Solar Power Satellites Neg - Maurer

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 1
[Maurer/Moore/Rekhi] Solar Power Satellites Neg
Solar Power Satellites Negative

Solar Power Satellites Negative......................................................................................................................................1
SETI DA Shell................................................................................................................................................................3
SETI Internals ................................................................................................................................................................4
SETI DA Links: SPS Hurts Radio Astronomy...............................................................................................................5
SETI- 2NC Tradeoff Links.............................................................................................................................................8
SETI DA: A2: We will not locate it near radio observatories........................................................................................9
SETI DA: A2: Use Other Frequencies..........................................................................................................................10
SETI UQ.......................................................................................................................................................................11
SETI Impacts.................................................................................................................................................................13
Asteroids DA Shell.......................................................................................................................................................15
Asteroid DA Links........................................................................................................................................................16
Asteroid DA Internal Links- Detection Key................................................................................................................17
Asteroid DA Impacts....................................................................................................................................................18
Asteroid Uniqueness.....................................................................................................................................................25
Ozone DA.....................................................................................................................................................................27
Ozone Links..................................................................................................................................................................28
Ozone Uniqueness.........................................................................................................................................................29
Ozone Impacts...............................................................................................................................................................30
Space Junk DA.............................................................................................................................................................31
Space Junk Links..........................................................................................................................................................32
Space Junk Impacts: Satellites Economy Module........................................................................................................33
Space Junk DA: Space Junk Destroys Satellites...........................................................................................................34
Space Junk Impacts: Satellites Key to Economy..........................................................................................................35
Space Junk DA Impacts: Satellites Key to the Military................................................................................................36
......................................................................................................................................................................................36
Space Junk Impacts: Stops Space Exploration.............................................................................................................37
Space Junk Impacts: Kills SSP.....................................................................................................................................40
Space Junk DA: A2: Geosynchronous Orbit Not at Risk.............................................................................................41
Space Junk DA: A2: Solutions to Debris......................................................................................................................42
Space Junk DA- Link Magnifier- Privates Bad............................................................................................................44
Link Magnifiers for Space Junk and Ozone DAs.........................................................................................................45
Space Junk and Ozone DA Uniqueness: No New Launches........................................................................................46
Satellites DA Shell .......................................................................................................................................................47
Satellites DA: Links- Hurts Satellites ..........................................................................................................................48
Satellites DA: Links- Geosynchronous Orbit Links.....................................................................................................49
Satellites DA: A2: We Can Repair Satellites................................................................................................................52
1NC Solvency Frontline................................................................................................................................................53
Solvency A2: We have had the tech since the 1970s....................................................................................................55
Solvency Extensions #1: Long T/F No Tech................................................................................................................56
Solvency: Government Development Will Fail............................................................................................................64
1NCBIZ CON LINK.....................................................................................................................................................65
Biz Con Link Extensions: Investors..............................................................................................................................66
Biz Con Links- Its Expensive- Launch Costs...............................................................................................................69
Biz Con Links- Increases Energy Costs........................................................................................................................72
Biz Con Links- Its Expensive......................................................................................................................................74
Biz Con Links- A2: It will get cheaper.........................................................................................................................77
Biz Con Links- Short Changing ...................................................................................................................................78
Politics Links.................................................................................................................................................................79
A2: Poverty Advantage.................................................................................................................................................81
Poverty Advantage Extensions.....................................................................................................................................82
A2: Environmental Advantages....................................................................................................................................83
A2: Environment: Ext #3- Energy is Safe....................................................................................................................84
A2: Environment: SPS Bad for Env.............................................................................................................................85
1NC Space Answers......................................................................................................................................................86
Military Readiness Adv- Neg Answers: Readiness Low Now.....................................................................................88
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 2
[Maurer/Moore/Rekhi] Solar Power Satellites Neg
Military Readiness Adv- Neg Answers: SPS Interferes with Military Ops..................................................................89
Military Readiness Adv- Microwaves Turn on Military..............................................................................................90
Terrorism DA- Links....................................................................................................................................................91
Space Weaponization Good..........................................................................................................................................92
Space Weaponization- SSP Key...................................................................................................................................93
Space Weaponization- Nuclear Cannot Solve..............................................................................................................94
Space Weaponization- Military Will Coopt..................................................................................................................95
NASA Credibility- Neg Answers.................................................................................................................................96
Environmental Adv – Pollution- Neg Answers............................................................................................................99
No Inherency- US Building SPS Now........................................................................................................................100
SSP Inevitable.............................................................................................................................................................101
Other Countries SSP-General.....................................................................................................................................102
Japan SPS Tech...........................................................................................................................................................103
Europe SPS Tech........................................................................................................................................................104
India Space Solar Tech..............................................................................................................................................105
Moon SPS Fails...........................................................................................................................................................106
Space Link...................................................................................................................................................................107
Grid Instability Links..................................................................................................................................................108
China DA Links..........................................................................................................................................................109
SETI DA Shell
(SEARCH FOR EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE)
A) SPS interferes with microwave astronomy
Olsen 98, ("RETHINKING THE USE OF EXISTING TECHNOLOGY: SOLAR POWER HARNESSED IN
SATELLITE BEAMS BETH OLSEN DECEMBER 3, 1998", http://clab.cecil.cc.md.us/faculty/biology1/Solar
%20power%20Satellites.HTM)
One concern voiced with reference to SPS is the possible interference of the system’s microwaves with
other technologies using similar frequencies, such as astronomical observatories and the communications
industry. The spectrum constitutes an exhaustible resource. It cannot be expanded. As a finite resource, the
spectrum must be managed to most efficiently benefit mankind. For example, astronomers scan the
universe for any microwave activity that may emanate from space. Astronomical observations must
have the ability to measure very weak signals, which are easily drowned by background noise. Many are
concerned about interference from space-based technologies such as SPS and the communications
satellites that create microwave ‘noise’ on the astronomical monitors.
B) Microwave observatories key to SETI

University Wire 04, (March 11, 2004 Thursday HEADLINE: SETI director keeps eyes on stars BYLINE: By
Ruby Thomas, Indiana Daily Student; SOURCE: Indiana U., l/n)
The SETI research strategy is to use radio signals, radio telescopes and optical telescopes to listen and
look for signals -- microwave radio frequency and optical wave length frequency -- that may be transmitted
from other planets. Tarter said she hopes to one day pick up signals that will be a manifestation of
technologies on other planets. "We look, and we listen," she said. "We use ourselves as an example as to
what technologies to look for."Tarter works on Project Phoenix, a comprehensive search for extraterrestrial
technology and a continuation of NASA's high-resolution microwave survey terminated in 1993. "It's called
Project Phoenix because it is rising from the ashes of congressional termination," she told the audience,
which responded with a loud roar of laughter. Phoenix is a targeted search of 1,000 stars near Earth. Tarter
said they concentrated the search on the low end of the microwave window in the sky because at higher
frequency, the water vapor and oxygen in the earth's atmosphere creates background noise that could
interfere with potential extraterrestrial signals. SETI looks for patterns in frequency and time in these
signals.
C) SETI key to survival

Michaud 04, (Last modified: September 21, 2004. Deputy Director of the Office of International Security Policy,
a branch of the U.S. State Department in Washington. "Cosmic Search Vol. 1 No. 3 Extraterrestrial Politics By
Michael A. G. Michaud", http://66.102.7.104/search?
q=cache:zlhQvdd6JscJ:www.bigear.org/vol1no3/politics.htm+SETI+%22human+survival%22&hl=en)
The ultimate goal of a community of intelligence, the transcendental vision that gives purpose to the cosmic
polis and guides its work, may be to assure the survival of intelligence in a universe that is indifferent to it.
This may be the ultimate ethical act - and getting from an atomized diversity of intelligences to a conscious,
directed universe may be the supreme political challenge. If Gale and Edwards are right, no one species can
control the universe or shape its future. Only if the intelligent species of the universe work together can
they hope to reverse the running down of the cosmos that we measure as entropy, or its collapse into a
new primeval fireball. Failing that, it may take their collective knowledge and abilities to find another
escape from cosmic death. Cosmic politics, then, may be essential to the long-term survival of intelligence in
the universe. As SETI gets under way, we will be making choices about our own role in the universe
through our political decisions about the future of spaceflight, and our attitudes toward the
extraterrestrial paradigm. One may argue that our species cannot contribute to the community of
intelligence unless we search for evidence of its existence and communi cate with it. One also may argue
that our contribution will be significant only if we adopt an extraplanetary model of our future, so that
we may expand our influence on the universe and join with others in the tasks of assuring longterm
survival.
SETI Internals
SETI signals in key microwave frequencies
Ventura County Star 03, ((California) July 5, 2003 Saturday SECTION: Business; Pg. D01 HEADLINE:
They're ready for a return call from ET
Idaho Falls dish makers' custom-ordered products come in all sizes and shapes BYLINE: Wang Feng; Post Register,
l/n)
Unlike TV dishes that receive and decode satellite signals, the SETI dishes listen for radio signals in a
specific "window" of the microwave spectrum from 0.5 GHz to 11.2 GHz, Andersen said. "It took the SETI
two years to design the dish, and it took me one year to design the tooling to make them," said Andersen, a
veteran engineer and inventor.
SETI DA Links: SPS Hurts Radio Astronomy
SPS interferes with radio astronomy
National Research Council 81, (Electric Power From Orbit: A Critique of a Satellite Power System, A
report by the Committee on Satellite Power Systems, Environmental Studies Board, Commission on Natural
Resources, National Research Council, p. 100)
There are also two principal ways in which an SPS using microwave transmission could interfere with
the operation of radio telescopes. The first is through radiation that was close in freguency to the
bands assigned to radio astronomy; the second is through radiation within the astronomy bands.
SPS hurts radio astronomy

Radiation close to the bands would lead to the overloading of sensitive receivers used in radio
astronomy, while radiation within the bands would lead to general degradation of the performance of
a radio telescope and to the masking of radio signals of astronomical interest. These problems would
loom large because the substantial amounts of power transmitted by a satellite power system would
lead to hundreds of megawatts of power in unwanted modes and because radio astronomy receivers
are extremely sensitive, being able to measure power levels as low as 10-21 W.
SPS interferes with radio telescopes
The side lobe pattern in the receiving antennas of radio telescopes is another complicating factor. Just
as an antenna transmits attenuated signals in unintended directions, it also receives signals from
unintended directions; this characteristic is a function of frequency and geometry and is described by its
side lobes. So, even when a radio telescope is pointed away from an SPS satellite, it could receive
scattered SPS radiation through its side lobes at the power transmission frequency. Although the
received radiation is at the SPS transmitter frequency and a radio telescope would be tuned to operate at
another frequency, the effect could be to overload the telescope. As little as 0.003 microwatt (PW) of
unwanted signal would begin to cause serious overloading problems in state -of-the-art radio
telescopes.
SPS interferes with all radio astronomy bands

Among the existing radio astronomy bands are the 2690 MHz to 2700 MHz and the 4990 MHZ to 5000
MHz bands. The former is close to the reference SPS power frequency, while the latter is near the
second (and strongest) harmonic of the reference system. Receivers operating in both bands would
therefore be likely to experience serious problems of overloading due to the SPS. In addition, there
would be SPS interference with observation of important molecular radiofrequency spectral lines that
lie outside the designated bands, such as those of formaldehyde at 4830 MHz.
SPS shuts down key areas for radio astronomy

It is difficult to make reliable estimates of the degradation in performance of radio telescopes that would be
caused by SPS radiation. One can conclude, however, that the reference system would produce an area in
the sky--its width might be as much as 300--where radio astronomy observations with single antennas
would be impossible, even with cryogenic filters designed to exclude unwanted radiation. From important
U.S. radio observatories, this band includes some of the most interesting radio astronomical objects in
the sky, for example, in the Orion nebula.
SPS seriously degrades radio astronomy

The overloading of sensitive radio astronomy receivers operating at frequencies close to the SPS power
transmission frequency and spurious SPS radiation within radio and radar astronomy frequency
bands would confuse and obscure faint-object signals. Efforts to make radio astronomy measurements
of faint objects in certain parts of the sky from most earth-based observatories would be seriously
hampered.
SETI- 2NC Tradeoff Links
SETI gaining respect but has to compete for money with other programs
Christian Science Monitor 04, ((Boston, MA) July 8, 2004, Thursday SECTION: FEATURES; PLANET;
Pg. 14 HEADLINE: In hunt for E.T., a giant leap BYLINE: By Peter N. Spotts Staff writer of The Christian Science
Monitor, l/n)
The field is also finding new respectability. In its latest 10-year survey of key questions in astronomy and
astrophysics and the experiments needed to answer them, a National Research Council panel listed a
telescope being built by the SETI Institute and UC Berkeley as a project worth supporting. Although the
panel has endorsed SETI efforts in previous r reports, its 2001 document was the first to endorse a private,
nonprofit SETI effort. Moreover, NASA - which ended its own SETI project in 1993 after it raised some
eyebrows in Congress - has included one of the SETI Institute's scientists in its virtual Astrobiology Institute.
"SETI was once a four-letter word around NASA headquarters," Cullers says. Now SETI researchers can
compete for research money "under the same conditions as everyone else."
SETI DA: A2: We will not locate it near radio observatories
Does not matter- SPS will still produce interference
As with all antennas, energy at the SPS power frequency could be radiated in directions other than the
intended ones through many mechanisms. For example, a considerable amount of power would be
scattered into the side lobes due to electrical and mechanical tolerances within the antenna (Arndt
1980). Even minimal errors could mean the transmission of hundreds of megawatts of off -axis power,
some of it at large angles to the axis. There are also so-called grating lobes, which could cause relatively
large "spikes" (fractions of a watt per square meter) of radiated power in particular directions. These spikes
would appear on earth at spacings of about 440 km ' and could occur many hundreds of kilometers
from the rectenna. Finally, the rectenna itself would be capable of reradiating signals at significant
power levels (tens of megawatts), more or less in all directions.
SETI DA: A2: Use Other Frequencies
Other frequencies have not been tested and we do not have the tech
EPRI Journal 00, (March 22, 2000 SECTION: No. 1, Vol. 25; Pg. 6 ; ISSN: 0362-3416 HEADLINE: Renewed
Interest in Space Solar Power; Brief Article BYLINE: MOORE, TAYLOR, l/n)
For this reason, says Osepchuk, "it appears that NASA now favors 5.8 GHz as the frequency for
microwave power transmission, which would probably require new bioeffects studies to be done at that
frequency It is also likely to require ingenious solutions in transmitter and rectenna designs and
development. High-efficiency microwave generators--such as magnetrons--that operate at 5.8 GHz are
not yet available." Developing them may require the application of advanced high-power electronics.
SETI UQ
Radio astronomy is good and growing
Walker 08 (Christopher, PhD, University of Arizona, 1988; MS, Ohio State University, 1981; BS, Clemson
University, 1980, University of Arizona, 7/13/08, http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-
reviews/A3SPHUB1WDQ3G3/ref=cm_pdp_profile_reviews?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview)
Radio astronomy is an exponentially growing field of research through which we can gain insight into
everything from the origin of our solar system to the origin of the Universe itself. Unlike the beginning
of optical astronomy which is lost in the midsts of time, radio astronomy can trace its beginnings to
1931 with Karl Jansky's pioneering work at Bell Laboratories. Dr. Kraus was also there at the beginning,
attending Jansky's first public lecture and contributing technically, scientifically, and in education to this
emerging field ever since. This experience gives Dr. Kraus a unique vantage point from which to write his
book. In the book, Dr. Kraus carefully and methodically covers the basics of radio astronomy, wave
polarization & propagation, radio telescope antennas & receivers, and discusses radio observations of
the solar system, interstellar medium, pulsars, and external galaxies.
SETI expanding capability now

Christian Science Monitor 08 (Christian Science Monitor, Hurt for alien life to expand scope, 7/13/08, L/N)
Researching the prospects for life beyond our solar system is moving to the next level. Exoplanet hunters are
getting instruments that promise to spot Earth-like planets around alien stars. In some cases, they may even
yield crude estimates of how life-friendly such a planet may be. Meanwhile, the search for extraterrestrial
intelligence (SETI) is gaining new capacity to scan the heavens for alien signals. It could produce more
analyzed data over the next two years than its researchers have collected over the past half century.
Seth Shostak, who forecast that data bonanza at a meeting at the University of Arizona in Tempe earlier this
month, readily admits that researchers have monitored only a tiny bit of the cosmos. A senior astronomer at
the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., Dr. Shostak explains that "we might have to search
millions of star systems" to detect an alien signal. Yet, he says, "The actual number of star systems
that radio SETI experiments have carefully examined is fewer than a thousand." That's about to
change. New systems planned or under construction, such as the SETI Institute's 42-antenna Allen
Telescope array, will begin the needed millions-of-stars search. Many of these radio telescopes will be
devoted to other radio astronomical missions. But they will be sensitive enough to detect leakage from
radio transmissions an alien civilization may be sending domestically.
SETI on the brink of major breakthrough

Monitor, l/n)
For years, scientists have been listening for faint whispers of E.T. phoning anyone in electronic earshot.
Now, some researchers are hearing sounds almost as exciting - the staccato of hammers, the crackle of arc
welders, and the rumble of construction equipment - that signal the building of huge new telescopes to help
answer an old question: Are we alone in the galaxy? The answer to that question looms closer, thanks to
boosts in funding, facilities, astronomical discoveries, and advances in technology. Researchers say within a
few years they'll be able to conduct far more exhaustive searches for civilizations beyond our solar system.
SETI programs growing

Monitor, l/n)
The field "is in a stage of explosive growth," says Kent Cullers, director of research and development at the
SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. "I'm not only excited, I'm ebullient." A decade ago, the idea of
searching for intelligent life drew more sneers than cheers in some circles. Congress was skeptical. NASA
ended its small-scale program, leaving the search to private efforts. Now, interest is building again.
SETI UQ
Tech making discovery more likely
Monitor, l/n)
Another factor is rising technological horsepower. From cheaper, faster computers to devices better able to
detect and process extremely weak signals, technologies are allowing researchers to expand their searches
beyond radio waves and visible light. At least two new ground-based telescopes are under construction
dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). In August, top SETI scientists will meet at
Harvard University to look at potential new projects. Yet for all their efforts, scientists have come up empty-
handed. But even that serves as a goad. "The fraction of the galaxy we've searched ... is incredibly small," Dr.
Cullers says - perhaps 700 sunlike stars out of billions. "If we tie ourselves to the growth of computing,
within half a century the search will be billions of times larger than it is today."
SETI Impacts
SETI key to engaging alien species
Michael A. G. Michaud”, http://66.102.7.104/search?
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence may be the first step toward involving the human species in
cosmic politics. SETI would perform an ancient and respectable political function: the gathering of
intelligence about other political entities. It would be essential in establishing the receiving end of the
political communications process. And it may enable intelligent beings to give politics a higher purpose.
Space astronomy key to colonizing other planets

Michael A. G. Michaud", http://66.102.7.104/search?
At the same time, our species has improved its perceptions of its larger environment through astronomy and
planetary exploration. Those activities, given new range and acuteness by space transportation, orbiting
platforms, and improved sensing technologies, provoke larger dreams by revealing other worlds in
unprecedented detail, suggestinly that we someday might utilize them as habitats or resources, becoming a
multi-planet species. We are in the early stages of a search for extrasolar planets, with its long-term
implications of interstellar colonization. But astronomy also is revealing the true scale of the universe, and is
further confirming the non- centrality of the Earth, our solar system, and the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomy
invites us outward; at the same time, it makes the universe seem vast, lonely, and empty, encouraging us to
turn inward. We feel small, and helpless. Humankind has made the first tentative extension of its presence
beyond the Earth. After initial exploration of nearby space, we began expanding economic and military
activity outward; now the major space powers each have interests in space to protect. We have entered the
first stage of extraterrestrial politics, an outward extension of the politics we have known on Earth. But we, at
least in the West, are still unsure about what long-term human purposes in space should be; we have not
decided whether we should enlarge our conception of the relevant universe, and expand humanity beyond the
earth.
SETI Impacts
Contact with alien species key to survival
Michael A. G. Michaud" http://66.102.7.104/search?
Eventually, such expanding civilizations may come into contact. That contact may occur first by radio or
some other indirect means. But if interstellar flight is possible, expansion could lead to direct contact, and
detection by indirect means could encourage movement toward that event. What happens when different
ethospheres touch? That moment may be the most important turning point in the history of intelligence, after
the creation of language and technology. Among civilizations of relatively equal power, it could lead to
suspicion, fear, even conflict, to the conception of survival as a zero-sum game. But contact is much more
likely to be a demonstration of the politics of inequality. The outcome may depend on the ethos of the more
powerful species, on its conception of the value of intelligence in the universe. We can hope that contact
among intelligent species will lead to a higher ethos, a larger polis, and the formation of a new scale of
organization for social tasks. This may be possible only if the species coming into contact find political
solutions to their concerns, or if a superior species as a value system that encompasses the worth of other
intelligences. To extend the concept of altruism to another species to strengthen the prospects for the survival
of intelligence would be an act of statesmanship of the highest order. Contact, then, would allow - and
perhaps require - a new and vastly larger conception of politics and its purposes. It would be, for us, a higher
level of extraterrestrial politics.
Asteroids DA Shell
Telescopes key to asteroid detection
The Scotsman 04, (Fri 19 Mar 2004 http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=316162004, accessed
10/26/04 The Scotsman - Top Stories - Asteroid homing in for Earth's closest near-miss)
"Small asteroids come into the earth’s orbit all the time, but we have become increasingly good at
detecting them because of new technology, telescopes with better detectors that can cover more sky
more quickly. Now it is possible to scan the whole sky in one night, where a couple of years ago that just
wasn’t possible." "
SPS=unique risk to optical astronomy

To understand the seriousness of the problem that would be caused by an SPS, one must realize that
advances in astronomy usually come through observations made at the extreme limits of signal
detectability. An increase in diffuse sky brightness by even a factor of 2 could prevent astronomical
measurement of faint objects. For photon detectors, which are being used to an increasing extent, an
increase of 10 to 30 percent in diffuse sky brightness produces noticeable effects, an increase of 30 to 100
percent produces demonstrable loss of sensitivity, and an increase of more than 100 percent means a
significant loss of otherwise retrievable astronomical information (Ekstron and Stokes 1980). Most optical
objects of cosmological interst in astronomy are fainter than 3 percent of night sky brightness.
Asteroid impact threatens extinction- detection key to solving it

Paine 00, ("R report: Brits Should Help in Hunt for Killer Asteroids By Michael Paine Special to SPACE.com
posted: 12:22 pm ET 18 September 2000, http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/asteroid_r
report_000918.html, accessed 10/26/04)
# Impacts by asteroids and comets present a real and significant risk to humans and other life on
Earth. # Means now exist to avoid or reduce the fatalities caused by such impacts but only if the
threatening objects are detected well in advance of the collision.
Asteroid DA Links
SPS hurts astronomy
Resources, National Research Council, p. xxvii)
The reference SPS would deny a band of night sky, different for each observatory, to optical or radio
astronomical measurements of faint objects from most observatories on earth. For optical astronomy,
the most serious interference would be produced by an increase in the diffuse brightness of the night sky
concentrated in a band on either side of the satellite arc. For radio astronomy, the major problems would
arise from overloading of sensitive terrestrial radio astronomy receivers operating at frequencies near
the SPS power transmission frequency and from spurious SPS radiation within radio astronomy
bands.
SPS interferes with optical astronomy

For optical astronomers, the continuous, diffuse scattering of light by the satellites is of greater
concern than the flashes of light from specular reflection. Scattered light from an SPS satellite would
enter a telescope on earth whenever the telescope was pointed in the general direction of the satellite,
or even to some degree when it was pointed away from the satellite. In other words, there would be a
diffuse sky brightness, which would be greatest near the satellite and which would decrease with
increasing angular distance from the satellite.
SPS interferes with optical astronomy

The diffuse night-sky brightness produced by the reference SPS would interfere seriously with optical
astronomical measurements from the earth. This interference would be concentrated in an area on
either side of the satellite arc and would prevent the measurement of weak astronomical objects in
those areas.
Asteroid DA Internal Links- Detection Key
Detection key to preventing asteroid impacts

