was being told quite unbelievable things about the cost and expected performance of the Space Shuttle. We at Intelsat presented testimony that strongly contradicted NASA's statements on cost and performance. There are dozens of examples of entrepreneurial space enterprises that have generated innovative ideas that seemed to show us how we could have gotten ourselves into space faster, cheaper and better. - A private, Boulder, CO-based company called the External Tanks Corporation (ETC) suggested in the 1980s that we could just add a little more thrust to the External Tanks for the Space Transportation System (i.e. the Space Shuttle) and lo and behold we could put them into Low-Earth Orbit. Dr. Randolph Stick Ware of the ETC explained that one could then strap these tanks together and create the structure of a space station at a fraction of the cost of the ISS, and much more quickly as well. - Bob Zubrin has for years championed the idea of sending methane generators to Mars to produce the fuel for the astronauts' return trip. The cost of a Mars mission with a refueling station on Mars would be dramatically lower. - Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites took a few million dollars of backing from Microsoft's Paul Allen and developed the White Knight carrier craft and the SpaceShipOne spaceplane. This vehicle system, which won the X Prize, set the stage for a space adventures industry that will begin launches in 2011. When this experimental spaceplane landed at Edwards Air Force Base in 2004, a spectator's sign said it all: SpaceShipOne - NASA Zero. Some have suggested that President Barack Obama's cancellation of the unwieldy and expensive Project Constellation to send astronauts back to the Moon for a few exploratory missions was a blow to NASA and the start of the end of the US space program. The truth is just the reverse. Project Constellation, accurately described by former NASA Administrator Michael Grifn as Apollo on Steroids provided little new technology or innovation and had an astronomical price tag. It was clearly too much for too little. If the opportunity costs of Project Constellation are examined (i.e. if we think what could have been done with an extra $100 billion of space funds), dumping it dees argument.

Privatization is more cost effective than the federal government and saves taxpayers the liability Adam Summers & Anthony Randazzo, policy analyst at Reason Found. &director of economic resources at Reason Found., February 2011, Reason Foundation, Annual Privatization Report 2010: Federal Government Privatization, ed. Leonard Gilroy
http://reason.org/files/federal_annual_privatization_report_2010.pdf PayPal and Tesla co-founder Elon Musks Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, developed its Falcon 9 rocket to handle these space transportation needs, and hopes to begin shuttling astronauts by the end of 2013. The company estimates that it will charge NASA about $20 million per astronaut for the voyage, a bargain compared to the $300 million per astronaut it would cost NASA, or even the $56 million a head on Russias Soyuz rockets in the near term after the shuttle fleet is retired. SpaceX completed a successful test launch of the Falcon 9 from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida in June 2010. Another successful test flight in December 2010 earned the Falcon 9 the distinction of being the first privately owned ship ever to return safely from Earth orbit. Speaking of the differences between traditional government funding of the space program and the newer public-private financing model, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told ABC News in December 2010, If we overrun this program, we have to come up with the money through investment to cover the cost, which is

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NASA suffers from the inefficiency and debilitating management that the free market solves Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at Cato and editor of www.DownsizingGovernment.org, 6-4-2004, Policy Analysis
No. 15, Downsizing the Federal Government, Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa515.pdf A big problem with NASA, which is common to many federal agencies, is that large projects go far over budget and lag far behind schedule. The GAO concludes that the agency has debilitating weaknesses in its management of large projects.427 For example, the International Space Stations construction costs have skyrocketed from $17 billion in 1995 to $30 billion today, and it is four years behind schedule.428 Scrapping that project alone would save taxpayers $70 billion over the next 12 years.429 Congress shares the blame for NASAs waste, since it funds white-elephant projects, such as the space station, that have no clear policy goals. Americans do not need NASA in order to further advance the space age. Space should be opened up to private entrepreneurs eager to move forward with space tourism and other space businesses of the future.43

Private sector solves better than government avoids politicization Garmong 2004. (Robert Garmong Ph.D. in philosophy, was a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute from 2003 to 2004. Privatize
Space Exploration: The Free-Market Solution For America's Space Program. http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/science/space/3763-privatize-space-exploration-the-free-market-solution-for-america-039-sspace-program.html) hss Indeed, the space shuttle program was supposed to be phased out years ago, but the search for its replacement has been halted, largely because space contractors enjoy collecting on the overpriced shuttle without the expense and bother of researching cheaper alternatives. A private industry could have fired them--but not so in a government project, with homedistrict congressmen to lobby on their behalf. There is reason to believe that the political nature of the space program may have even been directly responsible for the Columbia disaster. Fox News reported that NASA chose to stick with nonFreon-based foam insulation on the booster rockets, despite evidence that this type of foam causes up to eleven times as much damage to thermal tiles as the older, Freon-based foam. Although NASA was exempted from the restrictions on Freon use, which environmentalists believe causes ozone depletion, and despite the fact that the amount of Freon released by NASA's rockets would have been trivial, the space agency elected to stick with the politically correct foam. It is impossible to integrate the contradictory. To whatever extent an engineer is forced to base his decisions, not on the realities of science but on the arbitrary, unpredictable, and often impossible demands of a politicized system, he is stymied. Yet this politicizing is an unavoidable consequence of governmental control over scientific research and development.

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Private companies have a better success rate than most NASA projects New Scientist, 12-18-2010, SpaceX capsule succeeds where NASA failed, Lexis
The first flight of a fully equipped Dragon space capsule, launched by SpaceX last week, has gone one better than NASA's Mercury capsule ON 8 December, a small California-based company called SpaceX did something that had previously been the domain of governments: it launched a space capsule with a pressurised cabin into orbit, then brought it back down again intact. The Dragon capsule could have carried a crew. Some day soon it will. Commercial space flight has been a charged issue in the US since President Barack Obama announced in February that he wanted to outsource trips to the International Space Station to private companies. Critics of the plan, including the first moonwalker, Neil Armstrong, claim that only NASA can be trusted to build spacecraft that carry astronauts, as only they know how to do it properly. The success of SpaceX's Dragon capsule and the Falcon 9 rocket that carried it suggests otherwise. The feat is all the more impressive when you consider the launch history of NASA's Mercury capsule, which carried the first American into orbit in 1962. NASA first tried to launch a fully equipped Mercury capsule in July 1960, in part to test its heat shield. Unlike the Dragon test flight, however, it was a complete failure. A structural problem in the attachment of the capsule to its Atlas rocket triggered an explosion that destroyed both capsule and rocket. Four months later, the next attempt at sending Mercury into space also failed. An error in the wiring of the Redstone rocket it was sitting on caused the rocket to lift only a few centimetres from the launch pad, before settling back and shutting down. Despite this, the Mercury capsule dutifully followed its flight plan, jettisoning its escape tower and deploying its parachutes. These were left dangling from the fully fuelled rocket overnight, until the batteries on the rocket's self-destruct mechanism ran down. Workers then gingerly moved in to disarm the rocket and drain its fuel. Finally, on 19 December 1960 ; on the third attempt ; a Mercury craft successfully flew into space. Compared to this, the success of the Dragon capsule's first flight is striking. Maybe somebody other than NASA understands this stuff after all. The flight is exciting because of its implicit promise that it will not always be just test pilots and rich space tourists that get to blast into orbit. Maybe the rest of us will be able to go too. In the 50 years since NASA's first successful capsule test, it has become clear that government space agencies have no interest in making that happen. Now that picture is changing ; and about time too. Henry Spencer n

Private sector approaches to solving are superior to NASA Worden 2004. (Pete Worden was Director of Transformation at the Space and Missiles Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force
Base. As the staff officer for initiatives in the first Bush administration's National Space Council, he spearheaded efforts to revitalize our civil space exploration and earth monitoring programs. He was scientific co-investigator for two NASA space lab missions. Private Sector Opportunities and the Presidents Space Exploration Vision. The George Marshall institute. http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/230.pdf) hss The first different private sector aspect is that NASA and other government agencies can contract for services rather than systems. There is a model here that the Department of Defense has used with great success, and as a former Air Force officer I must reluctantly commend the Navy. The Navy has something called the UFO, Ultra-High Frequency FollowOn communications satellites. (So the X-files TV show really is right, the government does have UFOs!) The Navy bought these communications capabilities as services rather than systems. The systems themselves werent developed by a government program office, but were built by the private sector to provide the services the Government contracted for. This is an example of more private sector involvement in the sense that government money is spent in a different manner. It is a step in the private direction, but only a small one. It is a first way to involve the private sector in a different manner than traditional contracting. NASA has not used it much, although there have been a few examples such as the Lunar Prospector that were done on this sort of model.

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Government spending cant cover future space endeavors. Profit and loss margins make the private sector most efficient. Murphy, 05 [Robert Murphy, is an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, where he teaches at the Mises Academy.January 2005,
A Free Market in Space, Volume 26, Number 1,] Prior to the exploits of SpaceShipOne, the standard justification for government involvement in space was that such undertakings were "too expensive" for the private sector. But what does this really mean? The Apollo moon program certainly didnt create labor and other resources out of thin air. On the contrary, the scientists, unskilled workers, steel, fuel, computers, etc. that went into NASA in the 1960s were all diverted from other industries and potential uses. The government spent billions of dollars putting Neil Armstrong on the moon, and consequently the American taxpayers had billions fewer dollars to spend on other goods and services. This is just another example of what Frdric Bastiat described in his famous essay, "That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen." Whenever the government creates some public work, everyone can see the obvious benefits. For example, everyone can appreciate the fact that we put a US flag on the moon, and listened as Neil Armstrong apparently flubbed his memorized line. Or to use a more mundane example, everyone can see a beautiful new sports stadium financed (in part) by tax dollars. What people cant see are the thousands of other goods and services that now wont be enjoyed, because the scarce resources necessary for their production were devoted to the government project. Politicians may break moral laws, but they cant evade economic ones: If they send a man to the moon (or build a new stadium), consumers necessarily must curtail their enjoyments of other goods. Thus the question becomes: Was the Apollo program (or new stadium) sufficiently valued by consumers to outweigh its opportunity cost (i.e., the value consumers place on the goods that now cannot be produced)? At first glance, this seems to be a difficult question to answer. After all, how can we possibly compare the benefits of the Apollo program with, say, the benefits of the additional shoes, diapers, automobiles, research on cancer, etc. that could have been alternatively produced? The short answer is, we cant. This is just a specific example of the more general principle elaborated by Ludwig von Mises: the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism. Even if a central planning board were truly benevolent, and even if it had access to all of the technical conditions (such as resource supplies and technological recipes) of the economy, the planners would be at a loss to deploy the scarce resources in an efficient way. There would be no way to determine whether the chosen output goals were good ones, or whether an alternative plan could have provided the subjects with a better outcome. The above analysis might puzzle the reader. Yes, it is certainly difficult in practice to tell whether the Apollo program (or any other government project) is worth its cost, but isnt that true of any undertaking? Why should this be a unique drawback for government endeavors? The crucial difference is that private projects are subject to the profit and loss test. The owner of a private firm must pay market prices for all of his or her scarce resources. If the consumers do not then voluntarily spend enough money on the final product or service to recoup these expenditures, this is the markets signal that the resources are more urgently needed in other lines (according to the consumers). It can never be the case that all entrepreneurs find a particular resource "too expensive" to use; if no entrepreneurs were buying it, then the price of this resource would fall until some did. For example, it would be unprofitable"wasteful"to use gold in the construction of bridges; the extra money motorists would pay to drive across a golden bridge would not cover the additional expense. Yet it is profitable to use gold in the construction of necklaces or rings. Consumers are willing to pay enough for golden necklaces (versus silver or copper ones) that it makes it worthwhile for jewelers to buy gold for this purpose. Hence, the high price of gold is (among other things) a signal to engineers not to use gold in building bridges, because consumers would rather the scarce metal be used in jewelry. The principle is the same when it comes to space travel. The reason private entrepreneurs would never have financed the moon program in the 1960s is that the financial returns from such a project wouldnt come close to covering the expenses. Yet this is just the markets way to tell these entrepreneurs that the computers, scientists labor, fuel, etc. would be better devoted to other ends. By seizing tax dollars and financing the Apollo program, President Kennedy et al. simply forced Americans to forgo the thousands of products that, according to their own spending decisions, they would have preferred to the space adventures.

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Private sector space firms are key to any form of space development David 10 By Leonard David, Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is past editorin-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines and has written for Space.com since 1999. updated 12/29/2010 11:02:21 AM ET, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40840100/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/private-spaceflight-readytake/# Private spaceflight ready to take off in 2011 The private space industry has long been viewed as fledgling. But this once-pejorative term has taken on new meaning this year, as a roster of successes and fast-paced growth throughout 2010 suggests private spaceflight is ready to take off in 2011. This year saw the very first launch of commercial space company SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster, and later the first liftoff of the firm's Dragon spacecraft, which launched atop a Falcon 9 to Earth orbit and then was recovered from the Pacific Ocean. Another company, Virgin Galactic, achieved some major milestones, including the first glide test of its suborbital spaceliner, SpaceShipTwo. [ Gallery: First Solo Flight of SpaceShipTwo ] Multiple private-sector space firms are moving into full power, going well beyond PowerPoints and hand-waving. Still, the coming year, according to experts and analysts contacted by Space.com, is likely to feature battles between "same old space" and the ascension of "new space." Commercial landscape "The space industry has never seen such a rich and varied commercial landscape," said Carissa Bryce Christensen, managing partner of consulting firm The Tauri Group in Alexandria, Va. "New markets are emerging and established ones are changing." Christensen said that entrepreneurs are testing new launch and on-orbit capabilities in the real world, trying to move beyond development and demonstration and into sustainable, profitable operation. Large firms are changing their game plans in response. "The successes and setbacks of 2011 are going to make it the most interesting year in the history of commercial space," Christensen predicted. Commercial space is finally coming into its own, and 2011 represents a year of enormous potential for this developing industry, said David Livingston, founder and host of the radio/Internet talk show "The Space Show." "The key will be to systematically move forward, building success upon success," Livingston said. "I believe the coming year will reward patience, achievable goals, business fundamentals, reasonable business risks and a safety mindset." In terms of trends for the space industry, Livingston foresees a move away from big government programs in favor of economically managed and leaner commercial space ventures and projects. "I believe this trend will continue through 2011 and beyond.

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The private sector is best space is becoming more about profit and less about policy. Profit incentives are key to development. Filho, 06 [Jos Monserrat Filho, 6-9 November 2006, United Nations/Ukraine Workshop on Space Law, Kyiv, Ukraine, Legal
Issues of Commercial Space Activities] Why commercial activities are necessary to the use of outer space? H.L. van Traa-Engelman15 stresses that since space operations need heavy investment, while carrying high risks, the economic factor that is inherently decisive in every commercialization process bears a special relevance to space activities. Commercial considerations became fundamental in the process preceding the appropriation of funds required to create new solutions and technologies, to initiate new fields of space applications, or to cover developments in existing fields. In the first decades of the space age, state security and military reasons have defined the content and the direction of national space programs. Now the development of space activities depends on quite large scale upon the possibility of recovering investments and making attractive profit.

Other domestic issues prove the private sector is more cost effective. Walker, Poole and Tumlinson, 01 [Walker, Poole and Tumlinson, March 15th, 2001, The CATO Institute]
Americans are fascinated by outer space. Most would take a trip into orbit if they could. But critics maintain that, in the three decades since men last walked on the Moon, NASA has gone from science and exploration to bureaucracy and politics, with high costs keeping space inaccessible to most entrepreneurs as well as to the general public. Privatization and deregulation of industries such as airlines, trucking, and telecommunications have reduced costs and created new economic opportunities. The communications and information revolution has transformed the economy and society. It is time to unleash the dynamics of free markets in the space sector. Entrepreneurs already are providing private launch services, satellites, and modules for broadcast and Internet services. Other planned innovations include collecting and beaming energy to Earth from orbit, a lunar rover sponsored by Radio Shack, and even space adventure travel for private citizens. But such profitable plans require radical reforms of America's space policy and the role of NASA.

Private companies ensure better access to scientific discovery, telecommunications technology, and big science projects Edward Hudgins, formerly director of regulatory studies for the Cato Institute and editor of Regulation magazine, is an expert on the regulation of space and transportation, pharmaceuticals, and labor, 2-4-2003, National Post, Private space: High costs have forced
NASA to cut projects and delayed the development of space. The way to open up the frontier is to involve the private sector, Factiva Further, in the 1970s, private companies asked NASA and other government agencies to purchase services from them. For example, in 1982 Space Sciences Inc. launched the first privately funded American rocket, named the Conestoga, since the pioneering days of Dr. Robert Goddard. NASA might have contracted with that company for services. But until the Challenger disaster, all government agencies, not just NASA, were required to send their payloads into orbit on government rockets. Thus, for example, if the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency or the Interior Department wanted to put up weather or remote-sensing satellites, they had to go to NASA rather than to a private launch provider. As it became apparent in the early 1980s that the shuttle would cost far more than anticipated, NASA needed a mission to justify its continued existence. Regardless of any commercial or scientific benefits, an orbiting space station seemed to serve that purpose. But the estimated cost of the station, which was supposed to be up and running in the early 1990s, went from a promised US$8-billion in 1984 to nearly US$40-billion before a 1993 stripped-down US$30-billion redesign. Like the shuttle, the station, (now named the International Space Station (ISS), has not lived up to NASA's projections. One General Accounting Office report found that, through June, 2002, the actual cost of designing, building and launching the station would be US$48.2-billion. (The GAO included the sunk costs of the various discarded designs.) The cost of operating the station after its assembly through 2012 will add another US$45.7-billion to the price tag, for a total bill of US$93.9-billion. Congress has capped the station's budget at about US$25-billion, excluding many costs. Even so NASA has found that it will cost about US$30-billion to complete the station in its current design. Worse, the station went from a projected capacity for 12 full-time occupants down to three. But it takes the time of twoand-a-half astronauts to maintain the station. That leaves very little time for science and research, an original justification for the station. As station costs soared, NASA ignored the private sector. In the past ''big science'' projects were handled by the private sector. For example, the Carnegie Institution spent (in 1996

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dollars) US$20.4-million between 1920 and 1929 on the Mt. Wilson Observatory, US$26.37-million from 1930 to 1939, and US$18-million between 1940 and 1949. The Rockefeller Foundation, starting in 1929, paid out US$60-million to build the Mount Palomar Observatory, which saw first light in 1948. Lower costs for access to space, and more space infrastructure and services, would benefit those wanting to use space for scientific investigations. The obvious way to bring down the high costs of space activities is to involve the private sector. After all, it is the private sector that generates and commercializes new goods and services from cars to computers, brings down costs, and makes them available to all consumers. The communications and information revolution produced a high demand for satellites, giving a boost to the private space sector. The Satellite Industry Association estimated that worldwide satellite industry revenues would be US$92-billion in 2001, up from US$83-billion in 2000 and US$69-billion in 1999, with the American portion currently valued at US$37.5billion. The Space Transportation Association chairman, Tidal McCoy, puts the number of employees in space-related industries at 497,000. Currently NASA fights with policymakers to maintain its budgets and is always under pressure to cut projects and missions. A market-based growth strategy would benefit any party that could benefit from low-cost access to space. Wouldn't it be great if a privatized Kennedy Space Center were as busy with launches as nearby Orlando International Airport is with take-offs and landings? It will certainly be a while before we see that level of private space operations.

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CP SolvesBetter than NASA

Private sector solves better than government avoids politicization Garmong 2004. (Robert Garmong Ph.D. in philosophy, was a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute from 2003 to 2004. Privatize
Space Exploration: The Free-Market Solution For America's Space Program. http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/science/space/3763-privatize-space-exploration-the-free-market-solution-for-america-039-sspace-program.html) hss Indeed, the space shuttle program was supposed to be phased out years ago, but the search for its replacement has been halted, largely because space contractors enjoy collecting on the overpriced shuttle without the expense and bother of researching cheaper alternatives. A private industry could have fired them--but not so in a government project, with homedistrict congressmen to lobby on their behalf. There is reason to believe that the political nature of the space program may have even been directly responsible for the Columbia disaster. Fox News reported that NASA chose to stick with nonFreon-based foam insulation on the booster rockets, despite evidence that this type of foam causes up to eleven times as much damage to thermal tiles as the older, Freon-based foam. Although NASA was exempted from the restrictions on Freon use, which environmentalists believe causes ozone depletion, and despite the fact that the amount of Freon released by NASA's rockets would have been trivial, the space agency elected to stick with the politically correct foam. It is impossible to integrate the contradictory. To whatever extent an engineer is forced to base his decisions, not on the realities of science but on the arbitrary, unpredictable, and often impossible demands of a politicized system, he is stymied. Yet this politicizing is an unavoidable consequence of governmental control over scientific research and development.

Private sector approaches to solving are superior to NASA Worden 2004. (Pete Worden was Director of Transformation at the Space and Missiles Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force
Base. As the staff officer for initiatives in the first Bush administration's National Space Council, he spearheaded efforts to revitalize our civil space exploration and earth monitoring programs. He was scientific co-investigator for two NASA space lab missions. Private Sector Opportunities and the Presidents Space Exploration Vision. The George Marshall institute. http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/230.pdf) hss The first different private sector aspect is that NASA and other government agencies can contract for services rather than systems. There is a model here that the Department of Defense has used with great success, and as a former Air Force officer I must reluctantly commend the Navy. The Navy has something called the UFO, Ultra-High Frequency FollowOn communications satellites. (So the X-files TV show really is right, the government does have UFOs!) The Navy bought these communications capabilities as services rather than systems. The systems themselves werent developed by a government program office, but were built by the private sector to provide the services the Government contracted for. This is an example of more private sector involvement in the sense that government money is spent in a different manner. It is a step in the private direction, but only a small one. It is a first way to involve the private sector in a different manner than traditional contracting. NASA has not used it much, although there have been a few examples such as the Lunar Prospector that were done on this sort of model.

NASA has failed the USISS, budget overruns (Hudgins 04, Edward L. Hudgins, director of The Objectivist Center, is the editor of the Cato Institute book, Space: The FreeMarket Frontier, 1/28/04, gd, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2514) The reaction to President Bush's plan for a permanent moon base and a trip to Mars is, "Great! It's about time NASA stopped going around in circles in low Earth orbit and returns to real science and exploration." Unfortunately, there's not a snowball's chance in the sun that the same agency that currently is constructing a downsized version of its originally planned space station, decades behind schedule, at 10 times its original budget, a few hundred miles up in orbit, will be able to build a station several hundred thousand miles away on the moon. If Americans are again to walk on the moon and make their way to Mars, NASA will actually need to be downsized and the private sector allowed to lead the way to the next frontier. The lunar landings of over three decades ago were among the greatest human achievements. Ayn Rand wrote that Apollo 11 "was like a dramatist's emphasis on the dimension of reason's power." We were inspired at the sight of humans at our best, traveling to another world. In announcing NASA's new mission, President Bush echoed such sentiments, speaking of the American values of "daring, discipline, ingenuity," and "the spirit of discovery." But after the triumphs of Apollo, NASA failed to make space more accessible to mankind. There were supposed to be shuttle flights every week; instead,

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there have been about four per year. The space station was projected to cost $8 billion, house a crew of 12 and be in orbit by the mid-1990s. Instead, its price tag will be $100 billion and it will have only a crew of three. Worse, neither the station nor the shuttle does much important science. Governments simply cannot provide commercial goods and services. Only private entrepreneurs can improve quality, bring down the prices, and make accessible to all individuals cars, airline trips, computers, the Internet, you name it. Thus, to avoid the errors of the shuttle and space station, NASA's mission must be very narrowly focused on exploring the moon and planets, and perhaps conducting some basic research, which also might serve a defense function. This will mean leaving low Earth orbit to the private sector. Thus, the shuttle should be given away to private owners. The United Space Alliance, the joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed-Martin that refurbishes the shuttle between flights, would be an obvious candidate. Let a private owner fly it for paying customers-including NASA, if necessary -- if it is still worth flying. NASA also should give up the money-draining space station, and sooner rather than later. The station might be turned over to international partners or, better still, to the mostly private Russian rocket company, Energia -- and the Western investors who were in the process of commercializing and privatizing the Mir space station before the Russian government brought it down for political reasons. If need be, NASA can be a rentpaying station tenant. NASA centers that drive up its overall budget but do not directly contribute to its mission should be shut down. If the government wants to continue satellite studies of the climate and resources or other such functions, they could be turned over to other agencies, such as EPA and Interior Department. NASA and the rest of the government should contract for launch services with private companies, which would handle transportation to and from low Earth orbit. Contracting with private pilots with private planes is what the Post Office did in the 1920s and 1930s, which helped the emerging civil aviation sector

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***Specific Missions*** CP SolvesAsteroids

Private enterprise is more efficient for asteroid missions Orange County Register, 10 (4/27, Space: Free-Market Frontier, Lexis)
Those goals contrast with President John F. Kennedy's famous proclamation before Congress on May 25, 1961, that America would land a man "by the end of this decade." That call was fulfilled on time, eight years later - with much of the engineering and construction done in Orange County. Granted, Mars and asteroid missions would be much more difficult. But more important is that the nature of space exploration has changed greatly since 1961, with private enterprises shooting faster toward the stars. Even with the cancellation of NASA funding for the Constellation project, Hudgins said, NASA's space proposals "shape up to be more NASA boondoggles. They're not making us a space-faring civilization. All this does is keep NASA employees at work. To what end?" According to November 2007 NASA estimate, the Mars mission alone could cost as much as $450 billion. Mr. Hudgins said missions to asteroids and Mars would be much cheaper once the private sector built up a strong technological infrastructure for space exploration.