Noble 02, (BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Could an asteroid be deflected? "By Ivan Noble BBC News Online
science staff 24 July, 2002 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2148924.stm, accessed 10/26/04)
As further observations accrue, we'll probably find that what is currently a possible hit will become a
near miss," Professor Mark Bailey, director of the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland, told BBC News
Online. In the very unlikely event that 2002 NT7 did turn out to be on a direct collision course, astronomers
would have plenty of time to make accurate predictions about the time and location of the impact, and,
with luck, to come up with a plan to deflect it. "It's not like dealing with space debris, where the object
may be irregularly shaped and tumbling and where even hours before impact you don't know exactly when
and where it's going to come down," said Professor Bailey. "With an asteroid impact, it's more like when
Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter. "There we were able to calculate the exact time of impact almost to the
second," he said. Asteroid rendezvous In the most unlikely event that it were on collision course, there
would be no more important project than to try to deflect it, he added.
Detection key to preventing impacts

Britt 02, ("World's Asteroid Hunters Make Political Plea to Save Earth By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET 31 January 2002,
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/aussie_asteroid_020201-1.html, accessed 10/26/04)
"A major global Spaceguard effort could provide decades of warning prior to an impact," the letter
states. "This would be sufficient time to refine the space technology needed to nudge a threatening
asteroid into a harmless orbit, or to evacuate the predicted impact area. Without Spaceguard there
would be too little warning to prevent a disaster."
Viable Asteroid Deflection Methods Exist

Schweickart 2005 (Russel L.,Chairman of the B612 Foundation for NEO deflection,
Asteroid Deflection; Hopes and Fear,
http://www.b612foundation.org/papers/Cosmic_Objects.doc, Accessed July 12, 2008)
In fact, the soft options (and I would argue the B612 mission in particular) provides not only a viable,
but a highly preferable alternative for asteroid deflection. Not only is the technology devoid of geopolitical considerations,
but it is, by its nature, generally applicable to all types of asteroids even in the absence of detailed information on their characteristics. The total
forces applied to the asteroid for successful deflection are in the range of a few pounds (less than 10
newtons) and can be distributed easily over an area of several square meters thus assuring that
virtually any surface, even the most fragile, can reliably be used.
Asteroid DA Impacts
Asteroid collisions are inevitable
Kunich 1997, (The Air Force Law Review 1997 41 A.F. L. Rev. 119 ARTICLE: Planetary Defense: The Legality
of Global Survival LIEUTENANT COLONEL JOHN C. KUNICH, USAF * * Lieutenant Colonel Kunich (B.S.,
M.S., University of Illinois; J.D., Harvard Law School; LL.M., George Washington University School of Law) is
the Staff Judge Advocate, 50th Space Wing, Falcon Air Force Base, Colorado. )
The prospect of large exogenous objects crashing into Earth is, quite unfortunately, not science fiction.
As hinted at by the near-misses previously described, it has happened many times during our planet's
known history, and there is every reason to believe that it will happen again.
Crater evidence proves the risk

Clear scientific evidence currently exists of approximately 140 "hypervelocity impact craters" on
Earth, and this number is increasing by about 3 to 5 new craters each year. As indicated in the Table in
the appendix to this article, these craters are found in virtually every part of the globe, with many
located within areas in the United States and Western Europe that are now heavily populated. It is
reasonable to presume that a large number of impacts remain undiscovered, because these impacts would
have occurred in oceans and [*121] seas or in relatively inaccessible terrestrial areas such as Siberia or
the interior of Greenland or Alaska. Given that a great preponderance of the Earth's surface is covered by
water, there is no reason to believe that these regions have received any less than their proportionate share of
impacts. In many cases of an ocean strike from space, the only evidence we would be likely to have would be
an otherwise unexplained tsunami or tidal wave.
Asteroid DA Impacts
Even if objects don’t hit the Earth massive damage can result
For most of the known impact craters, we can only estimate the nature of the collision from what remains of
the crater after erosion, human activity, and other factors have taken their toll. The size of these impact
craters ranges up to 200 kilometers in diameter or more; it is likely that many of these were once much
larger. n10 Moreover, some extremely destructive incidents may not have involved actual contact with
the Earth; a space object may explode in the atmosphere prior to "landing," with nonetheless
devastating effects on the planet from the shock wave and collateral phenomena.
Over 200 asteroids cross Earth’s orbit and risk massive damage
Currently, astronomers estimate that at least 200 asteroids are in orbits that cross the Earth's orbit,
and the number of such known asteroids is rapidly increasing as detection methods improve. n15 Most of
these asteroids are larger than 500 meters in diameter (several times larger than the Tunguska asteroid)
and would cause massive damage if they were to collide with this planet. In [*123] addition, long-period
comets, n16 although less numerous than asteroids, pose a significant threat due to their greater velocities
relative to Earth.
Asteroid DA Impacts
History proves the impact is mass extinctions
The history of life on Earth includes several devastating periods of mass extinction n18 during which the
vast majority of species then in existence became extinct within a relatively short span of time. n19 The best
known of these mass extinctions found the dinosaurs tumbling all the way from their throne as the kings of
all living things to the bone pile of archeological history. n20 No less significant, however, were the
extinction spasms that wiped out approximately 70 and 90 percent of marine species, respectively. n21 Even
the species that survived often experienced catastrophic reductions in their populations. Several scientific
studies have linked mass extinctions to collisions between Earth and large objects from space. The
hypothesis that these extinction spasms were caused by these collisions and their aftermaths is
supported (1) by the discovery of the now well-documented large impact event at the
[Cretaceous/Tertiary] boundary...; (2) by calculations relating to the catastrophic nature of the
environmental effects in the aftermath of large impacts; (3) by the discovery of several additional layers of
impact debris or possible impact material at, or close to, geologic boundary/extinction events; (4) by
evidence that a number of extinctions were abrupt and perhaps catastrophic; and (5) by the
accumulation of data on impact craters and astronomical data on comets and asteroids that provide
estimates of collision rates of such large bodies with the Earth on long time scales. n22 [*124] There are
at least six mass extinctions that have been linked with large impacts on Earth from space. n23 But how
and why did these impacts have such a profoundly devastating effect on such a vast spectrum of living
things?
Asteroid DA Impacts
Asteroid impact is extinction
Some scientists maintain that the greatest natural disasters on Earth have been caused by impacts of
large asteroids and comets. Although rare compared to "ordinary" floods and earthquakes, they are
infinitely more dangerous to life. There are several reasons for this. Initially, of course, a giant object
hitting the Earth at spectacular, hypersonic velocity would utterly destroy the local area around the
impact. An explosive release of kinetic energy as the object disintegrates in the atmosphere and then
strikes the Earth generates a powerful blast wave. The local atmosphere can be literally blown away. If
the impact falls on ocean territory, it may create a massive tidal wave or tsunami, with far-reaching
effects. n24 When tsunamis strike land, their immense speed decreases, but their height increases. It has been
suggested that tsunamis may be the most devastating form of damage produced by relatively small
asteroids, i.e., those with diameters between 200 meters and 1 kilometer. "An impact anywhere in the
Atlantic Ocean by an asteroid more than 400 meters in diameter would devastate the coasts on both
sides of the ocean with tsunami wave runups of over 60 meters high." n25 Horrific as such phenomena
are, they are dwarfed by a potentially far greater hazard. The impact of a sufficiently large object on
land may cause a blackout scenario in which dust raised by the impact prevents sunlight from
reaching the surface [of the Earth] for several months. Lack of sunlight terminates photosynthesis,
prevents creatures from foraging for food, and leads to precipitous temperature declines.... Obviously
even much [*125] smaller impacts would have the potential to seriously damage human civilization,
perhaps irreparably. n26 In addition to the dust raised from the initial impact, smoke and particulate
matter from vast, uncontrollable fires may greatly exacerbate this blackout effect. A large space object
generates tremendous heat, regardless of whether it is destroyed in the atmosphere or physically hits the
surface of the Earth. n27 These fires can reach far beyond the impact area, due to atmospheric phenomena
associated with the entry of a huge, ultra-high speed object. n28 A huge mass of dust, smoke, and soot
lofted into Earth's atmosphere could lead to effects similar to those associated with the "nuclear
winter" theory, n29 but on a much larger, much more deadly scale. Such effects are now widely
believed to have been a major factor contributing to the mass extinction spasms. n30
Asteroid DA Impacts
Despite their rarity impacts are the worst disaster imaginable
It is true that destructive impacts of gigantic asteroids and comets are extremely rare and infrequent
when compared with most other dangers humans face, with the [*126] intervals between even the
smallest of such events amounting to many human generations.... No one alive today, therefore, has ever
witnessed such an event, and indeed there are no credible historical records of human casualties from impacts
in the past millennium. Consequently, it is easy to dismiss the hazard as negligible or to ridicule those who
suggest that it be treated seriously. n32 On the other hand, as has been explained, when such impacts do
occur, they are capable of producing destruction and casualties on a scale that far exceeds any other
natural disasters; the results of impact by an object the size of a small mountain exceed the imagined
holocaust of a full-scale nuclear war.... Even the worst storms or floods or earthquakes inflict only
local damage, while a large enough impact could have global consequences and place all of society at
risk.... Impacts are, at once, the least likely but the most dreadful of known natural catastrophes. n33
Asteroid DA Impacts
Must err on the side of establishing a planetary defense
Kunich 1997, (The Air Force Law Review 1997 41 A.F. L. Rev. 119 ARTICLE: Planetary Defense: The
Legality of Global Survival LIEUTENANT COLONEL JOHN C. KUNICH, USAF * * Lieutenant Colonel Kunich
(B.S., M.S., University of Illinois; J.D., Harvard Law School; LL.M., George Washington University School of
Law) is the Staff Judge Advocate, 50th Space Wing, Falcon Air Force Base, Colorado. )
What is the most prudent course of action when one is confronted with an extremely rare yet enormously
destructive risk? Some may be tempted to do nothing, in essence gambling on the odds. But because the
consequences of guessing wrong may be so severe as to mean the end of virtually all life on planet
Earth, the wiser course of action would be to take reasonable steps to confront the problem.
Ultimately, rare though these space strikes are, there is no doubt that they will happen again, sooner or
later. To do nothing is to abdicate our duty to defend the United States, and indeed the entire world,
and place our very survival in the uncertain hands of the false god of probabilities. Thus, the mission of
planetary defense might be considered by the United States at some point in time, perhaps with a role played
by the military, including the United States Air Force.
Asteroid Uniqueness
Massive effort to find asteroids now
Manly Daily 08 (Australia) July 12, 2008 Saturday 1 – Edition Deadly IMPACT SECTION: Pg. 17, l/n
AS we safely pass the 100-year anniversary of the largest observed asteroid impact fortunately in an
uninhabited region of Siberia, we continue to wonder when it will happen again. One eyewitness
described the event saying: ``Suddenly in the north the sky was split in two, and high above the forest the
whole northern part of the sky appeared covered with fire. At that moment there was a bang in the sky and a
mighty crash. The crash was followed by a noise like stones falling from the sky, or of guns firing and the
earth trembled''. On June 30, 1908, an asteroid exploded before impacting the ground near the Podkamennaya
Tunguska River in Siberia. A century on, the debate continues as to what exactly happened. The most agreed
upon theory is that an asteroid, estimated to have been 35m across, weighing 500,000 tonnes and travelling at
50,000 km/h, entered the earth's atmosphere at 7.17am local time. As the asteroid entered the atmosphere it
heated the air to 45,000 degrees and due to this heating and internal pressure it exploded 8500 metres from
the ground. The explosion annihilated the asteroid as it released energy equivalent to about 185 Hiroshima-
size bombs. The explosion caused 80 million trees to be blown over in a radial pattern covering 2000 sq km.
The eyewitness sitting in his rocking chair 70km from the site was blasted out of his chair by the shock wave;
he felt as though his shirt was on fire. Today, there is a lot of effort involved in locating and tracking
Near Earth Objects.
Research is increasing knowledge of asteroids now- further observation key to avoiding

disaster
Space Daily 08 July 8, 2008 Tuesday When Worlds Collide You Get Space Potatoes BYLINE: Lee Pullen for
Astrobiology Magazine l/n
The asteroids that pepper our solar system come in all shapes, sizes and ages. What causes such a
variety among space rocks has been something of a mystery, until now. Researchers have been using a vast
database to study a staggering 11,735 asteroids. They have discovered that asteroids change shape over time, and they think they know
the reason why. Our Turbulent Solar System Gyula Szabo from the University of Szeged is the lead author of the study, which was
published in the July edition of Icarus. He explains, "there are several hundred thousand asteroids in our solar system. They orbit the
sun, but because they are small their surface gravity is low. This means that many have strange, irregular shapes." Scientists like Gyula
think that about one third of known asteroids belong to groups called "families." These clusters probably formed from piles of debris
after larger objects collided. Resolved to Save Time Determining the shapes of these asteroids presented difficulties for Gyula and his
colleague Laszlo Kiss from the University of Sydney. The most accurate data about asteroids comes from spacecraft fly-bys, but only a
few asteroids have been examined that way. Radar observations can only be made of objects that get close to the Earth. Telescopes
produce detailed images, but only for the largest asteroids. Another option for obtaining information about asteroids is called "time-
resolved photometry." The technique is surprisingly simple: by observing asteroids as they spin in space and
then studying the amount of light reflected, scientists can get an idea of their shape. Getting accurate
results from this method can take a long time, but the researchers realised that digital sky surveys
could speed up the process. Such projects study thousands of objects every night. The Sloan Digital Sky
Survey, for instance, mainly looks at stars and galaxies, but it also has gathered data on asteroids. "This procedure was very
economical," says Gyula. "Using photometry, astronomers have determined shapes for about 1,200 asteroids in the past 30 to 40 years.
We derived the shapes for ten times more asteroids, but in half an hour!" Surprising Results The results were really surprising," says
Gyula. "We saw there were families that included many elongated asteroids, and there were other ones which consisted of mostly
spheroidal bodies." In young groups of asteroids there are a great variety of shapes, hinting that they formed relatively recently from
fragments of rock that later bound together. Asteroids in older families tend to be rounder. It seems to take one to two billion years for
irregular asteroids to be transformed into smooth balls. But what changes the asteroids' shape? Gyula and his team have shown that
asteroids change shape from elongated to roughly spherical due to being impacted during their lifetimes. They are like pebbles on the
beach that become worn smooth over many years - only in space, erosion is caused by small impacts as rocks knock into each other and
chip pieces off. Impact specialist Jonti Horner from the UK's Open University agrees with Gyula. "The results make sense," he says.
"Catastrophic impacts create a huge slew of fragment shapes, like the shards of a broken bottle. The debris then are weathered over time
and smoothed towards sphericality by small impacts." Impacts are part of the fundamental processes in our solar system. They were part
of the planet formation process 4.5 billion years ago, and still occur today. "Sometimes astronomers have to be archeologists, too," says
Gyula. "This work is a fine example of how we can deduce a billion-year process from the world we observe today." Hopefully, this
research will not only teach us more about how the solar system operates, but will help us prepare for future impact events. Learning
all we can about asteroids could help us avoid disaster if we ever detect a large, fast-moving one on a
collision course with the Earth.
Asteroid Uniqueness
Visual astronomy solving now
Global Security.org 2008 (The leading source of background information and developing
news stories in the fields of defense, space, intelligence, WMD, and homeland security,
August 8, Space Surveillance Telescope,
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/sst.htm, Accessed July 11, 2008)
DARPA’s Space Surveillance Telescope program will show we can build a wide field of view ground-
based system that lets us detect, track, and discriminate between very small, dim objects in deep space
orbits. High sensitivity to find those small, dim objects -- and high search rates of the visible sky – these
are usually difficult requirements to satisfy with a single telescope design. In DARPA’s Space Surveillance Telescope
we've achieved an effective compromise. The Space Surveillance Telescope is a three-and–a-half meter F-1 telescope with a large, curved focal plane array.
Combined with very fast step-and-settle capabilities,the Space Surveillance Telescope will enable a quick search of all
deep space objects visible from a ground site multiple times a night. This telescope system will tell us
precisely where objects are, where they are going, and give us an overall idea how stable they are.
However, other capabilities are needed to appropriately identify the objects we are tracking. Identification can be accomplished in many ways. You can
measure distances and dimensions with radar range profiles or can obtain radar and electro-optical
images – this gives you the size and shape of the object being tracked.
Ozone DA
Increased space launches risks massive ozone destruction
Union of Concerned Scientists 02, (The Science of Ozone Depletion "© Union of Concerned
Scientists Page Last Revised: 10.24.2002",
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/archive/page.cfm?pageID=551)
The solid rocket strap-on motors used in the most powerful space launch systems -- the US space shuttle
and the Titan IV, as well as the European Ariane V -- produce copious amounts of HCl and possibly other
reactive chlorine-containing exhaust products. Since these strap-on motors burn well into the
stratosphere, a significant fraction of their exhaust gases is deposited there. The plume from each
launch causes a temporary "mini" ozone hole, although since space launch trajectories are slant paths, the
ozone depletion is not stacked up over a single surface point. Current launch levels are so low that the
stratospheric chlorine injected by space launches is only a few tenths of a percent of that due to
halocarbon decomposition. But if more frequent space launches occur in the future, care should be
taken to design more stratospherically benign rocket propulsion systems for both US and foreign
launch systems.
Ozone destruction causes extinction

Anna Goodwin et al, students at the University of Bristol, 2001,
(http://www.priweb.org/ed/ICTHOL/ICTHOLrp/82rp.htm)
The Permian-Triassic boundary extinction was the largest extinction the world has ever experienced.
About 90 percent of all species vanished in this mass extinction 250 million years ago. Approximately 85% of all
marine species and 70% of all terrestrial species went extinct in less than one million years. By studying the species which became
extinct at this time, the rate at which they became extinct, and the regions of the Earth in which the greatest extinction occurred,
hypotheses about possible methods for the cause of extinction have been devised. There are many theories which have been developed
to understand this historic mass extinction. One theory is the formation of a super-continent which caused a reduction of shallow
continental shelves. Such a reduction in oceanic continental shelves would result in ecological competition for space, perhaps acting as
an agent for extinction. However, although this is a viable theory, the formation of Pangaea and the ensuing destruction of the
continental shelves occurred in the early and middle Permian, and mass extinction did not occur until the late Permian Impact from an
extraterrestrial object is a common theory for the explanation of this extinction. The collision wasn't directly responsible for the
extinction but rather triggered a series of events, such as massive volcanism and changes in ocean oxygen, sea level and climate. Those
in turn led to species extinction on a wholesale level. The collision would either weaken or kill much of the life that thrived during this
time. Dust clouds and CO2 in the atmosphere would have caused major climate changes for the species and make it unsuitable for them
to thrive. Evidence of increased levels of atmospheric levels of CO2 exists in the fossil record. Glaciation is also a viable theory.
Simultaneous glaciation events on the north and south poles could have caused rapid warming and severe climatic fluctuations. In
temperate zones, there is evidence of significant cooling and drying in the sedimentological record, shown by thick sequences of dune
sands and evaporites, while in the polar zones, glaciation was prominent. This caused severe climatic fluctuations around the globe, and
is found by sediment record to be representative of when the Permian mass extinction occurred. Another theory is volcanism. Basaltic
lava eruptions in Siberia were large and sent a quantity of sulphates into the atmosphere. Evidence in China supports that these volcanic
eruptions may have been silica-rich, and thus explosive, a factor that would have produced large ash clouds around the world. The
combination of sulphates in the atmosphere and the ejection of ash clouds may have lowered global climatic conditions. The age of the
lava flows has also been dated to the interval in which the Permian mass extinction occurred. Other than changes in atmospheric carbon,
no other evidence exists for this theory. Scientists are working to precisely date volcanic ash from Permian fossil reefs in Texas and
China. This will provide a kind of timeline for the extinction to build a global database of extinction for the Permian Age, which species
died, where they died and when they died. This too will help him determine the timing of the extinction in more detail and highlight gaps
in the fossil record that may be distorting palaeontologists' understanding of when various organisms went extinct and how rapidly they
did so. Lastly, a new theory has been proposed- the Supernova explosion. A supernova occurring 30 light years
away from earth would release enough gamma radiation to destroy the ozone layer for several years.
Subsequent exposure to direct ultra-violet radiation would weaken or kill nearly all existing species. Only
those living deep in the ocean will be secured. Sediments contain records or short-term ozone destruction-large
amounts of NOx gasses and C14 plus “global and atmospheric cooling.” With sufficient destruction of
the ozone layer, these problems could cause widespread destruction of life.
Ozone Links
SPS would lead to massive pollution from launches
Olsen 98, ("RETHINKING THE USE OF EXISTING TECHNOLOGY: SOLAR POWER HARNESSED IN
SATELLITE BEAMS BETH OLSEN DECEMBER 3, 1998"
http://clab.cecil.cc.md.us/faculty/biology1/Solar%20power%20Satellites.HTM)
These cost reductions would enhance the competitiveness of SPS as compared to current energy sources.
However, the transportation of the required materials from Earth on the scale required to construct a global
SPS system (34) may result in undesirable environmental effects, as propellant combustion products are
deposited at various levels within the atmosphere (35). Therefore, it may be environmentally preferable to
obtain raw materials required for the construction of SPS from the Moon; especially if processing and
transportation of materials from the Moon to GEO could be accomplished at costs at or below those of
payload launches from Earth. The adaptation of familiar processes to the microgravity environment is a
relatively unexamined challenge to the chemical engineering community. It remains to be seen whether the
space environment will provide a more difficult or less difficult area of operations for processing than a
terrestrial site. Also, our knowledge of the diversity and quantity of lunar minerals is very limited.
Information from the Apollo and Luna missions to the Moon enable serious consideration of this possibility,
but the information remains incomplete (34).
Ozone Uniqueness
Ozone Hole Healing
Times of India, 2008. (Green issues that no longer matter, July
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Open_Space/Green_issues_that_no_longer_matter/articleshow/3201712.c
ms, accessed July 14, 2008)
The Ozone Hole Scientists had warned for years that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used in refrigeration
and aerosol sprays, could deplete the ozone layer that surrounds the Earth. Dire warnings about the
consequences, particularly rising rates of skin cancer, prompted governments to crack down on CFC
use around the world. What happened to it? It is now hoped that the hole will fully heal in the next 60
years
Ozone Impacts
Ozone layer is very delicate, even small disruptions can cause huge impacts.
Ross and Zittell 07. (Martin and Paul, May 16, “Rockets and the Ozone Layer”,
http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/summer2000/01.html, accessed July 13, 2008)
Compared with the mass of all the gas in the stratosphere, the mass of combustion emissions from even
the largest rocket is miniscule, so it's easy to conclude that the effect of all rocket launches on the ozone
layer must be inconsequential. The ozone layer, however, is maintained by a delicate balance of the
production, transport, and destruction of ozone molecules. Relatively small amounts of sufficiently
active chemical compounds can upset this balance and cause important changes in the amount and
distribution of ozone. Rocket engines produce small amounts of such active compounds.
Ozone depletion leads to starvation & increased warming

Think Quest 01. (“Ozone Depletion”, http://library.thinkquest.org/C0111401/ozone_depletion.htm,
accessed July 13, 2008)
The thinning of the ozone layer results in an increased exposure to UV rays from the Sun. In humans,
this can cause diseases like skin cancer and cataract and may also result in a reduced resistance to
diseases. Humans are also indirectly affected. Too much UV rays will damage plant tissues and destroy
crops, thus reducing food production. Also, planktons - basic source of food for marine life - would be
killed, and this will affect the entire ecosystem. Strong UV rays have also been known for deforming
fish larva. In the end, all these would result in widespread hunger.
Humans cannot adapt to loss of ozone layer

Union of Concerned Scientists 02, (The Science of Ozone Depletion "© Union of Concerned Scientists
Page Last Revised: 10.24.2002", http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/archive/page.cfm?pageID=551)
Scientists cannot predict with certainty the consequences for life on earth if the stratospheric ozone layer
weakens. In general, biologists and health professionals recognize that life on earth evolved under the
protection of an ozone layer thick enough to remove much of the UV-B solar radiation known to damage
cellular DNA. Accordingly, various organisms -- including humans -- may have difficulty adjusting to the
higher UV-B levels resulting from a thinner ozone layer.
Space Junk DA
Increasing satellites increases space junk
Christian Science Monitor 03, ((Boston, MA) October 9, 2003, Thursday SECTION: FEATURES; IDEAS;
Pg. 11 HEADLINE: Lots in space BYLINE: By Peter N. Spotts Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, l/n)
Increasingly, the space about Earth is getting cluttered with such junk. And it's not just messy, it's
dangerous. Full-size rocket bodies can destroy. Even smaller pieces - such as a 1965 space glove that
zipped around for a month at 17,000 miles per hour - amount to more than a smack in the face. They can
puncture space suits and cripple satellites. Fortunately, the aerospace community is giving the problem
increasing attention. Engineers are considering everything from techniques for rendering derelict satellites
and boosters less harmful, to an international "space traffic control" system, to Earth-based lasers that can zap
the stuff. But the problem is expected to get worse as governments and companies prepare to triple the
satellite population over the next two decades and send more people into space. "If we don't change our
ways, this could become a serious problem," says William Ailor, who heads the Center for Orbital Reentry
Debris Studies at the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, Calif.
Space Debris risks societal collapse