Privatization solves asteroidsits profitable Meteorite USA, 10 (12/29, Saving the World One Meteorite at a Time http://www.meteoritesusa.com/meteorite-articles/savingthe-world-one-meteorite-at-a-time/) Steve Arnold of the Science Channels Meteorite Men recently did an interview for Yahoo News where he stated that scientists cant typically afford to hunt meteorites as often or spend as much time in the field, and thats where private sector meteorite hunters come into play. Meteorite hunting takes time, money, and a massive amount of effort to be successful. The huge time commitment involved makes it tough for most university researchers and scientists, because they usually cant afford the time or money to hunt meteorites full time. The private sector meteorite hunter has the opportunity and motivation to hunt meteorites for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the monetary value. In a word its profitable to hunt meteorites IF you know what youre doing.

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CP SolvesConstellation Constellation fails privatization makes it effective David 10, N. David, freelance journalist, 2-6-2010, The NASA 2011 budget and the future of Americas Manned Space
Program, http://www.helium.com/items/1734055-nasa-2011-budget, DKreus NASA's budget is not being cut under the 2011 proposal. It is being increased, just not at the amount that Constellation required. With ambitious but achievable goals that spark the imagination of the American public, and the help of America's private sector, it may just be possible for NASA to revitalize America's manned space program. Right now there are more questions than answers, but perhaps the 2011 budget and its new direction for NASA will not be the serious blow to America's manned space program that some fear. If it truly results in proper use of the ISS, successful commercialization of low Earth orbit, and new technologies for manned exploration of deep space, we may one day look back and wonder why it didn't happen sooner.

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CP SolvesExploration The private sector is key to exploration Presidents Commission on Implementation of US Space Exploration Policy, 04 (The Commission is made up of
a number of industry and government members, viewable in Appendix D of the liked document, 06/4/04, gd, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/moontomars/docs/M2MReportScreenFinal.pdf) Although many companies exist and more are emerging in the field of space, an increase in both the number and variety of such businesses would vastly increase the processes and materials available for space exploration. The private sector will continue to push the envelope to succeed competitively in the space field. It is the stated policy of the act creating and enabling NASA that it encourage and nurture private sector space. The Commission heard testimony on both positive incentives and potential bottlenecks encountered by the private sector as they attempt to exploit these commercial opportunities. A space industry capable of contributing to economic growth, producing new products through the creation of new knowledge and leading the world in invention and innovation, will be a national treasure. Such an industry will rely upon proven players with aerospace capabilities, but increasingly should encourage entrepreneurial activity.

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CP SolvesSPS
SPS should be privatized solves faster, costs less, and revitalizes the aerospace sector more effectively NSS 06, National Space Society, organization researching and analyzing various methods to explore and develop space, 12-6-2006,
Introduction to the motion to the National Space Society Board of Directors, http://www.sspi.gatech.edu/sunsatcorpfaq.pdf, DKreus Space Solar Power must be a commercial or public/private company, as Comsat was. Several organizations, such as NASA and DOE are vying to assume control of the space solar power / wireless power transfer research venue to enlarge their empires. Neither organization would move space solar power an inch closer to commercial reality because neither organization would "win" by doing that. Rather, placing space solar power / wireless power transfer research and development under their control will delay the formation of a power satellite industry, delay the lowering in cost of orbital space transportation, delay the formation of innumerable other cis-lunar industries, including asteroid protection, and, finally, incidentally for NSS, delay space settlement in general. NASA doing anything in space costs ten times as much compared to commercial enterprise doing it. IF commercial enterprise can do it, then commercial development is the way to go. (Some things, like the Apollo program, telescopes on the moon, or Mars development cannot be done commercially.) So Space solar power and many other goals await organizations chartered and committed to doing those things. For example, if NASA could support 6 settlers on the moon for 2 billion dollars per year, commercial (public/private) enterprises could do it for one tenth of that cost. The 10 to 1 ratio applies across the board. Most importantly the development is ten times more easily sustained by reason of the lower cost. And actually probably a hundred times more likely to be sustained, since NASA has no significant history of income-generating activity. A renaissance in commercial cis-lunar space markets beckons. If and when SSP is built, greatly reduced launch costs will provide unprecedented access to space and space operations - from in-situ resource utilization and improved observation and communications to space settlement, and many products we can only dream of today - beginning with SSP promising to provide reliable power delivery and global energy security with improved international prosperity at greatly reduced environmental impact. Therefore we present and commend the following motion to the Board of Directors: Motion to recommend the chartering by Congress of a Space Solar Power Corporation. The National Space Society recommends the enactment of legislation by the Congress to charter a Space Solar Power Corporation. This corporation would be directed to research, design, develop, build and operate a Space Solar Power System (SSPS). The corporation would receive special financial incentives designed to coordinate a lowering in commercial launch to orbit costs commensurate with, and as a direct result of a massively expanded market.

Private sector has sufficient technology could be completed within a year Business Green 08 (publication for firms wishing to improve environmental sensitivity, 4/30. Satellite solar panels promise grid parity power by next year http://www.businessgreen. com/businessgreen/news/2215513/satellite-solar-panels-promise)
Solar Concentrator Company Sunrgi is planning to undercut conventional grid electricity prices within twelve months, using the same solar technology designed for satellites. Sunrgi is planning a technology combining solar concentrators with space-class solar technology based on germanium, which it claims will produce energy costing five cents per kilowatt hour when amortised over 20 years. The company would not reveal the initial investment required in the equipment, which will be initially sold to utilities and large-scale industrial organisations. The technology, which uses lenses to focus sunlight onto solar material, has an efficiency of 37.5 per cent, the company said, compared to around 15 per cent for conventional crystalline solar panels. With sunlight generating 1MW per square metre, that means it can harvest 375 watts, said Sunrgi CEO Paul Sidlo. The company is using solar chips from Boeing Spectrolabs as the basis for the solar concentrator system. Spectrolabs has previously been credited with developing high-efficiency multi-junction solar material. The lenses used by the company will focus the power of 2,000 suns onto the solar material, said Sidlo, creating temperatures of 3,400 degrees. He added that the technology rests on two key pieces of intellectual propery. Firstly, Sunrgi uses a proprietary cooling technology to stop the intense heat from the lenses vapourising the solar material. "We have a nanomount on the back of the chip that has a tremendous ability to move thousands of thermal watts of energy away from the chip," explained Sidlo. "It uses nanotechnology that we developed." Once removed from the chip by the nanotechnology, the heat eventually reaches an aluminium heat sink that can help to move it out of the solar array. In future versions, the company is considering harvesting the waste heat and converting it back into power. The other proprietary technology is a tracking system that will minutely adjust the array's position to track the sun, increasing the energy that a unit will be able to harvest from the sun on a daily basis. The company said it hopes to begin commercial production in within 12 to 15 months.

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Market exists now to create cheap SPSrecent deal with PG&E and commercial competition prove. Bruce Dorminy, award-winning science journalist, former Hong Kong bureau chief for Aviation Week and Space Technology and former technology correspondent for Financial Times, October 25, 9. Snagging Free-Range Solar Power in Space Is an Option
http://www.miller-mccune.com/science-environment/snagging-free-range-solar-power-in-space-is-an-option-3382/ This past April, Pacific Gas and Electric signed the worlds first space solar power purchase agreement. Beginning in 2016, Solaren Corporation, a space solar power startup based in Manhattan Beach, Calif., will provide PG&E with 200 megawatts of space solar power per hour, or some 1,700 gigawatt/hours (GWh) per year. Thats significant, since one GWh roughly equals a sixth of Los Angeles peak electric demand. With a solar photovoltaic collecting array of an estimated kilometer in size, the satellite will use solar concentrators to focus sunlight onto a photovoltaic array. Energy from the photovoltaic array will then be converted into a radio frequency signal using solid-state power amplifiers. From there, it then forms a beam that can be transmitted to the ground. Located in a rural part of Fresno County, Calif., the PG&E/Solaren rectenna will be hooked into an onsite substation that will gather up the solar electricity and adjust voltages at a so-called delivery point. However, from the time the space solar power enters the PG&E system, the California utility projects that this new space electricitys 2016 wholesale price will be some 12.9 cents per kilowatt. Utilities are notoriously conservative, so we had to
convince PG&E that we knew what we were doing, said Solarens CEO Gary Spirnak. He refuses to give an exact cost for the project, except that it will be in the billions of dollars. And PG&E has only contracted to pay for energy it actually receives and none of the startup costs. Those costs will be huge. Spirnak, a former spacecraft project manager with the U.S. Air Force who later worked for both Hughes and Boeing, notes that Solaren will launch its estimated 100,000-kilogram geosynchronous space solar satellite in sections. This will require some three to four launches from Cape Canaveral; based on current launch cost estimates, the financial burden of launching such hefty payloads into geostationary Earth orbit would easily range into the hundreds of millionsof dollars. Spirnak said many previous space solar designs planned on moving gigawatts of electricity over many kilometers in space, and so wiring would make up a third of their systems weight. In contrast, his own team patented a design that alleviates such heavy on-orbit wiring, making the whole system significantly lighter. A possible competitor, Space Energy, an international space solar startup with offices in Switzerland and

Canada, hopes to reduce its costs at the launch pad. This might be achieved by using more economical ways of accessing space, perhaps with the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket (a new reusable commercial launcher). Space Energy already has some $10 million in seed capital, but is at least a couple of years away from building hardware for its projects. Amaresh Kollipara, Space Energys chief strategy officer, said plans call for a $180 to $280 million demonstrator satellite to be launched into low Earth orbit within two years of the venture being funded. Before 2025, Kollipara and colleagues would like to see their first phase of operation fully implemented that is, the on-orbit robotic construction of a space solar satellite stretching over several square kilometers. It would likely be divided into separate nodes that would either be linked physically or via laser transmissions. Space Energys current plan is to use such a platform to beam one gigawatt of microwave energy to the ground. Theres no way we are going to displace other forms of electricity, Kollipara said. Space solar will simply be one energy option. But Space Energys potential target markets would be China, India, portions of western Europe and niche regions of the U.S.Kollipara estimates the startups end-to-end cost per kilowatt-hour will be some 15 to 25 cents. Thats more expensive than power generated from hydroelectric and coal-burning plants, he said, but is on par with costs of terrestrial solar power and wind energy.

Only privatization solves the cost barrier to SPS.

Solar Companies, national directory for solar services, 11. Is Space-Based Solar Power Viable? http://www.solarcompanies.com/solar-articles/is-space-based-solar-power-viable
Space is vast. This means we have a lot of room to put up solar energy systems. In fact, we've already done so repeatedly. Most satellites run on it. The space station certainly uses panels to keep the lights on. To generate a massive amount of solar energy, we would merely need to expand the system and make a small change. The idea would be to build mirror fields of 2.5 kilometers by 5 kilometers. These would then be focused on highly efficient solar panels. The condensed sunlight could produce enough energy to power 1,000 homes. That may sound like a big system, but space is infinite and the sun is "on" every second. How about maintenance? Any system is going to need some maintenance. We've become fairly good at space walks and such. We already have the space station in orbit, so a home is established. Setting up a small shuttle to move out and about on the system to replace broken parts would represent some minor technical advances, but nothing we can't handle. Okay, we're generating power. How do we get it back to Earth to use? Well, this has already been worked out as well. The answer is microwaves. Instead of converting the energy to alternate current electricity, it would be converted to microwaves. A beam of microwaves would then be shot down to a receiving plant roughly a square mile in size. There, the waves would be converted into useable energy. So, why haven't we done this yet? How come we aren't meeting oddly attractive

aliens yet? The answer is the same as it always is. The technology may exist, but the cost of getting it all up into space and working is simply staggering. There is no current solution, but the effort of companies to privatize the space exploration process is raising hopes that it will become viable at some point in the not to distant future.

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Private companies have the tech they are ready to build NSS 06, National Space Society, organization researching and analyzing various methods to explore and develop space, 12-6-2006,
Introduction to the motion to the National Space Society Board of Directors, http://www.sspi.gatech.edu/sunsatcorpfaq.pdf, DKreus Question 4: What Is The State Of The Technology, Especially Compared To The Comsat Analogy? I.E., How Much Of The Necessary Technology Is Known, And How Much Needs To Be Created? Answer 4: We are far better prepared to build Sunsats today than we were in 1962 to build Comsats. Our space transportation understanding is 40+ years more advanced. Our telerobotics understanding is 40+ years more advanced. Telesurgery is commonplace. Our understanding of the electromagnetic interaction between the earths magnetosphere, solar flares and an SSPs intense electromagnetic field is almost perfect. (We had almost zero knowledge of that interaction then.) Our space photovoltaics technology is ten times more efficient and a hundred times lighter in weight. Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) technology is once again unfunded in the US. Creating a real WPT laboratory and industry would be a core component of SunSat Corp, just as a satellite communications laboratory was/is a core component of Comsat Corp. WPT was demonstrated in 1975 by Bill Brown at JPL/Goldstone. For a readable paper on WPT see the URSI White Paper on Solar Power Satellites which is a bit later than the one on the SSPW website. We are not at a final version because of international disagreements on publishing this work area. Neither version on the web contains much important work done in recent decades, such as Draper et als work on earths magnetosphere, solar flares, etc.,

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CP SolvesColonization
Privatization key to colonization Dinkin 2004. Sam Dinkin is a writer for The Space Review. Space privatization: road to freedom. July 26, 2004.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/193/1) hss Some things may be worth that transportation cost. Colonization in order to assure that our species outlasts the dinosaurs is priceless. Opening Mars to colonization will also create new opportunities for religious freedom and personal freedoms as the Pilgrims found when they immigrated to the New World. Space entertainment might pay its own way, as might suborbital tourism. Orbital hotels may be viable. Space science might be able to tag along, but science would have to be heavily subsidized. Maybe astronomical observing frequencies could be sold off on Earth to pay for a site on the far side of the Moon, but that would require much lower transport prices and higher spectrum prices than weve seen since the 3G crash. Suborbital point-to-point service from New York to Tokyo with a flight time less than the Concordes New York-toLondon time may emerge some time. There are some valuable military uses to space being explored by the Pentagon with its FALCON and RASCAL programs in addition to earth observing satellites. Further weaponization of space will probably be required to defend the US in the most economical manner and to defend the new civilian space assets. If no weaponization occurs by the US, we can definitely expect terrorists or other states to do so and for space to be stunted by lack of defensive protection. With no privatization and no military protection, there will not be much colonization. Antarctica may be free of the intellectual pollution brought by property rights, but there are also no citizens, no development and very little in the way of commercial exports. Alaska, in contrast, hands out checks to its citizens rather than charging them taxes. Antarctica is also more inaccessible, so there may be another explanation for the disparity.

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CP SolvesMoon Colonization/Mining
NASA has failed the US. Private companies quickest, cheapest way to moonISS, budget overruns Hudgins 04, Edward L. Hudgins, director of The Objectivist Center, is the editor of the Cato Institute book, Space: The FreeMarket Frontier, 1/28/04, gd, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2514 The reaction to President Bush's plan for a permanent moon base and a trip to Mars is, "Great! It's about time NASA stopped going around in circles in low Earth orbit and returns to real science and exploration." Unfortunately, there's not a snowball's chance in the sun that the same agency that currently is constructing a downsized version of its originally planned space station, decades behind schedule, at 10 times its original budget, a few hundred miles up in orbit, will be able to build a station several hundred thousand miles away on the moon. If Americans are again to walk on the moon and make their way to Mars, NASA will actually need to be downsized and the private sector allowed to lead the way to the next frontier. The lunar landings of over three decades ago were among the greatest human achievements. Ayn Rand wrote that Apollo 11 "was like a dramatist's emphasis on the dimension of reason's power." We were inspired at the sight of humans at our best, traveling to another world. In announcing NASA's new mission, President Bush echoed such sentiments, speaking of the American values of "daring, discipline, ingenuity," and "the spirit of discovery." But after the triumphs of Apollo, NASA failed to make space more accessible to mankind. There were supposed to be shuttle flights every week; instead, there have been about four per year. The space station was projected to cost $8 billion, house a crew of 12 and be in orbit by the mid-1990s. Instead, its price tag will be $100 billion and it will have only a crew of three. Worse, neither the station nor the shuttle does much important science. Governments simply cannot provide commercial goods and services. Only private entrepreneurs can improve quality, bring down the prices, and make accessible to all individuals cars, airline trips, computers, the Internet, you name it. Thus, to avoid the errors of the shuttle and space station, NASA's mission must be very narrowly focused on exploring the moon and planets, and perhaps conducting some basic research, which also might serve a defense function. This will mean leaving low Earth orbit to the private sector. Thus, the shuttle should be given away to private owners. The United Space Alliance, the joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed-Martin that refurbishes the shuttle between flights, would be an obvious candidate. Let a private owner fly it for paying customers-including NASA, if necessary -- if it is still worth flying. NASA also should give up the money-draining space station, and sooner rather than later. The station might be turned over to international partners or, better still, to the mostly private Russian rocket company, Energia -- and the Western investors who were in the process of commercializing and privatizing the Mir space station before the Russian government brought it down for political reasons. If need be, NASA can be a rentpaying station tenant. NASA centers that drive up its overall budget but do not directly contribute to its mission should be shut down. If the government wants to continue satellite studies of the climate and resources or other such functions, they could be turned over to other agencies, such as EPA and Interior Department. NASA and the rest of the government should contract for launch services with private companies, which would handle transportation to and from low Earth orbit. Contracting with private pilots with private planes is what the Post Office did in the 1920s and 1930s, which helped the emerging civil aviation sector

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CP SolvesMoon Colonization
Private sector can get around international laws can colonize the moon. The Space Settlement Institute 2011. (The Space Settlement Institute is a non-profit association of professionals founded to
help promote the human colonization and settlement of outer space. Lunar Land Claims Recognition Strategy. http://www.spacesettlement-institute.org/strategy.html) hss International law bans governments from owning land on the Moon, but private entities could legally own such land. The possibility of acquiring a vast tract of undeveloped Lunar real estate would create a major incentive for the private sector to invest billions to independently finance and develop a regular space transportation system and permanent base on the Moon. Freeing the development of a Lunar transport system and base from dependence on government funding would not only provide significant taxpayer relief but would also help make the President's Moon-to-Mars proposal more sustainable.

Private sector best way to solve moon colonization too many problems with NASA. Schmitt 3. Harrison H. Schmitt is the chairman of the Interlune-Intermars Initiative, Inc., Testimony of Hon. Harrison H. Schmitt:
Senate Hearing on "Lunar Exploration" http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=10924) hss It is doubtful that the United States or any government will initiate or sustain a return of humans to the Moon absent a comparable set of circumstances as those facing the Congress and Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson in the late 1950s and throughout 1960s. Huge unfunded "entitlement" liabilities and a lack of sustained media and therefore public interest will prevent the long-term commitment of resources and attention that such an effort requires. Even if tax-based funding commitments could be guaranteed, it is not a foregone conclusion that the competent and disciplined management system necessary to work in deep space would be created and sustained. If Government were to lead a return to deep space, the NASA of today is probably not the agency to undertake a significant new program to return humans to deep space, particularly the Moon and then to Mars. NASA today lacks the critical mass of youthful energy and imagination required for work in deep space. It also has become too bureaucratic and too risk-adverse. Either a new agency would needed to implement such a program or NASA would need to be totally restructured using the lessons of what has worked and has not worked since it was created 45 years ago. Of particular importance would be for most of the agency to be made up of engineers and technicians in their 20s and managers in their 30s, the re-institution of design engineering activities in parallel with those of contractors, and the streamlining of management responsibility. The existing NASA also would need to undergo a major restructuring and streamlining of its program management, risk management, and financial management structures. Such total restructuring would be necessary to re-create the competence and discipline necessary to operate successfully in the much higher risk and more complex deep space environment relative to that in near-earth orbit.

Private companies can colonize the moon studies prove David 2005. (Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than four decades. He is past editor-in-chief of the
National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines and has written for SPACE.com since 1999. Private Sector, LowCost Lunar Plan Unveiled. http://www.space.com/1793-private-sector-cost-lunar-plan-unveiled.html) hss A newly released study has focused on how best to return people to the Moon, reporting that future lunar missions can be done for under $10 billion - far less than a NASA price tag. The multi-phased three-year study was done by a private space firm, SpaceDev of Poway, California, and concluded that safe, lower cost missions can be completed by the private sector using existing technology or innovative new technology expected to be available in time to support human exploration of the Moon in the near-future. SpaceDev announced the results of its International Lunar Observatories Human Servicing Mission study last week at a meeting conducted by Lunar Enterprise Corporation (LEC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Space Age Publishing Company of Hawaii's Island, Hawaii, and Palo Alto, California. The study was funded by LEC.

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CP SolvesMoon Exploration
Privatization is key to lunar exploration workforce flexibility and innovation Schmitt 03, Harrison H. Schmitt, Fulbright Fellow, National Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, NASA distinguished service medal, Caltech grad and Fairchild Fellow, Fellow at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Engineer of the Year Award, National Space Society of Professorial Engineers, former US senator, former Astronaut, 6-30-03, Private
Enterprise Approach to Lunar Base Activation, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6V3S-4B82PJY-S1&_cdi=5738&_user=4257664&_pii=S0273117703005374&_origin=&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F2003&_sk=999689988&view=c& wchp=dGLbVlz-zSkWW&md5=9e41c9111a8bb0381cac273fe28e2ddd&ie=/sdarticle.pdf, DKreus Along with a highly motivated and capable young work force, the preparation of program, project, financial, engineering design, manufacturing, and risk management plans, and their systematic configuration control, was a key to the success of Apollo. Deep space is not yet as forgiving an environment for human activities as near-Earth space has become (and even there risk there is still very high). Only one of three attempts to forge the competent and disciplined management system necessary to function safely and successfully in lunar space has been successful, namely the mature Apollo Program. The former Soviet Union tried and failed, as did the Apollo Program until after the Apollo 1 fire in 1966. It does not appear that an existing government agency could create a management and personnel environment necessary to successfully undertake a return to the Moon. A new agency with the same flexibility that the early NASA had might do this, however, it is not clear that government, national or international, is capable of the sustained commitment of resources such an effort requires. Thus, of the various possible approaches to managing a return to the Moon, a largely private initiative would be desirable (Schmitt, 2000).

The workforce is in place for private development action is key Schmitt 03, Harrison H. Schmitt, Fulbright Fellow, National Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, NASA distinguished service medal, Caltech grad and Fairchild Fellow, Fellow at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Engineer of the Year Award, National Space Society of Professorial Engineers, former US senator, former Astronaut, 6-30-03, Private
Enterprise Approach to Lunar Base Activation, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6V3S-4B82PJY-S1&_cdi=5738&_user=4257664&_pii=S0273117703005374&_origin=&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F2003&_sk=999689988&view=c& wchp=dGLbVlz-zSkWW&md5=9e41c9111a8bb0381cac273fe28e2ddd&ie=/sdarticle.pdf, DKreus Experience with young engineers, scientists and skilled workers strongly suggests that a large reservoir of potential employees exists for private sector hires to work on the Moon and in related activities on Earth. Criteria for selection, compensation, and training of employees will be developed in concert with the development of engineering designs and operational plans. One selection criterion that will be considered because of cost considerations will be employee interest in permanent settlement on the Moon. Also, lunar-based employees must realize that all medical and recreational requirements will be served on the Moon, with returns to Earth severely limited by costs. ANCILLARY ACTIVITIES The development and amortization of the capability to go to the Moon and return routinely using private capital resources will create several potential profit centers in support of ancillary activities. The cost of such activities, if carried out in conjunction with the support of Helium-3 production, would be at the margin. Scientific research on or from the Moon and tourism, as examples, would not have to bear the capital cost of launch and space vehicle development or of the creation and management of a lunar support base, but could piggy-back on resource related activities. There may be no other practical means for affordable scientific research on the Moon or for creating an economically viable opportunity for tourists. CONCLUSION A business/investor-founded approach to the establishment of a permanent lunar base represents a clear alternative to initiatives by the U.S. Government or by a coalition of countries. A return to the Moon will require a sustained commitment for 10 to 15 years or until the base can be self-supportive indefinitely. Although not yet certain of success, a business/investor approach, supported by the potential of lunar Helium-3 fusion power, offers the greatest likelihood of sustained commitment.