Horvath 03, (TP: Apocalypse Soon? "John Horvath 29.09.2003",
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/15747/1.html, accessed 10/25/04)
Not only this, but as with electricity and our insatiable thirst for energy, the mere dynamics of technological
expansion is a major contributor to the problem. Satellites play an increasingly crucial role in transmitting
information around the planet, with space becoming an essential part of telecommunication
infrastructure. Over the last few years, a number of problems have started to emerge whose cause is
loosely termed "space debris". Much of this man-made: the remnants of rockets, satellites, and space
stations. Some of the problems, however, are also of natural origin: meteors and solar radiation, for instance.
In fact, ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA scientists have warned that the earth is about to face a
decade long galactic dust storm (cf. www.cordis.lu; record control number 20688). They estimate that the
amount of galactic dust entering the solar system is three times higher than during the 1990s. It's believed
that the sun could be responsible for the increase, which threatens to play havoc with our space-borne
machinery. Already accidents have started to occur. In May 1988, a satellite operated by PanAmSat
spun out of control because of "sky static". Pager traffic was wiped out, credit card transactions
halted, and media stations (TV and radio) were knocked off the air. In 1997 AT&T's Telstar 401 satellite
was destroyed, knocking out thousands of television sets and telephones. In light of the impressive catalog of
minor disasters which have thus far occurred, some (like Antony Milne in his book "Sky Static: The Space
Debris Crisis") conclude that it's inevitable that eventually something catastrophic will occur. But we
don't have to look so high in the sky for such catastrophes: a more down to earth example, like the ice storm
which hit eastern Canada in 1999, did an impressive job in crippling all aspects of social life: both on-line
and off. While accidents do happen, it's another story altogether when the scale of these accidents are
exacerbated by negligence and even ignorance, coupled with an interdependence which turns a local
problem into a regional, national, or even an international one. When all this is combined with the fact
that western society has prematurely put most of its vital functions in terms of commerce,
bureaucracy, and even access to basic information on weak and dilapidated energy and
communications network infrastructures, it's a recipe for disaster.
Space Junk Links
Satellites cause space debris
Australian Space Weather Agency 2008 (http://www.ips.gov.au/Educational/4/2/1)
The initial and continuing source of space debris is the launch of satellites. Not only the satellites
themselves add to the population of orbiting space objects, but often the last stages of the rockets that are
used to place them in orbit also remain aloft for many years. As satellites get old they deteriorate under the
influence of the space environment. Outgassing can not only release gases, but may also take other materials
with them, as the gas beneath a surface slowly makes it way into the surrounding environment. The strong
solar UV in space can cause the deterioration of many materials. Paint and other surface materials may be
expelled in flakes. More catastrophic than age related deterioration are satellite fragmentation events.
These may result from collisions with other (external) objects, or they may be explosive, as when
remnant fuel in an old spacecraft undergoes an exothermic reaction (ignites). Both of these type of events can
produce an astounding number of small fragments that become a new source of space debris. On the debit
side, the removal of orbiting space debris may be due to a deliberate action or the result of natural orbital
decay. In low Earth orbits, a satellite is subject to atmospheric drag, and this will eventually cause it to re-
enter the Earth's atmosphere. Unless the object is particularly large, it will completely ablate during this
process, and there will be no visible remnant that reaches the ground. If the object is felt to pose a threat to
life and infrastructure on the ground, then it is sometimes possible to cause a controlled re-entry with a
fuelled de-orbit burn. Other spacecraft, such as the Space Shuttle may sometimes be directed to directly
retrieve an ageing spacecraft of particular significance. In the past this has been only for satellite
refurbishment, but in the future it might be due to environmental concerns.
Satellite launches lead to space junk

Christian Science Monitor 03, ((Boston, MA) October 9, 2003, Thursday SECTION: FEATURES; IDEAS;
Pg. 11 HEADLINE: Lots in space BYLINE: By Peter N. Spotts Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, l/n)
This hardware can yield space junk in several ways: When satellites separate from their boosters, they
shed shrouds and other bits and pieces. They can collide. Boosters can malfunction and explode. Or
spent booster segments with still-pressurized fuel tanks can explode when hit by debris or after joints
weaken from the constant freezing and thawing. Solid-fuel motors can give off "slag" as part of their
exhaust plumes.
Space debris accumulates with multiple launches

Schmid 06 (Randolph E., January 20, 2006, http://www.space.com/news/ap_060120_space_junk.html)
WASHINGTON (AP) - More than 9,000 pieces of space debris are orbiting the Earth, a hazard that can
only be expected to get worse in the next few years. And currently there's no workable and economic
way to clean up the mess. Space junk measuring 4 inches or more total some 5,500 tons, according to a
report by NASA scientists J.-C. Liou and N. L. Johnson in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
Even if space launches were halted now - which will not happen - the collection of debris would
continue growing as items already in orbit collide and break into more pieces, Liou said in a telephone
interview.
Space Junk Impacts: Satellites Economy Module
Human space junk closes down key satellite areas
Bird 03, (American Business Law Journal March 22, 2003 SECTION: No. 3, Vol. 40; Pg. 635; ISSN: 0002-7766
HEADLINE: Procedural challenges to environmental regulation of space debris. BYLINE: Bird, Robert C, l/n)
Human-made space debris, the focus of this paper, poses the primary risk to human activities. (13)
Natural debris usually escapes Earth's orbits where spacecraft and satellites are commonly found. (14)
Human-made debris, on the other hand, tends to remain in Earth's orbits during its lifetime. (15)
Human-made space debris also confines itself to the orbits most needed by spacecraft and satellites,
clogging them much quicker than natural debris. (16)
US economy dependent on satellites

Dowd 02, (World and I May 1, 2002 SECTION: No. 5, Vol. 17; Pg. NA ; ISSN: 0887-9346 HEADLINE: Taking
the high ground - The U.S. Military Marches Into Space. BYLINE: Dowd, Alan W, l/n)
Space already plays a crucial role in the U.S. economy, and America's dependence on space will only
deepen in the coming decades. Whether we recognize it or not, what happens in space affects our very
way of life. "More than any other country," Rumsfeld argues, "the United States relies on space for its
security and well-being."9 The United States has more than eight hundred active satellites and probes
orbiting the earth at any given moment. Fully a quarter of them have no military purpose at all.
Instead, they circle the earth to relay everything from Nike ads to the Nikkei average; improve the use
and development of farmland; guide ships, planes, and trucks to their destinations; synchronize
financial networks; support police and fire departments; and connect a people and an economy that
move at ever- increasing speed.
Economic decline leads to nuclear war

Mead 1992 (Sir Walter Russell, New Perspectives Quarterly, p. 30 Summer)
If so, this new failure – the failure to develop an international system to hedge against the possibility of
worldwide depression – will open their eyes to their folly. Hundreds of millions – billions – of people around
the world have pinned their hopes on the international market economy. They and their leaders have
embraced market principles – and drawn closer to the West – because they believe our system can work for
them. But what if it can’t? What if the global economy stagnates – or even shrinks? In that case, we will
face a new period of international conflict: South against North, rich against poor. Russia, China,
India – these countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much greater
danger to world order than Germany and Japan did in the ‘30s.
Space Junk DA: Space Junk Destroys Satellites
Space junk shuts down commercial satellites
The growing prevalence of space debris can inhibit a number of present and future business
opportunities in earth's orbits and outer space generally. Remote sensing, which has been defined as "the
sensing of the Earth's surface from space by making use of electromagnetic waves emitted, reflected or
diffracted by the sensed objects," (49) uses satellites to gather data. (50) Remote sensing has been used in
agriculture, geography, hydrology, oceanography, and even news r reporting. (51) Television signals are
increasingly being broadcast by satellite to community and home receivers. (52) One source projects that
within the next few years approximately 2,000 satellites will be orbiting the earth for various commercial,
military, and scientific purposes. (53)
Space junk can ruin satellites

New York Times 03, (February 18, 2003 Tuesday Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section F; Column 1;
Science Desk; Pg. 1 HEADLINE: Wanted: Traffic Cops For Space BYLINE: By ANDREW C. REVKIN, l/n)
Because the material is moving at such high speeds, even a small chunk can cause potentially lethal
damage. A collision with a small piece of space junk remains high on NASA's list of possible
explanations for the puncture that apparently led to the disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia as
it re-entered the atmosphere. Even a one-centimeter pellet, the width of a fingertip, can destroy a
spacecraft traveling at a typical orbital speed of 20,000 miles per hour or more, experts say. And the
best military radars and telescopes can reliably track only debris that is at least 10 times as large, or roughly
bigger than a softball.
Space Junk Impacts: Satellites Key to Economy
Global economy dependent on satellites
del Rosario 04, (GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT R REPORT March 1, 2004 SECTION: Vol. 2, No. 3 A
Boost to The Satellite Communications Industry By Jose del Rosario, Northern Sky Research, l/n)
Certain technologies are government-specific, and some technologies are not viable commercially.
Moreover, the military's reliance on commercial systems may lead to a future national-security crisis because
the enemy can target commercial spacecraft. This trend not only will only hamper the military's ability to
conduct warfare, but it may disrupt the commercial sector and damage parts of the U.S. and global
economy because many corporate and residential services rely directly or indirectly on commercial
satellites.
Space Junk DA Impacts: Satellites Key to the Military
Satellites key to the economy and the military
Columbus Dispatch 02, ((Ohio) August 21, 2002 Wednesday, Home Final Edition SECTION: EDITORIAL
& COMMENT; Pg. 12A HEADLINE: A NEW BATTLEGROUND? ; Air Force Space Command committed to
safeguarding vital satellite systems, l/n)
"It's not a matter of if this will happen but when ," Gen. Lance Lord, commander of the Air Force Space
Command, told a Colorado newspaper recently. The general said that with so much of the nation's
economy dependent upon satellites, adequate steps must be taken to protect them from attack. Military
satellites alone are vital to navigation, communication, surveillance, weather information and missile
warnings to deployed troops.
Satellite assets key to the US military

Today, "space-based capabilities have become an integral part of American military operations,"7
according to Gen. Ralph Eberhart, head of U.S. Space Command. Entire units, such as the 527th Space
Aggressor Squadron and 76th Space Control Squadron, are conducting war games set in space and working
to prevent a September 11 or December 7 from ever happening in the heavens. Indeed, the Air Force has
opened a new Space Warfare School, and the Army just graduated its first class from its own Space
Operations program. As the Rumsfeld commission ominously observes, "We are now on the threshold of
a new era of the Space Age, devoted to mastering operations in space."8
Space Junk Impacts: Stops Space Exploration
Space launches now close off space for colonization- gender edited
Hoffman 98, (Russell D. Hoffman Discusses SPACE DEBRIS "Last modified January 23rd, 1998. Webwiz:
Russell D. Hoffman" http://www.animatedsoftware.com/spacedeb/spacedeb.htm, accessed 10/12/04)
So to that extent this is not something you have to worry about and I'm not trying to scare you into wearing a
hard-hat whenever you go outside. Not that that would do you any good, but it's not even the issue. Space
debris is a problem for space explorers. Which is what we want to be! [Hu]-Mankind has an insatiable
quest for knowledge, for exploration, and for discovery. That's why what we've done to near-earth orbit is
so shameful and disgusting. Space debris is almost entirely a [hu]-man-made problem. There are a few
pieces of natural space junk orbiting the earth, but more than 99.9%--is man-made. Within 2000 miles of
earth some 7 million pounds of space junk is orbiting. And nearly 4 million individual pieces -- and, these
numbers are a little bit old so the true figure at this point is probably half again higher than what I've just
given you. And these are Government figures. In fact, about every seven years since about 1965 the
amount of space debris in near-earth orbit has doubled. And you thought that NASA was stupid just
because of the Challenger disaster, or the loss of astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee in a fire! Or Apollo
13. No, the truth is that NASA's worst nightmare is yet to come. The true legacy of [hu]-man's early
exploration of space will be that future generations will curse us and despise us for polluting that part
of space through which all other space exploration must start--near earth orbit. We are in essence
closing the door in front of us--the door to the stars. The door to the other planets and to the moon.
Indeed, the door to [hu]-mankind's future. By making all future astronauts run a deadly gauntlet at
the start of every flight, we have guaranteed that accidents, disasters, and major malfunctions (as
NASA first described the Challenger disaster) will continue to occur.
Space debris will stop colonization

Dilley 04, (Last Updated: Thursday, 15 April, 2004, 09:07 GMT 10:07 UK One giant (scrap)heap for mankind?
By Ryan Dilley BBC News Online Magazine" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3623239.stm, accessed
10/25/04)
In 1996, a French satellite was fatally hit by a chunk of an exploded Ariane rocket. Parts of the
shredded satellite, in turn, added to the shroud of debris surrounding our planet. This collision - the
first such instance reported - prompted newspaper headline writers to suggest that "space junk could
close final frontier".
Cascade effect will make all space travel impossible

Taipei Times 03, (- archives"Earth walls itself in with space junk DPA , MOSCOW Wednesday, Jul 16, 2003,
Page 16", http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2003/07/16/2003059688, accessed 10/25/04)
At the current pace of cosmic littering, the coming years are predicted to bring our spacefaring species down
to earth with a bump. Called collisional cascading, or the Kessler effect (named after the former chief of the
US orbital debris program, Donald Kessler), the process involves chunks of debris colliding and shattering
into many smaller pieces that will hit others and so on. "If his estimates prove to be true it could become
impossible to fly in space. The probability that you'd get holed would increase drastically," says Kulik.
Space debris shut down possibility of future space projects

Although less immediately obtainable, many other resources exist beyond earth's orbits. Helium-3, a
rare isotope used to perform controlled nuclear fusion, is produced in great quantities by the solar wind. (57)
The energy potential of lunar Helium-3 reserves is so great that it would contain ten times the potential of all
recoverable fossil fuels on earth. (58) Researchers speculate that the market value of one ton of Helium-3
would exceed one billion dollars. (59) Extra-terrestrial mining on the moon and on asteroids could unearth
massive deposits of silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, magnesium and other elements. Asteroids with more
valuable minerals could have a net mineral market value of one trillion dollars. (60) Any of these
commercial activities are vulnerable to interruption from collisions with the ever growing population
of space debris.
Cascade effect ensures permanent debris ring around the earth

The most dangerous feature of space debris may not be its amount, great speed, or its potential to impact
present business ventures, but rather its ability to become self-generating by a process called the cascade
effect. (61) Proponents of the cascade effect hypothesize that large space debris pieces will increasingly
collide, break apart, and fill the orbit with smaller and more numerous bits of debris. (62) These
smaller pieces of debris will further collide and break apart, creating more fragments and increasing
the chance of new impacts. (63) When the space debris population reaches a certain threshold,
collisions between objects will create so much new debris that it will increase independently of further
space operations. (64) Left unchecked, this self-generation could actually create a debris belt around
the Earth. (65)
Increased reliance on space now closes it off for future generations to use
Humphrey 02, (Western Daily Press June 7, 2002 EDITION: WP LATE CITY SECTION: News, Pg.11
HEADLINE: But don't leave your junk behind, guys; BYLINE: David Humphrey, l/n)
Dr Crowther said: "The real danger comes from the smaller items of space debris because of the high
collision velocities that are encountered. "A small coin travelling at 10 kilometres per second through
space will have the same impact energy as a small bus travelling at 100 kilometres per hour on the ground.
"So as these large objects break up they generate millions of fragments." The risks have been highlighted
by several recent near-misses and one major collision involving the Cerise satellite and a fragment
from an Ariane launch vehicle. "As we increasingly rely on space-based systems for remote sensing,
communications, and navigation, we must understand the threat that space debris poses and the long-
term financial consequences of ignoring it, " said Dr Crowther. "Further, we must take appropriate steps
to ensure the cost-effective and sustainable development of near-Earth space for generations to come."
Space Junk Impacts: Kills SSP
SPS satellites will collide with space debris
Hiroshi and Toshiya 07 (Hirayama and Hanada, Kyushu University, http://sciencelinks.jp/j-
east/article/200601/000020060105A0997432.php)
Solar power satellite has extremely high probability to collide with space debris due to its wide cross
section and long orbital life. This paper shows distributions of incident angles and relative velocities of
space debris on typical solar power satellites. These characteristics can be used to design reliable and safe
solar power satellites.
Existing space debris makes satellite launch dangerous

ScienceDaily 08 (July 10, 2008, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080709153152.htm)
After more than 50 years of launching rockets and satellites into space, the human race now has to deal
with the clutter left behind -- or is it "above"? Dead satellites, spent rocket stages, paint flakes, and
coolant from nuclear-powered satellites continue to orbit the Earth at ultrahigh velocities. It's a serious
subject. Space debris threatens the lives of astronauts and the launch of new satellites today, says Dr.
Noam Eliaz, Head of the Biomaterials and Corrosion Laboratory at the School of Mechanical Engineering at
Tel Aviv University. An expert in materials science and engineering, Dr. Eliaz is working with a team at
Soreq NRC to create and test new materials to make the heavens safer for satellites and astronauts alike. The
oldest piece of "space junk" is the U.S. satellite Vanguard I, launched in 1958 and still in orbit. "Space debris
has become a major concern recently, since collisions with such debris at ultrahigh velocities could be a
disaster for spacecraft that pass through Earth's orbit," says Dr. Eliaz. "An impact could be
catastrophic."Eliaz says that the combined effects of other components in the space environment, such
as atomic oxygen, might increase the damage. The researcher, a past Fulbright and Rothschild scholar at
MIT, is investigating new kinds of materials that could be used on spacecraft surfaces to protect against such
hazards.
Space Junk DA: A2: Geosynchronous Orbit Not at Risk
Geosynchronous orbit uniquely at risk from junk
But three regions in space that are growing very popular with companies lofting commercial satellites are
particularly vulnerable to a continuing buildup of space junk, according to analyses by NASA and other
researchers: the band from 480 to 600 miles up, another 840 to 900 miles up, and finally the special zone
22,300 miles from the Equator, called geosynchronous orbit, where satellites can remain nearly stationary
over a spot on the surface. That region already has some 320 satellites parked in coveted spots, with
dozens more planned as space-based enterprises continue to expand. Several large spacecraft have
broken up in that region in recent years, including an American Titan rocket stage and a Russian
satellite. Debris there, just like the satellites, goes nowhere and can create highly dangerous zones.
Space junk will shut down the geostationary ring

Science 02, (May 17, 2002 SECTION: No. 5571, Vol. 296; Pg. 1241; ISSN: 0036-8075 HEADLINE: Space
junk--protecting space for future generations; Policy forum: space science; Statistical Data Included BYLINE:
Crowther, Richard, l/n)
Only objects in low-altitude orbits will return to Earth naturally through the influence of aerodynamic drag,
which steadily reduces their orbital energy until capture by, and burn up within, the atmosphere. Atmospheric
density decreases exponentially with altitude, so that above 1000 km, objects remain in orbit for hundreds or
thousands of years, a legacy for future generations to deal with. Of particular concern is the failure of
many operators to remove their defunct satellites a safe distance from the geostationary ring (an
altitude of 36,000 km at which a satellite will orbit the Earth at the same rate that the Earth spins on its axis).
Exploitation of this orbit avoids the need for Earth dishes to track the transmitting satellite, a major
economic factor in the success of satellite systems that broadcast TV direct to subscribers' homes via
fixed antennas. The geostationary ring has unique characteristics, and provision of such
communications services from other orbits may not be viable should the ring become crowded with
discarded satellites that remain on the ring indefinitely.
Objects in geosynchronous orbits at risk of debris collision

The Aerospace Corporation. 01, (Risks Posed by Orbital Debris http://www.aero.org/cords/debrisks.html,
accessed 10/12/04)
"At geosynchronous altitude, average relative velocity at impact is much lower than in low Earth orbit,
about 200 m/sec (720 km/hr or 432 mph). This is because most objects in the geosynchronous ring move
along similar orbits. Nevertheless, fragments at this velocity can still cause considerable damage upon
impact. A 10-cm fragment in geosynchronous orbit has roughly the same damage potential as a 1-cm
fragment in low Earth orbit. A 1-cm geosynchronous fragment is roughly equivalent to a 1-mm low
Earth orbit fragment."
Space Junk DA: A2: Solutions to Debris
Solutions too far away
Some NASA and private scientists have proposed ways to use ground-based lasers, tethers or space tugs to
sweep away dangerous debris, but these options are many years from being employed, experts say.
Shielding will not solve

Science 02, (May 17, 2002 SECTION: No. 5571, Vol. 296; Pg. 1241; ISSN: 0036-8075 HEADLINE: Space
junk--protecting space for future generations; Policy forum: space science; Statistical Data Included BYLINE:
Crowther, Richard, l/n)
In the longer term, better monitoring and shielding will not be sufficient. As the number of objects in
orbit grows, the mass penalty represented by physical shielding would make many missions
prohibitively expensive. The only cost-effective option then is to limit the number of inactive objects in
orbit and thus the probability of collision (6).Retrieval of most objects currently in orbit is neither
economical nor feasible (e.g., they are not accessible by existing systems such as the STS orbiter or are not
designed for return to Earth). The next generation of launch vehicles and satellites will need to be either
removed from orbit at the end of operational life or, if this is not practicable, passivated to avoid explosive
breakup. Passivation would involve the removal of any on-board stored energy at the end of operational life,
such as venting of propellants or pressurants and controlled discharge of batteries. To be removed from orbit,
an object would need sufficient propellant to achieve a propulsive de-orbit, unless it is operated at a low
enough altitude for atmospheric drag to effect its removal. Operational debris must also be reduced by
ensuring that objects such as shrouds and covers remain attached to parent bodies and that elements of
separation mechanisms such as explosive bolts are retained.
Lack of international standards prevents regulations from solving

NYT 03, (February 18, 2003 Tuesday Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section F; Column 1; Science Desk; Pg. 1
HEADLINE: Wanted: Traffic Cops For Space BYLINE: By ANDREW C. REVKIN, l/n)
Without a binding international standard, experts say, companies may simply shift their operations to
countries without standards, avoiding the extra costs of making flights safer. Alby Fernand, who directs
orbital debris policy for the French National Center for Space Research, said the result could mirror a
problem with ship registration: owners can register their vessels under "flags of convenience" to avoid
strict laws elsewhere. The motivation to skirt rules lies in money. One of the biggest expected costs to
commercial satellite owners from the proposed standards will be holding in reserve some of the fuel
that is used to keep certain satellites precisely positioned.
Space Junk DA: A2: Solutions to Debris
Space junk will not go away on its own
Hoffman 98, (Russell D. Hoffman Discusses SPACE DEBRIS "Last modified January 23rd, 1998. Webwiz:
Russell D. Hoffman" http://www.animatedsoftware.com/spacedeb/spacedeb.htm, accessed 10/12/04)
You may be wondering--why worry? Is this stuff going to fall on my head? The answer to that is--and I
almost want to say unfortunately--is NO. Most space debris will not fall to earth for thousands and even
millions of years, and the vast majority of what does fall to earth will incinerate itself when it hits the upper
atmosphere.
Space Junk DA- Link Magnifier- Privates Bad
Private companies will ignore efforts to reduce junk
The United States, starting in the 1990's, became the first country to adopt strict national standards for cutting
risks that space activities would add to debris-collision risks. The regulations apply both to NASA and
military launchings and to any company seeking the federal licenses required to launch or operate a satellite.
Europe and Japan are following suit, but most of the 65 countries that either launch or own satellites have no
such standards. The guidelines that Mr. Johnson and other space scientists will propose have not been made
public, but several scientists familiar with them say they are nearly identical to those already established in
the United States. They include physical changes like designing covers for cameras and other equipment that
do not pop off and float away -- once a common occurrence -- but instead are tethered. Another
recommendation is dumping any leftover fuel or draining batteries to avoid explosions that can turn one
derelict item into a cloud of thousands of deadly bits. The scientists are also calling for planning the
trajectories of launchings or timing the releases of rocket stages so that ejected components settle in orbits so
that they will drop into the atmosphere in no more than 25 years. One of the biggest continuing threats in
space comes from a steady buildup of abandoned rocket stages, and many of them spontaneously explode,
sometimes years or even decades after they were used. The breakup of rocket stages, according to NASA and
European officials, is responsible for about 40 percent of all the tracked debris circling Earth. Some experts
say that voluntary guidelines, even if adopted, will not be enough, particularly as space becomes
increasingly dominated by private ventures lofting satellites for navigation, imaging, communication
and other enterprises.
Link Magnifiers for Space Junk and Ozone DAs
Plan requires several launches per day
Nansen, space engineer, 95, (Ralph, Sunpower:The global Solution to the Coming Energy Crisis, p. 232)
Since several launches a day would be required to transport all of the satellite hardware to space
during the construction period, one of the problems with this site would be the noise. The problem would
become worse as the years went by and greater numbers of satellites were built.
SPS would require 10,000 launches