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CP SolvesMars
Privatization is superior solves Mars exploration faster and more efficiently David 10, N. David, freelance journalist, 2-6-2010, The NASA 2011 budget and the future of Americas Manned Space
Program, http://www.helium.com/items/1734055-nasa-2011-budget, DKreus "Imagine trips to Mars that take weeks instead of nearly a year; people fanning out across the inner solar system, exploring the Moon, asteroids and Mars nearly simultaneously," Charlie Bolden, the current NASA Administrator, said at a February 1, 2010 press conference. He says this will be the outcome of the direction outlined in the 2011 proposal. It certainly sounds impressive, but can any of it really happen? The Commercialization of Space One encouraging sign is that the commercialization of low Earth orbit is part of the plan. The Space Shuttle fleet will be retired at the end of 2010. Rather than use NASA resources to develop a replacement for the Shuttle, the goal is to have the commercial sector develop the means to reach low Earth orbit. The commercialization of space is long overdue. Private enterprise will do it more efficiently and cost-effectively, and leaving low Earth orbit to the private sector frees up NASA resources to explore deep space. Billions of dollars are allocated to NASA in the 2011 budget and beyond for research and development of new technologies and approaches to space flight. Hopefully, breakthrough technologies will make space flight easier, faster, and more affordable.

Private companies can do mission to mars for much cheaper than the government. Hudgins 2001 (Edward L., director of regulatory studies CATO, Cato Handbook for Congress: Policy
Recommendations for the 107th Congress (2001) hss Sensing that a less costly mission was possible, then Martin Marietta engineer Robert Zubrin and other scientists devised what they called a Mars Direct approach that would use existing technology and dispense with the space stations, Moon bases, and NASAs other expensive infrastructure. Zubrin saw that, instead of carrying return fuel to Mars, an unmanned ship could land first with a simple chemical laboratory to manufacture methane and oxygen (i.e., rocket fuel) from Marss carbon dioxide atmosphere. NASA put the cost of Zubrins approach at between $20 billion and $30 billion, some 95 percent less than the government approach. Yet NASA continues to squander its $13.5 billion annual budget on a space shuttle and a station that contribute little new, useful knowledge. That agency could mount two or three manned Mars missions for the cost of the space station.

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CP SolvesMarsAT: No Interest in Mission

Companies are interested in Mars exploration SpaceX proves Discover News 11, Discovery News, news organization aimed at space exploration, 4-23-11, SpaceX Aims to Put Man on Mars
in 10-20 Years, http://news.discovery.com/space/spacex-elon-musk-mars-astronauts-20-years-110423.html, DKreus Private US company SpaceX hopes to put an astronaut on Mars within 10 to 20 years, the head of the firm said. "We'll probably put a first man in space in about three years," Elon Musk told the Wall Street Journal Saturday. "We're going all the way to Mars, I think... best case 10 years, worst case 15 to 20 years." SpaceX is one of the two leading private space companies in the United States and has won $75 million from the US space agency NASA to help its pursuit of developing a spacecraft to replace the space shuttle. The California-based company last year completed its first successful test of an unmanned space capsule into orbit and back. "Our goal is to facilitate the transfer of people and cargo to other planets, and then it will be up to people if they want to go," said Musk, who also runs the Tesla company which develops electric cars. The US space shuttle program is winding down later this year with final flights of Endeavour set for next week and Atlantis in June, ending an era of American spaceflight that began with the first space shuttle mission in 1981. When the shuttle program ends, the United States hopes private industry will be able to fill the gap by creating the next generation of spacecraft to transport astronauts into space. "A future where humanity is out there exploring stars is an incredibly exciting future, and inspiring, and that's what we're trying to help make happen," Musk added in the interview. Earlier this month SpaceX unveiled what Musk has called the world's most powerful rocket, the Falcon Heavy, which will have its first demonstration flight at the end of 2012. The launcher is designed to lift into orbit satellites or spacecraft weighing more than 53 metric tons, or 117,000 pounds -more than twice the capacity of the Space Shuttle or Delta IV Heavy launcher. SpaceX, short for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, is one of two private companies that NASA has contracted to transport cargo to the International Space Station.

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CP SolvesISS
Privatizing the ISS would generate many more benefits. Hudgins 2001 (Edward L., director of regulatory studies CATO, Cato Handbook for Congress: Policy
Recommendations for the 107th Congress (2001) hss Construction costs for the ISS are pegged at some $50 billion, with the station costing taxpayers at least another $2 billion to operate annually. In addition to these high costs, there are two other major problems with the station. First, there is no prospect of any profitable commercial venture coming from NASAs operation of the station, since no customers could pay the actual costs of renting space on the station. NASA will have to give away space at a loss. This is not to say that commercial use cannot be made of the station. For example, the American company Spacehab and Russias Energia plan to build a commercial module to be attached to the Russian part of the station to provide TV and Internet broadcasting. And Boeing and Russias Khrunichev State Research Production and Space Center also want to build a module to provide commercial and station services. The problem is that NASA has no incentive to operate or experience in operating an economically viable enterprise and likely will mismanage it to the detriment of commercial ventures.

CP solves the ISS betterNASA needs to get out of the way Boaz 08 (David Boaz is the executive vice president of the Cato Institute and has played a key role in the development of the Cato
Institute. Space Privatizationfrom Cato to the BBC http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/space-privatization-from-cato-to-the-bbc/) In the premier issue of BBC Knowledge, the Cambridge University astrophysicist Martin Rees makes several provocative arguments about manned space flight. They are: The completion of the International Space Station (ISS) comes with a price tag of $50 billion, with the only profit being the cooperation with foreign partners. There is no scientific, commercial, or military value in sending people to space. Future expeditions to the Moon and beyond will only be politically and financially feasible if they are cut-price ventures. He concludes that fostering good relations with other countries is insufficient justification for the expenditures, and that NASA should move aside and allow the private sector to play a role in manned space flight. The cost of these activities must lessen if they are to continue, and that will only happen with a decrease or removal of government involvement. Rees observes that only NASA deals with science, planetary exploration, and astronauts, while the private sector is allowed to exploit space commercially for things such as telecommunications. However, there is no shortage of interest in space entrepreneurship: wealthy people with a track record of commercial achievement are yearning to get involved. Rees sees space probes plastered with commercial logos in the future, just as Formula One racers are now. Those ideas may sound radical, but not if youve been following the work of the Cato Institute. As long ago as 1986, Alan Pell Crawford wrote hopefully that space commercialization is a reality, and looked forward to the country making progress toward a free market in space. The elimination of NASA was a recommendation in the Cato Handbook for Congress in 1999. Edward L. Hudgins, former editor of Regulation magazine, wrote a great deal about private options in space. In 1995, he testified before the House Committee on Appropriations that the government should move out of non-defense related space activities, noting the high costs and wastefulness incurred by NASA. In 2001, Hudgins wrote A Plea for Private Cosmonauts, in which he urged the United States to follow the Russians in rediscovering the benefits of free markets after NASA refused to honor Dennis Titos request for a trip to the ISS. Hudgins testified again before the House in 2001, this time before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics. He noted that since the beginning of the Space Age, NASA has actively discouraged and barred many private space endeavors. This effectively works against the advancement and expansion of technology, while pushing out talent to foreign countries who court American scientists and researches to launch from their less-regulated facilities. In Move Aside NASA, Hudgins reported that neither the station nor the shuttle does much important science. This makes the price tag of $100 billion for the ISS, far above its original projected cost, unjustifiable. Michael Gough in 1997 argued that the space shuttle is a bust scientifically and commercially and that both successful and unsuccessful NASA programs have crowded out private explorers, eliminating the possibility of lessening those problems. Molly K. Macauley of Resources for the Future argued in the Summer 2003 issue of Regulation that legislators and regulators had failed to take into account the ills of price regulation, government competition, or command-and-control management in making laws for space exploration.

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CP SolvesHelium-3 Mining
Private sector can solve He3 mining Schmitt 3. Harrison H. Schmitt is the chairman of the Interlune-Intermars Initiative, Inc., Testimony of Hon. Harrison H. Schmitt:
Senate Hearing on "Lunar Exploration" http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=10924) hss I must admit to being skeptical that the U.S. Government can be counted on to make such a "sustained commitment" absent unanticipated circumstances comparable to those of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Therefore, I have spent much of the last decade exploring what it would take for private investors to make such a commitment. At least it is clear that investors will stick with a project if presented to them with a credible business plan and a rate of return commensurate with the risk to invested capital. My colleagues at the Fusion Technology Institute of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Interlune-Intermars Initiative, Inc. believe that such a commercially viable project exists in lunar helium-3 used as a fuel for fusion electric power plants on Earth. Global demand and need for energy will likely increase by at least a factor of eight by the mid-point of the 21st Century. This factor represents the total of a factor of two to stay even with population growth and a factor of four or more to meet the aspirations of people who wish to significantly improve their standards of living. There is another unknown factor that will be necessary to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change, whether warming or cooling, and the demands of new, energy intensive technologies. Helium has two stable isotopes, helium 4, familiar to all who have received helium-filled baloons, and the even lighter helium 3. Lunar helium-3, arriving at the Moon as part of the solar wind, is imbedded as a trace, non-radioactive isotope in the lunar soils. It represents one potential energy source to meet this century's rapidly escalating demand. There is a resource base of helium-3 of about 10,000 metric tonnes just in upper three meters of the titanium-rich soils of Mare Tranquillitatis. This was the landing region for Neil Armstrong and Apollo 11 in 1969. The energy equivalent value of Helium-3 delivered to operating fusion power plants on Earth would be about $4 billion per tonne relative to today's coal. Coal, of course, supplies about half of the approximately $40 billion domestic electrical power market. These numbers illustrate the magnitude of the business opportunity for helium-3 fusion power to compete for the creation of new electrical capacity and the replacement of old plant during the 21st Century. Past technical activities on Earth and in deep space provide a strong base for initiating this enterprise. Such activities include access to and operations in deep space as well as the terrestrial mining and surface materials processing industries. Also, over the last decade, there has been historic progress in the development of inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Progress there includes the production of over a milliwatt of steady-state power from the fusion of helium-3 and deuterium. Steady progress in IEC research as well as basic physics argues strongly that the IEC approach to fusion power has significantly more commercial viability than other technologies pursued by the fusion community. It will have inherently lower capital costs, higher energy conversion efficiency, a range of power from a few hundred megawatts upward, and little or no associated radioactivity or radioactive waste. It should be noted, however, that IEC research has received no significant support as an alternative to Tokamak-based fusion from the Department of Energy in spite of that Department's large fusion technology budgets. The Office of Science and Technology Policy under several Administrations also has ignored this approach.

Private sector solves He3 mining best avoids international laws Schmitt 3. Harrison H. Schmitt is the chairman of the Interlune-Intermars Initiative, Inc., Testimony of Hon. Harrison H. Schmitt:
Senate Hearing on "Lunar Exploration" http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=10924) hss On the question of international law relative to outer space, specifically the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, that law is permissive relative to properly licensed and regulated commercial endeavors. Under the 1967 Treaty, lunar resources can be extracted and owned, but national sovereignty cannot be asserted over the mining area. If the Moon Agreement of 1979, however, is ever submitted to the Senate for ratification, it should be deep sixed. The uncertainty that this Agreement would create in terms of international management regimes would make it impossible to raise private capital for a return to the Moon for helium-3 and would seriously hamper if not prevent a successful initiative by the United States Government.

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CP SolvesLunar Mining
Privatization solves lunar mining its preferable to the aff Stone 09, William Stone, aerospace engineer, June 2009, Mining the Moon, http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/spaceflight/mining-the-moon, DKreus Lunar prospecting will cost a lot of moneyperhaps $20 billion over a decade. Rovers would have to descend into the polar craters to sample the deposits and test for ice, and then move on to other spots to form an overall map, much as wildcatters do every day in oil fields. At the moment, no country seems eager to foot the bill. But where governments fail to act on a vitally important opportunity, the private sector can and should step in. Two years ago, I and a group of like-minded businessmen, expeditionary explorers, and space-systems managers and engineers formed the Shackleton Energy Co. in Del Valle, Texas, to conduct lunar prospecting. Should we find significant reserves of ice, we would then establish a network of refueling service stations in low Earth orbit and on the moon to process and provide fuel and consumables. Like modern highway service stations, these celestial stations would be able to refuel space vehicles of all kinds and would be positioned at key transportation nodes; an obvious spot would be near the International Space Station. Such stations would radically change the way nearly every space system is designed. No longer would you have to carry your fuel and water into orbit with you. Entirely new classes of space vehicles would become possible, ones that operate only at and beyond low Earth orbit, such as vehicles for orbital transfer and satellite repair. Today launch systems must be designed to withstand the punishing effects of high-speed atmospheric drag, pressure, vibration, and heating that occur on the way to space. Protecting the rocket and its payload adds enormously to launch costs. But a vehicle that is designed from the start to operate only in spacesay, between low Earth orbit and the moonis not bound by the same design rules. We would also be able to clear up the ever-growing space debris problem. Thered be plenty of fuel for maneuvering satellites and other spacecraft to avoid debris, and you could also deploy cleanup vehicles to remove obsolete materials from orbit. Within a decade or two, we would soon see the dawn of a new age of space exploration, space tourism, and space business ventures.

Privatization is more efficient makes moon mining more cost efficient Stone 09, William Stone, aerospace engineer, June 2009, Mining the Moon, http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/spaceflight/mining-the-moon, DKreus Three elements are essential for the commercial success of our operation. First, to save about $1 billion during the initial staging of the lunar mining base, the first human team will take only enough fuel to land and establish the basenot enough for a return trip to Earth. This may sound radical, but the human crew who will undertake this mission will do so knowing that their success and survival depend on in situ fuel generation for the return. Should they fail, theirs will be a one-way trip; the risk is theirs to take. For government-sponsored space agencies, such a concept is unthinkable; they cannot tolerate the political risk of failure. Yet it is the only viable business choice. Centuries of explorers made the same hard choice in pushing the limits on land, sea, and air. Its time to carry it forward into space. This is not reckless bravado but calculated risk management to satisfy mission needs and affordability. Second, we need a relatively inexpensive means of returning to low Earth orbit. To do that involves the dissipation of nearly 3 kilometers per second of excess velocity. Decelerating with rocket propellant alone would be prohibitively expensivewed be eating the seed corn. So we plan to do it with actively controlled aerobraking. The water-laden spacecraft will repeatedly dip into and skip out of the upper atmosphere, losing some velocity with each dip, until it ultimately ends up in the orbit of the fueling station. This same maneuver was previously used only for much smaller planetary robotic missions, such as Magellan and the Mars Global Surveyor, but the physics and engineering are well understood. We intend to take the concept to an industrial scale, which would have obvious applications for other space missions. Third, we plan to rely on inflatable structures. Constructed of multilayer fabrics shielded with Kevlar or other strong materials and banded by steel exoskeletons, these structures could provide most of our habitation, storage, and transportation requirements. They would be both lighter and less expensive than traditional spacecraft. A number of companies have done extensive R&D on such inflatable space structures, including Boeing and Bigelow Aerospace, which has even lofted two test modules to low Earth orbit. Reliance on such technologies will decrease the cost of our operation, but it still will not be cheap. We estimate that establishing a lunar mining outpost and low-Earth-orbit fueling network will cost about $20 billion and take about a decade to put in place. That may sound like a lot, but in terms of complexity its comparable to a North Sea oil production complex. And its just a third of what the state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco said it will spend on oil and gas projects over the next five years.

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CP SolvesSpace Tourism
The private sector can solve for space tourism. Worden 2004. (Pete Worden was Director of Transformation at the Space and Missiles Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force
Base. As the staff officer for initiatives in the first Bush administration's National Space Council, he spearheaded efforts to revitalize our civil space exploration and earth monitoring programs. He was scientific co-investigator for two NASA space lab missions. Private Sector Opportunities and the Presidents Space Exploration Vision. The George Marshall institute. http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/230.pdf) hss Other groups are looking at substantial orbital complexes. The Space Island Group is talking about using shuttle main tanks left in orbit as construction building blocks for an orbital complex. There are at least a dozen groups that have pretty substantial financing and support and pretty good technical credibility behind them that are looking at privately developed stations in Earth orbit that could support manufacturing, tourism and so forth. These are the kinds of ideas that are really moving along.

The private sector can build rockets and promote space tourism. Hudgins 2001 (Edward L., director of regulatory studies CATO, Cato Handbook for Congress: Policy
Recommendations for the 107th Congress (2001) hss Lockheed-Martin in the past decade has successfully commercialized its Atlas rocket launch services. It used to sell nearly all of its services to the government; now as many as two-thirds of its customers are private parties. It has held costs down and has had a yearlong backlog of orders for launches. Further, Boeing, which builds and launches the Delta rocket, is also competing for cargo and providing private-sector services. A number of smaller companies also are trying to enter the launch market. Rotary Rocket rolled out a prototype of a planned fully reusable rocket in 1999, but problems have caused a suspension of activities. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the lunar module pilot on the first Moon landing, has developed what he hopes will be a totally reusable craft. Aldrin also is a major advocate of space tourism and commercialization. Kistler Aerospace Corp., using refurbished Russian rocket engines, plans to soon launch what it hopes will be a cost-effective cargo rocket.

Only privatization can catalyze the launch market its comparatively more effective NSS 06, National Space Society, organization researching and analyzing various methods to explore and develop space, 12-6-2006,
Introduction to the motion to the National Space Society Board of Directors, http://www.sspi.gatech.edu/sunsatcorpfaq.pdf, DKreus Question 7: To What Extent Would This Duplicate, Overlap Or Conflict With NASA Launchers? Answer 7: NASA launchers will never be cost competitive. There is no overlap. Only commercially developed and operated reusable space vehicles will be in the cost class necessary. (This is the purpose of NASAs COTS awards, but a handful of launches is not the answer. We need thousands to really lower costs.) There are none in the market today and it will probably take around 3-4 years to get where we need to be to fly those thousands of flights per year. But it is imminently doable, as the space transportation community is well aware. Read the Space Transportation chapter at http://www.sspi.gatech.edu/

CP solves bestmakes space flight financially viable Trevor Brown, MSc, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Masters in Asian Studies, specializes in political, economic, and military strategy for the medium of space, 3-1-2009, Air and Space Power Journal,
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj09/spr09/brown.html The Air Force could also use space transportation, another emerging industry, to maximize its resources. Private ventures now under way are reducing the costs of space access considerably. It is possible that one enterprise could become an alternative to Russian Soyuz spacecraft for NASAs missions to the International Space Station.39 Such enterprises could prove attractive, cost-effective options for delivering the Air Forces less-sensitive payloads to Earth orbit. Space tourism, a growing industry, could enable the Air Force to procure affordable capabilities to routinely operate 60 to 90 miles above Earth.40 Advances that entrepreneurs are making in suborbital space flight could eventually evolve to a point where the Air Force would find it far easier, politically as well as financially, to acquire platforms capable of delivering munitions from

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CP SolvesSpace Research
Commercial spaceflights provide a better mechanism for researching in space Katharine Sanderson, PhD in organometallic chemistry from Cambridge University, 'new business features journalist of the year' by the Periodicals Publishing Association in 2005, and journalist for Nature News, February 2010, Nature News, Science lines up for
a seat to space, http://oea.citadel.edu/newsclips/archive20092010/26258.pdf In time, commercial carriers might give scientists and their projects cheaper and more reliable access to orbit than the ageing space shuttle can offer. They could also provide a better platform for experiments than the International Space Station (ISS), where astronauts had little time to attend to experiments after crew numbers temporarily fell from six to three for several years after the Columbia space-shuttle disaster in 2003. "You can't do good science when you're focusing on keeping the ISS from falling out of the sky," says Mike Gold, director of operations at the Washington DC office of Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas, Nevada, which aims to build a commercial space station. Stern argues that science will turn out to be a bigger customer for commercial spaceflight than tourism. "Tourists will typically fly once or twice they're going to buy tickets in small numbers. But when governments or industry buy tickets they will buy them by the dozens or hundreds," he says. "The prices are now down in the range of single-investigator grants." Seats aboard SpaceShipTwo go for $200,000.

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CP SolvesMilitary Satellites
Private companies can make military communication satellites Clark 2011. Stephen Clark is Reliability Engineer at Serco North America, he Researched and designed a model for a new
supersonic missile, and developed a report with theoretical data to support the design and he designed and created a theoretical test model of a space craft for a hypothetical mission, and gave a presentation to a board made of NASA professionals. February 17, 2011. U.S. military turns to private sector for SATCOM capacity. http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1102/17milsatcom/) hss "The commercial marketplace for procuring commercial satellite technologies is maturing very rapidly, and in some cases may be eclipsing what the military can do," Pino said at a commercial space conference in Washington last week. Pino said government-owned satellites should focus on nuclear-hardened communications, contested environments and anti-jamming capabilities. Commercial satellites can provide the bulk of everyday communications for the military. Military satellite communications, or MILSATCOM, was ahead of commercial technology 15 years ago, but Pino said he believes industry can provide better benign communications than the government can today. "I used to always think the role of commercial was to augment MILSATCOM," Pino said. "I'm unlearning what I used to think I knew. Commercial is here to stay.

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CP SolvesWeather Satellites
Private companies can gather accurate weather information. Intriligator 2007. Devrie Intriligator is the Director, Space Plasma Laboratory at Carmel Research Center, Inc. Collaboration
Between Government and Commercial Space Weather Information Providers. Space Weather Journal. 12 October 2007. http://www.agu.org/journals/sw/swa/news/article/?id=2007SW000348) hss Thomas Bogdan, director of SWPC, opened the meeting stating that the commercial providers and SWPC were convening at a historic moment, just as the space weather enterpriseincluding space tourism, commercial satellites, and commercial aviationis opening up to new customers who are reliant on space weather information. He mentioned that many people do not know that they are or will be in need of space weather information; rather, they will wake up with a surprise in 2012 at solar maximum when a solar flare shorts out their gadgets, requiring them or the companies that service them to seek help from new products and warnings. Bogdan stated that in the current era of constrained budgets, SWPC requires key partnerships to function effectively so as to coordinate and leverage SWPC capabilities. Thus, SWPC may need to move away from certain activities in order to address the growing needs of new customers. He acknowledged that commercial providers stand ready to fill any gaps and ensure continuity of products and services. Bogdan emphasized that SWPC personnel present at the meeting were seeking to understand what products and services the commercial providers wanted and the financial and operational impacts on the SWPC if certain products were emphasized or discontinued. John Kappenman, of Metatech Corporation and chair of CSWIG, discussed the importance of growing the commercial sector for space weather into a thriving industry, citing the National Space Weather Program assessment report (http://www.nswp.gov/nswp_acreport0706.pdf) commissioned by the Office of the Federal Coordinator for Meteorology. He stressed that commercial providers, because they are running a business, focus on their investments and whether infrastructure exists to support these investments. Thus, the reliability, promptness, lack of latency, high cadence, and validation of spacecraft data, such as those from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) series and the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE), as well as ground-based data, such as from magnetometer networks and the Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS), are "musts" for commercial providers in order that they can expand their own capabilities. Further, Kappenman emphasized that commercial providers must know what SWPC considers its "core" versus "noncore" capabilities, so that steps can be taken to ensure continuity of data given to the commercial space weather providers should the SWPC choose to cut programs.

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***Advantage Areas*** CP SolvesAerospace Industry

Private sector development solves maximizes aerospace growth NSSO 07, National Security Space Office, October 10,2007, http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/final-sbsp-interimassessment-release-01.pdf, Space Based Solar Power As an Opportunity for Strategic Security, pg d8. DKreus Private industry participation: a. With the exception of specific safety and legal functions, private industry will be used to develop, produce, construct, field, and operate the infrastructure. b. Competitive contracting and redundant infrastructure capabilities, needed for assured space access and national freedom of space operations, will be used to maximize private industry participation by small, medium, and large companies. c. SLIC, through competitive contracting, will aim to maximize the growth of American space operational mastery within American private industry so as to establish the foundation of technical expertise and industrial capability needed to fully exploit the new spacefaring logistics infrastructure and promote future space enterprises. d. Private industry will be encouraged to commercially exploit the newly acquired technical expertise and industrial capabilities to bring new space products and services to the marketplace to replace and extend the initial spacefaring logistics infrastructure capabilities. e. As part of operational support contracts for government owned facilities and systems, private industry will be required to ensure that a specified percentage of the operational personnel are military reserve personnel to enable, should circumstances warrant, operation of the infrastructure under direct military control. f. As part of participation in the development and production of the spacefaring logistics infrastructure systems, private industry will be required to participate in programs that encourage and foster the development of the future American aerospace workforce.