The construction of the SPS satellites would require the development of a complex system of space
transportation, both for materials and for space workers. The first stage of transportation, from earth to
LEO, would require the development of a heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV) that would be reusable. The
reference system postulates the development of an HLLV capable of carrying about 400 metric tons. Since
these vehicles would have to carry about 4 million metric tons of materials from earth to LEO over a period
of 30 years, it would be necessary to construct a fleet of 40 to 50 HLLVs to make more than 10,000
flights, an average of more than one HLLV launch per day.
Space Junk and Ozone DA Uniqueness: No New Launches
Rocket launches decreasing
Tass 08 (February 2, 2008 Saturday 6:39 AM EST, TASS, Official news agency of Russia L/N)
The world's market of rocket engines is "quite specific and conservative", Energomash Deputy Director General
Dmitry Pakhomov said. "Such products require state regulation because they are associated with national security and national pride," he told Itar-Tass.
"This explains the protectionist policy on the North American, European, and Asian markets. They all seek to support their own producers." "This is why
the fact that Energomash has a presence on the North American market is certainly a success not only for the company but for Russia in general," the
official said. "It's not a secret that the majority of existing space programmes are either purely American or involve Americans, which means that we have to
fit into the existing rules," Pakhomov said. "As to how Energomash fits into this policy, I must note our attempt to develop cooperation with Japan. There is
a programme called Galaxy Express, which was initiated by the Americans and which provides for the supply of the first finished stage of the Atlas carrier
rocket with our engine to Japan," he said. In his view, another specific feature of the global rocket engine market is that "it has become obvious over the past
seven to eight years that rocket engines have become a product of its own right. In other words, not only the rocket carriers but the engines are also a
product". One of the reasons for that is that when a country wants to have its own carrier rocket it often prefers to avoid designing its own engine. Korea and
some other countries are following this path. "Some countries are ready to cooperate with Energomash, like China and India. But there is another factor that
gets involved here. Since Russia strictly monitors how its enterprises comply with the missile technology non-proliferation agreement, it cannot cooperate
with the states that are not parties to this agreement ," Pakhomov said. He
believes that the market is also seriously affected by
the decreasing number of commercial launches. As a result, demand for carrier rockets and engines is
declining.
No major satellite launches planned

Canada NewsWire 04, (February 10, 2004, Tuesday SECTION: FINANCIAL NEWS DISTRIBUTION:
Attention Business/Financial Editors HEADLINE: Stratos Releases 2003 Audited Financial Results, l/n)
With respect to competing satellite services, the continued weakness in the global economy has
constrained the development of new competitive satellite constellations in 2002 and 2003. There does
not appear to be a significant threat from new competing constellations over the short term.
Satellites DA Shell
A. SPS risks knocking out satellites in a number of ways
Several problems of perhaps lesser priority will also affect the electromagnetic compatibility of SPS
with itself and with other satellites. These are (a) the generation of spurious electromagnetic radiations
by its power generation, rectification, and associated subsystems; (b) the creation of additional
propagation paths on satellite-relayed communications circuits through scatter or reflection; (c)
excessive illumination of satellites in lower orbits that may traverse the SPS power beam, and (d) the
compatibility of SPS with its own power beam command and control systems (discussed in Chapter 2).
In addition, the huge size of each SPS satellite means that the possibility of satellite collisions must be
taken seriously, even though it has been appropriate hitherto for ITU to ignore the possibility of such
collisions.
B. US economy dependent on satellites

Space already plays a crucial role in the U.S. economy, and America's dependence on space will only
deepen in the coming decades. Whether we recognize it or not, what happens in space affects our very
way of life. "More than any other country," Rumsfeld argues, "the United States relies on space for its
security and well-being."9 The United States has more than eight hundred active satellites and probes
orbiting the earth at any given moment. Fully a quarter of them have no military purpose at all.
Instead, they circle the earth to relay everything from Nike ads to the Nikkei average; improve the use
and development of farmland; guide ships, planes, and trucks to their destinations; synchronize
financial networks; support police and fire departments; and connect a people and an economy that
move at ever- increasing speed.
C. Economic decline leads to nuclear war

Mead 1992 (Sir Walter Russell, New Perspectives Quarterly, p. 30 Summer)
If so, this new failure – the failure to develop an international system to hedge against the possibility of
worldwide depression – will open their eyes to their folly. Hundreds of millions – billions – of people around
the world have pinned their hopes on the international market economy. They and their leaders have
embraced market principles – and drawn closer to the West – because they believe our system can work for
them. But what if it can’t? What if the global economy stagnates – or even shrinks? In that case, we will
face a new period of international conflict: South against North, rich against poor. Russia, China,
India – these countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much greater
danger to world order than Germany and Japan did in the ‘30s.
Satellites DA: Links- Hurts Satellites
SSP would disrupt communications satellites
EPRI Journal 00, (March 22, 2000 SECTION: No. 1, Vol. 25; Pg. 6 ; ISSN: 0362-3416 HEADLINE: Renewed
Since 1986, Osepchuk has argued that although public fear of microwaves may represent a greater obstacle
to the eventual deployment of SPS technology, the most serious technical problem in the near term is
that of radio-frequency interference (RFI) and the related issue of frequency allocation. Over the past
20 years, many communications companies have been using frequencies in the 2.4-2.5-GHz microwave
band supposedly reserved for industrial, scientific, and medical use, crowding the spectrum in which
SSP systems were envisioned to operate. SSP power beams are likely to pose an RFI threat to nearby
communications systems that operate in the same frequency band.
SPS interferes with telecommunications

On the basis of present technology, U.S. deployment of the reference SPS would be incompatible with
our international obligations to avoid interference with recognized telecommunications uses of the
electromagnetic spectrum. To accommodate the unusual use of the spectrum contemplated by SPS
would require design improvements in SPS itself, design improvements in telecommunications systems,
and some revision of the international arrangements for spectrum management in order to make room
for an SPS.
SPS would knock out ground based satellite relays

Earth terminals of satellite communications systems are among the most sensitive types of
telecommunications equipment in use today. Because these antennas are directed toward the
geosynchronous orbit, they would be particularly vulnerable to SPS emissions, especially any
out-of-band SPS radiation that fell in the reception band of the terrestrial station. Such radiation might
originate as a harmonic of the SPS power beam, as noise sidebands of the microwave power frequency
extending to the adjacent Fixed-Satellite and Broadcasting-Satellite bands at 2500 MHz to 2690 MHz,
or as spurious radiations resulting from the nonlinear mixing of SPS signals with other radiations
incident on the SPS. Unfortunately, estimates of the intensity of such radiations from an SPS satellite (or a
system of 60 satellites) are extremely uncertain.
Satellites DA: Links- Geosynchronous Orbit Links
SPS=geosynchronous slot scarcity
This discussion of orbit congestion was limited, for specificity, to consideration of the orbit over U.S.
longitudes. It will be sufficient to note qualitative rather than quantitative changes in the discussion if a
global rather than national SPS is contemplated. The number of satellites elsewhere in orbit can also be
expected to increase. Orbit positions over land masses rather than over oceans will be most useful for
both SPS and most other satellites. Thus GEO slot scarcity can be expected to develop around the
world, although perhaps not quite as severely as at the longitudes of its highly developed regions.
SPS closes off geosynchronous orbit

The requirements of the reference SPS for use of segments of the geosynchronous orbit are greater
than can be accommodated under even a conservative projection of the requirements of other types of
satellites using the orbit. Furthermore, the interests of other countries in the geosynchronous orbit as a
whole are strong. Accordingly, the United States or even a group of countries seeking to establish an
SPS would have to consult with other states and international bodies to obtain agreements
accommodating the proposed use of the orbit.
SPS shuts down the ability to use geosynchronous orbit
National Research Council 81, (Electric Power From Orbit: A Critique of a Satellite Power System, A r
Resources, National Research Council, p. xxvi-xxvii)
Satellite station-keeping tolerances, together with the intense microwave radiation from a reference
system satellite would make a length of the orbital arc around its orbital position unusable to other
electromagnetic systems, such as communication satellites. The minimum length of that arc would appear
to be the portion traced out diurnally by the satellite under the influence of the solar wind, gravitational force,
and other forces, which has been calculated to be about one-fifth of a degree. The length ascribable to
electromagnetic interference is as yet not well-determined but such estimates as can be made using available
information are of the order of one degree. The expected growth in the use of geosynchronous satellites in
the next 20 to 50 years makes it likely that an SPS of 60 separate satellites would be incompatible with
other uses of the geosynchronous orbit existing at that time.
SPS shuts down the use of geosynchronous orbit for other uses
Resources, National Research Council, p. 92-93)
There are at least six reasons to believe that an SPS would be a uniquely large user of both the
electromagnetic spectrum and orbital space, and would therefore produce severe problems of compatibility
with other types of satellite system. The number (60) of reference SPS satellites postulated for U.S. use is
considerably more than the number now used in GEO for any other single service. Sixty SPS satellites would
at least double the number of geosynchronous satellites of all types currently active or planned for the
longitude sector appropriate the United States. The power radiated by each reference system satellite would
be some 30 million times larger than that now radiated from any other single geosynchronous satellite.
The directivity of each reference system transmitting antenna would be some 10,000 times greater than that
of any other geosynchronous satellite now operating at frequencies of 1000 MHz to 5000 MHz. The
combination of high radiated power and high antenna directivity would mean that the intensity of the main
beam would be more than a hundred billion times greater for a single SPS satellite than for any other
geosynchronous satellite operating near this frequency. Each reference SPS satellite would be more than
100,000 times larger in cross-sectional area than any other current or envisioned geosynchronous satellite. It
would therefore be a much greater potential source of scattered electromagnetic radiation (including sunlight)
and a much larger radiator of thermal radiowaves than other satellites. An SPS might also become a major
source of interference outside of its own frequency band (produced by the nonlinear mixing of the SPS
carrier frequency with other electromagnetic signals) because of the large amount of power radiated, the
variety of materials used, and the huge size of the SPS satellite and rectennas.
we therefore conclude that:
0 An SPS is likely to preclude use by other satellites of a significant fraction of the limited
geosynchronous orbit and associated electromagnetic spectrum resources . Hence, obtaining
international acceptance of a purely U.S. SPS is likely to be difficult not only in the administrative
sense but also in the broader context of political decisions._
Satellites DA: A2: We Can Repair Satellites
Satellite repair impossible
McCauly and Davis 01, (An Economic Assessment of Space Solar Power as a Source of Electricity for Space-
Based Activities Molly K. Macauley and James F. Davis, Resources for the Future, October 2001 • Discussion
Paper 01–46, http://www.rff.org/Documents/RFF-DP-01-46.pdf, accessed 10/14/04)
Electrical power on spacecraft is so critical and expensive that a spacecraft design handbook begins its
chapter on power subcomponents with those words.1 Engineers use batteries, solar cells and arrays, radiators,
and a host of other devices to create power systems that are able to survive extreme vibration during launch
and then operate in a harsh space environment. But the moving parts of solar arrays can fail to operate or
wear out quickly. Furthermore, the systems are difficult or impossible to repair once the spacecraft is in
orbit. The power supplies are also heavy and bulky, and spacecraft can ill afford their weight and
volume.
1NC Solvency Frontline
1. SPS decades away
Science 03
(April 25, 2003 SECTION: No. 5619, Vol. 300; Pg. 581; ISSN: 0036-8075 IAC-ACC-NO: 101941628
HEADLINE: Planning for future energy resources. ; Letter to the Editor, l/n)
Second, we doubt whether the development and implementation of the radically new technologies such
as fusion or solar power satellites advocated in the article are feasible within the time horizon necessary
for C[O.sub.2] stabilization. The process from invention, to demonstration projects, to significant
market shares typically takes between five and seven decades (3). Fundamentally new technologies that
have not been demonstrated to be feasible even on a laboratory scale today would therefore likely
come much too late to contribute to the emissions reductions necessary by 2050, particularly for
stabilization at 450 ppmv or below (4). We believe that the appropriate mix of investments must include an
initial focus on technologies with proven feasibility if we are to embark on a path to stabilization. At the
same time, we should begin to explore new energy sources that might then be available in the long term to
finish the job.
2. SPS fails- multiple reasons

Energy 03
(June 22, 2003 SECTION: No. 3, Vol. 28; Pg. 45; ISSN: 0149-9386 IAC-ACC-NO: 109579058 HEADLINE:
Energy economics, 101: energy efficiency depends upon how much is lost during production, transport and usage;
Contrarian's View on Energy ... BYLINE: Cohn, Ernst M., l/n)
A space solar power system (SSPS) is useless for at least three reasons: Its reliability is low because of
possible human interference and potential collisions with space objects. It would interfere with
electromagnetic signals used for a variety of purposes all over the globe. Its concentrated energy would
constitute a threat to living things that might get into the way of its rays. Were members of the SSPS
society ever told about these problems, and does the society still exist?
3. Failure to establish a new agency to run the SPS dooms solvency

Nansen, space engineer, 95 (Ralph, Sunpower:The global Solution to the Coming Energy Crisis, p. 215-216)
Choosing the people and organization within the government to lead such an effort becomes the
critical factor in order to avoid two nearly fatal traps. One trap is assigning the responsibility to an
existing agency that has developed a deep bureaucratic mindset through long routine government
service, and the second would be to choose leaders who do not understand the commercial utility
market. To avoid these traps, the best solution is to establish a new agency under the leadership of an
individual selected from industry with the specific responsibility for this project only, r reporting to
the executive branch at a very high level. The agency needs to have authority to perform all necessary
functions to accomplish the goal, without other distracting responsibilities. The task is to develop an
operational energy system. It is not a scientific research endeavor, but is a massive engineering effort, based
on highly scientific principles to generate commercial power at low cost.
1NC Solvency Frontline
4. No way to distribute SSP power
Mankins, Manager, Advanced Concepts Studies Office of Space Flight, 00, (Federal News Service September 7,
2000, Thursday HEADLINE: PREPARED TESTIMONY OF JOHN C. MANKINS MANAGER, ADVANCED
CONCEPTS STUDIES OFFICE OF SPACE FLIGHT BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE AND AERONAUTICS, l/n)
Power Management and Distribution. Power management and distribution continues to be a major
challenge for large-scale SSP systems. A major feature of the 1979 SPS Reference System was the
presumption of very high solar array voltages (e.g., 40,000 volts) that would largely eliminate the
requirement for massive power management for the system. The findings of the SERT Program
suggest that this feature is not technically feasible for reasons of interactions with the space
environment at these voltages and that lower voltages must be used. However, a great disparity exists
between the cost of terrestrial voltage converters (about $0.20 per watt) compared to voltage converters
in space (about $20 per watt). Studies are continuing to better understand the reasons for these differences
and to formulate affordable and effective power management and distribution concepts for large-scale SSP
systems. Also during the SERT Program, an option identified during the SSP Fresh Look Study--the use of
superconducting power cabling at lower voltages--has resurfaced as one potential solution.
5. By the time SSP is ready better techs will be ready

Macauly et al, 00, (Can Power from Space Compete? Molly K. Macauley, Joel Darmstadter, John N. Fini, Joel
S. Greenberg, John S. Maulbetsch, A. Michael Schaal, Geoffrey S. W. Styles, James A. Vedda March 2000 •
Discussion Paper 00–16, Resources for the Future, http://www.rff.org/Documents/RFF-DP-00-16.pdf,
accessed 10/14/04)
We note that by the time SSP is deployed, technological innovation in other electricity supplies—for
example, advanced storage systems—might compete with SSP in these markets. Also, increased
construction, operation, and maintenance costs associated with an SSP system that serves multiple
markets (such as the ability to redirect beams) must be considered in estimating the net advantage of
SSP compared with alternative technologies serving these markets.
Solvency A2: We have had the tech since the 1970s
Not proven- no demonstration model has been launched and none of this is verified. All of
our evidence postdates this and assumes the 1970’s studies. Your tech claims are overblown
National Research Council 81 (Electric Power From Orbit: A Critique of a Satellite Power System, A report
by the Committee on Satellite Power Systems, Environmental Studies Board, Commission on Natural Resources,
National Research Council, p. xxviii)
In general, we believe that the NASA contractors were substantially more optimistic in their estimates of
schedule, performance, and cost than available data and analyses can support.
Solvency Extensions #1: Long T/F No Tech
SSP will take until 2050 to work
David 01 (Power Plugs in Space By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 07:00 am ET 05 March 2001,
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_solarpower_010302.html)
By the 2011-2012 time frame, a 1-megawatt class SSP platform could validate space-to-space and space-
to-surface wireless power transmission, Mankins said. Within the next 15-20 years, an SSP platform
cranking out 10-megawatts of energy might be workable. By 2025-2035, a full-scale SSP platform looks
feasible and capable of producing 1-2 gigawatts of power. Ultimately, Mankins said, in the post-2050
time frame, a 10-gigawatt power class SSP platform could become viable. An incremental, stepping up of
power levels would shake out SSP technologies and power management ideas. Terrestrial power beaming
and a range of space science, exploration and commercial activities in Earth orbit -- such as space business
parks or energizing large communications platforms -- could be supported by taking this approach, Mankins
said.
Timeframe for SPS decades away- need gradual approach to make sure tech is there-
forcing it like the aff will fail
Mankins, Manager, Advanced Concepts Studies Office of Space Flight, 00
(Federal News Service September 7, 2000, Thursday HEADLINE: PREPARED TESTIMONY OF JOHN C.
MANKINS MANAGER, ADVANCED CONCEPTS STUDIES OFFICE OF SPACE FLIGHT BEFORE THE
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE AND AERONAUTICS, l/n)
Very briefly, our results and findings to date can be summarized as follows: Large-scale SSP is a very
complex integrated system of systems that requires numerous significant advances in current
technology and capabilities A technology roadmap has been developed that lays out potential paths for
achieving all needed advances - albeit over several decades - Ongoing and recent technology advances have
narrowed many of the technology gaps, but major technical, regulatory and conceptual hurdles continue
to exist This NASA-funded SSP activity has made significant contributions to narrowing the technology gap
(e.g. a three-fold reduction in mass at the solar array level over current state-of-the-art) An incremental and
evolutionary approach to developing needed technologies and systems has been defined, with
significant and broadly applicable advances with each increment The technologies and systems needed
for SPS have highly leveraged applicability to needs in space science, robotic and human exploration,
and the development of space The decades-long time frame for SPS technology development is
consistent with the time frame during which new space transportation systems, commercial space
markets, etc. could advance Power relay concepts appear technical viable using space solar power
technologies, but may depend upon higher frequency power beaming The question of ultimate large-scale
solar power satellite economic viability remains open.
Tech not there for SPS

Houston Press 02
((Texas) February 28, 2002 Thursday SECTION: News/Featured Stories HEADLINE: Moonstruck
Dave Criswell dreams of living on the moon. He has a plan for colonization. Other scientists say his idea is 100
years too early. But he's ready now. BYLINE: By Wendy Grossman, l/n)
Although Criswell has been included in several NASA-related projects and workshops, when NASA re-
examined space solar power seven years ago, officials discarded his proposal and ruled out using the
moon. "We could not get past the giggle factor," says Mankins, program executive for NASA's space solar
power research and technology activities. "When engineers look at something, if it's got too many
miracles in a row, they don't take it seriously. . .It might be possible in terms of the physics, but if it
requires too many things all at once, it's very unlikely ever to happen." Mankins considers Criswell's
concept a "very far-term visionary one." The coal in Earth's crust should last through the century, he says, so
Criswell's proposal to power the entire planet isn't necessary yet. He says NASA plans to study various
components of Criswell's plan, instead of launching the entire project at once. "It's not that it's intractable --
there's nothing in the physics that's wrong with the idea -- it's just that it's hard," Mankins says. And
expensive. Criswell says his proposed budget for the first ten years is the same as the Apollo mission to the
moon. Translated into today's dollars, that's about $50 billion.
Lack of transpo systems to get SPS to space
Olsen 98 ("RETHINKING THE USE OF EXISTING TECHNOLOGY: SOLAR POWER HARNESSED IN
SATELLITE BEAMS BETH OLSEN DECEMBER 3, 1998", http://clab.cecil.cc.md.us/faculty/biology1/Solar
%20power%20Satellites.HTM)
One of the biggest drawbacks to SPS implementation is the cost and environmental impact of
transporting the satellites or the materials to build the satellites from Earth to space. The energy
required to transport a given mass into LEO is surprisingly low, about 10 kWh per kilogram of payload. This
is roughly equivalent to the energy required to transport an equal mass across the United States via a
commercial airline. Presently, the cost of transporting materials into space is about 1000 times that of
terrestrial transport. There are two major reasons for this high cost. One is the large number of
engineers and scientists required for a successful launch. The other is that much of the transport
vehicle is throw away after each launch (3). We desperately need technological innovation in this field. As
part of the SPS system studies, various space transportation system concepts have been considered, including
advanced space shuttles, launch vehicles utilizing shuttle components, and a variety of advanced heavy-lift
launch vehicles. Such vehicles could transport payloads ranging from 100 to 300 tons and would be
recoverable and repeatedly reusable. Both offshore and onshore launch facilities have been considered. For
example, an offshore launch site located near the Equator would reduce launch costs and reduce the impact
of noise pollution by avoiding population centers. The development of advanced space transportation
systems is underway. The cost of orbiting payloads is projected to drop from thousands of dollars per
kilogram for the space shuttle to hundreds of dollars per kilogram for an advanced space transportation
system (33).
Multiple barriers to SSP

David 01 ("Bright Future for Solar Power Satellites By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 07:00 am ET
17 October 2001 http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/solar_power_sats_011017-1.html, accessed
10/11/04)
Among them: The size, complexity, and cost of an SSP undertaking are daunting challenges.
International legal, political, and social acceptability issues abound. Health or environmental hazards
from laser or microwave beams broadcast from space appear worrisome. Additionally, in the battle of
energy market forces on Earth, any SSP constellation may prove far too costly to be worth metering.
Solar tech not ready

Nagatomo et al 94 ("Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium on Space Technology and Science,
Yokohama, JAPAN, May 1994, pp. 469-476 Paper No. ISTS-94-e-04 Conceptual Study of A Solar Power Satellite,
SPS 2000 *Professor, **Associate Professor, **Research Associate. Institute of Space and Astronautical Science 3-
1-1 Yoshinodai, Sagamihara 229 JAPAN Makoto Nagatomo*, Susumu Sasaki** and Yoshihiro Naruo***
http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/conceptual_study_of_a_solar_power_satellite_sps_2000.shtml, accessed
10/11/04)
Solar cells: The most critical issue of SPS2000 design to satisfy the basic requirements is availability of the
key electric technologies, such as a large number of solar cells and a large number of high efficiency
and low cost semiconductors for the spacetenna. However, solar cells developed for terrestrial use seem
to be usable in space, according to our preliminary study (6). On the other hand, the application of the
current space technology will be difficult both in the required reduction of cost and in mass
production.
Engineering problems prevent deployment
10/11/04)
In addition to lack of the basic electric parts technology, inexperience of some areas of design has been
found to be a critical problem. As described in the following, construction in space is a typical example
of engineering area which is not ready to initiate basic design of such a large system in a near-earth
orbit.
Technology not ready