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CP SolvesBeating China
The private sector best ensures American space dominance 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 I started 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 actual launch costs and prices. As noted last month by a Chinese government official, SpaceX currently has the best launch prices in the world and they dont believe they can beat them. This is a clear case of American innovation trumping lower overseas labor rates. I recognize that our prices shatter the historical cost models of government-led developments, but these prices are not arbitrary, premised on capturing a dominant share of the market, or teaser rates meant to lure in an eager market only to be increased later. These prices are based on known costs and a demonstrated track record, and they exemplify the potential of America's commercial space industry. Here are the facts: The price of a standard flight on a Falcon 9 rocket 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 I am so confident that our performance will increase and our prices will decline over time, as is the case with every other technology. 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 the work required to integrate with the Space Station. If there are cost overruns, SpaceX will cover the difference. (This concept may be foreign to some traditional government space contractors that seem to believe that cost overruns should be the 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 million are the costs of building launch sites at Vandenberg, Cape Canaveral and Kwajalein, as well as the corporate manufacturing facility that can support up to 12 Falcon 9 and Dragon missions per year. This total also includes the cost of five flights of Falcon 1, two flights of Falcon 9, and one up and back flight of Dragon. The Falcon 9 launch vehicle was developed from a blank sheet to first launch in four and half years for just over $300 million. The Falcon 9 is an EELV class vehicle that generates roughly one million pounds of thrust (four times the maximum thrust of a Boeing 747) and carries more payload to orbit than a Delta 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 and recover 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 growth and major infrastructure and operations investments. We have over 40 flights on manifest representing over $3 billion in revenues. These are the objective facts, confirmed by external auditors. Moreover, SpaceX intends to make far more dramatic reductions in price in the long term when full launch vehicle reusability is achieved. We will not be satisfied with our progress until we have achieved this long sought goal of the space industry. For the first time in more than three decades, America last year began taking back international market-share in commercial satellite launch. This remarkable turn-around was sparked by a small investment NASA made in SpaceX in 2006 as part of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. A unique public-private partnership, COTS has proven that under the right conditions, a properly incentivized contractor even an all-American one can develop extremely complex systems on rapid timelines and a fixed-price basis, significantly beating historical industry-standard costs. China has the fastest growing 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.

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CP SolvesBeating China
Only privatization solves China riseAmerican free enterprise ensures we stay ahead of the curve Colony Worlds, 11 (5/4, SpaceX to Skeptics: We Can Beat China. http://www.colonyworlds.com/2011/05/spacex-to-skeptics-we-can-beat-china.html)
Colony Worlds seeks to highlight the innovation in technology, medicine and science that will help our species discover new homes upon new worlds. SpaceX has sent out a press release aimed at silencing the chatter that the young rocket company prices are too good to be true (since not even China can match SpaceXs prices). However in the process of defending the reputation of his rocket company, CEO Elon Musk does reveal a few interesting tidbits about SpaceX that may have rivals rethink their current practices within the industry. The price of a standard flight on a Falcon 9 rocket 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 I am so confident that our performance will increase and our prices will decline over time, as is the case with every other technology. 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 the work required to integrate with the Space Station. If there are cost overruns, SpaceX will cover the difference. (This concept may be foreign to some traditional government space contractors that seem to believe that cost overruns should be the responsibility of the taxpayer.) [...] SpaceX has been profitable every year since 2007, despite dramatic employee growth and major infrastructure and operations investments. We have over 40 flights on manifest representing over $3 billion in revenues. [...] China has the fastest growing 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. (SpaceX) Truthfully SpaceX probably would not post prices online if they were not confident that they could service their clients at those rates (as changing prices midway can open ones self to a plethora of lawsuits). While SpaceXs press release will not satisfy skeptics (something their first successful rocket launch was supposed to do), it may help encourage the rocket industry to become much more transparent with their prices (as forcing tax payers to fork out extra cash is a great to kill off public trust for private space companies).With the space race heating up between the US and China (note: Russia is apparently having a few difficulties), America will need companies like SpaceX to help us not only get back to the Moon, but also help our species settle Mars without breaking the bank.

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CP SolvesCompetitiveness
Privatization solves competitiveness only free enterprise guarantees continued innovation Colony Worlds, 11 (5/4, SpaceX to Skeptics: We Can Beat China. http://www.colonyworlds.com/2011/05/spacex-to-skeptics-we-can-beat-china.html)
Colony Worlds seeks to highlight the innovation in technology, medicine and science that will help our species discover new homes upon new worlds. SpaceX has sent out a press release aimed at silencing the chatter that the young rocket company prices are too good to be true (since not even China can match SpaceXs prices). However in the process of defending the reputation of his rocket company, CEO Elon Musk does reveal a few interesting tidbits about SpaceX that may have rivals rethink their current practices within the industry. The price of a standard flight on a Falcon 9 rocket 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 I am so confident that our performance will increase and our prices will decline over time, as is the case with every other technology. 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 the work required to integrate with the Space Station. If there are cost overruns, SpaceX will cover the difference. (This concept may be foreign to some traditional government space contractors that seem to believe that cost overruns should be the responsibility of the taxpayer.) [...] SpaceX has been profitable every year since 2007, despite dramatic employee growth and major infrastructure and operations investments. We have over 40 flights on manifest representing over $3 billion in revenues. [...] China has the fastest growing 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. (SpaceX) Truthfully SpaceX probably would not post prices online if they were not confident that they could service their clients at those rates (as changing prices midway can open ones self to a plethora of lawsuits). While SpaceXs press release will not satisfy skeptics (something their first successful rocket launch was supposed to do), it may help encourage the rocket industry to become much more transparent with their prices (as forcing tax payers to fork out extra cash is a great to kill off public trust for private space companies).With the space race heating up between the US and China (note: Russia is apparently having a few difficulties), America will need companies like SpaceX to help us not only get back to the Moon, but also help our species settle Mars without breaking the bank.

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CP SolvesEconomy
Promoting more private space industry increases jobs and the economy. The Huffington Post 2010. Commercial Spaceflight: Creating 21st Century Jobs Written by guest staff writer Governor Bill
Richardson. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gov-bill-richardson/commercial-spaceflight-cr_b_473509.html) hss Picture how different your life would be if commercial air travel didn't exist -- and imagine the millions of jobs that would vanish. Fortunately, commercial passenger aviation does exist and it exists because the U.S. government in the 1920s wisely decided to begin flying "air mail" on commercial airplanes, accelerating the growth of the entire passenger airline industry. President Obama's bold, new plan for NASA, announced earlier this month, makes an equally wise decision by promoting the growth of commercial spaceflight. This is a win-win decision; creating thousands of new high-tech jobs and helping America retain its leadership role in science and technology. President Obama's decision to invest in this growing industry comes at a perfect time. Entrepreneurial companies like Virgin Galactic, Scaled Composites, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada Space Systems, Masten Space Systems, Armadillo Aerospace, XCOR Aerospace, and Blue Origin are investing their own money, right now, to create new jobs across the nation, including my home state of New Mexico, as they roll out innovative space vehicles. Even the larger, more traditional firms that build launch vehicles for government satellite missions are throwing their hat into the ring to launch new commercial space activities. Commercial spaceflight represents the type of dynamic innovation that we need to create 21st century jobs. Indeed, commercial space companies are one of the few industries that have continued to hire people during the recession.

Allowing for privatization of space industry allows fan explosion of new business opportunitiessolves the economy P Collins & A Autino, 25 May 2008, "What the Growth of a Space Tourism Industry Could Contribute to Employment, Economic
Growth, Environmental Protection, Education, Culture and World Peace", Originally presented at Plenary Session of the International Academy of Astronautics 1st Symposium on Private Human Access to Space, held at Arcachon in France, 25-28 May 2008. Reducing the cost of space travel to 1% of existing launch vehicles' costs, in combination with the growth of a new consumer service market in space, would greatly aid the growth of many commercial space activities, thereby creating numerous new business opportunities both on Earth and in space. This process is already at work on a small scale in relation to sub-orbital ight services: in addition to a large number of travel companies acting as agents for sub-orbital ights (including JTB, the largest travel company in Japan), Zero-G Corporation supplies parabolic ight services, Bigelow Aerospace is developing the first space hotel, Spaceport Associates advises on spaceport design, Orbital Outfitters Inc. supplies customised ight suits, spaceports are being developed in several places, and several support organisations have been established. All of this activity is occurring some years before the first high-priced services even start, so a much wider range of different space travel-related businesses are sure to grow in future.

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CP SolvesInnovation
Private sector development solves innovation News Journal Online, 11 (6/6. NASA needs clear plan for the future. http://www.newsjournalonline.com/opinion/editorials/n-j-editorials/2011/06/06/nasa-needs-clear-plan-for-the-future.html)
For now, the general game plan is to use the private sector's considerable space program to get astronauts to the International Space Station, or to get cargo into space. That's a good idea -- one that encourages private-sector innovation regarding our very important maintenance of satellites and scientific research in space. But even the private sector isn't planning on the kind of missions that the space shuttles were doing. And there certainly is no private plan for exploration on the moon, Mars or the asteroids of this solar system.

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CP SolvesInternational Cooperation
The private sector can boost international coopcommercial transcontinental alliances
Peeters, International Space University professor, July/August 2001. To the Stars, http://www.nss.org/adastra/volume13/v13n4/contents/v13n4f1.pdf The next steps in the direction of international coopera- tion are transcontinental alliances. SeaLaunch is undoubted- ly one of the most striking examples, because in this specific case cooperation has led to an innovative concept. It is evident that composing a consortium of this type would not have been possible without a geopolitical envi- ronment conducive to it. Indeed, restrictions on strategically sensitive technologies in the past would never have allowed the companies in question to undertake such cooperation. Other examples of transcontinental alliances are strategic alliances such as: Alcatel (F), Loral (U.S.) and NPO-PM (Russia) Starsem: Aerospatiale and Arianespace (F) with RAKA and Progress (Russia) OHB (D) with Fiat-Avio (I) and Yuzhnoe (Ukraine). Technological alliances such as: Joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Khrunichev for the construction of launch boosters A United Technologies (UTC) and Energomash joint venture for the production of a new booster rocket engine, the RD-180. Geographical alliances, e.g.: ASTRA - AsiaSat merger in 1998 EurasSpace Joint Venture between Astrium and the China Aerospace Corporation. EuropStar Joint Venture between Alcatel (F) and Loral (UK) There is no reason to doubt that this trend will continue during the next decade. Enterprises with end-to-end capacity, such as those resulting from the mergers described above, will penetrate the different markets even further, where at present such capacity is not readily available. In order to increase their chances of success, they will most probably enter into partnerships with local companies. Such combinations will satisfy both parties: the prime company will be able to deliver its main product and the local partner deals with local interfacing, while benefiting from the technology transfer.

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CP SolvesPublic Support
By driving costs down, private companies can revitalize the waning interest in space New Scientist, staff writers, New Scientist vol 205 pg 5, 2-13-2010, A turning point for space exploration., Ebsco
If private companies succeed in developing reliable vehicles for routine tasks, more adventurous space exploration will be the long-term winner. Private-sector companies already reckon that they will be able to launch astronauts for a fraction of the cost of a space shuttle flight - and they could even undercut Russia's Soyuz craft. Competition between them could drive down prices even further. As time goes on, there will be new commercial opportunities for space tourism, contract research, even private exploration beyond low-Earth orbit for manufacturing, minerals and more. A few decades from now, human space flight could be supported more by commercial activities than government funding - and we'll look back in amazement to the days when cumbersome national agencies were allowed to monopolise our exploration of the final frontier.

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CP SolvesReadiness
The private sector helps improve the military forces. Space Policy 2001 (Privatization and militarization in the space business environment Space policy Journal. Volume 17, Issue
1, February 2001, Pages 19-26. Science Direct.) hss We have tried to underline the close connection that exists between privatization and militarization, which is completed by a connection between militarization and exacerbated commercial competition. Intentionally, we did not touch on cooperation programs in order to underline the very real risks that naked competition can entail. We believe that many commercial space developments could be a lead to further military deployment by the nation fostering such commercial development. How can the proposition that one nation can have a greater interest in outer space than any other nation be sustained? It is still possible to slow down or redirect the irrepressible rush towards a substantial militarization and weaponization of outer space, especially in low-Earth orbits, in total contradiction of the words and spirit of the Outer Space treaties. Is cooperation the answer? Certainly, but cooperation as the result of forced political or industrial partnership is not an objective. The illustration provided by the ISS venture remains incomplete, with its spots of national sovereignty within the station itself, its complex patent dispositions and its features as an industrial partnership [44, 45 and 46]. Beyond the whole ISS venture, one should really question the need to rush into deep space projects, while ongoing and urgent development issues still plague three-quarters of humanity on Earth. Cooperation works if it is accompanied by some dose of devolution of power to a central a-national authority and is geared towards real needs [47]. For example, in the wake of Unispace III, proposals to consider Earth observation as a public good vs. Earth observation as a commercial venture should be explored further and given much more attention than they are now [48].

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CP SolvesSpace Leadership
Privatization is vital to space leadership a market-based solution is best Messier, 11 founder of Earth and Space Foundation, International Space University graduate, masters in public policy and science
and technology from George Washington University (Douglas, 11/29. Witt: Privatization Absolutely Required to Progress in Space. http://www.parabolicarc.com/2010/11/29/witt-privatization-absolutely-required-progress-space/) The Obama administration, Congress, NASA and the private sector are finally voyaging toward a market-based space industry. Admittedly, the new policys vision is not bold enough nor its exploration schedule aggressive enough, but it does as the Great One advised skate to where the puck is going, not to where its been. It dismantles a cost-plus quagmire that has left Americans traveling in space far less often, far less safely, at far greater expense and, most ironically, not so very far at all. Much must be done to maintain U.S. space leadership, but privatization is absolutely required. In a world of declining revenues and budget-crushing entitlements, NASA as a sleepy jobs program for aging engineers is unsustainable. We understand that putting all our eggs into a newly woven basket of private space firms is taking a risk. However, risk-taking has defined Americas space accomplishments. President Obama took a risk when he chose to fight the vested interests for this private-sector solution, and it would be mad to imagine a Republican-led House opposing it. Yet, in a through the looking glass moment, some GOP members are resuscitating socialized space as a high-tech pork delivery vehicle for loyal Southern states.

Commercial space reliance solves space leadership Worden, 2004 former Brigadier General in the USAF, Research Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona (Simon, 4/7. Private Sector Opportunities and the Presidents Space Exploration Vision, http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/230.pdf)
Ill leave you with some final thoughts on space exploration. This time its really different. Ive been involved in past attempts to revitalize space exploration. I want to point out, and weve already seen a lot of evidence of this, that the Presidents vision is not just about a government program. Some, maybe even most of the heavy lifting, in terms of funds, may end up being done by the true private sector. The governments role will be to develop the supporting technology and infrastructure, much as we did in decades past. I want to leave you with a final thought on a rationale for our renewed space exploration endeavor. This is for those who wonder why we are pursing this Moon-Mars program when we have other pressing problems. The new focus really is a recognition that the rest of the world is going into space. Thats pretty obvious. Countries that we didnt traditionally think of as space-faring, such as India and China, are going to the moon. Having future generations of Americans ask Why are other countries people walking on the moon, going to Mars and we are not? would have devastating consequences for our national psyche. Americas destiny has always been to lead in the frontier. This is one frontier I think we cant afford to cede to other. As we think about the private sector, I think that the motivation is with us all to ensure we continue to lead in space exploration.

CP solves space leadership NASA should get back to its roots Gingrich and Walker 10 senior fellow at AEI; chairman of the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry (Newt and Robert S, 2/12. Obamas Brave Reboot for NASA. AEI Online. http://www.aei.org/article/101651)
Newt Gingrich and Robert S. Walker applaud the Obama Administration's 2011 spending plan for NASA, and view the White House vision for the space program as an excellent opportunity for bipartisan cooperation. The Obama plan echoes the opinion of many experts that greater commercial activity in space is the proper way forward for the United States to remain the dominant force in space exploration. For example, getting the agency out of the low-earth-orbit launch business--where the technology is developed but operational costs are still high--frees up the NASA budget so that the program can go back to its roots in advanced technology development, experimentation and exploration. Despite the shrieks you might have heard from a few special interests, the Obama administration's budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration deserves strong approval from Republicans. The 2011 spending plan for the space agency does what is obvious to anyone who cares about man's future in space and what presidential commissions have been recommending for nearly a decade. The Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry in 2002 suggested that greater commercial activity in space was the proper way forward. The Aldridge Commission of 2004, headed by former Secretary of the Air Force Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge, made clear that the only way NASA could achieve success with President

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CP SolvesSpace Leadership
George W. Bush's Vision for Space Exploration was to expand the space enterprise with greater use of commercial assets. Most recently, the Augustine Commission, headed by Norman R. Augustine, former chief executive of Lockheed Martin, made clear that commercial providers of space-launch services were a necessary part of maintaining space leadership for the United States. NASA consistently ignored or rejected the advice provided to it by outside experts. The internal culture within the agency was actively hostile to commercial enterprise. A belief had grown from the days when the Apollo program landed humans on the moon that only NASA could do space well and therefore only NASA projects and programs were worthy. To his credit, former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin adopted a program to begin to access commercial companies for hauling cargo to the International Space Station. That program existed alongside the much larger effort to build a new generation of space vehicles designed to take us back to the moon. It has been under constant financial pressure because of the cost overruns in the moon mission, called Constellation. With the new NASA budget, the leadership of the agency is attempting to refocus the manned space program along the lines that successive panels of experts have recommended. The space shuttle program, which was scheduled to end, largely for safety reasons, will be terminated as scheduled. The Constellation program also will be terminated, mostly because its ongoing costs cannot by absorbed within projected NASA budget limits. The International Space Station will have its life extended to at least 2020, thereby preserving a $100 billion laboratory asset that otherwise was due to be dumped in the Pacific Ocean by middecade. The budget also sets forth an aggressive program for having cargo and astronaut crews delivered to the space station by commercial providers. The use of commercial launch companies to carry cargo and crews into low earth orbit will be controversial, but it should not be. The launch-vehicle portion of the Constellation program was so far behind schedule that the United States was not going to have independent access for humans into space for at least five years after the shutdown of the shuttle. We were going to rely upon the Russians to deliver our astronaut personnel to orbit. We have long had a cooperative arrangement with the Russians for space transportation but always have possessed our own capability. The use of commercial carriers in the years ahead will preserve that kind of independent American access. Reliance on commercial launch services will provide many other benefits. It will open the doors to more people having the opportunity to go to space. It has the potential of creating thousands of new jobs, largely the kind of high-tech work to which our nation should aspire. In the same way the railroads opened the American West, commercial access can open vast new opportunities in space. All of this new activity will expand the space enterprise, and in doing so, will improve the economic competitiveness of our country.

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CP SolvesSTEM
Private business in space allows the government goals to be met and also promotes education in math and science. The Huffington Post 2010 (Commercial Spaceflight: Creating 21st Century Jobs Written by guest staff writer Governor Bill
Richardson. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gov-bill-richardson/commercial-spaceflight-cr_b_473509.html) hss Our modern economy depends on space -- it is woven into our social fabric, from bank transactions and weather forecasts that depend on satellite signals, to GPS and the latest overhead images by commercial spacecraft that will help us rebuild Haiti. America's commercial space industry can bring private investment to the table and enable government dollars to go much further in meeting our goals. Our nation's military already benefits from the use of commercial communications and remote sensing satellites, and trusts the commercial sector to launch critical military satellites on rockets designed and built commercially. Now NASA is poised to follow in the same direction by placing an emphasis on commercial space. In New Mexico, our support for commercial spaceflight is already reaping benefits. About 500 New Mexicans are now on the job, creating the first commercial spaceport in the world. Another 300 new jobs are expected this year. The spaceport is fulfilling its promise of inspiring young people to study math and science and developing our statewide economy. Our anchor tenant, Virgin Galactic, recently unveiled its completed, environmentally friendly spacecraft, and has over forty two million dollars deposited in reservations. The demand is there, and New Mexico will get its return on investment. Americans will get their return on investment, too. The excitement of commercial spaceflight is already inspiring kids to pursue careers in science and technology, something our nation desperately needs to remain competitive with emerging powers like China.

Privatization solves STEM education Weeks 10(Edythe Weeks is an adjunct professor of international space law at Webster University

in St. Louis and coordinator of Webster's online international relations program. She is a member of the International Institute of Space Law and researches international outer space policy and development. http://www.e-ir.info/?p=6286) The first step toward accomplishing this goal is to expose students, teachers, administrators, civic leaders and public officials to cutting-edge research which highlights emerging industries in the field of outer space development. Exposing students to this type of knowledge while it is being created, is cutting-edge and likely to have a seriously positive impact of their future careers. Preparing them now to lead in newly emerging industries at a time when outer space settlements are being constructed can serve as a powerful motivating force to enable them to want to excel in school. Budding abilities, gifts and talents can be are recruited, nourished and developed. Outer space development studies involves many disciplines including technology, physics, geology, science, engineering, business, law, politics, hotel and restaurant management, space stations, space hotels, life support systems, psychology, sociology, medicine, international law, physiology, chemistry, intergovernmental organizations, institutions and industries, computer science, astronomy, and many more subject areas. Applying problem solving techniques usually involves several fields being integrated. Usually space studies require that students be fluent in several disciplines and this is good practice for interdisciplinary studies. Math, chemistry, science, architecture and other subjects can take on new meanings for students as they are taught to help solve problems related to outer space development. Space has been known to engage and interest students, and it is time to take these possibilities to a place beyond mere fascination and engagement. It is time to take students to a new level actual meaningful participation in outer space development resulting in tangible careers opportunities.

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CP SolvesEarth Sciences
Private companies should take on Earth sciences. Hudgins 2001 (Edward L., director of regulatory studies CATO, Cato Handbook for Congress: Policy
Recommendations for the 107th Congress (2001) hss NASA in recent years has seen environmental projects as potential cash cows. It has fought with other agencies through its Mission to Planet Earth, a project to study Earths ecology for jurisdiction over satellites to monitor the environment. Typical of its tactics, in February 1992 NASA made screaming headlines with its announcement that a huge ozone hole could be in the process of opening over the Northern Hemisphere. In fine print, the data were skimpy at best. Still, the agency got the politically correct headlines as well as funding. There were few headlines months later when no ozone hole developed. The mission itself is of questionable value. It seems to be aimed at selectively acquiring data to push politically correct agendas. Even if the mission is not shut down, it does not belong in NASAs portfolio. Some other department should direct the project. And if the government needs data, it should take bids from the private sector to provide those data.

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CP SolvesSpace Shuttle
Private companies will create a cheaper shuttle flight than NASA Peter Diamandis, chief executive of the X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit that conducts incentivized competitions, 2-13-2010, Wall
Street Journal, Space: The Final Frontier of Profit?, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059350409331536.html The challenge faced by all space-related ventures is the high cost of launching into orbit. When the U.S. space shuttle stands down later this year, NASA will need to send American astronauts to launch aboard the Russian Soyuz at a price of more than $50 million per person. The space shuttle, on the other hand, costs between $750 million to $2 billion per flight (for up to seven astronauts) depending on the number of launches each year. Most people don't realize that the major cost of a launch is labor. Fuel is less than 2%, while the standing army of people and infrastructure is well over 80%. The annual expense NASA bears for the shuttle is roughly $4 billion, whatever the number of launches. The government's new vision will mean the development of multiple operators, providing the U.S. redundancy as well as a competitive market that will drive down the cost of getting you and me to orbit. One of the companies I co-founded, Space Adventures, has already brokered the flight of eight private citizens to orbit, at a cost of roughly $50 million per person. In the next five years we hope to drive the price below $20 million, and eventually below $5 million.

Commercial space companies are the only way to replace the space shuttle program Sheridan 11 by Kerry Sheridan, Kerry Sheridan is a health and science reporter for Agence France-Presse, Washington, DC.
March 2, 2011, http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-unafraid-commercial-spaceflight-nasa.html, US must be 'unafraid' of private spaceflight: NASA NASA chief Charles Bolden, pictured here on January 2011, told lawmakers Wednesday he is confident that commercial industry will be able to make a new spacecraft for taking humans into orbit after the US shuttle program ends. NASA's chief said Wednesday that America must be "unafraid" of a new future in spaceflight and vowed full confidence that private business can come up with a solution to replace the space shuttle. Charles Bolden faced some skepticism as he testified before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology to discuss President Barack Obama's fiscal year 2012 budget request of $18.7 billion for NASA. "I am certain that commercial entities can deliver," said Bolden, who fielded questions about cost, safety and how long it will take to forge a new mode of access to the International Space Station after the US shuttle program retires later this year. "We have got to develop commercial capability to get into low Earth orbit," said the former astronaut. "The nation needs to become unafraid of exploration. We need to become unafraid of risks." In December 2010, SpaceX became the first private company to successfully launch its own space capsule into orbit and back, a feat Bolden described as "awesome." The Dragon capsule carried no crew, but SpaceX is working on a cargo launch to the orbiting international space lab for later this year. Bolden said NASA was sticking to its planned 2015-2016 timeframe for developing a new mode of travel for taking crew into orbit, but added that is "dependent" on private industry. Industry leaders have promised it would take "three years to the day after they sign a contract" to get a spacecraft up and running for crew transport, he said. No one has yet signed such a contract. Obama's draft budget proposes $850 million in 2012 as seed money to help companies devise a new crew capsule for orbital travel, a $350 million increase over 2010 levels. Asked by one Florida lawmaker what he should tell the thousands of his constituents who will lose their jobs at Kennedy Space Center once the shuttle program ends, Bolden answered: "You should tell them the future of human spaceflight is bright and robust and we need their help in rapidly developing new systems so we can go and explore."

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***AT: Aff Arguments*** AT: No Private Capacity

Private industry already exists Kandy Collins, Science and Engineering Journalist, June 13, 2011, 'Yesterday's Technologies Are Not Enough': How Private
Companies Are Boosting NASA's Future in Spaceflight, http://scienceblogs.com/usasciencefestival/2011/06/yesterdays_technologies_are_no.php A new age is dawning in U.S. space exploration: Entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos, are working to open up human spaceflight, once the domain only of governments, to the private sector and the public. Soon, anyone will be able to go to space just by purchasing a ticket on a suborbital space flight, and several companies are working on orbital space missions as well. Scientists, teachers, artists, and even kids will travel to space by the thousands and experience the wonder of weightlessness and seeing the Earth from above. "These companies are bringing the silicon valley spirit to the space industry" says John Gedmark, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), the industry association of leading businesses and organizations which are working to make commercial human spaceflight a reality. Gedmark added "America is unique in the world in having private companies develop this capability." Entrepreneurs are investing over 1.5 billion dollars of private investment in their new endeavors, These new companies are projected to create thousands of new high-tech jobs nationwide, and are already inspiring more young people to pursue science and engineering. NASA is also now welcoming these efforts, resulting in even greater benefits for the country. "NASA and private industry can work together to find innovative technological solutions to today's spaceflight challenges" NASA now plans pay these companies to transport NASA astronauts into space, which will free up NASA to do other things such as explore the solar system and one day send astronauts to Mars. "Yesterday's technologies are not sufficient to keep America in first place in the global race for economic competitiveness," says John. "Technological innovation is what got America to the moon in the 1960s, and we need a renewed focus on technology to drive spaceflight forward in the 21st century."

Commercial Space is creating a robust space economy in Florida and saving the US millions of dollars Stern 11 By S. Alan Stern, Alan Stern is a planetary scientist and aerospace consultant. He is NASAs former Associate
Administrator in charge of Science, and he serves as the chair of the Commercial Spaceflight Federations Suborbital Applications Researchers Group. Monday, June 27, 2011, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1871/1 Commercial space, whats good for Florida, and 2012 For too long the economy of Floridas Space Coast has been too heavily dependent on a very small number of huge government projects. This narrow business model calls to mind the adage if you only own one stock, you probably deserve what you get when it goes down. Tragically, the state and the nation failed to learn this very lesson when the end of Apollo program devastated Central Floridas economy in the 1970s, and as a result the Space Coast is now losing 9,000 Space Shuttle jobs. Fortunately though, the dawning era of commercial American space efforts is giving flower to a far wider variety of new space systems and projects with refreshingly diverse markets and backers. This has the opportunity to create a Florida space economy that will be far more robust than any in the past 50 years. Consider how these examples of American commercial space development could help reinvigorate the Space Coasts economy: This has the opportunity to create a Florida space economy that will be far more robust than any in the past 50 years. Suborbital Spaceflight: This new sector has over $1 billion in private investment behind it among five separate suborbital space lines (XCOR Aerospace, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, Armadillo Aerospace, and Masten Space Systems), each of which plan to begin flying frequent tourist and research missions as soon as 2012 or 2013; several have shown interest in flying from the Cape. Orbital Launch: Here, a company called SpaceX is taking the lead by pouring hundreds of millions of private dollars into its line of Falcon launchers, which are already flying, and which are under contract by NASA, DOD, and commercial satellite companies. New commercial launchers that could base in Florida are also under consideration by Virgin Galactic and XCOR, and United Launch Alliance hopes to launch commercial and government astronauts aboard Atlas V vehicles from the Cape by 2015. Crew Transport: Four companies (Sierra Nevada, Boeing, SpaceX, and Blue Origin) are vying to become one of NASAs astronaut transportation service providers to the International Space Station, which will relieve us from paying the Russians hundreds of millions to get our astronauts to space. These firms hope to also exploit purely commercial markets to transport tourists, researchers, and commercial research equipment to low Earth orbit. Satellite and payload integrators such as Astrotech and Astrogenetix will also benefit from this effort. A recent market survey showed that that these commercial applications are likely to outstrip NASAs crew transport demands. Private Space Stations: At least two companies (Bigelow Aerospace and Excalibur Almaz) are planning to field space stations. Both will earn their

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revenues from private sector and from the approximately 180 nations that are not a part of the International Space Station,

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and Bigelow has already put two test stations in orbit. These commercial space activities have the potential to create numerous manufacturing, launch, and operations jobs in Florida, and also create engineering services, hotel, and restaurant jobs, and possibly even new entertainment-themed attractions. These will significantly blunt the blow of the shuttles demise.

The private sector is ready to fill-in for NASA. Rudaksky, 10 [Gil Rudawsky, 7:45PM 04/15/10, Free Market to Take Over Space Travel in Obama's NASA Overhaul,
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/04/15/free-market-to-take-over-space-travel-in-obamas-nasa-overhaul/] Say goodbye to taxpayer-funded space shuttle. NASA budget is $100 billion over the next five years, an increase of $6 billion, and its primary focus will be robotic exploration, scouting missions, increased earth-based observations, and extending the life of the international space station. Morningstar analyst Anil Daka said you can count on the "big boys" to fill the gap and keep landing the lucrative NASA contracts. "There are a lot of moving parts, but you can bet that Lockheed and Boeing will figure out ways to make it work to their advantage," Daka said. Private-sector companies have had a difficult time creating a profitable "space taxi" program since NASA, which held the monopoly, had an endless supply of taxpayer funding. "I wouldn't want to say the plan is perfect, but the timing is right to make a change and shake up the agency," Spaceport's Ketcham said. "NASA has turned into another bureaucracy, and this will bring a little creative disruption from the private sector."

The Private space industry is more innovative, cost effective and reliable Davis 10 By Leonard Davis, Space Insider Columnist, He has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He
is past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines and has written for SPACE.com since 1999, 29 December 2010 Time: 07:51 AM ET, http://www.space.com/10548-private-spaceflight-ready-2011.html, Private Spaceflight Ready to Take Off In 2011 The private space industry has long been viewed as fledgling. But this once-pejorative term has taken on new meaning this year, as a roster of successes and fast-paced growth throughout 2010 suggests private spaceflight is ready to take off in 2011. This year saw the very first launch of commercial space company SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster, and later the first liftoff of the firm's Dragon spacecraft, which launched atop a Falcon 9 to Earth orbit and then was recovered from the Pacific Ocean. Another company, Virgin Galactic, achieved some major milestones, including the first glide test of its suborbital spaceliner, SpaceShipTwo. [Gallery: First Solo Flight of SpaceShipTwo] Multiple private-sector space firms are moving into full power, going well beyond powerpoints and hand-waving. Still, the coming year, according to experts and analysts contacted by SPACE.com, is likely to feature battles between "same old space" and the ascension of "new space." Commercial landscape "The space industry has never seen such a rich and varied commercial landscape," said Carissa Bryce Christensen, managing partner of consulting firm The Tauri Group in Alexandria, Va. "New markets are emerging and established ones are changing." Christensen said that entrepreneurs are testing new launch and on-orbit capabilities in the real world, trying to move beyond development and demonstration and into sustainable, profitable operation. Large firms are changing their game plans in response. "The successes and setbacks of 2011 are going to make it the most interesting year in the history of commercial space," Christensen predicted. Commercial space is finally coming into its own, and 2011 represents a year of enormous potential for this developing industry, said David Livingston, founder and host of the radio/Internet talk show "The Space Show." "The key will be to systematically move forward, building success upon success," Livingston said. "I believe the coming year will reward patience, achievable goals, business fundamentals, reasonable business risks and a safety mindset." In terms of trends for the space industry, Livingston foresees a move away from big government programs in favor of economically managed and leaner commercial space ventures and projects. "I believe this trend will continue through 2011 and beyond. That said, I do not think our space program should be one or the other, government or private," Livingston said."I believe we can now, more than ever, effectively create public/private partnerships to guide us into space and our future." Squarely in the spotlight The scheduled retirement of NASA's threeorbiter space shuttle fleet next year will also likely affect the landscape. "I think the environment for 2011, although much improved from the religious war in 2010, will still see continued debate about the future direction of NASA with shuttle retirement," said Brett Alexander, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an industry group that includes commercial spaceflight developers, operators, spaceports, suppliers and service providers. Alexander said he thinks commercial space will be "squarely in the spotlight" with an expected ramp-up of both suborbital flight testing and multiple orbital launches and re-entries under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) partnership agreements

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with U.S. industry. NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program is investing financial and technical resources to stimulate efforts within the private sector to develop and demonstrate safe, reliable and cost-effective space transportation

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capabilities. "So, with steady progress on the technical front, it should help to solidify NASA's new direction to develop commercial capabilities," Alexander said. Battleground "2010 was the year that war broke out between commercial and cost-plus space," observed Jim Muncy, president and founder of PoliSpace, an independent space policy consultancy based in Alexandria, Va. "A rational White House, which nobody can accuse of having an ideological bias in favor of commercial business and privatization, decided that the nation couldn't do much, let alone everything, the 'traditional' way," Muncy said. "To actually use the International Space Station and explore space, the private sector needed to play a greater role in both." Muncy said that as nasty and counterintuitive as the long debate of 2010 was, next year especially in the context of the new Congress, which has vowed to cut government spending will see "the rubber hit the road" in several fronts of this war. For 2011, Muncy forecasts: At least two companies that operate suborbital reusable launch vehicles will fly science payloads for NASA, and piloted vehicles will have their first flight tests. A SpaceX Dragon will carry a mammal to low Earth orbit and possibly to the International Space Station. The effort to build a commercial crew spacecraft will move forward, while overall budget pressure on NASA will slow down Florida Senator Bill Nelson's grand compromise (which, among other things, gave money to commercial companies and NASA to develop and build new rockets). The Commercial Space Launch Amendment Act's "informed consent" regime for Federal Aviation Administration regulation of commercial human spaceflight will clash with some politicians' desire to kill commercial crew efforts. The fight over human-rating of commercial crew will get heated, as will a scrap for control over this rating between NASA's Johnson Space Center and the agency's Kennedy Space Center. "Not a prediction but a hope," Muncy said, is that "Republicans will remember they like the private sector and stop mindlessly bashing commercial."

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Theres a strong legal basis for privatization Filho, 06 [Jos Monserrat Filho, 6-9 November 2006, United Nations/Ukraine Workshop on Space Law, Kyiv, Ukraine, Legal
Issues of Commercial Space Activities] Is there a legal basis for commercial space activities? Does the Outer Space Treaty permit this kind of activities? Yes, by all means. Today there is not any doubt that, in principle, commercial space activities are absolutely legal as well as legitimate. No matter that they are not mentioned in the existing international space law, which was created during the Cold War by quite different motivations international peace and security. Commercial space activities are supported not only by a legal basis including a solid custom , but also by a general recognition as fair and crucial activities, since they can attend fundamental needs and interests of all countries. In fact, the major international instruments governing outer space activities22 were elaborated and adopted before the development of commercial uses of outer space and dont make reference to them. Nevertheless, when Article I of Outer Space Treaty mentions exploration and use of outer space, it is universally accepted that the word use covers the commercial use. At the same time, it is widely admitted that commercial space activities, in principle, meet the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, as is required by the same Article I. If it is not always true, there is at least a general and growing conviction (and a hope) that it must work in this 7sense. No one State refuses the idea that world commerce is an essential tool for its development in all fields, particularly nowadays in that time of absolute interdependence among nations. The difficulties here usually do not involve the merit of the commercial activities themselves, but the manner how they are conducted under which practice, as well as under which rules and their interpretation and applications. These questions, of course, may also appear in relation to commercial space activities. Commercial space activities are also compatible to the Article I (2), which establishes that outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance to international law, since of course they are carried out in accordance with the letter and the spirit of this relevant provision. A step ahead in this regard will be the creation of an international legal instance for resolving space disputes. If taking the principle of free use of outer space as one side of the coin, the other side is the principle of non-appropriation of outer space and celestial bodies, fixed by Article II. The later strengthens the former and definitely does not intend to prevent commercial space activities. To exert such activities it is plenty enough to use outer space, not to appropriate it or even a part of it. The Article VI is the most convincing to give legal support to commercial space activities. It recognizes the private space activities as national activities and establishes the international responsibility for them by the appropriate state. Because space activities by private sector automatically introduce the commercial aspect, which is not the case with governmental activities, the creation of this Article has to be considered as one of the strongest incentives of an overall recognition of commercial utilization within the general framework of the Treaty.23 The Article VII and its spin-off, the 1972 Liability Convention24, as victim-oriented, bring more clarity to the question about who pays and more certainty (or probability) that the damage caused will be paid, no matter if the entity which suffers damage is a governmental or a commercial one. This principle can be, in great measure, a guarantee for commercial activities. According to Article VIII, any State can decide to exclude commercial activities in relation to space object under its national jurisdiction and control. But it is absolutely not realistic to admit such a possibility in the contemporary world, due to the highest relevance of commerce private or public for all countries, without exception. Examining accurately all provisions compiled in the Outer Space Treaty, it is evident that none of them could be used as an argument to deny the commercial space activities. Reflecting certainly this reality, the Declaration on International Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for the Benefit and in the Interest of all States, Taking into Particular Account the Needs of Developing Countries, adopted by General Assembly of 8United Nations in 1996, considers commercial activities as one of the effective and appropriate modes to conduct international cooperation. Its 4 reads: International cooperation should be conducted in the modes that are considered most effective and appropriate by the countries concerned, including, inter alia, governmental and nongovernmental; commercial and non-commercial; global, multilateral, regional or bilateral; and international cooperation among countries in all levels of development.

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Privatization of space inevitable. Rudaksky, 10 [Gil Rudawsky, 7:45PM 04/15/10, Free Market to Take Over Space Travel in Obama's NASA Overhaul,
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/04/15/free-market-to-take-over-space-travel-in-obamas-nasa-overhaul/] President Obama presented an overhauled aerospace plan Thursday that will officially mothball NASA's space shuttle program, and put the future of human space travel squarely in the hands of private sector companies. The administration's new free-market approach of designing and operating spacecraft could mean big business for a handful of U.S. companies in what will decidedly be a lucrative new market. "NASA is getting out of the space shuttle business, and this change unleashes the private sector," said Dale Ketcham, director of the private think tank Spaceport Research and Technology Institute. "This creates new opportunities for companies to compete for this work. We can tap into our entrepreneurial innovation to fill this gap." Who's who of aerospace firms champing to fill gap. The usual suspects head up the A-list of beneficiaries, such as a Lockheed Martin (LMT), Raytheon (RTN), Boeing (BA) and Northrop Grumman (NOC). But the next tier, which includes Orbital Sciences (ORB) and Space Exploration Technologies, also stand to cash in. Mark Hamel, a senior vice president at Orbital Sciences, said this week at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs that a new, healthy market for the private sector will emerge from the space plan. The Virginia-based company is developing the Taurus II rocket and a cargo capsule. Obama, as part of his tour at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, visited privately held SpaceX's commercial launch facility. The company's founder, Internet tycoon Elon Musk, is a huge proponent of having NASA go the private-sector route. Musk, the 38-year-old founder of PayPal, was seen speaking with Obama prior to the president's speech. Plan not without detractors. "For the first time since Apollo, our country will have a plan for space exploration that inspires and excites all who look to the stars. Even more important, it will work," Musk said in a statement.

NASA is currently giving private companies more influence and posture on space objectives, creating a more privatized space now. Dinerman, 09 (Taylor Dinerman, 5/11. He wrote a syndicated weekly column for the Space Review. He was an author of the
textbook Space Science for Students and has been a part time consultant for the US Defense Department NASA Approves Partial Privatization of the Space Program http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,519609,00.html#ixzz1Se9cuDRI) When the Justice Department or the Centers for Disease Control want to send employees somewhere, they don't specify the aircraft types, let alone design the airframes, engines and avionics. They just buy plane tickets. Even the military finds it cheaper to use civilian aircraft for certain missions. So why should space transportation be any different? NASA's beginning to agree. For the first time, after nearly a half century of building its own rockets and orbiters, it has approved the outsourcing of some of the equipment that enables its manned space missions to private contractors. Last week, acting NASA Administrator Chris Scolese told a congressional subcommittee that the agency plans to give $150 million in stimulus-package money to private companies that design, build and service their own rockets and crew capsules spacecraft that could put astronauts in orbit while NASA finishes building the space shuttle's replacements. On Thursday, the White House ordered a top-to-bottom review of the entire manned space program, one that will be led by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, long considered a friend of private space ventures. Both developments show that the once-reluctant space agency and the Obama administration are ready to support commercial human spaceflight. It's a dramatic change, one that could reduce America's dependency on Russia for the next half-decade after the space shuttle program ends, and one that could kick-start a space program that some see as having stalled for 40 years. "Our government space program has become over-burdened with too many objectives, and not enough cash," says William Watson, executive director of the Space Frontier Foundation, a Houston-based group promoting commercial space activities. Watson said that allowing private companies to handle routine orbital duties could free up NASA to focus on returning to the moon and going to Mars. Scolese said that $80 million of the stimulus money will be awarded to the company that demonstrates the best "crewed launch demo" a prototype, based on existing cargo-capsule designs, modified for humans. The agency was careful to note that the competition will be an open one.Two well-positioned spaceflight companies, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, are seen as the leading contenders. Each already has a full line of rockets and cargo capsules ready to go, and each company's capsules can be converted to transport astronauts. Both firms were tight-lipped about their suddenly increased opportunities. Orbital Sciences didn't respond to queries; SpaceX said only that it was "encouraged by NASA's commercial crewed services initiative."But NASA's savings in cost and time could be significant. The two leading contractors are building their launch vehicles from scratch. Their designs emphasize very efficient business models and low manufacturing costs. And they operate with at most a few dozen employees at their launch sites, as opposed to the space shuttle program's standing army of almost 15,000 workers. NASA's hostility toward other American space ventures goes

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back at least to the early 1990s, when Lockheed Martin developed the DC-X suborbital experimental rocket, financed by the Pentagon's Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). The goal was to get payloads into orbit with a reusable craft that was not the space shuttle, which the Defense Department saw as unreliable and costly. NASA was hardly enthusiastic about this approach. It believed that it would be many years before such Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs) would be ready to fly, and some inside the agency saw it as a threat to its monopoly on human space flight. In 2000, NASA even objected to the cash-strapped Russian space agency's $20 million deal to send up the first "space tourist," American billionaire Dennis Tito. But three things happened. -- The February 2003 Columbia space-shuttle disaster, in which seven astronauts died, forced NASA to rethink its way of doing business. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board's final report "found a NASA blinded by a 'Can Do' attitude, a cultural artifact of the Apollo era that was inappropriate in a Space Shuttle program so strapped by schedule pressures and shortages that space parts had to be cannibalized from one vehicle to launch another." NASA's tight relationship with a small number of major contractors and its persistent problems integrating political and legal demands with the need to maintain engineering excellence had stressed the agency to the breaking point, the report said. -- In January 2004, President George W. Bush decided to "reboot" the space program, announcing his "Vision for Space Exploration" to go back to the moon and to eventually send humans to Mars. -- And in October 2004, engineer Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X Prize. The rocket was the first privately built flying machine ever to reach space. There was a catch to the Bush plan: As part of the ambitious new program, the 30-year-old space-shuttle program will end next year, saving NASA $3 billion a year to spend on new spacecraft, the first of which is scheduled to fly in late 2015. But that has created a gap in America's ability to launch astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). For at least five years, NASA will depend primarily on Russia to get Americans into space, which doesn't sit well with many space experts and politicians. As a result, NASA quickly became much friendlier to commercial ventures. In late 2005, then-agency Administrator Michael Griffin announced that NASA was considering buying crew and cargo transportation services to the ISS from private industry. "We believe," he said, "that when we engage the engine of competition, these services will be provided in a more cost-effective fashion than when the government has to do it," Griffin said. In 2006, the first round of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) contracts was won by SpaceX corporation of Hawthorne, Calif., which received a contract worth $278 million, and by Rocketplane Kistler of Oklahoma City, which was supposed to get $207 million. Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX for short, founded by PayPal entrepreneur Elon Musk, was already hard at work on its Falcon series of rockets. It also had done preliminary design work on a multipurpose capsule called the Dragon, which could be adapted to carry either crew or cargo to the ISS on a Falcon 9. SpaceX was funded mostly by Musk's personal fortune, but also had a small number of contracts to launch satellites for the Defense Department and from overseas. Rocketplane Kistler, on the other hand, was an innovative but underfunded enterprise. It promised to build on an earlier RLV program that had failed to get off the ground after a promising start in the late 1990s. In October 2007, Rocketplane Kistler's NASA contact was terminated due to its failure to meet the agreed-upon financial milestones. The remaining $170 million from the Rocketplane Kistler disbursement was awarded to Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., for its Taurus 2 launcher and Cygnus capsule combination. Orbital, one of the few entrepreneurial space firms that have successfully gone from start-up to billion-dollar status, not only builds the Pegasus and Taurus launchers, but also has established a decent reputation building small-to-medium-sized commercial and scientific satellites and space probes. Most importantly, both SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are well-funded and commercially viable, a crucial factor to NASA. If a private company shows it's ready to invest its own funds, that's a lot better than people who want to "help spend NASA's money," as Griffin once put it in a different context. But not everyone in NASA's old guard is pleased with this approach. "In order to preserve U.S. leadership in space, it would be better to invest in a lifting body lander, a spaceplane that would land on a runway like the Shuttle does now," Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, told FoxNews.com. "There is a [NASA] design called the HL-20 that could be launched on an existing reliable rocket and could be ready for a demonstration flight in 2013." But to the Space Frontier Foundation's Watson, the sky's the limit. "Let's have an American competition in space to create good jobs, fuel innovation and close the [spaceflight] gap more quickly," he said. "With private funds matching government investment, we can dramatically leverage taxpayer dollars to produce breakthroughs in a new American industry commercial orbital human spaceflight."

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Privatization of the space industry is coming nowbroad support Nelson 2/08/11 (David Nelson, Senior Staff writer for The Daily Caller who writes frequently on politics. Fiscal conservatives
call for increased privatization of space http://dailycaller.com/2011/02/08/fiscal-conservatives-call-for-increased-privatization-ofspace) Space spending has long been the multibillion-dollar government project that is rarely discussed and even more infrequently brought up as a primary focus by fiscal conservatives. Tuesday morning the Competitive Space Task Force, a self-described group of fiscal conservatives and free-market leaders, hosted a press conference to encourage increased privatization of the space industry. Members of the task force issued several recommendations to Congress, including finding an American replacement to the Space Shuttle (so to minimize the costly expenditures on use of Russian spacecraft) and encouraging more private investment in the development of manned spacecraft. Former Republican Rep. Robert S. Walker of Pennsylvania said, If we really want to win the future, we cannot abandon our commitment to space exploration and human spaceflight. The fastest path to space is not through Moscow, but through the American entrepreneur. Task Force chairman Rand Simberg, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said, By opening space up to the American people and their enterprises, NASA can ignite an economic, technological, and innovation renaissance, and the United States will regain its rightful place as the world leader in space. Also speaking at the press conference was Tom Schatz of Citizens Against Government Waste. Keith Cowing of NASA Watch wrote that he pressed Simberg about his feelings on the Obama administrations priorities. He wrote that Simberg, did not think that the President cared either way about space commercialization. Cowling also wrote that he asked [Citizens Against Government Waste] how they can reconcile statements in support of commercial transport to the [International Space Station] when they have derided the [International Space Station] as a boondoggle for more than a decade. They said that they saw no contradiction.