10/11/04)
The SPS2000 conceptual study of the ISAS SPS Working Group was intended to provide the researchers
having interest in power from space with ideas of practical problem areas of an early phase of research. A set
of basic requirements were defined and used for design work of the SPS 2000 concept from standpoints of
economic and technical feasibility of power utility based on solar power satellites. As a result, a unique
concept of SPS has been developed. It was found that technology was not mature in the key electrical
parts such as solar cells and semiconductors, and engineering for automatic construction and assembly
methods was not ready. In this respect, this study has given researchers a remarkable insight into
uncertain future of development of power from space.
Not enough commercial launch capacity

Landis 90 ("An Evolutionary Path to SPS Geoffrey A. Landis Geoffrey A. Landis Nyma, Inc. NASA Lewis
Research Center mailstop 302-1 Cleveland, OH 44135 originally published in Space Power, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 365-
371 (1990) http://www.islandone.org/Settlements/EvolutionaryPathSPS.html, accessed 10/12/04)
Development of SPS will require a large infrastructure for space transportation and space
construction. This will present a large risk element unless the transportation infrastructure is developed and
tested well before commitment to a SPS. The transportation requirements will be orders of magnitude
more than needed for known commercial applications such as communications satellites. A significant
boost would be identification of near-term, large-scale commercial applications of space*. Pending such an
as-yet unknown commercial application, however, I see little prospect for commercial space enterprise
to develop transportation on the scale required.
Even in a best case scenario SPS is 50 years away
Science 02 (November 1, 2002 SECTION: No. 5595, Vol. 298; Pg. 981; ISSN: 0036-8075 HEADLINE:
Advanced technology paths to global climate stability: energy for a greenhouse planet., l/n)
Space solar power (SSP) (Fig. 3, A and B) exploits the unique attributes of space to power Earth (44, 45).
Solar flux is 8 times higher in space than the long-term surface average on spinning, cloudy Earth. If
theoretical microwave transmission efficiencies (50 to 60%) can be realized, 75 to 100 [W.sub.e] could be
available at Earth's surface per [m.sup.2] of PV array in space, [less than or equal to] 1/4 the area of surface
PV arrays of comparable power. In the 1970s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) studied an SSP design with a PV array the size of Manhattan in
geostationary orbit [(GEO) 35,800 km above the equator] that beamed power to a 10-km by 13-km surface
rectenna with 5 G[W.sub.e] output. [10 TW equivalent (3.3 T[W.sub.e]) requires 660 SSP units.] Other
architectures, smaller satellites, and newer technologies were explored in the NASA "Fresh Look Study"
(46). Alternative locations are 200- to 10,000-km altitude satellite constellations (47), the Moon (48, 49), and
the Earth-Sun [L.sub.2] Lagrange exterior point [one of five libration points corotating with the Earth-Sun
system (Fig. 3C)] (50). Potentially important for C[O.sub.2] emission reduction is a demonstration proposed
by Japan's Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science to beam solar energy to developing nations a few
degrees from the equator from a satellite in low equatorial orbit (51). Papua New Guinea, Indonesia,
Ecuador, and Colombia on the Pacific Rim, and Malaysia, Brazil, Tanzania, and the Maldives have agreed to
participate in such experiments (52). A major challenge is reducing or externalizing high launch costs.
With adequate research investments, SSP could perhaps be demonstrated in 15 to 20 years and deliver
electricity to global markets by the latter half of the century (53, 54).
Lack of tech for SPS

Science 01 (November 9, 2001 SECTION: No. 5545, Vol. 294; Pg. 1273; ISSN: 0036-8075 HEADLINE: Japan
looks for bright answers to energy needs: a massive solar array to beam energy back to Earth is still a dream, but
feasibility studies are moving ahead on several continents; Space Solar Power; Brief Article BYLINE: Normile,
Dennis, l/n)
Although the NRC committee agrees with Matsumoto that the basic concept has been proven, it noted that
"providing space solar power for commercially competitive terrestrial electric power will require
breakthrough advances in a number of technologies." There's also the problem of getting the necessary
equipment into space. Both NASA and NASDA have programs to develop low-cost launch technologies
based on either reusable rockets or inexpensive expendable rockets. Both will probably be needed to build a
workable power grid: The NRC committee estimates that it would take 1000 space shuttle payloads to deliver
the necessary material, an order of magnitude more than the number of missions needed to construct the
international space station. Without breakthroughs in launching technology, space solar power "would
be impractical and uneconomical for the generation of terrestrial base load power due to the high cost
and mass of the components and construction," the NRC r report concludes.
SPS not ready anytime soon
Tampa Tribune 00 ( (Florida) September 25, 2000, Monday, FINAL EDITION SECTION:
NATION/WORLD, Pg. 4 HEADLINE: Solar Solution; BYLINE: KURT LOFT, of The Tampa Tribune; l/n)
Orbiting solar platforms won't replace coal-burning power plants any time soon. But a driving force
behind the technology is to look at alternative sources of energy that don't pollute or add to global warming,
according to the National Solar Power Research Institute in California. Tapping the sun's power, an institute r
report says, "represents an inexhaustible supply of energy that can be converted to electricity, without the
need for any kind of fuel, and without producing any waste product." Experts don't agree whether SSP will
become an emerging energy source within 50 years, or if it proves to be too expensive to get off the
ground. But with 133 million people being born each year, Erb adds, alternatives can't be ignored.
Multiple barriers to SSP

Greenberg, president, Princeton Synergetics, 00 (Aerospace America May, 2000 SECTION:
FEATURES; Economics; Pg. 42 HEADLINE: Space solar power; The economic realities BYLINE: by Joel S.
Greenberg, president, Princeton Synergetics, l/n)
SSP faces several challenges in competing with terrestrial electricity generation:
* The relative immaturity of the technologies required for SSP makes it difficult to assess the validity
of its cost estimates and likely competitiveness. As with most space development initiatives, orders-of-
magnitude reduction in the cost of launch and deployment are necessary. In addition, the NASA studies have
assumed all on-orbit operations, including construction and maintenance, to be accomplished telerobotically.
* Achieving an economically viable SSP will require that government play a major role in developing a
relevant technology base that can be exploited by industry. It would be premature for the government to
make commitments (through loan guarantees or tax incentives, for example), other than possibly pursuing a
technology development and demonstration program. * State-of-the-art conventional technologies feature
numerous environmental controls, eroding somewhat the environmental advantage of nonfossil fuel
technologies. * Actual and/or perceived health risks associated with exposure to electric and magnetic
fields generated by SSP are likely to cause significant public concern. * National security and economic
considerations may cause some countries to require equity participation in SSP, to rely on it for only a
small share of their energy portfolios, or to decline its use altogether.
Need space factories to provide enough power for earth

EPRI Journal 00 (March 22, 2000 SECTION: No. 1, Vol. 25; Pg. 6 ; ISSN: 0362-3416 HEADLINE: Renewed
The SPS reference concept envisioned that a system sized to meet the U.S. power demand at the time
would total sixty 5-GW satellites, each beaming microwave energy to one or more rectennas. Lifting each
satellite's 50,000 metric tons into LEO would require a reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle weighing 250
metric tons. At a LEO-based space factory 300 to 500 trained space workers would be needed over an
anticipated 20 years to construct the satellites and send them into higher GEO orbit.
Past tech proves the plan will fail
Macauly et al, 00 (Can Power from Space Compete? Molly K. Macauley, Joel Darmstadter, John N. Fini, Joel
accessed 10/14/04)
In Section IV, we briefly discuss the roles of government and the private sector in further investment
in SSP. We suggest that decisions about continued public funding consider the relative return of SSP
compared with other energy technologies (such as photovoltaics and fuel cells). We also note that
past projections of large market penetration of new power-generation technologies (for instance,
nuclear and solar power) have not, for various reasons, been borne out by experience. With this in
mind, and given the large uncertainty associated with many of the technological breakthroughs
needed for SSP deployment, we find that it is premature for government to make commitments such
as “anchor tenancy,” loan guarantees, or tax incentives for SSP.
No tech to ensure permanent geosynchronous orbit

The attitude control system would also be used to maintain the satellite's precise position in geosynchronous
orbit. Due to slight gravitational variations on the earth, one of the anomalies of geo synchronous orbit
is that a satellite left without any control will wander from one location to another within the orbit. It is
necessary to keep the satellite aligned with its earth receiving antenna while simultaneously ensuring that it
will not interfere with weather and communications satellites already in geosynchronous orbit. Argon, used
by the attitude control system, would be the only material on the satellite that would have to be resupplied on
a periodic schedule. Current geosynchronous satellites must carry all additional fuel needed for their
useful life when they are launched since there is presently no capability to resupply them. The
infrastructure necessary to resupply argon and carry out routine maintenance on the satellites would
be an integral part of the concept development.
International legal barriers prevent SPS

National Research Council, p. xxi)
On the basis of current technology! there are serious questions of international legal and political
acceptability that could make an SPS difficult or impossible for the United States to achieve
unilaterally. Allocations of orbital positions and microwave frequencies are examples. There are also
issues of political and social acceptability such as those related to the fear of possible hazards to health
from exposure to microwaves. (Chapter 5)
SPS would requires thousands of space workers
National Research Council 81
(Electric Power From Orbit: A Critique of a Satellite Power System, A report by the Committee on Satellite Power
Systems, Environmental Studies Board, Commission on Natural Resources, National Research Council, p. 6)
Construction of the entire reference SPS would require about 20,000 space workers, about 1500 of
whom would be in space at any one time. These workers would be transported from earth to LEO in a
special module attached inside an HLLV or in a totally separate personnel launch vehicle (PLV). Another
vehicle, called the personnel orbital transfer vehicle (POTV), would be equipped with a chemical propulsion
system to provide fast transit through the Van Allen radiation belts to carry workers from LEO to GEO.
While in GEO, workers would spend most of their time within heavily shielded enclosures designed to
protect them from the ionizing radiation of space. In these enclosures they would operate the mechanized and
robotic equipment that would perform most of the construction work. Other, smaller vehicles, would be
needed to transport workers between the GEO base and the power satellites.
NASA does not have the tech

National Research Council 81
(Electric Power From Orbit: A Critique of a Satellite Power System, A report by the Committee on Satellite Power
Systems, Environmental Studies Board, Commission on Natural Resources, National Research Council, p. 8-9)
Both the HLLV and the EOTV would be smaller, however, than the SPS satellites. Each of the 60 power
satellites postulated by the reference system would be built in space, and each would require an
on-board control system to keep it stable during construction and operation. NASA has not built
structures of any size in space, and the robotic and mechanized equipment that has been proposed for
automated construction is completely undeveloped.
****HLLV=Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle
****EOTV=electric orbital transfer vehicle
Government support for SSP will fail
accessed 10/14/04)
Our view is that in the case of SSP as a source of terrestrial power, it is premature for government to
make commitments such as anchor tenancy, cost sharing, low interest loans, or loan guarantees. SSP
is at such an early stage of development that these options are inappropriate at this time. For example,
anchor tenancy can significantly reduce market risk, but the government cannot enter into such an
arrangement until a commercial entity has chosen a system design and committed to building it. For
similar reasons, cost sharing is also premature; it requires agreement on system concepts and designs,
a development timetable, detailed system cost estimates, and, above all, a well-grounded expectation
by government that a commitment of taxpayer funds serves the public good. As we noted earlier, we
urge that decisions on continued public funding of SSP consider the relative return on taxpayer
investment compared with other energy technologies in particular, and other public sector
investments in general. Also, past projections of large market penetration of new power-generation
technologies (such as nuclear and solar power) have not been borne out by experience.27 With regard
to low-interest loans and loan repayment guarantees, they, too, await an industry commitment to a
more advanced stage of development.
Factories key to space exploitation

Nansen, space engineer, 95 (Ralph, Sunpower:The global Solution to the Coming Energy Crisis, p. 249)
Putting factories in space is the goal of many visionaries trying to bridge the gap in the development cycle
between development and exploitation. They have begged for a Space Station to research the benefits of
manufacturing products in zero gravity and the vacuum of space. They have struggled with small
experiments on Skylab, Space Shuttle, Russia's space stations, and on unmanned rockets. Several interesting
phenomena have been discovered. Two examples are the ability to separate medical drugs in the absence of
gravity and the ability to eliminate the convection currents that affect the formation of crystal structures as
they cool and solidify.
Solvency: Government Development Will Fail
Shuttle proves government development of SSP will fail
The story of the Space Shuttle is an example of how wrong a government procurement can go. The
original concept was to develop a fully reusable two-stage vehicle. Each stage would be able to fly back to its
launch base. The system was to be designed for minimum maintenance and rapid turnaround to achieve low
perflight cost for an operational system. Unfortunately, the government made all the classic mistakes
during its development cycle. First of all it was supposed to be an operational system to provide
low-cost space access, but was developed by NASA, a research and development agency with no
commercial experience. The managers placed in charge were mainly professional bureaucrats or
technologists, while many of the experienced leaders of the Saturn/Apollo program had retired or returned to
industry. There was serious intercenter rivalry as the various NASA centers worked to change the
configuration to favor their center. Instead of using proven low-cost elements to achieve an effective
operational system the technologists saw the opportunity to develop new high-technology components. The
politicians holding the purse strings saw it as a huge pork barrel and shaped the design to favor
contractors in their areas. Annual funding was limited (a typical practice in government procurement)
and forced design decisions based on compromise. This in turn limited the development of low -cost
operational systems and favored initially cheap systems with future high operational cost. The
experienced bureaucrats made sure they could not be blamed for anything. In addition, the detail
specifications that evolved were oriented to using the system as a research device rather than an operational
system. The final configuration was a hybrid design that incorporated the worst of all these factors. Today we
have a Space Shuttle that works some of the time, in spite of everything. But we went through the tragic
trauma of watching the Challenger explode, carrying her crew to their deaths. Then the gut-wrenching
investigations to determine cause and blame. Finally a fix that is really only a series of splints patching things
back together. The Shuttle is two orders of magnitude more expensive to operate than it should be and
will never be able to meet its original operational goals. The development of the solar power satellite
system cannot be successful if it is developed in the same environment as the Space Shuttle.
NASA will not be able to handle the project

Integration of a large complex program is not handled well by a government agency. Just look at the
disastrous cost and schedule overruns experienced by the Washington Public Power Supply System
(WPPSS) in their effort to manage the construction of a group of nuclear power plants in the state of
Washington several years ago. The end result was the abandonment of the program after completion of
one out of the five funded plants. WPPSS then defaulted on the billions of dollars of bonds sold to finance
the rest of the project. Even the Saturn/Apollo government integration team ran into trouble. After the Apollo
4 fire the director of NASA recognized that there had been insufficient integration and control of the overall
program and turned to an industrial contractor to oversee testing, integration, and evaluation to bring the
program to a successful completion. Development of the Space Station was in serious trouble under the
direct management of NASA, and it was not until NASA consolidated management under a prime
contractor that the cost and schedule was brought under control .
1NCBIZ CON LINK
Utility industry would balk at SPS
Nansen, President, Solar Space Industries, 00 (Federal News Service September 7, 2000, Thursday
SECTION: PREPARED TESTIMONY HEADLINE: PREPARED TESTIMONY OF RALPH H. NANSEN
PRESIDENT, SOLAR SPACE INDUSTRIES THE TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY OF SPACE SOLAR POWER
BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE AND AERONAUTICS, l/n)
The key issues that prevented development centered around the size of the program, its cost, safety of
wireless energy transmission, and international implications. These issues were compounded by the
lack of the infrastructure required to support the program and insufficient validation of cost
competitiveness with other sources. Also, it is a high technology space program that is outside the
framework of the conservative electric utility industry.
Biz Con Link Extensions: Investors
SPS too risky of an investment for businesses
The problem is that possible risks for such a large project are very large, and there is an understandable
reluctance to committing enormous amounts of financial resources to a project with uncertain pay-off.
The pay-off time is long, and thus fear of technological obsolescence is high. Electricity demand may be
inaccurately forecast, or alternative, lower-cost generating technologies may be developed during the
time required to develop and construct the system. SPS must overcome the negative experiences with
large projects of the nuclear power industry, which invested heavily on long-term, large capacity
projects and discovered that projected use did not materialize, while costs and environmental
objections ballooned.
Investors will resist switch to SPS

McCauly and Davis 01 (An Economic Assessment of Space Solar Power as a Source of Electricity for Space-
Based Activities Molly K. Macauley and James F. Davis, Resources for the Future, October 2001 • Discussion
Paper 01–46, http://www.rff.org/Documents/RFF-DP-01-46.pdf, accessed 10/14/04)
In this report, we estimate the value of SSP for a variety of space-based uses that might arise in the next
decade or two. We find that the potential market penetration of SSP—that is, the willingness of potential
customers to adopt a new power technology like SSP—is promising although, like many future markets
premised on new technology, somewhat uncertain. We base our estimates on interview surveys of
spacecraft designers and operators and information in the literature on spacecraft power system design and
cost. We find that potential customers have minimal installed base and stranded costs in their investment in
existing power equipment, and they are accustomed to accepting new technologies. These characteristics
sharply contrast with terrestrial power markets, where customers often resist new technology.
Iridium proves investors will not support SPS

Nansen, President, Solar Space Industries, 00 (Federal News Service September 7, 2000, Thursday
SECTION: PREPARED TESTIMONY HEADLINE: PREPARED TESTIMONY OF RALPH H. NANSEN
PRESIDENT, SOLAR SPACE INDUSTRIES THE TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY OF SPACE SOLAR POWER
BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE AND AERONAUTICS, l/n)
The existing space transportation market has not been large enough to justify the huge development
cost of a reusable heavy lift launch vehicle system. However, solar power satellites would create a large
enough market if the perceived risk of their commercial viability is reduced to an acceptable level for
the commercial investment community. The commercial investment community has been unwilling to
invest in a long term, high cost project of this magnitude. The recent failure of the Iridium global
satellite communication system has underscored the potential risks with space based commercial
systems.
SSP is economically unviable- companies will not touch it
accessed 10/14/04)
Economically viable SSP systems have not yet been developed, but advocates believe they someday
could serve both industrialized nations and developing nations as a source of electricity. At present,
the high risk, high cost, and long time horizon of SSP development and commercialization discourage
private companies from mounting their own efforts to be first to market with this unconventional
power source. Indeed, the view twenty to thirty years hence—when SSP is projected to be
operating—is clouded by uncertainties. These uncertainties include future demand for and
competition in conventional and alternative energy production; the extent to which environmental
concerns associated with fossil fuel combustion may favorably influence decisions about solar-based
technologies; and general perceptions of SSP that run the gamut from an individual’s concern about
the health and safety effects of its electromagnetic field to, perhaps, a nation’s concern about whether
SSP could be a reliable and secure source of energy. In addition, of course, and aside from these
market-related factors, the construction and operation of SSP itself require tremendous technological
achievements, such as much cheaper access to orbit and progress in robotic assembly and
maintenance of structures in space.
SSP is not cost competitive

Discussion Paper 00–16, Resources for the Future, http://www.rff.org/Documents/RFF-DP-00-16.pdf, accessed
10/14/04)
The relative immaturity of the technologies required for SSP makes it difficult to assess the validity of
estimated costs and likely competitiveness of SSP. As in many space development initiatives, orders-of-
magnitude reduction in the costs of space launch and deployment and other key technologies is critical.
As these reductions occur, the economic viability of SSP may be more promising. Until then, it is premature
for the U.S. government to make commitments such as loan guarantees or tax incentives for SSP.
No private capital available to build SPS

Boswell 04 (The Space Review: Whatever happened to solar power satellites? "by David Boswell Monday,
August 30, 2004" http://www.thespacereview.com/article/214/1, accessed 10/11/04)
There is a very interesting discussion on the economics of large space projects that makes the point that “the
fundamental problem in opening any contemporary frontier, whether geographic or technological, is not
lack of imagination or will, but lack of capital to finance initial construction which makes the subsequent
and typically more profitable economic development possible. Solving this fundamental problem involves
using one or more forms of direct or indirect government intervention in the capital market.”
Private investors will not pay for SPS
National Research Council, p. xxiv)
Conventional financing of development and initial deployment of an SPS by electric utility companies
is unlikely; public sector financing, direct or indirect, would be required. Major institutional changes
in the regulation of utility rates would be required for private financing to help meet system costs in
the latter stages of deployment.
Biz Con Links- Its Expensive- Launch Costs
Launch costs will remain high
Grey, Director, Aerospace And Science Policy American Institute Of Aeronautics And Astronautics, 00 (Federal
News Service September 7, 2000, Thursday SECTION: PREPARED TESTIMONY HEADLINE: PREPARED
TESTIMONY OF BY JERRY GREY DIRECTOR, AEROSPACE AND SCIENCE POLICY AMERICAN
INSTITUTE OF AERONAUTICS AND ASTRONAUTICS BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
Earth-to-orbit transportation and infrastructure. The Earth-to-orbit cost goal of $400 per kg. in 10 years is
critical to making the SSP concept economically feasible. The current reusable-vehicle technology
demonstrator program (X-33), which is based on a single-stage-to-orbit concept, appears to be
foundering. But even if we do achieve a lower- risk two-stage reusable system, the achievement of $400 per
kg in ten years does not seem reasonable. It is possible that, with substantial effort, costs of $1,000 to $2,000
per kg could be reached in perhaps 15 years. Hence launch cost will continue be the major economic
barrier to any SSP system within the next two decades.
Even if launch costs reach zero it is still to expensive

Fetter, professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland, 03 (Steve
Fetter is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland, College Park, Re: Space Solar
Power new [Re: apsmith] #84 - 11/10/03 02:02 PM Attachment, http://www.fpsboard.org/forums/attachments/84-
SSP-P%26S.pdf, accessed 10/14/04)
If space-based systems cost more than earth-based systems, as seems almost certain, the
comparison becomes even less favorable for SSP. As indicated by equation (2), if space-based
photovoltaic arrays cost two to three times more per peak kilowatt than earth-based systems, SSP
would not be cost-effective even if launch costs were zero. Today, space-based arrays cost about
500 times more than earth-based arrays per peak kilowatt.6
Launch costs will never be cheap enough with chemical rockets

Fetter, professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland, 03 (Steve
Fetter is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland, College Park, Re: Space Solar
Power new [Re: apsmith] #84 - 11/10/03 02:02 PM Attachment, http://www.fpsboard.org/forums/attachments/84-
SSP-P%26S.pdf, accessed 10/14/04)
Much of the discussion surrounding SSP has focused on the last of these conditions. A launch cost of $250
kg–1 corresponds to a cost of only $3 to $5 kg–1 for a disposable launcher— comparable to the cost of
the propellants alone.7 Propellant for a reusable vehicle is likely to cost more than $50 per kilogram
placed into orbit;8 achieving a total cost of $250 kg–1 would therefore require a total-to-fuel cost ratio
of no more than 5:1. Given that the total-to-fuel cost ratio for the U.S. air freight industry is about 4:1,
launch costs below $250 kg–1 are probably unachievable with chemical rocket technology.
Trasportation costs are too high
Mankins, Manager, Advanced Concepts Studies Office of Space Flight, 00
(Federal News Service September 7, 2000, Thursday HEADLINE: PREPARED TESTIMONY OF JOHN C.
MANKINS MANAGER, ADVANCED CONCEPTS STUDIES OFFICE OF SPACE FLIGHT BEFORE THE
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE AND AERONAUTICS, l/n)
Earth-to-Orbit (ETO) Transportation. Affordable, large-scale Earth-to- orbit transportation is a key
capability for any substantial future activities relating to the exploration and development of space,
including SSP systems. How low these costs must be depends entirely on the type of future missions and
markets that are contemplated. SERT results suggest that recurring launch costs in the range of $100-
$200 per kilogram of payload to low-Earth orbit are needed if SPS are to be economically viable.2 The
current National Space Transportation Policy as implemented in 'NASA's Integrated Space Transportation
Plan and Space Launch Initiative, provide a solid strategic and programmatic foundation for achieving launch
costs in the range that is projected to be required during the coming 20 years. In-Space Transportation.
Affordable and timely in-space transportation beyond low-Earth orbit is of equal importance to ETO
transport for many exploration and development of space goals, such as SSP. There remains a
significant challenge in achieving very low-cost, highly reliable and timely in- space transportation
beyond low-Earth orbit. SERT results suggest that recurring in-space transportation costs in the range
of $100-$200 per kilogram of payload from low-Earth orbit to geostationary-Earth orbit are needed if
SPS delivering power to terrestrial markets are to be economically viable. Several approaches continue
to be examined as part of the Integrated Space Transportation Plan and the NASA Aerospace Base
technology program.
Transpo the number one barrier to SPS