Privatization inevitable- natural development will prove Weeks 10(Edythe Weeks is an adjunct professor of international space law at Webster University in St. Louis and coordinator of
Webster's online international relations program. She is a member of the International Institute of Space Law and researches international outer space policy and development. http://www.e-ir.info/?p=6286)
Recently we have seen news images of billionaires taking $20,000,000 trips to outer space. Various entrepreneurs are developing fleets of private spaceships. In 2010, President Barack Obama announced that NASAs Constellation Program would be cancelled, yet NASAs budget would also be increased by $6,000,000,000. Vast quantities of natural resources such as gold, iridium, osmium, platinum, helium 3 and many others have been found in abundant quantities in outer space. The International Space Station has been in Low Earth Orbit since 1998 and humankind has come to understand what it needs to know regarding human space habitats and living in outer space. Space laws and policies have existed for decades and are ever growing. Outer space is in the process of being developed. The first phase of outer space development has already taken place. This phase involved satellite telecommunications industries and the global widespread acceptance of cable television, cell phones, the Internet and a multitude of goods and services linked to these space technologies. Bill Gates and others became very wealthy as the result of the first phase of outer space development. The Geostationary orbit has been colonized and developed. Key thinkers are looking towards the development of other regions of

outer space including, Low Earth Orbit, Near Earth Orbit, asteroids, Earths Moon, Mars and elsewhere. Only a handful of experts and students are aware of the outer space development phenomenon. The vast majority of people around the world are still thinking of outer space as an elite field for government astronauts and scientists, not for them. Meanwhile,
unemployment is high, inspiration is low, economies are crashing (even the United States), job loss is increasingly common, school systems are failing, outdated school curriculum programs are unable to motivate students to lead, and people are searching for ways to create prosperous futures for themselves and their families. So, why not expose more people to outer space development? The term

used herein, outer space development involves a culmination of forces historical, legal, ideological, institutional, political, economic, psychological and structural all operating together in the post Cold War era so that space commercialization and privatization are widespread accepted norms.[i] Recently, a new trend is being set by U.S. policy. In 2004
a new policy was instituted in accordance with the Presidents Commission Report which lays the foundation of U.S. development of the outer space territory[ii]. Also in 2004 a new U.S. law[iii] was passed facilitating the legality of private space travel as a new industry being called space tourism. In addition the NASA Authorization Act of 2005 made funding available to carry out the New Vision U.S. Space Exploration Policy.[iv] This policy, to a large extent calls for more participation from the private-sector in space exploration and other programs. Already a critical number of space entrepreneurs have paved the way towards new space industries, as they

did during the satellite telecommunications revolution during the 1980s and 1990s. This is only the beginning of a new trend towards further space commercialization and privatization. The result so far has been millions of dollars are being offered through
various prizes to spur increased privatization of space. For example the $10,000,000 Ansari X Prize and many other cash prizes are being offered to spur space entrepreneurship/space privatization. Examples include, the NASA Centennial Challenges Prizes ($100,000,000), the Americas Space Prize ($50,000,000 million), the Heinlein Prize for Practical Accomplishments in Commercial Space Activities ($500,000) and the NASA Ralph Steckler/Space

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Grant Space Colonization Research and Technology Opportunity involved awards totalling $1,000,000.

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Incentives for private companies are popular in Congress Space X proves Messier 10 By Doug Messier, masters degree in Science, Technology and Public Policy from The George Washington University,
studied at the Space Policy Institute. He is a graduate of the International Space University and holds a B.A. in Journalism from Rider University. December 10, 2010, at 12:23 pm, http://www.parabolicarc.com/2010/12/10/congressional-praise-spacexs-successfuldragon-flight/ Congressional Praise for SpaceXs Successful Dragon Flight Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL The leading congressional authority on the U.S. space program said Wednesday that America is on track to remain a global leader in space, science and technology, after a privately owned rocket carrying a capsule powered off a launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and into outer space before returning safely to Earth. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson made his comments today following the successful launch into low-earth orbit and return to Earth of the 157-foot tall Falcon 9 rocket and the Apollo-like unmanned Dragon capsule built by Space X. With the splash down of its capsule in the Pacific, Space X became the first private company to successfully recover a spacecraft sent into outer space. Weve arrived at the dawn of new era of U.S. space exploration that should ensure America remains a leader in space exploration, said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, who was a crew member aboard a 1986 space shuttle mission, and now heads a Senate subcommittee that oversees NASA. In September, Congress approved a Nelson-engineered NASA budget blueprint that would help boost the commercial rocket industry such as the development of the Falcon 9 and have NASA become the chief player for building a new deep-space rocket and carry out missions to Mars. Based on the budget blueprint, Congress is now putting the final touches on a detailed 2011 spending plan for NASA. Lawmakers hope to pass it by years end. Meantime, SpaceX is among a number of companies vying to prove they can carry out spaceflight missions once only performed by governments. In the wake of the winding down of NASAs space-shuttle program, the agency is counting on private companies to be able to deliver crew and cargo to service the International Space Station. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-TX Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), Ranking Member on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, today praised the successful launch, re-entry and recovery of SpaceX Dragon capsule and called it an important milestone in the development of cargo services, and eventually crew transportation services, needed to support and sustain the International Space Station. I congratulate SpaceX on its successful launch of the Falcon 9 Rocket and Dragon capsule, said Senator Hutchison. This launch represents an important milestone that reflects the wisdom of the balanced approach outlined in the recently enacted NASA authorization law. The new law preserves and advances the activities of commercial space companies working to develop reliable cargo and crew services to the International Space Station. Supporting the development of these commercial activities will allow NASA to focus its efforts on the development of a new launch system and crew exploration vehicle to move beyond lowEarth orbit, which the new law established as one of NASAs highest priorities. Much work remains, but this is an important achievement and I congratulate SpaceX on a successful mission. Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, R-CA Today, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher issued the following congratulatory statement on the successful launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle and reentry of the Dragon capsule. Todays launch was the first NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Demonstration Flight. SpaceX has taken one more step into changing the paradigm of space flight, said Rohrabacher. By demonstrating that we can use commercial companies to meet national goals, the continued success of SpaceX will enable NASA to focus their efforts into the far frontiers of space. American commercial space companies continue to meet new goals while ensuring the highest level of safety in protecting the public. As SpaceX and the entire commercial space industry continue to make spectacular new achievements, we salute their efforts and look forward to the days when we can permanently expand humanity beyond the Earth. The Dragon spacecraft is the first vehicle to return from space under the authority of the Federal Aviation Administration. In 2004, Rep. Rohrabacher served as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics when the FAA was granted said authority.

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NASA is unpopular, its inefficient- Republicans prefer privatization Dunham 11 By Richard Dunham, Rick Dunham is the Washington bureau chief of the Houston Chronicle and Hearst
Newspapers. He created Texas on the Potomac in 2007, Posted on June 13, 2011 at 8:21 pm http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2011/06/republican-presidential-candidates-agree-no-more-federal-money-for-human-space-flight/ Republican presidential candidates agree: No more federal money for human space flight The Republican presidential field sent a clear message to NASA workers in Texas and Florida: They dont see a federal role in funding human space flight. The unanimous verdict came during a New Hampshire presidential debate tonight and following a scathing assessment of NASA management by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says NASA has presided over "failure after failure." (AP photo) NASA has become an absolute case study in why bureaucracy cannot innovate, he said. What we have is bureaucracy after bureaucracy, failure after failure. Gingrich, a longtime supporter of space research, said the private sector and not government should lead the nation into the future of space innovation. Unfortunately, he said, NASA is standing in the way of it. Debate moderator John King of CNN asked the other six candidates in attendance including Texas Rep. Ron Paul whether they would continue federal funding for human space flight. Not a single candidate Paul, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Godfathers Pizza CEO Herman Cain raised their hand. Pawlenty interjected that NASA can be refocused and reprioritized and said I dont think we should eliminate the space program. But Gingrich pushed back. The issue is not about eliminating a space program in America, he said, Its about getting to a real space program that works. NASA is preparing for the final space shuttle mission. In the future, the U.S. will contract with the Russian Federation to send American astronauts to the International Space Station. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has supported retaining NASA jobs in Texas, did not participate in the debate.

The CP is massively popular with the public they hate NASA wasting money and prefer free enterprise Healy 7/12/11(Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of The Cult of the Presidency: America's
Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power. Space Program Was Our Biggest Bridge to Nowhere https://store.cato.org/pub_display.php?pubid=13342) More by Gene Healy Outside of avoiding the hypothetical horror of Martian gulags, what does the ordinary taxpayer get from the space program? Not much, says Robin Hanson, a George Mason University economist and research associate at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute: The benefits are "mostly like the pyramids national prestige and being part of history." Space partisans often point to the alleged technological breakthroughs that come from solving hard problems like keeping humans alive in an environment never meant to sustain them. But, as Hanson points out, you could get similar technological boons from any ambitious project you convince the feds to spray money at whether it's robot butlers or floating cities. If we wanted to, we could surely "find other projects with larger direct payoffs." The argument for federally funded spaceflight ultimately boils down to "spacecraft as soulcraft," the quasi-religious notion that, as Post columnist Charles Krauthammer puts it, we go "not for practicality," but "for the wonder and the glory of it." Space must be an alluring muse indeed, given that it makes Krauthammer, normally a hardheaded neoconservative, sound like a yoga instructor gone lightheaded during a juice fast. He calls space skeptics "Earth Firsters," deaf to "the music of the spheres." Apparently there's nothing more "isolationist" than wanting to stay on your own planet. Krauthammer's obsession makes sense, in a way, since federally funded spaceflight is the quintessential neoconservative project: a giant, wasteful crusade designed to fill Americans' supposedly empty lives with meaning. Sorry, Charlie: The public's not buying it. A 2010 Rasmussen poll showed that more Americans think private enterprise should pay for space exploration than think government should fund it. By nearly 2-to-1 margins, they also oppose sending federally funded astronauts to the moon or Mars. As far as Americans are concerned, space is the ultimate "bridge to nowhere." It's true that, with a $1.5 trillion deficit, NASA's $18 billion isn't what stands between us and our fiscal day of reckoning. But every little bit counts, and this is the rare cut that won't make the public squeal. Moreover, there's a matter of principle at stake here. The threat of force lies behind every tax dollar the government collects. You might demand that your neighbor help defend us against a foreign invader but would you really hold a gun to his head to help him appreciate "the music of the spheres"?

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Fiscal Conservatives demand privatization of space Nelson 11 By Steven Nelson, Steven Nelson writes for The Daily Caller., Published: 4:14 PM 02/08/2011
http://dailycaller.com/2011/02/08/fiscal-conservatives-call-for-increased-privatization-of-space/#ixzz1SkIdFI1s Fiscal conservatives call for increased privatization of space
Space spending has long been the multibillion-dollar government project that is rarely discussed and even more infrequently brought up as a primary focus by fiscal conservatives. Tuesday morning the Competitive Space Task Force, a self-described group of fiscal conservatives and free-market leaders, hosted a press conference to encourage increased privatization of the space industry. Members of the task force issued several recommendations to Congress, including finding an American replacement to the Space Shuttle (so to minimize the costly expenditures on use of Russian spacecraft) and encouraging more private investment in the development of manned spacecraft. Former Republican

Rep. Robert S. Walker of Pennsylvania said, If we really want to win the future, we cannot abandon our commitment to space exploration and human spaceflight. The fastest path to space is not through Moscow, but through the American entrepreneur. Task Force chairman Rand Simberg, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said, By opening space up to the American people and
their enterprises, NASA can ignite an economic, technological, and innovation renaissance, and the United States will regain its rightful place as the world leader in space.

Senators want private space flight to increase jobs and economic growth Garcia 10 By Melissa Garcia, A graduate of the University of Colorado Denver, Melissa earned her B.A. in Communication with a certificate in
Conflict Management, Published: 12/15/2010 5:54 pm, http://www.woai.com/news/local/story/Senator-files-bill-in-advance-of-commercialspace/suXn8JU1_EyuDVQDy8gV3g.cspx, Senator files bill in advance of commercial space travel
SAN ANTONIO -- Blasting off in a rocket ship won't just be for NASA astronauts. Average Joe's will someday go into outer space on commercial spaceships. And maybe, sooner than you think. One Texas senator is already preparing for it. Senator Carlos Uresti has filed Senate Bill 115,

also known as the "Space Flight Liability" bill. It would protect private space flight companies from being sued if passengers on board are injured or killed. Uresti says if he would have waited to file the bill until the next legislative session in two years, that could be too late. The start of commercial space flight has been taking off around the country. Last week, a private ship that took off from Florida orbited the Earth in just a few hours. "We've talked about rocket ships and space
since we were children," commented space travel enthusiast Raz Hernandez. "And now, it's here." But along with the excitement come risks. "If you go on a space flight, there's a chance you may not come back," commented Senator Uresti. And some of his constituents question the flights' safety. "Who are the people that are going to be flying these commercial space ships?" commented Kristina Quijano. "And how qualified are they?" On the edge of

Uresti's district, the space flight company "Blue Origin" has been launching test flights from their West Texas Launch site. Engineers expect to send up the first human being in 2012. Uresti says the thrust behind Senate Bill 115 and the legal backing it would provide Blue Origin, could help stimulate the economy. "It helps the county, it helps the community, and hopefully it will bring more jobs," said Uresti.

Senators support the commercial space industry because it attracts thousands of jobs in innovative fields Senate. Gov 10 August 17, 2010, http://billnelson.senate.gov/news/details.cfm?id=327226&, Senator unveils new plan for
boosting commercial space ventures U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, in a move to further lessen the impact from the wind-down of the space shuttle, this morning announced a plan aimed at boosting the commercial rocket industry and attracting thousands of jobs to Floridas Space Coast. In meetings with representatives from NASA and various commercial aerospace ventures at Cape Canaveral on Tuesday, Nelson touted a new measure that would create up to five regional business enterprise zones around the country as magnets for commercial space ventures which in turn would attract jobs to areas where there are lots of scientists and engineers. More specifically, his office said, the
Commercial Space Jobs and Investment Act would allow space-related businesses - situated around places like the Kennedy Space Center ( KSC ) - to qualify for major tax breaks and other incentives. President Kennedy was right when he predicted that space exploration would create a great number of new companies and strengthen our economy, Nelson said. What were doing now is everything we can to ensure

KSCs continued importance to our nations space exploration effort, while also broadening the economic opportunities along our Space Coast. Nelson said this new measure ( below ) is the next critical step to spurring space-industry job growth in the region. Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate quickly and unanimously passed a different Nelson-engineered plan, and the U.S. House of Representatives is considering a comparable measure. The Senate-approved plan provides enough money for another space shuttle flight next year, for jump-starting NASAs new heavy-lift rocket, and for developing the commercial rocket industry all of which will save jobs of
thousands of displaced shuttle workers. The new proposal - to give tax breaks to commercial space entrepreneurs - is drawing the support of aerospace industry leaders including those from Space Florida, the state-backed organization charged with promoting the development of commercial rocketry and related undertakings. "The Commercial Space Jobs and Investment Act symbolizes a significant step forward in ensuring the right incentives are in place to attract industry to Florida, and the broader domestic marketplace," said Frank DiBello, Space Florida president. "This bill will stimulate the commercial space industry to create jobs in our state, at a time when we need it

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Washington prefers the competitive private industry to NASA Harwood, 10 by William Harwood, Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape
Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. February 1, 2010 3:31 PM PST, http://news.cnet.com/8301-19514_3-10445227-239.html#ixzz1SYynU9gY,Obama ends moon program, endorses private spaceflight On the seventh anniversary of the Columbia disaster, President Obama unveiled a sweeping change of course for the nation's space program Monday, putting an end to NASA's post-Columbia moon program and shifting development and operation of new rockets and capsules from the government to private industry. Requesting some $19 billion for NASA in fiscal 2011, the administration announced plans to pump an additional $6 billion into NASA's budget over the next five years to kick-start development of a new commercial manned spaceflight capability, including some $500 million in 2011. A launch tower being built for the Ares I rocket, part of NASA's now-canceled Constellation program, stands at the Kennedy Space Center with the program's target--the moon--visible in the remote distance. (Credit: CBS News) Over that same five years, some $7.8 billion will be earmarked for new technology development, including autonomous rendezvous, orbital fuel transfer systems, and closed-loop life support systems. Another $3.1 billion will support development of new propulsion technologies needed by future heavy-lift rockets. And $3 billion will go to pay for a series of robotic missions to the moon and beyond to test systems needed for eventual manned flights. "Imagine trips to Mars that take weeks instead of nearly a year, people fanning out across the inner solar system, exploring the moon, asteroids, and Mars nearly simultaneously in a steady stream of firsts," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told reporters. "And imagine all of this being done collaboratively with nations around the world. That is what the president's plan for NASA will enable, once we develop the new capabilities to make it a reality." No timetables were established for human flights beyond low-Earth orbit, with deputies saying the focus instead will be on enabling technology development and innovation. As for commercial flights to and from the International Space Station, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said she hoped a new privatesector launch system, possibly including modified versions of technology developed for the canceled moon program, could be available by around 2016 if not earlier. "We will try to accelerate and use the great minds of industry to get a competition going, and I'm sure they'll want to beat that,"

Congress supports private space firms NASA is too inefficient Whittington 11 By Mark R. Whittington who Is The author of Children of Apollo Moonwalker and The Last. He has
Written on space subjects for a Variety of periodicals, Including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the LA Times, and The Weekly Standard, 05/13/2011, http://nursingclasses.typepad.com/myblog/2011/05/newt-gingrich-prefersspace-prizes-over-nasa-exploration-projects-to-continue.html Newt Gingrich Prefers Space Prizes Over NASA Exploration Projects to Continue One Of The Things That Makes the presidential CANDIDACY form of House Speaker Newt Gingrich notable Is That He Is One Of The Few American Politicians Who Has Given a great deal of Thought to space issues. Gingrich not only disdain now the Apollo model of NASA Sending astronauts back to the Golden Moon to Mars, goal has Some Interesting Ideas How To Do Those Things Outside the NASA infrastructure, According to a 2006 interview in Space Review. "I am for a Dramatic Increase In Our efforts to reach out Into space, I am goal for doing Virtually all of it Outside of NASA-through prizes and tax incentives. NASA Is an aging, unimaginable, bureaucracy Committed to over-engineering and riskavoidance Which Is Actually diverting resources from The Achievement and stifling We Need The Entrepreneurial and risk-taking spirit Necessary to lead in space exploration. " Prizes Have Been Used to advance space technology Already in the 21st Century.The Privately Funded Ansari X Prize led to The First Privately Funded Space Flight in 2004. Google is running a Lunar X Prize That Would Pay Cash To The first private group to land a robot probe On the surface of the Moon. NASA has run a series Itself of prizes from under the Centennial Challenge Program. Gingrich has taken The Idea of Space prizes To The ultimate conclusion by Proposing a $ 20 trillion prize For the first group to land a person on Mars and return to Earth Safely HIM, The Cato Institute reports. Later, he Added The Idea of a lunar base prize for $ 5 trillion. Under the Gingrich vision for space, NASA Would Be relegated to technology development and little else. Prizes and Tax Incentives Would drive space and exploration, Eventually, The Settlement of Humans from Earth on Other Worlds.Gingrich has come out in Publicly aussi Favor of President Obama's plan to foster commercial space-through Government subsidies.

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Private enterprises saves money for both NASA and tax payers. Bormanis 2010 (Andre Bormanis is a staff writer for the The Space Review. Critical partnerships for the future of human space
exploration. July 19, 2010. http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1667/1) hss A program that recognizes and embraces these three partnerships has a far greater likelihood of success than the US trying to repeat the Apollo experience, if for no other reason than it will use our limited financial resources more efficiently. The private sector is on the cusp of providing human access to LEO, freeing NASA to devote its resources to developing the systems that will take us beyond it. Current federal spending levels are not sustainable, and in a few years, if not sooner, NASA will be forced to tighten its already constrictive belt. If NASA is still building Ares 1 and Orion when the federal government begins to make the draconian cuts necessary to move toward a balanced budget, we will be stuck in LEO for a very long time. Shifting more of the cost to the private sector and international partners will help alleviate the burden on the US taxpayer. Enhancing the role of robotics will lower the cost of human missions beyond LEO even more by deferring the expense of human Mars landing and return vehicles until after Ph.D. missions have yielded their maximum scientific returns.

Private space companies provide much cheaper and reliable systems Theobald 09 by Bill Theobald, FLORIDA TODAY, 19 June 2009 Time: 12:55 PM ET, Private Companies Claim Better,
Cheaper Options for New NASA Rocket, http://www.space.com/6868-private-companies-claim-cheaper-options-nasa-rocket.html WASHINGTON -- Executives from several private space companies said Wednesday that they could provide cheaper, more reliable launch systems than those of NASA's Constellation program. The executives made their comments about alternatives to NASA's plan for sending astronauts to the moon and on to Mars during the first meeting of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee created by President Barack Obama. After the daylong meeting, committee Chairman Norm Augustine, a former CEO of Lockheed Martin Corp., said some commercial launch efforts appear "further along than I thought." Michael Gass, the CEO of United Launch Alliance, told the committee that the company could use an existing Delta rocket to launch the Constellation project's Orion capsule into space sooner and at a lower cost than NASA's planned Ares I rocket. And Gary Pulliam at Aerospace Corp., which was hired to look at other ways to launch Orion, said a modified Delta IV Heavy rocket could save between $3 billion and $6 billion compared with the Ares I. But Pulliam also noted that NASA has said canceling the Ares I project would add $14.1 billion to $16.6 billion to the cost of developing the larger Ares V rocket, which NASA hopes to use to take the Orion capsule farther into space, including to Mars. Executives with SpaceX and Orbital Sciences told committee members that they could help NASA ferry astronauts to the International Space Station, filling the gap between the end of the shuttle program in 2010 and the start of Constellation. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also said that using private firms to service the space station -- both for supplies and people -- would free up NASA to spend its funds on more ambitious space exploration. NASA has contracted with both firms for a total of 20 missions to service the station. Steve Metschan, part of a group called Direct, offered the most provocative presentation, which proposed using existing shuttle components to create a new launch system that would be cheaper and already tested.

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Private space firms are inherently more financially savvy Borenstein 11 By Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press Apr 05, 2011 19:01:57 PM
http://www.news1130.com/news/world/article/207999--private-firm-to-build-rocket-that-carries-more-than-space-shuttle-claims-it-salso-cheaper, Private firm to build rocket that carries more than space shuttle; claims it's also cheaper WASHINGTON - A high-tech entrepreneur revealed plans Tuesday to launch the world's most powerful rocket since man went to the moon. Space Exploration Technology already has sent the first private rocket and capsule into Earth's orbit as a commercial venture. It is now planning a rocket that could lift twice as much cargo into orbit as the soon-to-be-retired space shuttle. The first launch is slotted for 2013 from California with follow-up launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Space X's new rocket,
called Falcon Heavy, is big enough to send cargo or even people out of Earth's orbit to the moon, an asteroid or Mars. Only the long retired Saturn V rocket that sent men to the moon was bigger. "This is a rocket of truly huge scale," said Space X president Elon Musk, who also founded PayPal and manufactures electric sports cars. The Falcon Heavy could put 117,000 pounds (53,070 kilograms) into the same orbit as the International Space Station. The space shuttle hauls about 54,000 pounds (24,500 kilograms) into orbit. The old Saturn V could carry more than 400,000 pounds (181,440 kilograms) of cargo. The old Soviet Union had a giant moon rocket bigger than the Falcon Heavy, but it failed in all four launch attempts. Another Soviet rocket, also bigger than Falcon Heavy and designed to launch its version of the space shuttle, had one successful flight more than 20 years ago. While the new

Space X rocket is designed initially for cargo, it satisfies NASA's current safety requirements for carrying humans, and after several launches it could carry people, Musk said. He has said that if NASA does buy rides on commercial rockets, he would be able to fly astronauts to the space station in his smaller Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule within three years. Potential customers for the new larger rocket are NASA, the military, other governments and satellite makers. Musk said Falcon Heavy will be far cheaper than government or private rockets. Launches are about $100 million each. He said the Air Force pays two older more established aerospace firms about $435 million for each of its launches. Over its 40 year design history, the space shuttle program has cost about $1.5 billion per launch, according to a study by the University of Colorado and an Associated Press analysis of NASA budgets. Musk, who has a contract to supply the space station with cargo using the smaller Falcon 9, said his pricing is more fixed than traditional aerospace firms. He joked: "We believe in
everyday low prices." To get costs that low, Musk said he needs to launch about four Falcon Heavy rockets a year but plans on launching about 10. He does not have a paying customer for his first launch, but is in negotiations with NASA and other customers for flights after his company proves the new rocket flies. "It would be great if it works, if it's safe," said Henry Lambright, a professor of public policy and space scholar at Syracuse University. "I don't want to come across as skeptical, but I am." Lambright said companies have often made big claims about private space without doing much. But, he said, Musk has some credibility because of his successful Falcon 9. If Musk's plans work, it will give President Barack Obama's space policy a needed boost, Lambright said. Obama has been battling some in Congress over his plans to use more private space companies, like Space X, for getting people to orbit with NASA concentrating on missions to send astronauts to new places, such as nearby asteroids. Several companies are vying to launch private rockets that could replace the shuttle. NASA is now paying Russia to send astronauts to and from the space station on Soyuz spacecraft. Howard McCurdy, a space policy expert at American University, said of Musk: "If he's not in the lead, he's well positioned for the finish." McCurdy said

NASA's space shuttle was a technological marvel, but had a bad business model and was not cost effective. He said Musk, who is using his own money in his privately held firm, has incentive to be more financially savvy.

NASAs launching costs too much, competitive markets are more cost effective Diamonds 10 By Peter Diamonds, FEBRUARY 13, 2010 Peter Diamandis is chief executive of the X Prize Foundation, a
nonprofit that conducts incentivized competitions. He is also CEO of Zero Gravity, which offers weightless flights; and chairman of the Rocket Racing League, an interactive entertainment company. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059350409331536.html Space: The Final Frontier of Profit? A debate on the pros and cons of commercializing the cosmos; valuing asteroids at $20 trillion each. Peter Diamandis makes a case for private space. The challenge faced by all space-related ventures is the high cost of launching into orbit. When the U.S. space shuttle stands down
later this year, NASA will need to send American astronauts to launch aboard the Russian Soyuz at a price of more than $50 million per person. The space shuttle, on the other hand, costs between $750 million to $2 billion per flight (for up to seven astronauts) depending on the number of launches each year. Most people don't realize that the major cost of a launch is labor. Fuel is less than 2%, while the standing army of people and infrastructure is well over 80%. The annual expense NASA bears for the shuttle is roughly $4 billion, whatever the number of launches. The government's new vision will mean the development of multiple operators, providing the U.S. redundancy as well as a competitive market that will drive down the cost of getting you and me to orbit. One of the companies I co-founded, Space Adventures, has already brokered the flight of eight private citizens to orbit, at a cost of roughly $50 million per person. In the next five years we hope to drive the price below $20 million, and eventually below $5 million. Within the next several decades, privately financed research outposts will be a common sight in the night sky. The first one-way missions to Mars will be launched. Mining operations will spring up on the moon. More opportunities we have yet to even comprehend will come out of the frontier. One thing is certain: The next 50 years will be the period when we establish ourselves as a space-faring civilization. As the generation that has never known a world without "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" matures, it will not be content to watch only government astronauts walk and work on the moon. A "let's just go do it" mentality is emerging, and it is that attitude that will bring the human race off this planet and open the final frontier.

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Private companies solves for a fraction of the cost of NASA David 2005. (Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than four decades. He is past editor-in-chief of the
National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines and has written for SPACE.com since 1999. Private Sector, LowCost Lunar Plan Unveiled. http://www.space.com/1793-private-sector-cost-lunar-plan-unveiled.html) hss NASA has tallied its future lunar mission costs, projecting a figure of $104 billion over 13 years. According to SpaceDev's chief, Jim Benson, the private group has found that a more comprehensive series of missions could be completed in a fraction of the time and for one-tenth of the cost of the NASA estimate. Each mission, as envisioned by SpaceDev, would position a habitat module in lunar orbit or on the moon's surface. The habitat modules would remain in place after each mission and could be re-provisioned and re-used, thus building a complex of habitats at one or more lunar locations over time, according to a press statement on the study findings. Benson also noted: "We are not surprised by the significant cost savings that our study concludes can be achieved without sacrificing safety and mission support."

NEAP proves that private development is cheaper Zinsmeister, 98 (Jeff Zinsmeister, Global Notebook Editor, Harvard International Review, (Private space: a free-market
approach to space exploration, Spring 1998, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb137/is_2_20/ai_n28713165/) The anatomy of the NEAP project itself is a novel concept. Since the project is funded entirely with private money, profit and investor security is the overriding concern. Returns on investments are critical, which has been a difficult task given the high costs and risks normally involved in space exploration. Costs have been kept to a minimum, with projected expenditures pegged at around US$40 million. Innovative programs to ensure NEAP's success and control costs have been implemented to attract investors, such as SpaceDev's cooperation with the academic world. Students and professors at the University of California at San Diego, New Mexico State University, and the University of Texas at Austin have been working with SpaceDev on all aspects of spacecraft design and flight logistics. Although Benson has invested a significant amount of his own money in the expedition, more has been raised through the sale of equity in the company, via a private placement of stock in an existing trading company. However, given the difficult logistics and high risks involved, putting NEAP in space will require some creative business decisions. The academic teams are making every effort to ensure success in a mission in which countless mishaps can occur. Furthermore, Benson is insuring equipment and investments on board NEAP to assuage fears of mission failure and the loss of scientific equipment. No longer will scientists suffer the uncompensated loss of equipment like that following the failure of the Mars Observer. Although NEAP, unlike NEAR, will actually land on an asteroid, the information retrieved will be remarkably similar. A camera will measure the size of the asteroid, a neutron spectrometer will search for traces of water vapor, and deployable probes with on-board spectrometers will measure the asteroid's composition. What will be done with the data, however, is entirely new. Unlike NEAR, NEAP was brought into existence for a very unique task: to explore and exploit both the enormous reservoir of scientific wealth and valuable elements found in near-earth asteroids. The data collected will be sold on the market not only to the scientific community at considerably reduced prices, but also to mining and space flight industries interested in commercial exploitation of the asteroid. The idea of resource extraction from other worlds has long remained the domain of science fiction, and it is true that there is little reason to think that ferrying materials to Earth will be possible or cost-effective even in the fairly distant future. Although one asteroid may be worth anywhere from US$1 to US$4 trillion in gold, platinum, cobalt, and other metal ores, transportation costs would be astronomical and would make the process quite unprofitable. Water is the most valuable resource to be found in the short-term; its extraction becomes extremely valuable when used to produce rocket fuel. Water is the major component in rocket propellant, a cheap commodity on Earth; what costs cents to produce and use on this planet, however, costs US$6,000 a pint in space due to the immense costs of transportation. Producing fuel in space from space-based water deposits promises to be substantially cheaper. When functional, the proposed Space Station Alpha could be the first step in establishing demand for fuel in orbit and consequently a demand for space-based water deposits. Benson is hoping that SpaceDev will help satisfy this demand.

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The private sector spends money more efficiently avoids the spending DA Scatz, 11 - former legislative director and president of Citizens Against Government Waste (Thomas, 2/17. Testimony Before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. http://www.cagw.org/ccagw/government-affairs/testimony/house-committee-oversight.html)
NASAs Constellation Program has come under frequent criticism, for good reason. Despite having spent more than $10 billion on the program to date, NASA is no closer to sending an astronaut to space than it was when the program began. According to a letter from NASA Inspector General Paul K. Martin to Sens. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) on January 13, 2011, due to restrictive language in NASAs fiscal year (FY) 2010 appropriation, coupled with the fact that NASA and the rest of the Federal Government are currently being funded by a continuing resolution (CR) that carries over these restrictions and prohibits initiation of new projects, NASA is continuing to spend approximately $200 million each month on the Constellation Program, aspects of which both NASA and Congress have agreed not to build. Furthermore, the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 requires NASA to spend more than $10 billion in the next three years to continue Constellation, now referred to as the Space Launch System and Multi-purpose Crew Vehicle. Unfortunately, NASA delivered a report to Congress on January 12, 2011 concluding that it simply cant build a rocket that fits the projected budget profiles nor schedule goals outlined in the Authorization Act. Even so, some members of Congress are insisting that NASA move forward with the program. The private sector can spend money more effectively than government bureaucrats. As a result, the governments role in space exploration should be minimized.

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China will subsume the US politically and technologically unless the US downplays its governmental space program and opens the door to cheaper and more efficient private companies Trevor Brown, MSc, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Masters in Asian Studies, specializes in political, economic, and military strategy for the medium of space, 3-1-2009, Air and Space Power Journal,
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj09/spr09/brown.html The United States would do well to keep a low profile for its military space program and burnish its technological image by showcasing its commercial and scientific space programs. Doing so would enable it to accumulate rather than hemorrhage soft power. Such a rationale is not lost on the Chinese, who certainly have had their successes in recent years in building soft power and using it to extend their influence around the globe. According to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) administrator Michael Griffin, the Chinese have a carefully thought-out human-spaceflight program that will take them up to parity with the United States and Russia. Theyre investing to make China a strategic world power second to none in order to reap the deals and advantages that flow to world leaders.30 Analysts believe that the United States determination to maintain dominance in military space has caused it to lose ground in commercial space and space exploration. They maintain that the United States is giving up its civilian space leadership an action that will have huge strategic implications.31 Although the US public may be indifferent to space commerce or scientific activities, technological feats in space remain something of a marvel to the broader world. In 1969 the world was captivated by mans first walk on the moon. The Apollo program paid huge dividends in soft power at a time when the United States found itself dueling with the Soviets to attract other nations into its ideological camp. Unless the United States has a strong presence on the moon at the time of Chinas manned lunar landing, scheduled for 2017, much of the world will have the impression that China has approached the United States in terms of technological sophistication and comprehensive national power.32 If recent trends hold, this is likely to come at a time when the new and emerging ideological confrontation between Beijing and Washington will have intensified considerably.33 The most recent space race reflects the changing dynamics of global power. Technonationalism remains the impetus for many nations space programs, particularly in Asia: In contrast to the Cold War space race between the United States and the former Soviet Union, the global competition today is being driven by national pride, newly earned wealth, a growing cadre of highly educated men and women, and the confidence that achievements in space will bring substantial soft power as well as military benefits. The planet-wide eagerness to join the space-faring club is palpable.34 India and Japan are also aggressively developing their own space programs.35 But the United States does not necessarily have to choose between civilian and military space programs since much of the technology developed for space is dual use. The space industry provides a tremendous opportunity for militaries that desire more affordable access and space assets that can significantly augment terrestrial forces. As Alfred Thayer Mahan pointed out, Building up a great merchant shipping lays the broad base for the military shipping.36 The US military can maximize its resources, not only financially but also politically, by packaging as much military space activity as possible into commercial space activity. One example involves satellite communications. The arrangement the Pentagon has with Iridium Satellite LLC gives the military unlimited access to its network and allows users to place both secure and nonsecure calls or send and receive text messages almost anywhere in the world.37 Another example involves space imagery. Even though the government must maintain sophisticated imaging capabilities for special situations, it could easily meet the vast majority of its routine requirements at lower cost by obtaining commercially available imagery.38 The Air Force could also use space transportation, another emerging industry, to maximize its resources. Private ventures now under way are reducing the costs of space access considerably. It is possible that one enterprise could become an alternative to Russian Soyuz spacecraft for NASAs missions to the International Space Station.39 Such enterprises could prove attractive, cost-effective options for delivering the Air Forces less-sensitive payloads to Earth orbit. Space tourism, a growing industry, could enable the Air Force to procure affordable capabilities to routinely operate 60 to 90 miles above Earth.40 Advances that entrepreneurs are making in suborbital space flight could eventually evolve to a point where the Air Force would find it far easier, politically as well as financially, to acquire platforms capable of delivering munitions from space.

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US space weakness is key to Chinese influence and soft power Sabathier and Faith 5-17, Vincent G. Sabathier has more than 20 years of experience in aerospace, from rocket and satellite
design to space policy. As president of Sabathier Consulting, he provides strategic insights to both the private sector and governments in the fields of aerospace and telecommunications. He is also a senior associate with the technology and public policy program at the CSIS. G. Ryan Faith is a research analyst at the space foundation. Prior to that, he was a program manager for space initiatives at CSIS, where he wrote extensively about space policy, (The Global Impact of the Chinese Space Program, in, Space Power: A Crowded Field, World Politics Review, 2011) Space activity has increased tremendously over the past decade thanks to both the growth of space applications and the entry of many new national and regional players. Space is now understood as a fully dual-use domain, with space systems not only part of the digital and cyberspace domains and as such powerful socio-economic enablers, but also at the core of all global defense policies and operations. Indeed, space is the smart-power tool par excellence, effective for applying both soft and hard power or, as is more often the case, a little bit of both. Space power is the modern-day equivalent of the 18thcentury sea-power domain so eloquently described by Alfred Thayer Mahan, but extended to both the vertical and digital dimensions. Countries with global ambitions understand that, absent significant space capabilities, they will neither attain nor retain global pre-eminence. But since every post-Cold War national space program, with the exception of the U.S. thus far, has at some point been subject to significant resource limitations, nations have needed to cooperate to some degree or another in order to develop significant capabilities. As space systems become more complex and costly, this trend is going to increase and will likely even affect the U.S. Although China has relied on cooperation in the past to develop its space capabilities, it is increasingly willing to go it alone, proceeding slowly and steadily in a long march fashion. China might cooperate on space activities to accelerate a particular program or to gain prestige and recognition along the way, but ultimately its aim is to become a global competitor in space. Over time, Chinese policymakers have studied, analyzed and understood both the successes and failures of the U.S.-Soviet space race as well as the benefits China can derive from space. One such benefit, increased national pride, is more important in China than in any other current major spacefaring power -- with the possible exceptions of India and Russia -- because it helps unify the country during periods of great stress and transformation. In addition to showing considerable signs of determination and an enormous ambition, China has the resources needed to comprehensively develop its space assets in all areas. This will eventually allow China to compete across the board, around the globe and throughout space. China will probably catch up with European commercial space assets and policies before 2020. Its navigation system, Beidou, will be operational before its European counterpart, Galileo, and the Long March 5 family of launch vehicles, slated for use starting in 2014, will outperform Ariane 5 and its foreseen successors. China will subsequently land a taikonaut on the moon in the middle of the next decade, at roughly the same time that Chinas GDP is projected to exceed that of the U.S. -- a subtle soft-power means of highlighting Chinas growing influence. A Chinese moon landing ought not to represent an existential threat to U.S. space leadership, given that the U.S. landed on the moon more than 40 years ago and remains far ahead in all fields. However, if the U.S. remains stuck on the International Space Station (ISS) along with Europe, Russia, Japan and other station partners while China invites astronauts from around the world to visit the moon on board Chinese landers, the U.S. will certainly lose its soft-power edge in space for the first time in nearly half a century. It is possible that policymakers in the West will not understand the deeper, underlying significance of this moment and that the event will attract attention in neither Europe nor the U.S. After all, little has been made of the fact that once the Space Shuttle is retired this year, NASA will be forced to pay Russia to fly U.S. astronauts to the ISS at a cost of $75 million for each round-trip ticket. In any case, increased global activity in space is making space, especially in the specific orbits used for particular kinds of activities, more and more congested, competitive and contested. This situation impairs U.S. freedom of action, thereby diminishing the strategic and asymmetric advantage the U.S. currently derives from its dominance in space. In the management of orbits and space access, as in business when a resource becomes a commodity, old space will have to be managed and new space will have to be found.

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Chinese soft power will lead to the decline of US hegemony unless we increase soft power ideology of liberalization is key Meyer 07 By Marius Meyer, thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
(International Studies) at the Stellenbosch University supervisor Dr. K. Smith, March 2007, http://scholar.sun.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10019.1/2391/Meyer.pdf?sequence=1 An exploration of the Role of soft power in hegemony: the USA and China (pg. 70,71) Joseph Nyes term soft power was explored, as it is the chief aspect which is almost synonymous with nn- material power. It was found that soft power attracts and legitmises actions whilst building alliances and consensus. It was found that soft power is a more peaceful alternative to the zero- sum strategy of the realist- that focuses excessively on hard power capabilities. Thus the soft power of attraction creates uniform behavior far better than force in hard power terms. The next chapter served as a practical application of the theory of soft power and hegemony. Both in the cases on the US and China it was indicated what their respective soft power; capabilities and how this will be influential in their future possible ascension to hegemony. It was found that although the US ha massive soft power capabilities (coupled with massive hard power abilities) they are in fact experiencing some real decline with regards to their attractiveness in the international realm. The growing anti- US sentiment in response to their unilateral and hard power approach to international relations has tarnished the ability of its non- material influence, arguably helped the US cheat decline since the 1970s. On the other hand it was found that Chinese are engaging their international counterparts more effectively with regards to cultural exchange awareness. The growing attractiveness of china, in addition to their unprecedented economic growth has lead to an ascendance or growth tendency with regards to Chinese soft power and attractiveness to the international community. Thus it could well be argued that the US is in relative decline- especially with regards tro the growing Chinese dragon. There is however one discrepancy which inevitably drives a stake into the spoke of this analysis. In illustrating US soft power decline and Chinese growth- the study has not accounted for the fact that the US is still arguably hegemonic and in control of the system through the control and maintenance of the Neoliberal ideology and agenda within the global structure. Regimes and international organizations all have entrenched Neoliberal values which propagate freedom, democracy and liberalization of markets. It is argued that this is the core of the US hegemonic capabilities (as they are the authors of these values) and hence enables the US to perform hard power activities such as the war in Iraq- without any legal base or sufficient allies. In conclusion this study has tried to show that hegemony- especially material or hard power hegemony- can only occur in cases where it is built on a sturdy non material and soft power foundation. The United States of America is a prime example of how soft power can help a states to prevent decline through consensus and alliance formation. The Chinese on the other hand have noticed this- whilst the US possibly forgot the value of soft power as a sustaining capability for hegemony. Thus China is growing and nurturing its soft power capabilities in order to create an image of benevolent super power, whilst the US are increasingly being perceived as malevolent- which is not conducive to hegemony or dominance in the international system,. It would then not be inconceivable that- as (of if) the US continues to lose control of their soft power capabilities, they will probably be overshadowed by the Chinese dragon in (or more probably after ) the next 20-30 years. This is a mere forecast and not a prediction, but if the Chinese ideology could become the dominant one- then they can become hegemonic.

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Hegemony is key to global stability U.S. presence prevents conflicts. Bradley A. Thayer, Associate Professor in the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University, 2007
["The Case For The American Empire," American Empire: A Debate, Published by Routledge, ISBN 0415952034, p. 42] Peace, like good health, is not often noticed, but certainly is missed when absent. Throughout history, peace and stability have been a major benefit of empires. In fact, pax Romana in Latin means the Roman peace, or the stability brought about by the Roman Empire. Romes power was so overwhelming that no one could challenge it successfully for hundreds of years. The result was stability within the Roman Empire. Where Rome conquered, peace, law, order, education, a common language, and much else followed. That was true of the British Empire (pax Britannica) too. So it is with the United States today. Peace and stability are major benefits of the American Empire. The fact that America is so powerful actually reduces the likelihood of major war. Scholars of international politics have found that the presence of a dominant state in international politics actually reduces the likelihood of war because weaker states, including even great powers, know that it is unlikely that they could challenge the dominant state and win. They may resort to other mechanisms or tactics to challenge the dominant country, but are unlikely to do so directly. This means that there will be no wars between great powers. At least, not until a challenger (certainly China) thinks it can overthrow the dominant state (the United States). But there will be intense security competitionboth China and the United States will watch each other closely, with their intelligence communities increasingly focused on each other, their diplomats striving to ensure that countries around the world do not align with the other, and their militaries seeing the other as their principal threat. This is not unusual in international politics but, in fact, is its normal condition. Americans may not pay much attention to it until a crisis occurs. But right now states are competing with one another. This is because international politics does not sleep; it never takes a rest.

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NASA spends 70% of budget, or $12 billion, on Space Exploration. If NASA cuts space exploration budget and adds it to Earth science and monitoring, they can pay the Air Force to launch DSCOVR by 2012 Bill Donahue, Reporter for PopSci, 4/06/11, http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-03/lost-satellite
The Air Force, which is keenly interested in the space weather data DSCOVR would provide, agreed to pay for the satellites launch vehicle. The service requested $135 million for this purpose in 2012, but a defense spending bill passed July 8 by the House Appropriations Committee did not include this funding. The Air Force planned to allow new entrants such as Hawthorne, Calif.-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp. to compete for the launch, government and industry sources said.

NASAs current solar storm detector, ACE, does not solve Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., Administrator of the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA), 1/28/10, Natural
Disasters and Solar Storms: Why Space Weather Matters, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/conrad-c-lautenbacher-phd/naturaldisasters-and-sol_b_440128.html Efforts to predict this space weather -- and prevent such catastrophes -- currently rely on data from a single spacecraft, which is wearing out. While NASA's ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) has fuel through 2024, top scientists and military strategists have found that during space storms several key instruments have failed to report data in real time This is like having a fire department that breaks down just when there is a fire, just when you need it the most.. The DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory), replacement spacecraft for ACE, was built to monitor Earth weather and global warming, and also features equipment that can measure -- and help predict -- solar and space weather. DSCOVR was evaluated by the National Academy of Sciences and their report called this mission "strong and scientifically vital." However, due to budgetary concerns, this $100+ million DSCOVR program is at risk as a potpourri of federal environmental, space, defense, and budgetary agencies attempt to pare down federal expenditures. In Congress, efforts to fund space weather in the "Critical Electric Infrastructure Protection Act," which also addresses cyber security, languishes in committee. Space weather remains an under-appreciated challenge. Spacecraft along with other space and ground assets can detect the arrival of these storms; but, without an ACE replacement, there will be no warning in time to prevent potentially catastrophic damage. This is a serious life-threatening matter that demands our attention. We simply cannot afford to let DSCOVR's launch funding be eliminated.

DSCOVR satellite can replace ACE, and can measure solar/space weather Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., Administrator of the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA), 1/28/10, Natural
Disasters and Solar Storms: Why Space Weather Matters, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/conrad-c-lautenbacher-phd/naturaldisasters-and-sol_b_440128.html The DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory), replacement spacecraft for ACE, was built to monitor Earth weather and global warming, and also features equipment that can measure -- and help predict -- solar and space weather. DSCOVR was evaluated by the National Academy of Sciences and their report called this mission "strong and scientifically vital."

Solar Flares will be disastrous- destroys economy, knocks out electrical grid for years, kills thousandsand the timeframe is soon- flares will peak in 2013 Vastag, 6/21/11 (Brian Vastag, , reporter for the Washington Post June 21, 2011 Sunburst could be a big blow The
Washinton 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 his smartphone. 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 since February, our star has been spitting out flares and plasma like an angry dragon. It's Hesse's job to watch these eruptions.If a big one were headed our way, Hesse needed to know, and fast, so he could alert the electric power industry to brace for a geomagnetic storm that could knock some of the North American power grid offline. Hesse gathered his team at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, where he is chief of the Space Weather Laboratory, and fed the latest data from four sun-staring satellites into powerful computers.At 7:49 Hesse got his answer. An animated chart traced the predicted path of a huge arc of plasma - hot gas - hurtling through the inner solar system. But only the tail of the plume would lick Earth, arriving June 9 and driving a dazzling display of the northern lights from Alaska through Maine.While a video of the

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eruption captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory showed an enormous plume spraying from the sun, this solar tantrum 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, which Carrington had projected via telescope onto paper, he saw a sudden flash emerge from a dark spot. Although such sunspots had sparked curiosity for centuries - Galileo famously drew them, too, in the early 1600s - Carrington had no idea what the flash could mean.Within hours, telegraph operators found out. Their long strands of wire acted as antennas for this huge wave of solar energy. As this tsunami sped by, transmitters heated up, and several burst into flames. Observers in Miami and Havana gaped skyward at eerie green and yellow displays, the northern lights pushed far south. Such a "Carrington event" will happen again someday, but our wired civilization will suffer losses far greater than a few telegraph shacks.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. 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 the North 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 a flight. 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 experts warn that the grid is not ready. In 2008, the National Academy of Sciences stated that an 1859-level storm could knock out power in parts of the northeastern and northwestern United States for months, even years. Report co-author John Kappenmann 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 the annual U.S. gross domestic product.Utilities say they're studying the issue, with an eye toward understanding how to protect the grid by powering down sections of it during an hours-long solar storm.Their efforts are motivated, in part, by the sun's increasingly frequent outbursts. Every 11 to 12 years, solar activity ramps up. After a quiet season, the sun is now spitting out flares again, with activity expected to peak in 2013 and 2014, said Dean Pesnell, a solar scientist at Goddard."The sun is not partisan, it doesn't listen to diplomacy, and sanctions don't work," said Peter Huessy, president of GeoStrategic Analysis. Huessy wants Congress to enact rules that would force power companies to better protect the power grid. "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 a coronary."