Nansen, President, Solar Space Industries, 00
(Federal News Service September 7, 2000, Thursday SECTION: PREPARED TESTIMONY HEADLINE:
PREPARED TESTIMONY OF RALPH H. NANSEN PRESIDENT, SOLAR SPACE INDUSTRIES THE
TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY OF SPACE SOLAR POWER BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
Since 1980 organized activity to study or develop solar power satellites has been limited. There was no US
government sponsored work until NASA initiated their "New Look Studies" in the mid 1990's. Subsequently
the Department of Energy abstained from any involvement. However, during this time the Japanese
government and industry became interested in the concept. The Japanese updated the reference system design
developed in the System Definition Studies in the late 1970's, conducted some limited testing and proposed a
low orbit 10 megawatt demonstration satellite. Their effort has been curtailed by their economic problems.
Interest by other nations has persisted, but only at low levels of activity. The overwhelming initial cost of
development and deployment has remained the primary obstacle. Number one on the list of cost barriers is
the cost of space transportation. Solar power satellites are only economically feasible if there is low cost
space transportation.
Launch costs and tech barriers prevent price reductions
Houston Press 02 ((Texas) February 28, 2002 Thursday SECTION: News/Featured Stories HEADLINE:
Moonstruck Dave Criswell dreams of living on the moon. He has a plan for colonization. Other scientists say his
idea is 100 years too early. But he's ready now. BYLINE: By Wendy Grossman, l/n)
NASA is working to lower the cost of space solar power from hundreds of dollars per kilowatt-hour to less
than a dollar. Criswell's target price is a penny per kilowatt-hour, making the average annual power bill $200
per person. The largest deterrent to Criswell's concept is the price tag. Criswell hopes to someday get
sponsors from the private sector, and envisions power plants footing a portion of the bill, because when Earth
runs out of energy, they won't have a product to sell. He imagines the receiving antennae being placed
outside cities in abandoned coal mines and ruined oil fields. Despite NASA's recent efforts, launch costs
remain exorbitant. Because of that, no one has been to the moon in 30 years. We don't yet have the
technology for reasonably priced large-scale moon industrialization and urbanization, says Bryan Erb,
manager of the Canadian Space Power Initiative.
Biz Con Links- Increases Energy Costs
SPS increases energy costs and kills species
New Scientist 01 (December 8, 2001 SECTION: This Week: Frontiers, Pg. 2222 HEADLINE: Giant space
stacks BYLINE: Ian Sample Will Earth ever get its power from orbiting towers of solar panels ?, l/n)
Mankins calculates that each SunTower could transmit up to 300 megawatts of power to Earth. But
safety and cost are still a problem. Any creatures caught in the powerful beams would be fried. And at
today's prices the power would cost 80 cents per kilowatt-hour once construction and launch costs are
included, compared with around 5 cents for more traditional sources. The towers would be sent into
orbit in modules weighing around 10 tonnes. To make the project viable, launch costs would have to come
down to dollar 400 per kilogram, says Mankins, compared with at least dollar 10,000 per kilogram today.
SPS power costs more than other alternatives

Another barrier is that launching anything into space costs a lot of money. A substantial investment would be
needed to get a solar power satellite into orbit; then the launch costs would make the electricity that was
produced more expensive than other alternatives. In the long term, launch costs will need to come down
before generating solar power in space makes economic sense.
Biz Con Links- Increases Energy Costs
SPS will be more expensive than current energy- will not survive on the market
Even if a solar power system was built and launched there would still be the economic problem of
producing electricity at a cost that is comparable to other options. Government subsidies can help get
this new industry on its feet but it will need to compete in the market in order to survive. This is a challenge
for all emerging renewable energy solutions. Current non-renewable energy supplies are cheap. Even
with the recent increases in the price of oil, it is still historically low. Adjusted for inflation, gas prices are
still much lower than they were during the oil crisis in the 1970s. With current prices there is little
incentive for customers or producers to pursue alternatives. Even if oil prices continue to increase, it is
not likely that this will be enough to drive demand for alternatives. Although we will eventually run out
of oil, coal, and other non-renewable energy sources, in the short term rising oil prices will simply generate
more oil.
Reduction in energy costs key to log term growth

Lewis, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, 03
("Killing Energy: Beware the “Soft Kyoto” Strategy Lewis Op-Ed in National Review Online by Marlo Lewis, Jr.
July 28, 2003 " http://www.cei.org/gencon/019,03575.cfm, accessed 9/26/04)
Energy, as the late Julian Simon observed, is the "master resource." Energy enables mankind to transform all
other resources into goods and services, and it empowers people to move themselves, commerce, and
information across distances great and small. That is why long-term declines in energy costs are
essential to economic progress. It is also why Republicans, who claim to be the party of growth, have the
most to lose politically under a Kyoto-style regime.
Biz Con Links- Its Expensive
Initial SPS costs are huge
Space Island Group 2006 (“Clean Energy, Cheap Hydrogen, and Weather Control From Space,”
http://www.spaceislandgroup.com/solarsat.html, accessed on July 13, 2008)
An average U.S. home or apartment uses about 1,000-2,000 kilowatt hours a month, and a city of 250,000
with factories, stores, homes and streetlights might need as much as a billion kilowatt hours a month.
Proposed solar satellites will generate from a few million to a few billion kilowatts each, depending on their
size. Solar satellites will generate about one kilowatt hour of electricity for each kilogram (2.2 pounds)
of the satellite’s weight. A lot of this weight will be low cost frames, but a lot will also be higher cost
solar cells, electronics and guidance systems. If solar satellite components cost an average of $100 per
pound to manufacture and (optimistically) $1000 per pound to carry to orbit, they’d have to sell their
power for 30-50 cents per kilowatt hour to pay off these costs in 30 years. That doesn’t include the cost
of launching the assembly and maintenance crews into space at much higher rates, and launching and
operating the living quarters for these crews. Even if solar satellite assembly robots were used, you’d need
people in orbit to maintain, repair and refuel the robots. The launch costs and maintenance costs for these
crews could add another $200 per pound to solar satellite costs over a 30-year period. Several
innovative designs have been proposed which unfurl sheets of solar cells like umbrellas after they’re
launched, then allow them to automatically connect themselves piece by piece into huge structures in orbit.
These designs will reduce - but certainly not eliminate - the solar satellite manpower needs. Some 20% of
communications satellites fail in orbit because of electrical problems, fuel shortages or because their solar
panels fail to open as planned, even though this industry has 40 years of experience behind it.The “Space
Island Space Hardware” section below will explain how we’ll make it possible for solar satellites to be
launched, assembled and operated cheaply enough to profitably sell their power for ten cents per kilowatt-
hour. This will allow solar satellites to begin replacing most Earth-based generating plants during the next
decade, which will in turn reduce the greenhouse gases these plants produce. It will also reduce the need for
nuclear power plants. Conversion of 90% of Earth’s power needs to solar power generators could be
completed by 2050, giving companies and employees several decades to adjust to this new technology.
Costs of SPS are huge
Tampa Tribune 00 ( (Florida) September 25, 2000, Monday, FINAL EDITION SECTION:
NATION/WORLD, Pg. 4 HEADLINE: Solar Solution; BYLINE: KURT LOFT, of The Tampa Tribune; l/n)
Certainly, the challenges of putting hundreds of tons of equipment into orbit - much less on the moon -
are enormous, evident to anyone who follows construction of the International Space Station. A solar
power station capable of 5 gigawatts, for instance, would be 6 miles long and 3 miles wide and weigh 50,000
tons. Building such large structures will require a new fleet of rockets or spaceships that make access to
space affordable by today's standards. BIG CAVEAT with this is how practical is it to get the stuff up into
orbit?" Erb says. "It's excruciatingly expensive. Only when the cost comes down will we have a good
shot of producing a commercially viable system."
$24 billion just to build the first satellite- that does not even include R&D
To make this initial comparison I will use the cost estimates generated by my Boeing team for the
NASAIDOE studies, which were based on a satellite that had an output of five thousand megawatts. The cost
estimates to produce a single satellite was $12 billion. This cost was developed in 1979 dollars, and
includes the cost of the satellite, the ground receiver, and the cost of transporting the satellite
hardware to space. The $12 billion would escalate to $24 billion in 1995 dollars. These numbers do not
include research and development costs nor the cost of the infrastructure required to support satellite
development. These two items will be discussed separately in order to keep the comparison as consistent as
possible. They will be treated as a national investment in the same way that nuclear power was developed.
SPS costs billions

New York Times 03 (November 4, 2003 Tuesday Late Edition – Final SECTION: Section F; Column 4;
Science Desk; Pg. 1 HEADLINE: As Earth Warms, The Hottest Issue Is Energy BYLINE: By KENNETH CHANG,
l/n)
And by the end of the century, they wrote, at least three-quarters and maybe all of the world's energy would
have to be emission-free. No existing technology appears capable of filling that void. The futuristic
techology might be impractically expensive. Developing a solar power satellite, for example, has been
estimated at more than $200 billion.
SSP would cost at least $25 trillion

Dinkin 04 , B.S. Economics, Caltech, ’91, Ph.D. U of AZ, ’96 is a regular columnist at the Space Review, 04
(The Space Review: Review: Out of Gas "by Sam Dinkin Monday, September 27, 2004"
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/231/1, accessed 10/11/04)
If Earth-based solar is good, space-based solar could be better. Goodstein says that about 800 solar satellites
the size of Manhattan in geosynchronous orbit would do the trick. At $1,000 per kilogram we would only
need to spend $15 trillion or so on launch costs to heft 15 billion kilograms of solar cells, which would
only be about one-fourth as much as 200,000 square kilometers because there’s about four times as
much light up there with no clouds and no night. Throw in another $10 trillion for the cells and some
more for the microwave ground stations and we have a pretty good case for solar orbital. We should
probably exhaust the case for stratospheric lighter than air solar before we invest, but there are other
objections.-
-SPS would cost $74 billion for a prototype
D.O.E 03 (Energy Savers: Solar Power Satellites This fact sheet was reviewed for accuracy in April 2003.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumerinfo/factsheets/l123.html , accessed 10/12/04)
Cost was the major obstacle to development of the SPSS. When the NASA-DOE r report was completed
in 1979, the estimated cost for building a prototype was $74 billion. Construction of an SPSS system
would have taken about 30 years to complete. At the time, the United States did not appropriate funds to
begin construction. Other countries, such as Japan, are currently exploring the concept of solar power stations
in space.
The prototype alone would cost 100 billion- high costs will prevent businesses from
building it
The barrier to development of SPS is social, not technological. The initial development cost for a SPS
would be enormous: e.g., 102 billion [1977 dollars] for the first 5 GW unit [2,3] (possibly somewhat
lower for some alternative concepts), and the construction time would be long. While it is often argued
that production of solar power satellites could eventually be a profit-making commercial venture, the
high initial cost and long development time presents a large barrier to commercial involvement. Thus:
how can we get there from here?
Price will be huge

Differ, Director, Research and Analysis, JP Aerospace, 02 (Dr Alfred W Differ Director - Research and Analysis
- JP Aerospace budget skeptic (5.00 / 3) (#205) by adiffer on Tue Nov 12th, 2002 at 04:07:59 AM EST,
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/11/11/83056/403, accessed 10/14/04)
I feel the urge to raise a point about the numbers tossed around for costs of space solar power stations. No
matter which article you read, make sure you drill down on the assumptions they make about how such
stations are to be constructed. If the material is of terrestrial origin, the costs are going to be absolutely
astronomical. That is why few people are doing this kind of research. They just don't see it as economical. If
the material is derived from off-world sources, the costs are much lower, but the technical risks are higher
since we have to reinvent a couple of industries and make sure they work in space.
Biz Con Links- A2: It will get cheaper
Components too expensive to bring the costs down
10/11/04)
Requirement 2: Commercial and versatile technologies will be used for this system. The present space
technology is a typical high value-added technology which only communication industry affords.
Considering the large scale of utility power systems, we cannot use such expensive technology in a
large quantity for solar power satellites. Some say mass production of electric parts would reduce the
cost per unit. However, mass production of GaAs semiconductor used for hand-carry telephones could
not reduce the price so much as expected. Implications of this requirement are that more design efforts will
be required for application of lower performance technology than existing space-use hardware.
Cannot get costs down

Science 01 (November 9, 2001 SECTION: No. 5545, Vol. 294; Pg. 1273; ISSN: 0036-8075 HEADLINE: Japan
looks for bright answers to energy needs: a massive solar array to beam energy back to Earth is still a dream, but
feasibility studies are moving ahead on several continents; Space Solar Power; Brief Article BYLINE: Normile,
Dennis, l/n)
Some doubt that space solar power will ever prove economically competitive for terrestrial use. "The
tasks are formidable, and [at present] it's not clear that you can identify a path that you know will
solve the technology problems," says Richard Schwartz, an electrical engineer and dean of engineering at
Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, who chaired the NRC panel. Schwartz, who remains neutral on
the question of putting a solar power plant in space, nevertheless believes that an increased investment could
bolster work on photovoltaics, robotics, and wireless power transmission.
Biz Con Links- Short Changing
The aff short changes the plan leading to massive cost overruns
Nansen, space engineer, 95
(Ralph, Sunpower:The global Solution to the Coming Energy Crisis, p. 148-149)
It is the initial development cost that presents the problem. The cost of developing the technology for the
solar power satellite as a power plant is not so much a problem, but rather the infrastructure to launch and
assemble it. Much of the infrastructure is unique because it will be located in a remote site. To date
there has been no need for a transportation system capable of launching solar power satellites, so it
does not yet exist. This is the single greatest impediment to the development of solar power satellites. In the
past, costs of this nature were funded by government investment, such as the funding of the railroads as they
moved west across the nation. It is not unreasonable for the government to fund the development cost of the
required infrastructure as a national investment in our future. The magnitude of the development for the
necessary infrastructure, beyond what is being developed by the Space Station, would be considerably less
than the Saturn/Apollo lunar landing program. An important lesson was learned during the moon landing
program as the costs were controlled within the original target . This was due to the fact that the original
completion schedule was maintained at any cost, and the people working on the program were dedicated to
achieving that goal. As a result, solutions were found when a problem developed or another team was
brought in to solve it. Time was money. Any significant change in one segment of the effort that delayed
another segment meant that huge blocks of manpower were being wasted. A delay in the program of a single
day cost ten million dollars. Usually government programs experience dramatic overruns. One reason is
due to annual funding restrictions forced by Congress, with the result being programs that are often
stretched out much longer than necessary, greatly increas ing the total bill. Actual costs are much
easier to control when sufficient funds are provided to maintain the schedule. This is why the
Saturn/Apollo program was accomplished on time and within the original cost estimate.
Politics Links
SPS requires political capital [gender edited]
To bring about a decision to develop the solar power satellites will not be easy. I know the frustration
and sense of futility, along with those few other dedicated people, as we continue to promote the solar power
satellite concept with government agencies who do not want to have anything disturb their comfortable jobs,
congressmen [congress reps] who are much more concerned with political maneuvering than
accomplishing anything useful, businesses that are only concerned about next quarter's profit and
protecting their current product line. It will require the leadership of the President, appropriate
government agencies, and Congress. It will take the backing of the people of America and support from our
industries.
SPS would be politically unpopular

National Research Council, p. 10)
An SPS would pose certain domestic political questions. As we have seen, SPS satellites would beam
microwaves to rectennas on earth. Although the strength of these microwaves outside rectenna sites would be
about 100 times less than a present guideline for occupational human exposure limits in the United States,
the safety of low-level, long-term microwave radiation is still not proven. This public health concern,
along with a variety of other concerns--ranging from the possible impact on land values to the
alteration of existing terrain--might pose local political problems related to the siting of rectennas.
Finally, there is the possibility that a project as large, technologically intensive, expensive, centralized,
and unprecedented as an SPS might raise, in the population at large, unspecified fears about its
consequences or general doubts about its wisdom.
Politics Links
Public opposition prevents SPS
It is difficult to say more at this point except to note that value judgments on such issues as economic growth,
social equity, and centralized versus decentralized energy systems will play a role in the debate over the
desirability of developing an SPS. Even if there were no technological problems, the development of such
a system would require a commitment to massive government financing over a long period of time
before a substantial payoff made its appearance. It is a large investment in a centralized power system.
The issues discussed in this chapter will be important in determining the public's response to the concept of
an SPS, and acceptance of the desirability of such a system will have to precede the appropriation of funds
for the necessary development. In summary, we can conclude only that: There is little evidence that
questions about the desirability of an SPS are matters of wide public concern now, but it is impossible
to predict whether or not they will become so in the future. The evolution of public opinion about
acceptable forms of electrical energy production in the future will depend on developments in
alternative sources of energy. Negative public reaction, however, couldmake an SPS politically
impractical.
Siting issues will spark huge political fights

Britt 03 (Could Space-Based Power Plants Prevent Blackouts?
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_power_030815.html By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer posted: 03:01 pm
ET 15 August 2003)
"Macauley argues that though it should become technologically possible to convert almost entirely to
space-based power, the reality will involve fights with groups opposed for various reasons. "There is
tremendous opposition to siting cell towers" in some communities, she points out. "There's going to be
vociferous opposition to these localized power planets.""
A2: Poverty Advantage
1. Long Timeframe- will take forever to get all of these people on the new power system.
2. No solvency- assumes that a global SPS is built not a private or US built system.
3. ITAR prevents international coop on SSP
Grey, Director, Aerospace And Science Policy American Institute Of Aeronautics And
Astronautics, 00 (Federal News Service September 7, 2000, Thursday SECTION: PREPARED TESTIMONY
HEADLINE: PREPARED TESTIMONY OF BY JERRY GREY DIRECTOR, AEROSPACE AND SCIENCE
POLICY AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF AERONAUTICS AND ASTRONAUTICS BEFORE THE HOUSE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE AND AERONAUTICS, l/n)
Major efforts in both system aspects and technology advancement for SSP are currently taking place in
Japan, Europe, and the former Soviet Union. Prior to the recent intensification of restrictions placed on
technology interchanges with non-U.S, engineers and scientists, NASA had invited non-U.S,
researchers to contribute to the SSP Technical Interchange Meetings. This interchange had resulted in
the incorporation of several non-U.S, technical concepts in the NASA program, and if current
restrictions under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) can be mitigated, interchanges
with non- U.S. SSP researchers should certainly be continued and expanded.
4. Other countries will not opt in to a US SPS

10/14/04)
National security and national economic considerations may discourage some countries
from participating in an SSP system operated by another country or group of countries.
Countries with these concerns may require equity participation in SSP, limit their reliance
on SSP to only a small share of their energy portfolio, or decline use of the technology
altogether.
Poverty Advantage Extensions
ITAR prevents coup
Grey, Director, Aerospace And Science Policy American Institute Of Aeronautics And
Astronautics, 00 (Federal News Service September 7, 2000, Thursday SECTION: PREPARED TESTIMONY
HEADLINE: PREPARED TESTIMONY OF BY JERRY GREY DIRECTOR, AEROSPACE AND SCIENCE
POLICY AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF AERONAUTICS AND ASTRONAUTICS BEFORE THE HOUSE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE AND AERONAUTICS, l/n)
(1) ITAR constraints on SSP technical interchange need to be mitigated. This could be best accomplished by
creating an umbrella list of SSP technologies, and submitting to the U.S. Department of State (DOS) a
rationale for DOD approval of technical SSP interchange as a research activity.
International cooperation needed to develop SSP

A growing interest in the commercial development of space and a recognized need for noncarbon energy
sources are spurring a reexamination of the prospects for generating large amounts of electricity from space-
based solar power systems. Technological advances over the past 20 years are casting a more favorable light
on the technical and economic feasibility of large-scale space solar power, and continued progress is
anticipated. But keeping the effort moving forward for the next several decades will require
international public-private cooperation and investment by both the government and commercial sectors.
Scientists and engineers have identified a variety of potential applications for solar power in space that could
become interim markets for developing and deploying the technology on the way toward an ultimate
realization of beaming solar electricity to Earth.
A2: Environmental Advantages
1. No solvency- they do not end all forms of dangerous electrical generation.
2. You can’t solve- time frame is too far off to end dependence on these systems
3. Globally switch is to environmentally safe power generation- guts the need for SSP
10/14/04)
Plausibly, severe environmental restrictions on combustion of fossil fuels could translate into an
economic burden absent from the projections reviewed earlier. Although recent studies suggest that
the damage (or “social cost”) of electricity generated by conventional means may be relatively
small—particularly for the noncoal resources likely to figure increasingly in future capacity additions
(see Box 4)—the costs of abatement that some policymakers may propose could be less than or
exceed that magnitude. Indeed, early and stringent constraints on CO2 emissions could easily invite
the second prospect. Issues of pollution, deforestation, and global warming are receiving growing
attention by the world community. However, cleaner forms of energy have been introduced into the
developing world in numerous initiatives to ameliorate these problems, and some governments
already have begun to use renewable energy technologies as a tool of economic development. For
example, India, China, South Africa, and several other countries have begun to use renewable energy
as a means of providing at least limited localized power to small communities without the cost of
stringing power lines to rural areas. Increasing investment in this infrastructure will likely lead to an
installed base with which SSP would have to compete.
A2: Environment: Ext #3- Energy is Safe
SSP advocates misrepresent environmental harms of other energy forms
Advocates of SSP have suggested that it offers an attractive alternative to many conventional fuels as a
source of electricity, in part because it would not contribute to air pollution or other health or environmental
problems. However, an important finding of the most recent research on the relationship between fuel
cycles and health and environmental effects is that damages associated with new-generation plants are
fairly small. Estimates of environmental and health damages, or "social costs," of electricity fuel cycles
suggest the following costs, per kilowatt-hour: pulverized coal, $ 0.001-$ 0.02; nuclear (pressurized water
reactor), 0; gas (combined cycle gas turbine), 0-$ 0.001; oil, 0-$ 0.015; biomass, $ 0.002-$ 0.004.
Their environmental claims ignore controls

accessed 10/14/04)
State-of-the-art conventional power-generation technologies increasingly incorporate numerous
environmental controls, eroding somewhat the environmental advantage of alternatives to fossil fuel
technologies, such as SSP.
A2: Environment: SPS Bad for Env
SPS create new sets of environmental problems
National Research Council, p. xviii)
If constraints are placed on the use of coal or uranium (in conventional or breeder reactors) and if a practical
fusion reactor is not achieved, an SPS could become an attractive option for deployment in the next century.
However, it should be noted that the technological and economic feasibility of an SPS has not been
established. The concept probably presents technological problems that rival those involved in
realizing terrestrial photovoltaics or solving the problems of carbon dioxide emissions, nuclear reactor
safety, and radioactive waste management.
SPS hurts birds

John Osepchuk, an expert on microwave technology who has written and consulted extensively about
biological effects, hazards, and standards development, says that the earlier DOE-NASA work on an SPS
reference system included several studies of potential effects of power beams on birds, bees, mice, and
humans. In the only positive evidence of an effect, microwave energy at the reference system's design
frequency and its beam power level at the rectenna was detectable by some bird species. This suggests,
Osepchuk explains, that "migratory birds flying through the beam may suffer some disruption of their
flight plans. Blue jays seemed to experience some thermal stress at 25 mW/[cm.sub.2], suggesting that
birds of that size or larger may suffer thermal stress at that power density at 2.45 GHz."
Launches for SSP would destroy the environment

An SPS would also create other environmental problems. For example, the exhaust emissions from the
HLLVs that would be launched into space anywhere from 375 to 500 times a year, would affect the
different atmospheric regions in various ways" including possible weather modification and changes in
the chemical composition of the atmosphere. The seriousness of these and other potential HLLV effects is
unknown at this time.
1NC Space Answers
Long timeframe- SPS will not be able to get to colonization for at least a century.
2. SPS not good enough for long term space colonization- need nuclear power
Weiler 02 (Federal News Service May 9, 2002 Thursday HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE
ON SPACE AND AERONAUTICS OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE DOCTOR EDWARD J.
WEILER, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR SPACE SCIENCE, NASA HEADQUARTERS; l/n)
DR. WEILER: Absolutely. In addition to the nuclear initiative which handles our long-term needs, real
powerful needs, you could use solar power to power ion engines. We have already demonstrated that with
the Deep Space 1 probe, which actually added five kilometers per second to its velocity and got the best
picture of a comet ever for free, so to speak. No, we are continuing -- in our In Space Propulsion Program
we are looking at more powerful solar cells to generate more electricity which gives you more ion
power. So absolutely, in the inner solar system the way to go is solar electric propulsion, but in the
outer solar system it's nuclear.
3. Things don’t work in space

David 02 (By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 07:00 am ET 15 May 2002Space Weapons For Earth
Wars, http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_war_020515-1.html)
"The current landscape is that the United States has an absolutely huge advantage over every other country in
space capabilities," Ride said. "It's hard getting to space. It's hard developing things that work in space,
and it's really, really hard to get things to work reliably over long periods of time in space," she added."
Military Readiness Adv- Neg Answers: Readiness Low Now
Military readiness low because of Iraq and Afghanistan
Scott 2008, Washington Post Staff Writer (Ann Scott, “Heavy Troop Deployments Are Called Major Risk,” April
2, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/01/AR2008040102444.html, accessed on July
12, 2008)
Senior Army and Marine Corps leaders said yesterday that the increase of more than 30,000 troops in
Iraq and Afghanistan has put unsustainable levels of stress on U.S. ground forces and has put their
readiness to fight other conflicts at the lowest level in years. In a stark assessment a week before Gen. David H. Petraeus,
the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is to testify on the war's progress, Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff,
said that the heavy deployments are inflicting "incredible stress" on soldiers and families and that they
pose "a significant risk" to the nation's all-volunteer military. "When the five-brigade surge went in . . . that took all the
stroke out of the shock absorbers for the United States Army," Cody testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee's readiness panel. He
said that even if five brigades are pulled out of Iraq by July, as planned, it would take some time before the Army could return to 12-month tours
for soldiers. Petraeus is expected to call for a pause in further troop reductions to assess their impact on security in Iraq. "I've never seen our lack
of strategic depth be where it is today," said Cody, who has been the senior Army official in charge of operations and readiness for the past six
years and plans to retire this summer.
Low military readiness already low

AFP 2006 (“Democrats Warn US Army Readiness At Post-Vietnam Low,” September 13,
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Democrats_Warn_US_Army_Readiness_At_Post_Vietnam_Low_999.html,
accessed on July 12, 2008)
The US Army's combat readiness has fallen to levels not seen since the Vietnam War, undercutting its
ability to sustain deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan or to respond to conflicts elsewhere, opposition
Democrats warned in a report Wednesday. The report attributed the slide to critical shortfalls in equipment, which have made it more difficult for
units back home to train with the tanks, armored vehicles and other weapons it will fight with. "Army military readiness rates have declined to
levels not seen since the end of the Vietnam War," said the report. Representative John Murtha, who released the report at a press conference
here, said he will present a resolution calling for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "not only for his past mistakes but for the
future of the military." About half of all army units received the lowest readiness rating that any fully formed
unit can receive, according to the report. Although units deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan are at peak
readiness, non-deployed units "are critically short of equipment and personnel, causing the vast
majority of them to be rated at the lowest readiness levels," it said. Roughly half of the army's 39 combat brigades are
committed to Iraq and Afghanistan, while the others are refitting and re-training for future deployments, it said. But the report said that 20 to 30
percent of the army's equipment is either not in service, in transit or in maintenance, and that maintenance depots have huge backlogs because of
funding shortfalls. As a result, non-deployed units are having trouble conducting the larger, more complex
exercises needed to prepare for combat, it said. "Of particular concern is the readiness rates of the units scheduled to deploy later
this year, particularly the 1st Cavalry Division," the report said. "This division and its four brigades will deploy to Iraq in October at the lowest
level of readiness because of equipment shortfalls," it said. "To meet its needs, this unit -- like virtually all other units that have recently deployed
or will soon deploy to Iraq -- must fall-in on equipment in theater," it said. "Operating unfamiliar, battle weary equipment increases the potential
for casualties and accidents." Army national guard and reserve units were in a worse state than the active duty
units, the report said, with four-fifths of them at the lowest readiness levels because of personnel shortfalls .
The guard and reserve play key roles in combat support and combat service units. The report also said that the low readiness levels of
non-deployed units means the army has no combat-ready reserves to fall back on if it needs to respond
to a crisis elsewhere in the world. "These are the units that would be called on to go to war in North
Korea, Iran, or elsewhere," the report said. "The degradation of army readiness here at home has
effectively eliminated the United States ground force strategic reserve." The army's goal is to have its active duty
forces on a three-year rotation cycle with two brigades at home re-equipping and training for every brigade that is deployed in Iraq or
Afghanistan. But the report said in practice that goal is "little more than a figment of the army's imagination." "In fact it's quite likely that army
combat units preparing for the next rotation (07-09) will be 'short-cycled'; that is, units will be forced to return to battle with less than one year's
time to recuperate, reset, and train," the report said.
Military Readiness Adv- Neg Answers: SPS Interferes with
Military Ops
Solar satellites interfere with military operations
Hecht 2006, Bulletin of Atomic Sciences Writer (Jeff, “Dual Threat,” October 12, p.14,
http://thebulletin.metapress.com/content/j056206173110p50/fulltext.pdf, accessed on July 12, 2008)
On the surface, NASA’s Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART) mission seemed innocuous. The robotic spacecraft was
supposed to locate another satellite and approach it without human control from the ground—a key step in the plan to develop autonomous robots
that could dock with ailing spacecraft to repair or upgrade them. After the 2003 Columbia disaster, NASA considered
sending a robot instead of astronauts to upgrade the aging Hubble Space Telescope but decided the
technology wasn’t ready. Two years later, the technology apparently still wasn’t mature. Eleven hours
after its April 15, 2005 launch, DART—which was supposed to maneuver around a target satellite—
instead bumped into it, then shut itself down a few minutes later. A high-level review panel catalogued
an embarrassing list of failures, but its detailed report was never released. Although the NASA mission
was not classified, security reviewers blocked release of the full report because it described militarily
sensitive technology. The incident highlights the growing dual use of common technology in both
military and civilian space systems. Autonomous robots might one day replace fading batteries, creaky gyroscopes, or aging
scientific instruments on research or commercial satellites. But Pentagon officials could also use them to take close-up looks at other nations’
satellites, and—if they don’t like what they see—to sabotage them. A robot able to repair solar panels on U.S. satellites
might also be able to cover the solar panels on somebody else’s satellite with a black plastic bag,
turning its power off. “You can’t take all programs at face value,” says Matthew Hoey, a research
associate at the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He warns that some
robots could be Trojan horses for weaponizing space. Antisatellite (ASAT) weapons are not new. Both
the United States and the Soviet Union tested them during the Cold War. In 1985, a U.S. interceptor destroyed an aging navy research satellite.
But cooler heads prevailed, and Congress banned ASAT tests for a decade. Both sides realized that early warning satellites offered vital
reassurance that their opposition was behaving—and that attacking those satellites would be seen as a prelude to a nuclear attack. Moreover,
destroying satellites would scatter shrapnel into orbit, potentially creating a debris field that would threaten all nations’ space-based assets. That
concern didn’t stop development of space weapons, although it did alter their trajectory. In October
1997, after the congressional ASAT test ban expired, the Pentagon fired a 2-million-watt ground-based
laser at a U.S. military satellite to probe its vulnerability. In theory, a powerful enough beam could fry a
satellite’s electronics, but atmospheric interference reduced the power delivered to the target . The
Pentagon still remains interested in lasers—a bit too much, according to some. The Washington, D.C.–based Center for Defense Information
(CDI) and the Henry L. Stimson Center released a report earlier this year that identified six highenergy laser research and development programs
buried in the fiscal 2007 defense budget that the authors believe have potential ASAT applications. (One of the programs, dubbed “advanced
weapons technology,” explicitly calls for a demonstration of “fully compensated beam propagation to low Earth orbit satellites.”) CDI and the
Stimson Center discovered other potential dual-use systems, including a maneuvering microsatellite that ostensibly will be used as target practice
for ballistic missile interceptors—but would also serve as a de facto test bed for ASAT technology. Beyond the Pentagon, another potent driver of
dual-use applications is the civilian aerospace sector, where new technology has opened the door to an emerging generation of small,
maneuverable satellites and low-cost launchers that could get them into orbit on short notice. This technology “has the potential to revolutionize
the space industry, especially military space systems,” Hoey wrote earlier this year in the online journal Space Review. Instead of blowing up
targets, the new generation of ASAT weapons could quietly silence them.
Solar satellites jam military communications, vulnerable for attack
Wright 2008, Union of Concerned Scientists Author (David, Laura Grego, Lisbeth Gronlund, “Technical
Implications and General Conclusions,” June 23, http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/space_weapons/technical-
implications-of-space-weapons-and-general-conclusions.html, accessed on July 12, 2008)
Interference can range from temporary or reversible effects to permanent disabling or destruction of
the satellite. Many methods can be used to interfere with satellites, including electronic interference
with communication systems, laser interference with imaging sensors, laser heating of the satellite
body, high-power microwave interference with electrical components, collision with another object
(kinetic-kill), and nuclear explosions. Because satellites can be tracked and their trajectories can be
predicted, they are inherently vulnerable to attack. However, a satellite’s vulnerability to ASAT attack
does not guarantee the effects of an attack will be predictable or verifiable, and this may limit the
ASAT attack’s usefulness. Jamming satellite ground stations (the downlinks) and the satellite’s
receivers (the uplinks) is relatively simple to do on unprotected systems such as commercial
communications satellites. Jamming protected systems, such as military communications satellites, is
much harder. An adversary need not be technologically advanced to attempt a jamming attack. Ground-
based lasers can dazzle the sensors of high-resolution reconnaissance satellites and inhibit observation of regions on the Earth that are kilometers
in size. With high enough power, ground- and space-based lasers can partially blind a satellite, damaging relatively small sections of the
satellite’s sensor. A high-power laser can physically damage a satellite if its beam can be held on the satellite for long enough to deposit sufficient
energy. This can result in overheating the satellite or damaging its structure.
Military Readiness Adv- Microwaves Turn on Military
Solar satellite microwave weapons attack all satellites
Wright 2008, Union of Concerned Scientists Author (David, Laura Grego, Lisbeth Gronlund, “Technical
Implications and General Conclusions,” June 23, http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/space_weapons/technical-
implications-of-space-weapons-and-general-conclusions.html, accessed on July 12, 2008)
High-power microwave weapons can disrupt or damage the electrical systems of a satellite if enough of their
energy enters these systems. Such attacks would be conducted from space rather than from the ground.
Microwave attacks could attempt to enter the satellite through its antennae (a front-door attack) or
through other routes, such as seams in the satellite’s casing (a back-door attack). The effectiveness of
both types of attack would be difficult to predict. Satellites in low earth orbits can be attacked by kinetic-kill ASATs carried
on short-range missiles launched from the ground. ASATs stationed on the ground or in low earth orbits can be designed to reach targets at higher
altitudes in a matter of hours. A nuclear explosion at an altitude of several hundred kilometers would create an intense electromagnetic pulse that
would likely destroy all unshielded satellites that are in low earth orbit and in the line of sight of the explosion. In addition, persistent
radiation created by the explosion would slowly damage unshielded satellites at altitudes near that of
the detonation.
Terrorism DA- Links
Satellites can be hijacked by terrorists
Office of Technology and Assessment 81 (Solar Power Satellites, Office of Technology Assessment,
7/11/08, http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk3/1981/8124/812409.PDF)
The state of technology obviously bears on the question of whether terrorists or criminals could attack an
SPS. Politically motivated terrorists are generally strong on dedicated manpower, not technical expertise. The
SPS would be a symbolic high-visibility target, but terrorists would be more likely to attack SPS launch-
vehicles, which would be vulnerable to simple heat-seeking missiles, than to threaten the SPS directly.
However, a believable threat of direct attack by terrorists or small powers could be a spur to defensive
measures such as hardening or antimissiIe devices, which wouId not stop an attack by a major power but
might be effective against lesser threats. Sabotage of the SPS through the construction force, either for
political purposes and/or for ransom, could not be ruled out. Careful screening of construction workers —
who would be few in number— can be expected, along with supervision while in orbit. The unavoidable
conditions of life and construction in space would make it difficult, especially at first, to smuggle explosives or
sabotagedevices into orbit. However, a major expansion into space involving large numbers of personnel
would, in the long run, provide opportunities for sabotage that probably cannot now be foreseen. Under
current conditions any installation, in space or on the ground, is vulnerable to long range missiles, or to
dedicated terrorist groups. Reasonable measures to mitigate threats to SPS should be undertaken, but the
dangers themselves cannot be eliminated.
Space Weaponization Good
Weaponization inevitable
Moltz 02, Associate Director and research professor for the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 02
(James Clay, April 15, 2002, http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/020415.htm)
Supporters of space weapons argue that arms control negotiations will be too difficult and that cheating
will occur, in any case, thus making space weapons inevitable.[4] They argue that commercial and
military assets alike are vulnerable to simple ASAT attacks, thus requiring countermeasures in the
form of anti-ASAT weapons. In the area of missile defense, space-based systems are touted by
supporters as the best means of achieving boost-phase interceptions. One problem for such defenses,
however, is that they suffer from the "absentee problem"--the necessity of orbiting multiple constellations so
that weapons are always in place over the target in case of a missile launch. This will raise costs
considerably. Laser enthusiasts point to the possible attractiveness of weapons against hostile missiles or
satellites and the possible utility of lasers for removing space debris. Yet current lasers lack power sources
light enough to boost them into space. Russian sources continue to discuss the desirability of space
weapons for the purposes of anti-asteroid defense and other exotic schemes, but it is not clear whether
these are serious initiatives or make-work efforts intended to save cash-strapped missile and space design
bureaus within the former Soviet weapons complex.
Space weaponization leads to stability and US key to heg

David 05, Senior Space Writer for Space.com, June 17 (Leonard,
http://www.space.com/news/050617_space_warfare.html, accessed 7-12-2008)
"The time to weaponize and administer space for the good of global commerce is now, when the United
States could do so without fear of an arms race there." This is the view of Everett Dolman, Associate
Professor of Comparative Military Studies in the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Maxwell Air
Force Base, Alabama. No peer competitors are capable of challenging the United States, Dolman
explained, as was the case in the Cold War, and so no "race" is possible. The longer the United States
waits, however, the more opportunities for a peer competitor to show up on the scene. Dolman argues
that, in ten or twenty years, America might be confronting an active space power that could weaponize
space. And they might do so in a manner that prevents the United States from competing in the space
arena. "The short answer is, if you want an arms race in space, do nothing now," Dolman said. For
those that think space weaponization is impossible, Dolman said such belief falls into the same camp that
"man will never fly". The fact that space weaponization is technically feasible is indisputable, he said, and
nowhere challenged by a credible authority. "Space weaponization can work," Dolman said. "It will be very
expensive. But the rewards for the state that weaponizes first--and establishes itself at the top of the Earth's
gravity well, garnering all the many advantages that the high ground has always provided in war--will find
the benefits worth the costs." What if America weaponizes space? One would think such an action
would kick-start a procession of other nations to follow suit. Dolman said he takes issues with that notion.
"This argument comes from the mirror-image analogy that if another state were to weaponize space,
well then, the U.S. would have to react. Of course it would! But this is an entirely different situation,"
Dolman responded. "The U.S. is the world's most powerful state. The international system looks to it
for order. If the U.S. were to weaponize space, it would be perceived as an attempt to maintain or
extend its position, in effect, the status quo," Dolman suggested. It is likely that most states--recognizing
the vast expense and effort needed to hone their space skills to where America is today--would opt not to
bother competing, he said.
Space Weaponization- SSP Key
Solar key to space weapons
Hagen 98, Writer for the Global Futures Bulletin, October 1 (Regina, “Military interest in space-based solar
power,” http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27b/051.html, accessed 7-12-2008
The US Air Force is officially planning for war from Space and for war in Space. The required new
technologies are explored in a 13 volume document entitled New World Vistas: Air and Space Power for the
21st Century by the USAF Scientific Advisory Board. Each volume of “New World Vistas” focuses on a
specific topic, eg on “Materials”, “Attack”, “Munitions”, or “Aircraft & Propulsion”. Due to general
budgetary cutbacks in defense spending “... the successful pursuit of our new missions will demand
creative use of commercial systems and technologies. This will produce an intimate intertwining of
commercial and military applications to an extent not yet encountered.” A key consideration is how to
provide the tremendous power requirement for the desired Space-based platforms and weapons
systems. Although they see that radioisotope thermoelectric generators, nuclear reactors, as well as
nuclear propulsion—is the “natural technology to enable high power in space”, they recognise political
and social resistance to this option. Current international treaties do not preclude the location of nuclear
reactors in Space. Their vision: “It is highly likely that very large orbiting solar power stations capable
of delivering energy to the earth will be built in space in the next several decades by the commercial
sector. ... These systems will likely use microwaves or millimeter waves for power transmission. It is
not likely that we could use such systems in a dual-use mode as space weapons.. [however] ...the DoD
could purchase power on demand from such systems.”
Solar can power space weapons

Grossman 91, Professor of Journalism at State University of New York, May 31 (Karl, “We don’t need reactors
in space,” http://www.animatedsoftware.com/cassini/kg9105we.htm, accessed 7-12-2008)
The U.S. government prefers nuclear power even when solar energy is an ideal alternative, as on Ulysses.
For the 1996 Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby mission, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has said that
solar energy could replace plutonium power. There is plenty of time to arrange the solar alternative.
Nevertheless, NASA last year began contract negotiations with GE to build plutonium-fueled generators for
this mission. Even for Star Wars, solar power could suffice (that is, if we want Star Wars in any form).
Pressed at a congressional hearing in 1988 on "The Future of Space Nuclear Power," Col. George Hess, then
of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, the Pentagon's Star Wars office, declared: "I believe in the
inventiveness of the American engineer, sir; that if we were restricted to have no nuclear power that we
would address other options."
Space Weaponization- Nuclear Cannot Solve
Nuclear technology is insufficient for use with space weapons
Grossman 91, Professor of Journalism at State University of New York, May 31 (Karl, “We don’t need reactors
in space,” http://www.animatedsoftware.com/cassini/kg9105we.htm, accessed 7-12-2008)
The record of nuclear power in space is poor. The United States has launched 24 nuclear-fueled space
devices, including a navigational satellite with plutonium aboard that disintegrated in the atmosphere
as it plunged to Earth in 1964. The U.S. failure rate for nuclear-powered space devices has been about
15 percent. The Soviet Union has the same failure rate. The Soviets have sent up more than 30 nuclear-
fueled devices, including the Kosmos 954, which littered a broad swath of Canada with radioactive
debris when it crashed in 1978. The United States spent some $2 billion of taxpayer money on
developing nuclear-powered rockets from 1955 to 1973, but none ever got off the ground. That effort
was finally canceled because of the concern that a rocket might crash to Earth.
Space Weaponization- Military Will Coopt
Military will coopt peaceful military uses
David 02 (By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 07:00 am ET 15 May 2002Space Weapons For Earth
Wars, http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_war_020515-1.html)
"The prospect of space weapons and the growing military space agenda engenders a wide variety of
viewpoints. Such is the case for America's first woman in Earth orbit, Sally Ride. She recently underscored
the fact that space has been used for military purposes for decades. (Ride is the former president of
SPACE.com.) Last month, Ride presented the annual Drell Lecture at Stanford University, sponsored by the
on-campus Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). After her NASA tour-of-duty, Ride
worked in the late 1980s as a CISAC science fellow, serving alongside Sidney Drell, noted physicist and
arms control expert. "Space is a real priority for national security," Ride said. She is presently a physics
professor at the University of California-San Diego and director of the University of California's Space
Institute in La Jolla. Today, U.S. intelligence agencies and the military count on some 100 satellites as
part of the country's national security. These space-based assets snap detailed images day and night,
keeping an eye on global hotspots, even pinpointing missile launchings around the globe for early warning
purposes. A satellite that in peacetime uses the global positioning system (GPS) constellation of
spacecraft for navigation purposes, may in wartime utilize that same capability to target bombs or
remotely piloted vehicles, Ride said.
NASA Credibility- Neg Answers
Space technology accidents lead to stalls in NASA programs
Malik 06 (Tarig, January 27, Space.com, staff writer, “Remembering Challenger: Shuttle Disaster and Others
Refocus NASA,” http://www.space.com/news/060127_challenger_anniversary.html)
"This is a time to think about those kinds of losses," NASA chief Michael Griffin said in a news conference
last week. "Spaceflight is the most technically challenging things nations do...it is difficult, it is
dangerous and it is expensive, given the technology we have today." Each fatal accident grounded
NASA spacecraft as the agency rooted out their causes and dealt out new safety plans before again
launching astronauts into space. It took more than two years following both the Challenger and
Columbia accident before NASA launched another shuttle - most recently with last year's STS-114 flight
aboard Discovery on a test flight which proved that still more work was needed to prevent fuel tank debris at
liftoff. "The anniversaries remind us that we can never be complacent about anything," astronaut Steven
Lindsey, commander of NASA's next shuttle flight STS-121, told SPACE.com. "[They] help us remind each
other, each year, to refocus...because the next several years, that's all we're going to thing about, but what
about 10 years from now? If we've been successful for 10 years and haven't had an accident, that's what you
worry about. "We've got to pay attention to the past so that we don't repeat it," Lindsey said. Lindsey's STS-
121 mission, currently set to launch no early than May 3, will mark NASA's second shuttle flight since the
Columbia disaster and complete a series tests designed to increase shuttle safety. "When you look back at all
these accident anniversaries coming within a few days of each other, they've had a cumulative effect that
suggests how important a well-designed crew carrying vehicle is," said John Logsdon, director of the Space
Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., in a telephone interview. "The point
that's been made over and over again is that the shuttle will always be an experimental vehicle." NASA first
learned that lesson after the Challenger accident, but then had to relearn it after the loss of Columbia,
Logsdon said. The Challenger and Columbia accidents were devastating losses and the lessons learned
from them--both mechanically and culturally--came at great cost, said Tony Ceccacci, who served as an
ascent and reentry flight controller during Challenger's ill-fated final flight and is now lead shuttle flight
director for NASA's STS-121 mission. " The very public loss of Challenger and Columbia were vivid
reminders of the risks inherent to human spaceflight, astronauts said.
Space technology accidents harm NASA’s credibility