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Private space industry initiatives fail Whittington 2010(Mark R. Whittington is a writer and is the author of The Last Moonwalker, Children of Apollo and Nocturne.
He has written numerous articles, some for the Washington Post, USA Today, the LA Times, and the Houston Chronicle. Three Problems with the Obama Commercial Space Initiative http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5425146/three_problems_with_the_obama_commercial_pg3.html?cat=58) One of the more interesting features of the Obama space policy is the plan to commercialize space travel between the Earth's surface and low Earth orbit. The idea was that NASA would lease seats and cargo space on private, commercial space craft to send astronauts and cargo to and from the International Space Station. The Obama commercial space plan was a revision of an earlier Bush era plan. The Bush commercial space plan would lease private space craft to carry cargo alone to and from the ISS. Once commercial space companies proved their ability to conduct routine space operations, then transportation of astronauts to and from ISS would be contracted out. In the meantime, the Bush plan would retain a "public option" of a NASA designed and operated space craft known as the Orion to be launched on a rocket called the Ares 1. The same system would be part of the Constellation return to the Moon space exploration program. The Obama commercial space plan has three problems. First, because there is no actual commercial space industry that provides launch services for cargo and astronauts to low Earth orbit, the government is going to have to help to create it, mainly by providing money to help develop launch systems and space craft that can be operated on a commercial basis. The Bush approach, under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems program was to do this in two stages, as mentioned above, first cargo then passengers. The idea was that commercial space companies would be given time to develop actual operational experience before becoming true space transportation lines. The Obama approach is to essentially go all in for commercial, spending six billion dollars to develop a commercial space industry in the next five years capable of transporting cargo and people to and from ISS. There are inherent risks involved in this approach, especially as the Obama administration proposes to cancel the public option of the Ares 1/Orion. The only other option will be to buy rides on the Russian Soyuz. The second problem with the Obama approach to commercial space is a lack of attention to encouraging private markets for space launch companies. Some potential markets exist, including space tourism and servicing private space stations such as the one Bigelow Aerospace is working on. Indeed, the existence of private markets in addition to the International Space Station would increase the launch rate for private space craft, decrease the cost per launch, and ensure that there would be more players in the nascent private launch industry. Inexplicably, the Obama administration is doing nothing to encourage private markets for commercial space. One idea it could pursue is one once put forward by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, providing tax and regulatory relief for products and services created in space. The proposal, sometimes called "Zero Gravity, Zero Taxes" would make space an enterprise zone. The third problem with the approach the Obama administration is taking to commercial space was revealed in recent Senate testimony by Apollo moonwalker Eugene Cernan. It appears that in a conference call with Cernan and Neil Armstrong, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden admitted that the Obama administration would provide a bailout for commercial space companies should it appear that they would miss the deadline of 2015 to provide space transportation services to and from the International Space Station. The implications of this statement, which Bolden does not recall making, but Cernan made contemporaneous notes of, is little understood by the mainstream media. One of the ways that a true commercial enterprise works is that the knowledge of the cost of failure, i.e. to deliver a promised product or service in the time and for the cost promises, will result in the lost of the contract. Indeed, commercial space under the Bush administration worked that way, with Rocket Plane/Kistler losing its COTS contract when it failed to deliver. Participants in the COTS program knew that NASA had its own, in house solution to Earth to LEO transportation, in the form of the Ares 1 launched Orion, should they fall short. But the idea that commercial space will get a bailout if it doesn't perform effectively removes a major incentive to perform. With no "public option" in the form of the Orion/Ares 1 and with the prospect that failure would only mean that a commercial firm would just get more money from the government, one would wonder what incentive a SpaceX or an Orbital would have to actually deliver what was promised. In conclusion, it would appear that the Obama commercial space initiative should be considered commercial in name only. Heavy government financing and involvement, coupled with a lack of firm private markets for commercial launch enterprises, combine to create the prospect of an industry whose sole function is to service government space launch needs, i.e. the International Space Stations, whose existence is dependent not only on that sole market but on government subsidies.

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Private companies cant solvethey dont have the resources or expertisethe industry will take decades to develop Krauthammer, 10 Pulitzer Prizewinning syndicated columnist, political commentator, and physician (Charles, 2/12. Closing the new frontier. http://culberson.house.gov/closing-the-new-frontier-charleskrauthammer/)
But the Obama 2011 budget kills Constellation. Instead, we shall have nothing. For the first time since John Glenn flew in 1962, the United States will have no access of its own for humans into space and no prospect of getting there in the foreseeable future. Of course, the administration presents the abdication as a great leap forward: Launching humans will be turned over to the private sector, while NASAs efforts will be directed toward landing on Mars. This is nonsense. It would be swell for private companies to take over launching astronauts. But they cannot do it. Its too expensive. Its too experimental. And the safety standards for getting people up and down reliably are just unreachably high. Sure, decades from now there will be a robust private space-travel industry. But that is a long time. In the interim, space will be owned by Russia and then China. The president waxes seriously nationalist at the thought of China or India surpassing us in speculative clean energy. Yet he is quite prepared to gratuitously give up our spectacular lead in human space exploration. As for Mars, more nonsense. Mars is just too far away. And how do you get there without the stepping stones of Ares and Orion? If we cant afford an Ares rocket to get us into orbit and to the moon, how long will it take to develop a revolutionary new propulsion system that will take us not a quarter-million miles but 35 million miles?

The private sector fails at space development empirically proven Butler, 10 lead writer at greenopia.com and at MNN (Katherine, 3/8. The Pros and Cons of Commercializing Space Travel, http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/the-pros-andcons-of-commercializing-space-travel)
Further, Dinerman points out that private efforts into space have failed again and again. He refers to dozens of private startups that never got off the ground, let alone into space. Dinerman points to Lockheed Martin's X-33 design, which was supposed to replace the space shuttle in 1996. The design never succeeded and ultimately cost the government $912 million and Lockheed Martin $357 million. Amazon.com Chief Executive Jeff Bezos company Blue Origin set up the DC-X program in the early 1990s. Its suborbital test vehicle was initially successful but was destroyed in a landing accident. Dinerman claims, The Clinton administration saw the DC-X as a Reagan/Bush legacy program, and was happy to cancel it after the accident.

The private sector fails empirics Taylor Dinerman, columnist for The Space Review and member of the board of advisers of Space Energy, February 13th, 2010,
Space: The Final Frontier of Profit?, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059263418508030.html | AK President Barack Obama's proposed plan for NASA bets that the private sectorsmall, entrepreneurial firms as well as traditional aerospace companiescan safely carry the burden of flying U.S. astronauts into space at a fraction of the former price. The main idea: to spend $6 billion over the next five years to help develop new commercial spacecraft capable of carrying humans. The private sector simply is not up for the job. For one, NASA will have to establish a system to certify commercial orbital vehicles as safe for human transport, and with government bureaucracy, that will take years. Never mind the challenges of obtaining insurance. Entrepreneurial companies have consistently overpromised and underdelivered. Over the past 30 years, over a dozen start-ups have tried to break into the launch business. The only one to make the transition into a respectably sized space company is Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Va. Building vehicles capable of going into orbit is not for the fainthearted or the undercapitalized. The companies that have survived have done so mostly by relying on U.S. government Small Business Innovation Research contracts, one or more angel investors, or both. Big aerospace firms tempted to join NASA's new projects will remember the public-private partnership fiasco when Lockheed Martin's X-33 design was chosen to replace the space shuttle in 1996. Before it was canceled in 2001 this program cost the government $912 million and Lockheed Martin $357 million. Of the smaller failures, there was Rotary Rocket in

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California, which promised to revolutionize space travel with a combination helicopter and rocket and closed down in 2001. In 1997, Texas banker Andrew Beal announced that his firm, Beal Aerospace, was going to build a new large rocket. He shut it down in 2000.

The government must come in first before private companies. Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer, 30 October 2010, Want to Mine the Solar System? Start With the Moon,
http://www.space.com/9430-solar-system-start-moon.html However, government leadership and investment will likely be needed to get these businesses off the ground, several panelists said. Some people in the aerospace industry are skeptical about the feasibility of extraterrestrial mining operations, Spudis said. To get them onboard, government should demonstrate the necessary technologies and know-how. "Let the government lead the way, and let the private sector follow," Spudis said. Government could also prime the pump for private industry, some panelists said, spurring demand for rocket fuel sold from orbiting filling stations. "An appropriate government investment can catalyze it," Greason said. "Government shows the initial demand and the private sector figures out how to provide the supply." The panel agreed about the transformative potential of extraterrestrial resource extraction.

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AFF Privatization Kills Jobs, Heg

Counterplan failsloses talent and 20,000 jobs in Florida alone and hands space leadership to China and Russia.
Fox News, March 9, 10. Obama's New Mission for NASA Sets Off Intense Criticism http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/09/obamas-new-mission-nasa-sets-intense-criticism/ But Obama's plan also is drawing fierce criticism, especially in Florida where some 20,000 jobs alone would be lost if the space shuttle program shuts down at the end of this year. Obama plans to visit Florida on April 15 to talk up his space vision. Taxpayers have already spent $9 billion over five years developing the program. Critics of the presidents' plan claim he has no vision for space travel, no firm goals. "If we don't have goals, we're just going to be adrift," said Sen. George Lemieux, R-Fla. "And what I'm afraid of is we're going to lose all of these great scientists that work in Florida and other states around the country and we're going to give up our preeminence in space to the Chinese and the Russians. Shame on us if we do that."

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AFF Privatization Bad

Privatization increases the risk of catastrophic space junk and destroys existing legal frameworks in space and isnt more efficient for the taxpayer Gagnon, 03 Senior Fellow at the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space (Bruce, 6/21. Space Privatization: Road to Conflict? http://www.space4peace.org/articles/road_to_conflict.htm)
Three major issues come immediately to mind concerning space privatization . Space as an environment, space law, and profit in space. We've all probably heard about the growing problem of space junk where over 100 ,000 bits of debris are now tracked on the radar screens at NORAD in Colorado as they orbit the earth at 18,000 m. p. h. Several space shuttles have been nicked by bits of debris in the past resulting in cracked windshields. The International Space Station (ISS) recently was moved to a higher orbit because space junk was coming dangerously close . Some space writers have predicted that the ISS will one day be destroyed by debris. As we see a flurry of launches by private space corporations the chances of accidents, and thus more debris, becomes a serious reality to consider. Very soon we will reach the point of no return, where space pollution will be so great that an orbiting minefield will have been created that hinders all access to space. The time as certainly come for a global discussion about how we treat the sensitive environment called space before it is too late. The taxpayers, especially in the U. S. where NASA has been funded with taxpayer dollars since its inception, have paid billions of dollars in space technology research and development (R & D). As the aerospace industry moves toward forcing privatization of space what they are really saying is that the technological base is now at the point where the government can get out of the way and lets private industry begin to make profit and control space . Thus the idea that space is a "free market frontier. " Of course this means that after the taxpayer paid all the R & D, private industry now intends to gorge itself in profits. One Republican Congressman from Southern California, an ally of the aerospace industry, has introduced legislation in Congress to make all space profits "tax free". In this vision the taxpayers won't see any return on our "collective investment. " Plans are now underway to make space the next "conflict zone " where corporations intend to control resources and maximize profit. The so-called private "space pioneers" are the first step in this new direction. And ultimately the taxpayers will be asked to pay the enormous cost incurred by creating a military space infrastructure that would control the "shipping lanes" on and off the planet Earth. Privatization does not mean that the taxpayer won't be paying any more . Privatization really means that profits will be privatized . Privatization also means that existing international space legal structures will be destroyed in order to bend the law toward private profit . Serious moral and ethical questions must be raised before another new "frontier" of conflict is created .

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AFF NASA Key

NASA solves betterprivatization is not the answer Burnett, 97 [R E Burnett. (1997). American space policy after the cold war: Has private sector space finally arrived? Policy
Studies Journal, 25(1), 183-190. Retrieved July 21, 2011, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 13263221).] Privatization is an argument that can be made easily given the difficulty in the 1980s for a private firm such as Space Services Incorporated to be able even to launch an experimental vehicle (6 months of filing papers and a quarter of a million dollars expended in legal fees!). Legislation now is in place to prevent much of this. However, Kay points out that a viable private sector in space industry is not the answer to a renewed vigor in American space activity. Today, technology, economies of scale, and markets still will not support private industry. More importantly, as the author states, private space activity does not address the primary problem of interarena complexity in the relationships between space "players." What about the so-called "smaller, cheaper, faster" programs, in which NASA is pursuing and promoting a new and different program philosophy that seeks to get away from big, expensive projects? This would seem to lessen the fact of complexity by using fewer technologies in a project and in a less complex arrangement. To date, spacecraft and instrument designs, though promising, are not advanced enough for it to be possible to tell whether they are feasible to build and reliable. Therefore we cannot determine if they indeed will lessen complexity and economic costs. Can democracies fly in space? Kay's conclusion zeroes in on the thematic question by painting a picture that we remember all too well: Students of American political history can point to any number of public programs and policy initiatives that are for one reason or another considered to be failures: ...It is difficult, however, to think of any other economic program or social policy that has failed (or even can fail) as completely or as spectacularly as Challenger (p. 183). Space flight is like no other endeavor that America nor any other group of people ever have attempted to do in this planet's history. It is fundamentally a process involving a level of complexity that has no peer. Despite the past history of our politicians using well-known historical accomplishments as moving metaphors, space travel has its own reality. As such, if it is to "fly" and to succeed, if it is to meet our dreams of grandeur, then it must be born and nursed from an equally nontraditional form of governing. Can we create a space policy and industry capable of providing such an environment? In Kay's own words (p. 193): Q: Can democracies fly in space? A: How badly do they want to?

The government must come in first before private companies. Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer, 30 October 2010, Want to Mine the Solar System? Start With the Moon,
http://www.space.com/9430-solar-system-start-moon.html However, government leadership and investment will likely be needed to get these businesses off the ground, several panelists said. Some people in the aerospace industry are skeptical about the feasibility of extraterrestrial mining operations, Spudis said. To get them onboard, government should demonstrate the necessary technologies and know-how. "Let the government lead the way, and let the private sector follow," Spudis said. Government could also prime the pump for private industry, some panelists said, spurring demand for rocket fuel sold from orbiting filling stations. "An appropriate government investment can catalyze it," Greason said. "Government shows the initial demand and the private sector figures out how to provide the supply." The panel agreed about the transformative potential of extraterrestrial resource extraction.

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AFF CP Links to Politics

The CP links to politicstheres major political opposition to it, especially among NASAs old guard WSJ, 10 The Wall Street Journal (Andy Pasztor, 1/24. White House Decides to Outsource NASA Work. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704375604575023530543103488.html)
The White House has decided to begin funding private companies to carry NASA astronauts into space, but the proposal faces major political and budget hurdles, according to people familiar with the matter. The controversial proposal, expected to be included in the Obama administration's next budget, would open a new chapter in the U.S. space program. The goal is to set up a multiyear, multi-billion-dollar initiative allowing private firms, including some start-ups, to compete to build and operate spacecraft capable of ferrying U.S. astronauts into orbitand eventually deeper into the solar system. Congress is likely to challenge the concept's safety and may balk at shifting dollars from existing National Aeronautics and Space Administration programs already hurting for funding to the new initiative. The White House's ultimate commitment to the initiative is murky, according to these people, because the budget isn't expected to outline a clear, long-term funding plan. The White House's NASA budget also envisions stepped-up support for climate-monitoring and environmental projects, along with enhanced international cooperation across both manned and unmanned programs. Press officials for NASA and the White House have declined to comment. Industry and government officials have talked about the direction of the next NASA budget, but declined to be identified. The idea of outsourcing a portion of NASA's manned space program to the private sector gained momentum after recommendations from a presidential panel appointed last year. The panel, chaired by former Lockheed Martin Corp. Chairman Norman Augustine, argued that allowing companies to build and launch their own rockets and spacecraft to carry American astronauts into orbit would save money and also free up NASA to focus on more ambitious, longer-term goals. However, many in NASA's old guard oppose the plan. Charles Precourt, a former chief of NASA's astronaut corps who is now a senior executive at aerospace and defense firm Alliant Techsystems Inc., said that farming out large portions of the manned space program to private firms would be a "really radical" and an "extremely high risk" path. Unless the overall budget goes up, he said, whatever new direction NASA pursues "isn't going to be viable."

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AFF CP Links to Spending

CP links to spending theres no way for the mission to be viable without a massive federal expenditure WSJ, 10 The Wall Street Journal (Andy Pasztor, 1/24. White House Decides to Outsource NASA Work. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704375604575023530543103488.html)
The White House has decided to begin funding private companies to carry NASA astronauts into space, but the proposal faces major political and budget hurdles, according to people familiar with the matter. The controversial proposal, expected to be included in the Obama administration's next budget, would open a new chapter in the U.S. space program. The goal is to set up a multiyear, multi-billion-dollar initiative allowing private firms, including some start-ups, to compete to build and operate spacecraft capable of ferrying U.S. astronauts into orbitand eventually deeper into the solar system. Congress is likely to challenge the concept's safety and may balk at shifting dollars from existing National Aeronautics and Space Administration programs already hurting for funding to the new initiative. The White House's ultimate commitment to the initiative is murky, according to these people, because the budget isn't expected to outline a clear, long-term funding plan. The White House's NASA budget also envisions stepped-up support for climate-monitoring and environmental projects, along with enhanced international cooperation across both manned and unmanned programs. Press officials for NASA and the White House have declined to comment. Industry and government officials have talked about the direction of the next NASA budget, but declined to be identified. The idea of outsourcing a portion of NASA's manned space program to the private sector gained momentum after recommendations from a presidential panel appointed last year. The panel, chaired by former Lockheed Martin Corp. Chairman Norman Augustine, argued that allowing companies to build and launch their own rockets and spacecraft to carry American astronauts into orbit would save money and also free up NASA to focus on more ambitious, longer-term goals. However, many in NASA's old guard oppose the plan. Charles Precourt, a former chief of NASA's astronaut corps who is now a senior executive at aerospace and defense firm Alliant Techsystems Inc., said that farming out large portions of the manned space program to private firms would be a "really radical" and an "extremely high risk" path. Unless the overall budget goes up, he said, whatever new direction NASA pursues "isn't going to be viable." Such arguments already are raging around NASA's Ares I rocket, which could be replaced or scaled back if the commercial option gains traction. Some Ares I contract work could be shifted toward providing the basic elements of a future larger, more-powerful NASA family of rockets. Alliant and other Ares proponents have argued the program is several years behind schedule primarily because Congress and previous administrations failed to provide promised funding. According to some of these analyses, Congress in the past five years earmarked a total of about $4 billion less than initially projected for NASA's manned exploration programs. The design of the Ares I also changed and became more complex since its inception. Ares critics, on the other hand, counter that instead of costing about $4.3 billion as originally planned, the Ares booster is likely to cost more than three times that much. The program already has spent roughly $4 billion, and these critics say that exceeds original funding profiles for the Ares I by hundreds of millions of dollars. Moreover, they say that year-by-year expenditures actually exceeded the original timetable. NASA's last budget projected spending another $9.5 billion through 2015. Space Exploration Technologies Corp., founded by Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, is one of the start-up commercial ventures likely to gain from the proposed policy shift. But other large incumbent NASA contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing Co. also are likely to compete for some of the anticipated government seed money earmarked for new commercial ventures. The White House's budget is bound to spark a battle with Congress because NASA would have to kill off big chunks of its existing manned exploration program in order to finance some of these new initiatives in the coming years. The budget package, slated to be released in early February, is expected to stop short of proposing major cancellations. But it also isn't likely to specify how all the different programs can be adequately funded in the future. Under the White House proposal, the agency's top-line budget is expected to stay close to the $18.7 billion in the current fiscal year. Only a small portionroughly $200 millionis likely to be slated for the initial phase of opening up NASA's manned space exploration program to private firms. However, that initiative is expected to cost a least $3.5 billion and potentially much moreover the next five years. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat who heads a key subcommittee, has blasted the notion of shifting money to outsource transporting astronauts to the international space station. Unless Congress makes the NASA budget a higher priority, Rep. Giffords said during a hearing last month, there won't be enough money for robust manned exploration efforts of any kind and U.S. human space flight could be "on hold for the foreseeable future."

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AFF CP Doesnt Solve Leadership

CP doesnt solve space leadershipin the time it takes for private companies to develop the tech, Russia and China will surpass us Krauthammer, 10 Pulitzer Prizewinning syndicated columnist, political commentator, and physician (Charles, 2/12. Closing the new frontier. http://culberson.house.gov/closing-the-new-frontier-charleskrauthammer/)
But the Obama 2011 budget kills Constellation. Instead, we shall have nothing. For the first time since John Glenn flew in 1962, the United States will have no access of its own for humans into space and no prospect of getting there in the foreseeable future. Of course, the administration presents the abdication as a great leap forward: Launching humans will be turned over to the private sector, while NASAs efforts will be directed toward landing on Mars. This is nonsense. It would be swell for private companies to take over launching astronauts. But they cannot do it. Its too expensive. Its too experimental. And the safety standards for getting people up and down reliably are just unreachably high. Sure, decades from now there will be a robust private space-travel industry. But that is a long time. In the interim, space will be owned by Russia and then China. The president waxes seriously nationalist at the thought of China or India surpassing us in speculative clean energy. Yet he is quite prepared to gratuitously give up our spectacular lead in human space exploration. As for Mars, more nonsense. Mars is just too far away. And how do you get there without the stepping stones of Ares and Orion? If we cant afford an Ares rocket to get us into orbit and to the moon, how long will it take to develop a revolutionary new propulsion system that will take us not a quarter-million miles but 35 million miles? To say nothing of the effects of long-term weightlessness, of long-term cosmic ray exposure, and of the intolerable risk to astronaut safety involved in any Mars trip six months of contingencies vs. three days for a moon trip. Of course, the whole Mars project as substitute for the moon is simply a ruse. Its like the classic bait-and-switch for high-tech military spending: Kill the doable in the name of some distant sophisticated alternative, which either never gets developed or is simply killed later in the name of yet another, even more sophisticated alternative of the further future. A classic example is the B-1 bomber, which was canceled in the 1970s in favor of the over-the-horizon B-2 stealth bomber, which was then killed in the 1990s after a production run of only 21 (instead of 132) in the name of post-Cold War obsolescence. Moreover, there is the question of seriousness. When John F. Kennedy pledged to go to the moon, he meant it. He had an intense personal commitment to the enterprise. He delivered speeches remembered to this day. He dedicated astronomical sums to make it happen. At the peak of the Apollo program, NASA was consuming almost 4 percent of the federal budget, which in terms of the 2011 budget is about $150 billion. Today the manned space program will die for want of $3 billion a year 1/300th of last years stimulus package with its endless make-work projects that will leave not a trace on the national consciousness. As for President Obamas commitment to beyond-lunar space: Has he given a single speech, devoted an iota of political capital to it? Obamas NASA budget perfectly captures the difference in spirit between Kennedys liberalism and Obamas. Kennedys was an expansive, bold, outward-looking summons. Obamas is a constricted, inward-looking call to retreat.

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AFF SPS Privatization=Normal Means

Perm: do the CP contracting and privatization are normal means for SPS NSS 06, National Space Society, organization researching and analyzing various methods to explore and develop space, 12-6-2006,
Introduction to the motion to the National Space Society Board of Directors, http://www.sspi.gatech.edu/sunsatcorpfaq.pdf, DKreus Question 2 - Is it a normal way of doing business for Congress to create a corporation? Isn't that private enterprise area? Has this been done before? If so, an example please. Answer 2: Congress has created a wide variety of such public/private corporations. Several good historical examples are the transcontinental railroad act in 1862 and Comsat in 1962. Please read the chapter at http://www.sspi.gatech.edu/sunsathow.pdf for a fuller and more interesting answer with references.

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AFF Lunar Mining Fed Key

Federal investment is key to catalyze lunar mining private sector alone fails Wall 10, Mike Wall, space.com senior writer and analyst, October 30, 2010, Want to mine the solar system? Start with the moon,
http://www.space.com/9430-solar-system-start-moon.html, DKreus Most panelists agreed that economics will ultimately drive such extractive enterprises. Private industry, rather than government, will be doing most of the heavy lifting. However, government leadership and investment will likely be needed to get these businesses off the ground, several panelists said. Some people in the aerospace industry are skeptical about the feasibility of extraterrestrial mining operations, Spudis said. To get them onboard, government should demonstrate the necessary technologies and know-how. "Let the government lead the way, and let the private sector follow," Spudis said. Government could also prime the pump for private industry, some panelists said, spurring demand for rocket fuel sold from orbiting filling stations. "An appropriate government investment can catalyze it," Greason said. "Government shows the initial demand and the private sector figures out how to provide the supply." The panel agreed about the transformative potential of extraterrestrial resource extraction. Once business gets a foothold in space, and it becomes obvious how much money there is to be made, space will open up to humanity. The sky is no longer the limit. "Once you do that, you have economic escape velocity," Greason said. "If we can get there, the stars are ours."

No investment in the counterplan investors wont jump on Schmitt 03, Harrison H. Schmitt, Fulbright Fellow, National Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, NASA distinguished service medal, Caltech grad and Fairchild Fellow, Fellow at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Engineer of the Year Award, National Space Society of Professorial Engineers, former US senator, former Astronaut, 6-30-03, Private
Enterprise Approach to Lunar Base Activation, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6V3S-4B82PJY-S1&_cdi=5738&_user=4257664&_pii=S0273117703005374&_origin=&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F2003&_sk=999689988&view=c& wchp=dGLbVlz-zSkWW&md5=9e41c9111a8bb0381cac273fe28e2ddd&ie=/sdarticle.pdf, DKreus INVESTOR BASE Identification of the required investor base for the long-term lunar energy enterprise, as well as the nearer term business bridges is essential to the development of the requisite business plans. Both long- and short-term investors, however, generally will be those who invest in entrepreneurial initiatives rather than those who are part of or investors in established enterprises in related fields. For, example, recent experience by the author has shown that existing energy companies are unwilling to consider investing in a competing long-term lunar energy initiative with delayed returns on investment and based on unproved technology. In addition, established businesses and potential competitors in the business bridges will not invest in a future competing technology, at least until that technology appears as a threat in the market place.

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