NASA 07 (September, “Public Opinion of the American Space Program,”
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/hqlibrary/pathfinders/opinion.htm)
NASA depends on the will of the people, as expressed through their senators and representatives and
the president, for its funding and direction. NASA has to take the pulse of the American people and
obtain its good will. This has not been easy. NASA had to play "catch-up" through much of its first five
years, as the Soviets launched one space spectacular after another. It has had to recover America's trust
after several fatal accidents and other misfortunes, such as the losses of the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1998
and the Mars Polar Lander in 1999. However, NASA does not work alone. Several space advocacy
organizations work at the grassroots level to get people interested in space exploration and to write to
Washington to ask for better finding for NASA. This pathfinder covers how the American people's opinion
of NASA is shaped.
NASA accidents and mistakes cause significant setbacks for space programs
Freemantle 03 (Tony, February 9, The Houston Chronicle, “NASA facing a test crisis of trust,”
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/030209-shuttle02.htm)
NASA took nearly three years to get back into space after the shuttle Challenger blew up shortly after
liftoff in 1986. It took that long in part because, in addition to repairing the spacecraft's physical flaws,
the space agency had to completely rebuild its public image, which lay in ruins as a result of mistakes it
made responding to the crisis. Today, underfunded and its mission under siege, NASA cannot afford to
make those errors again.. "There was a horrible revulsion in public opinion at the cover-up by NASA in the
Challenger case, and they are determined not to let that happen again," said David Acheson, a member of the
Rogers Commission, the blue-ribbon panel appointed by President Ronald Reagan to investigate the disaster.
"Some people at NASA must recall how close NASA came to losing the confidence of Congress and the
taxpayers.". For the shuttle program to continue, whatever its mission, public confidence will be
paramount. "Unavoidably, there is going to be some rough sailing here because unavoidably, it will
eventually be understood that mistakes were made and eventually it will be understood that someone was
asleep at the switch," Pike said. "But if this develops into a massive cover-up of pervasive incompetence and
there is an absence of accounting, things could go badly.”
NASA’s culture makes programs both inefficient and dangerous
Dunn 03 (Marcia, August 2, Associated Press, “Investigator says NASA culture must change,”
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20030802/ai_n14555684/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1)
A Nobel Prize-winning member of the board investigating the space shuttle Columbia disaster says he
fears NASA may be doomed to suffer more tragedies unless it changes the culture that has led to
flawed decision-making. The "same faulty reasoning" that led to the 1986 Challenger accident led to
Columbia, said Douglas Osheroff, one of the 13 board members wrapping up the report on the
Columbia accident. "No matter how good the report looks, if we don't do something to change the way
NASA makes its decisions, I would say that we will have been whistling in the wind," Osheroff told the
Associated Press in a telephone interview this week. "At the moment, I'm in a state of depression," he said
from his office at Stanford University. Several Columbia board members have said the space agency
needs dramatic change, but Osheroff is pessimistic that can be accomplished. "Look, I think it's been
clear for a long time that what has to change is not NASA's policies and procedures or management
structure. I suppose they have to change as well, but it's culture," he said. "Culture is a very funny thing,
of course. It is the way people intuitively behave to a situation." Board members and former NASA
employees have pointed to attitudes of superiority, fear of retribution among lower-level employees,
communications problems and strained relationships between key divisions of NASA as part of its
difficult culture. Osheroff is also troubled that some managers who made crucial decisions during
Columbia's flight seem unwilling to accept individual blame. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe has
promised things will change. Just last week, he said he was committed to "creating an atmosphere in
which we're all encouraged to raise our hand and speak out" when there are life-threatening hazards.
But Osheroff's own experience tells him how hard it will be to accomplish that. "I was at Bell
Laboratories at the time of the breakup of the Bell system, and they had industrial psychologists come in
trying to change the culture," he said. "I don't think it was at all successful, at least certainly not in the
research area where I was." In NASA's case, Osheroff and other board members have noted the
similarities between February's Columbia accident, in which seven astronauts died on their way home,
and the Challenger tragedy, which killed seven on their way to space. Challenger's loss also led to a hard-
hitting report on NASA. Yet, Osheroff notes, "the same faulty reasoning led to both accidents, right? I
mean, in both cases, it was a failure to recognize the potential hazards posed by an in-flight anomaly."
With Challenger, faulty O-ring seals in the solid-fuel rocket boosters were to blame. With Columbia, it was
foam insulation that broke off the fuel tank and gouged a hole in the shuttle's left wing, letting in the searing
gases of re-entry. In both cases, worried engineers were not heard -- or were ignored. Foam repeatedly
broke off shuttles during launch, but the problem was never fixed. With Columbia's final launch on Jan. 16
the biggest foam chunk ever struck with deadly force. Boston College sociology professor Diane Vaughan,
author of "The Challenger Launch Decision," sympathizes with the worried Osheroff. "Challenger, like
Columbia, was an institutional failure. That is, it wasn't just a matter of the decision-making structure.
It had to do with the entire organization and its culture, and the critical parts of that really didn't get
changed," Vaughan said Thursday night. She suggested NASA's leaders "may not understand how their
organization works and therefore may not know how to fix it, and it's up to the board in its report to point
them in the right direction." From the start, NASA head O'Keefe has promised to carry out all of the accident
board's recommendations. Already, he has begun setting up an engineering and safety center in Virginia to
take an independent look at a wide range of problems and trends. But Osheroff calls it "easy to be receptive
six months after a major accident. The question is whether it's going to last."
Environmental Adv – Pollution- Neg Answers
Nationwide Air Quality improved significantly since 1980
National Air Quality 08 (“Latest Updates on National Air Quality: Highlights", January 22, accessed on July
12, 2008)
For more than 35 years, EPA has been working to reduce pollution and make the nation’s air cleaner
and healthier to breathe. This summary report highlights the agency’s most recent evaluation of status and
trends in our nation’s air quality. LEVELS OF SIX PRINCIPAL POLLUTANTS CONTINUE TO
DECLINE Cleaner cars, industries, and consumer products have contributed to cleaner air for much of
the United States. Since 1980, nationwide air quality, measured at more than a thousand locations
across the country, has improved significantly for all six principal pollutahnts. These common
pollutants are ground-level ozone, particle pollution, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur
dioxide, and lead. Despite this progress, ground-level ozone and fine particle pollution (PM ) 2.5
continue to present challenges in many areas of the country. Ozone and fine particle levels are
continuing to decline. In 2006, 8-hour ozone concentrations were 9 percent lower than in 1990, and
annual PM2.5 concentrations were 14 percent lower than in the year 2000. But that same year, more
than 100 million people lived in counties that exceeded national air quality standards for ozone or
PM .
2.5
No Inherency- US Building SPS Now
US has technology to build SPS
Kurt 2008, featured CSM writer (Mehkong, “New JAXA Energy Captures Solar in Space ,“ March 4,
http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/02/18/round-the-clock-solar-energy-from-space-solar-power-system/, accessed on
July 13, 2008)
My high school science teacher came up with a simple solution. He worked out how steep and angle the rocket could veer before straying beyond
the safety zone at max altitude. Once he had that, he designed a simple mercury switch that would close a switch to activate a self-destruct system
if the rocket tilted more than 4 degrees (or something like that –that was a long time ago). He also worked out a way I could use radio-control
device used in RC model airplan flying as a manual backup . While for a space solar power satellite would require
technology considerably more precise than a crude mercury switch, it’s not difficult, with what we
have available today, to build a space age parallel. If the beam strays X amount off course, either the bean could be
automatically turned off, the satellite destroyed, or some two-step sequence of the two. Plus automated signals from the ground as backup to
either turn the laser off or destroy the satellite. Besides, JAXA is talking about 22 years up the road, not next week. Compare our
abilities in 1986 to today’s. Who knows what leaps and bound our scientists and technologists will
make in what is, in research terms, often multiple generations???
SSP Inevitable
Japan will launch SPS- solves all of the case

Aberdeen Press and Journal 01 (February 5, 2001 SECTION: Business:Construction:Aggregates, Pg.17
HEADLINE: Japan plans solar satellite BYLINE: By Iforsyth, l/n)
JAPAN has announced plans to build a solar power satellite by 2040 capable of transmitting a
gigawatt of energy to Earth as microwaves or radio waves. The estimated weight of the satellite is 20,000
tonnes - add in the weight of the construction base, the work crew and their consumables and this
project will require relatively cheap ac$-cess to space. This would make future mis$-sions to Mars and
beyond far more feasible. Powersats, if they prove fea$-sible, would significantly reduce global warming by
substituting for fossil fuels.
SSP is inevitable
The latest effort, NASA's 1995-1996 "Fresh Look" study, identified several alternatives. The study
suggested a number of economic benefits of this technology -- now known as space solar power, or SSP --
relative to other power production technologies. It found SSP would be economically competitive with
existing sources (after an R&D effort directed at lowering costs) and would be "inevitable" because of
resource depletion and environmental concerns.
Other Countries SSP-General
Many countries considering SPS
Farrar 08, writer for CNN, June 1 (Lara, “How to harvest solar power? Beam it down from space!,”
www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/05/30/space.solar/index.html accessed 7-13-2008)
"The country that takes the lead on space solar power will be the energy-exporting country for the
entire planet for the next few hundred years," Miller said. Russia, China, the European Union and
India, according to the Pentagon report, are interested in the concept. And Japan, which has been
pouring millions of dollars into space power studies for decades, is working toward testing a small-
scale demonstration in the near future.
Many multinational initiatives exist

Union Radio-Scientifique Internationale 06, “Supporting document for the URSI white paper on solar
power satellite systems,” July (http://www.ursi.org/WP/SupportingDocument1.pdf, accessed 7-13-2008)
As world-wide activities, the SPS research groups have initiated international collaboration such as
Japan-US SPS workshop, International Conference on SPS and WPT, International Astronautical
Congress (IAC) Space Power Committee, and URSI inter-commission working group.
Japan SPS Tech
Japanese researching SPS for over 25 years
Japanese scientists and engineers started their SPS research in the early 1980s. They conducted a
series of MPT experiments including the world’s first rocket ionosphere experiment in 1983 and
experiments on the ground. They also conducted a series of computer simulations and theoretical work
following these MPT experiments. After the conceptual study phase, two Japanese organizations
recently proposed their own models.
Japan leading in SPS advancement

Popular Science 08, written by staff, June 13 (http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2008-06/10-
audacious-ideas-save-planet, acessed 7-12-2008)
By 2030, Japan hopes to pull its power from the heavens instead of from polluting coal plants. The idea is to
send satellites into geostationary orbit above the equator, where they will unfurl 1.5-mile-long solar arrays
and soak up the sun 24 hours a day. Transmitters mounted on the satellites would convert the solar energy
into microwave energy and beam it down to terrestrial receiving stations. Equipped with massive antennas
measuring two miles across, each station would produce one gigawatt of electricity—enough to power
500,000 homes. That’s twice as much as a typical coal-fired plant, and without any of the greenhouse
emissions. Putting solar panels in space has one obvious advantage: It’s never cloudy 22,000 miles up. On
average, there’s 8 to 10 times as much sunlight available in space as there is on Earth, where atmosphere and
weather get in the way. Now, with satellite launch costs dropping (about five thousand dollars per pound
today, versus $12,000 per pound a decade ago) and energy bills rising (already double what they were in
2005), researchers are finally warming to the idea. Later this year, in fact, the Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to test the idea on the ground, blasting a microwave beam some 170
feet to a 6.5-foot-wide rectenna, a type of receiver that converts microwaves into DC electricity. Not as
glamorous as beaming rays from space, but it’s a vital first step. Potential Uh-Ohs One frightful but
improbable scenario is that the microwave beam misses the receiving antenna and fries something on Earth’s
surface. Like a village. To mitigate that risk, JAXA scientists are developing an automated detection system
that turns off the microwave beam if the satellite drifts out of line. ETA JAXA aims to launch its first
energy-beaming satellite into orbit by 2013, with a network of powersats that feed energy directly into
the grid to follow by 2030.
Europe SPS Tech
Europe researching SPS now
In 2003, the Advanced Concepts Team (ACT) of the European Space Agency (ESA) initiated a three-
phased, multiyear program related to solar power from space. In Europe, terrestrial solar power is one
of the fastest growing energy sectors with high growth rates sustained over more than a decade and
very promising forecasts. The first phase of the European Program Plan therefore involved the terrestrial
research community and was dedicated to assessing the general validity of space concepts for Earth power
supply by comparing them with comparable terrestrial solar concepts. In parallel, the general validity of SPS
concepts for space exploration and applications were assessed by comparing them with traditional solutions
and nuclear power sources.
India Space Solar Tech
India pursuing effective space solar power
Theodore 07, writing for The Statesman, June 29 (Stanley, “Solar energy in space to power India,”
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?clid=2&id=188481&usrsess=1, accessed 7-13-2008)
India is working intensely on having a solar power generation station in space to meet the nation’s ever
growing energy requirements. The “hyperplane,” which needs to transport the infrastructure into
space, will make a demonstrative flight at the 2008 end. “India’s hypersonic air and space transport
activity are now sharp focused on energy production through space solar power by having solar power
stations in orbit. The era of expendable launch vehicles should end and reusable launch vehicles (RLV) are
needed”, Defence Research and Development Organisation’s chief controller, R&D, Mr VK Saraswath said.
India enlarging space program, future plans

Williams 07, writer for the MIT Technology Review, July 30 (Mark, “India’s space ambitions soar,”
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19115/?a=f, accessed 7-13-2008)
Meanwhile, attracting far less attention and operating on a far smaller budget, that other rising Asian giant,
India, has also been ramping up its space program--and it is developing some novel, promising
approaches. This spring, India's then president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam--a colorful scientist-technologist who
loomed large from the success of his country's early satellite launch missions, and then led its guided-missile
program--laid out (via teleconferencing ) an ambitious vision of India's future space efforts during his
speech at a Boston University symposium. Kalam told the international audience of space experts in
Boston that, besides expanding its extensive satellite program, India now plans lunar missions and a
reusable launch vehicle (RLV) that takes an innovative approach using a scramjet "hyperplane."
Kalam said that India understands that global civilization will deplete earthly fossil fuels in the 21st
century. Hence, he said, a "space industrial revolution" will be necessary to exploit the high frontier's
resources. Kalam predicted that India will construct giant solar collectors in orbit and on the moon,
and will mine helium-3--an incredibly rare fuel on Earth, but one whose unique atomic structure makes
power generation from nuclear fusion potentially feasible--from the lunar surface. India's scramjet RLV,
Kalam asserted, will provide the "low-cost, fully reusable space transportation" that has previously
"denied mankind the benefit of space solar-power stations in geostationary and other orbits." Talk of
grand futuristic projects comes cheap, of course. Nevertheless, the Indian Space Research Organisation
(ISRO) performed its first commercial launch in April, lofting an Italian gamma-ray observatory into
orbit on its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. Next, in early 2008, the Chandraayan-1, India's first lunar
orbiter, will carry two NASA projects to search the moon's surface for sites suitable for the proposed U.S.
Moon Base. And at next year's end, the first flight of the Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle
(HTDV), a demo for the scramjet RLV, is scheduled.
Moon SPS Fails
Multiple barriers to lunar SPS
Olsen 98 ("RETHINKING THE USE OF EXISTING TECHNOLOGY: SOLAR POWER HARNESSED IN
SATELLITE BEAMS BETH OLSEN DECEMBER 3, 1998"
http://clab.cecil.cc.md.us/faculty/biology1/Solar%20power%20Satellites.HTM)
One other option being considered is the placement of photovoltaic receivers and microwave transmitters on
the lunar surface. The system would provide for the lunar day-night cycle by using orbiting mirrors to relay
microwave transmissions to Earth’s far side as viewed from the Moon. Additional sunlight could be reflected
toward the collectors through the use of orbiting mirrors as well (36). This system would have lower
construction costs since transport of materials mined on the Moon would be eliminated. The building site and
mining site could be located side-by-side. Its disadvantages are the relative complexity of the system as
compared to SPS (3) and the present uncertainty of the availability and ease of processing lunar minerals.
Another problem facing a lunar location and, for that matter, any lunar mining, is the uncertainty of
international law as it pertains to the exploitation of the Moon. When the ‘Space Age’ began in 1957,
decision-makers were strongly motivated to preserve this new environment for peaceful purposes and prevent
it from becoming an arena for warfare. They developed principles that are now incorporated in international
and national space laws. The 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration
and use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies has been ratified by 92 nations,
including all those with space capabilities. This fundamental legal document, formulated by consensus of the
United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and its Legal Subcommittee, contains
provisions that are being observed by institutions and nations engaged in space activities. One major
requirement is that space activities be carried out for the benefit and interest of all countries “. . . irrespective
of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind”. A provision
of particular interest to commercial companies is that “Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial
bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by
any other means” (37).
Moon base will fail

Washington Times 04 (March 15, 2004, Monday, Final Edition SECTION: OPED; Pg. A23 HEADLINE: To
the moon of Mars; Saving the Bush initiative BYLINE: By S. Fred Singer, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON
TIMES, l/n)
What will a moon base accomplish? The scientific return is minimal - certainly when compared to Mars. And
you always have to ask: Can the same job be done without a manned base? Resource exploitation? Helium-3
mining for nuclear fusion, when a working fusion reactor on Earth is just a gleam in someone's eye? Ice near
the lunar poles? We have a lot of that right here on Earth. A solar power supply for beaming energy to Earth?
Wrong place - even if you believe in space solar power. Stepping stone for manned interplanetary flight?
What technology will they test on the moon that cannot be tested in the space station? Even worse, you
cannot test the effects of zero gravity on the moon. I find it hard to keep a straight face when reading an op-
ed in the Jan. 8 Wall Street Journal, arguing for "a self-sustaining lunar base ... to assure the survival of
civilizationeby spreading its seed." [Yes, just look at the craters from continuing impacts of meteorites.] The
author then claims that "the Moon has the minerals and other constituents necessary to support life." [Yes,
except for readily available water and a breathable atmosphere.] It goes on to cite other dubious advantages.
Space Link
SPS opens up space
One of the greatest benefits of developing solar power satellites is the fact that they require the development
of a complete space infrastructure, including new low-cost space transportation systems, habitats, and robotic
assembly equipment. This infrastructure in turn will make it possible to open space to even more commercial
development. Fully reusable heavy-lift space freighters will bring the cost of hauling cargo to orbit down to
about one-hundredth to one-thousandth of what it is today using expendable boosters and the Space Shuttle.
Grid Instability Links
SSP=power grid instability
Glaser et al 93 (P.E. Glaser, F.P. Davidson, K.I. Csigi, Solar Power Satellites: The Emerging Energy Option, p.
22)
The stability of the SPS will have a substantial effect on the stability of the power pool which it serves.
Low-frequency fluctuations could cause the power level delivered by the SPS to the receiving antenna
to vary; high-frequency fluctuations could cause line surges which might disturb the transient stability
of other generators in the power pool. The magnitude of these fluctuations will have to be investigated to
establish the required degree of surge protection which would be supplied by short-term storage (of the order
of minutes) acting as a buffer.
SPS satellites greater than 2000MW lead to grid instability

One of the key findings of the industry survey we made in 1994 was the need to reduce the size of the
satellites from 5,000 megawatts to no larger than 2,000 megawatts. The reason is the inability of the
electric utility grids to readily handle a single power plant with so much output. If power is
unexpectedly lost for any reason the grids must be able the absorb the sudden loss of power.
Experience has shown that about 2,000 megawatts is the maximum they can tolerate without having
the whole network drop off line. Therefore, it looks like a 1,000 megawatt output is a good size for an
updated design.
China DA Links
US space advancements threaten China
CNS, 07 (Space Arms Race: China's ASAT Test a Wake-up Call, 7/11/08,
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/070124.htm)
On January 11, 2007, China successfully tested a direct ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon. A Chinese
Foreign Ministry spokesperson confirmed the test on January 23, but gave few details aside from noting that the test was not aimed at
any particular country.[1] This confirmation came over a week after initial U.S. reports that a rocket launched from the Xichang Launch
Facility in China's Sichuan province had destroyed an aging Chinese meteorological satellite in a low-earth orbit.[2] Despite Beijing's
assurance that the test was not "aimed" at anyone, China's use of an ASAT weapon to destroy a satellite raises a number of questions
about Beijing's intentions in space. Beijing has appeared in the past to take the moral high ground with regards to space arms control.
Chinese diplomats have called for controls on the weaponization of space for over a decade despite a lack of reciprocity from the United
States.[3] Skeptics, particularly in Washington, argued that Beijing was cynically using arms control as a ruse to hide its own military
space program. Last week's test appears to lend some credibility to that view. Others, however, argue that it is the billions of dollars the
United States has spent on research and development in the military use of space that ultimately triggered China to move forward with
ASAT development.[4] Last year, the U.S. National Space Policy reasserted Washington's intention to
remain the world's dominant space power.[5] Additionally, the United States and Japan are developing
a missile defense system that China views as threatening its national interests, especially with regards
to a military conflict over Taiwan. These on-going developments, some argue, have forced China's
military to strengthen its deterrent and defense capabilities, including testing potential
countermeasures to space-based interceptors. Chinese officials and academics have argued in the past that Beijing does
not want to participate in a space arms race. Pointing to the vast investment that would be required for such an endeavor, most contend
that China cannot afford to keep up with the U.S. military space program on the one hand and develop its economy on the other. Some
international analysts, particularly in the West, have called China's ASAT test a direct challenge to
U.S. space superiority. However, considering the economic and technical limitations still facing China's
space program, this test was most likely an attempt by military hardliners in China to ensure that U.S.
military planners took China's asymmetrical capabilities seriously.[6] Evidently overlooked, or disregarded, by
Chinese leaders in pushing forward with this test was the significant problem of having a large amount of debris in a low-earth orbit that
is frequented by large numbers of civilian satellites. That debris--that likely includes hundreds of fragments of more than 10 cm and tens
of thousands of smaller pieces--could damage the space assets of any number of nations.[7] The extent of debris that can be created by
ASAT testing has been widely understood since the United States and Soviet Union conducted a small number of tests in the 1970s and
1980s. In 1985, the United States Air Force launched the only U.S. ASAT weapons test involving the destruction of a satellite. That
test--in which a missile was launched from a high-altitude F-15 aircraft--destroyed an old scientific satellite producing over 250 pieces
of trackable debris.[8] The debris from that explosion took almost 20 years to fall back to earth and one piece came dangerously close to
the International Space Station in 1999.[9] The potential international fallout resulting from Beijing's apparent lack of foresight on the
matter of space debris may have long-term repercussions for China's global standing. It will also impact its economic bottom line in
more ways than one. According to an assessment by the Teal Group--an aerospace consulting firm--a space arms race that includes
potential ASAT development would increase the financial risk of any satellite program.[10] The report points out that this
will be felt most in the commercial satellite market--a market in which China is heavily invested. The
debris issue and heightening concerns about Beijing's intentions in space may lead many of China's space partners to rethink bilateral
collaboration. Much of China's space-related cooperation includes areas such as small satellite development and satellite tracking. These
areas of collaboration have significant value in the commercial satellite market, but also involve important technologies for developing
ASAT technology. China's civilian and military space programs are intertwined and knowledge and technology flow freely between the
two sectors. The possible transfer of technology and expertise to China's space program is likely to now be looked at in a more critical
light. The repercussions of China's ASAT test will not only affect Beijing's relationship with the United States and its major space
partners. The test is also making other nations think about their space security needs. India, for instance, has recently shown increasing
interest in certain technologies that could be converted to use in a military space program. Notably, in November 2006 India successfully
tested an anti-ballistic missile system that used a hit-to-kill vehicle.[11] After the Chinese test, a senior Indian defense official said that
New Delhi would take the necessary steps to counter Chinese ASAT capabilities, including through the use of ballistic missiles.[12]
China and its military leaders have been widely criticized for their decision to test an ASAT weapon. Despite this rhetoric, the
international community still faces a choice with regards to further ASAT development. Major space-faring powers, like the United
States, Russia and the European Union, can take the initiative and push for a moratorium on the development and testing of anti-satellite
weaponry. With China's space program still benefiting greatly from cooperation with other space powers, a pledge from China to forgo
further testing could be made a requirement for future collaborations in space. China is not the only nation with both
security concerns and greater space aspirations. As with nuclear weapons, one nation gaining anti-
satellite weapons may motivate others--such as India--to acquire the same technology. The
international community as a whole will suffer greatly from the instability this proliferation would
cause. China's successful test should be seen as a wake-up call--not to start an arms race in outer
space, but to stop one before it picks up too much steam.

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Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 1

[Maurer/Moore/Rekhi] Solar Power Satellites Neg

Solar Power Satellites Negative

B) Microwave observatories key to SETI

C) SETI key to survival

SPS hurts radio astronomy

SPS interferes with all radio astronomy bands

SPS shuts down key areas for radio astronomy

SPS seriously degrades radio astronomy

SETI expanding capability now

SETI on the brink of major breakthrough

SETI programs growing

Space astronomy key to colonizing other planets

SPS=unique risk to optical astronomy

Asteroid impact threatens extinction- detection key to solving it

SPS interferes with optical astronomy

SPS interferes with optical astronomy

Detection key to preventing asteroid impacts

Detection key to preventing impacts

Viable Asteroid Deflection Methods Exist

Crater evidence proves the risk

Research is increasing knowledge of asteroids now- further observation key to avoiding

Ozone destruction causes extinction

Ozone depletion leads to starvation & increased warming

Humans cannot adapt to loss of ozone layer

Space Debris risks societal collapse

Satellite launches lead to space junk

Space debris accumulates with multiple launches

US economy dependent on satellites

Economic decline leads to nuclear war

Space junk can ruin satellites

Satellite assets key to the US military

Space debris will stop colonization

Cascade effect will make all space travel impossible

Space debris shut down possibility of future space projects

Cascade effect ensures permanent debris ring around the earth

Existing space debris makes satellite launch dangerous

Space junk will shut down the geostationary ring

Objects in geosynchronous orbits at risk of debris collision

Shielding will not solve

Lack of international standards prevents regulations from solving

SPS would require 10,000 launches

No major satellite launches planned

B. US economy dependent on satellites

C. Economic decline leads to nuclear war

SPS interferes with telecommunications

SPS would knock out ground based satellite relays

SPS closes off geosynchronous orbit

2. SPS fails- multiple reasons

3. Failure to establish a new agency to run the SPS dooms solvency

5. By the time SSP is ready better techs will be ready

Tech not there for SPS

Multiple barriers to SSP

Solar tech not ready

Technology not ready

Not enough commercial launch capacity

Lack of tech for SPS

Multiple barriers to SSP

Need space factories to provide enough power for earth

No tech to ensure permanent geosynchronous orbit

International legal barriers prevent SPS

NASA does not have the tech

Factories key to space exploitation

NASA will not be able to handle the project