Resolved: The United States Federal Government should mine astoids.

First off, let me start by saying that some of my previous links were not working because a space was added to the end of them. Here they all are again. [1] http://www.wsj.com... [2] http://ireport.cnn.com... [3] http://www.usgs.gov... [4] http://oceanservice.noaa.gov... [5] http://www.nature.com... [6] http://www.mining.com... [7] http://www.upi.com... [8] http://www.nasa.gov... [9] http://www.space.com... [10] http://www.spaceflight.nasa.gov... [11] http://www.sciencedaily.com... [12] http://space-facts.com... [13] http://upload.wikimedia.org... Again, these were for my Round 2. That said, let us go into Round 3. I will address my opponent's arguments here in a separate order than they presented, so that it flows better on this side. ==China== (my opponent's Contention 2 and 3) My opponent falsely states that China has 95% of the world's supply of REE. The fact is that they control over 90% of the current production, but only 28% of the world's known reserves [1]. Because of this, even if they do decide to crack down on exports (which will be addressed shortly) we have significant reserves in just the US to meet all our demand [2] and plenty more around the world [3]. Now, regarding the crack down on exporting. It is true that in 2010, China stopped exporting to Japan (as my opponent's source shows... in 2010), and they reduced their exports to the rest of the world... in 2012, as my opponent has feared. However just this year, er, last year (in 2014) China substantially increased their exports [4][5] because they like money. My opponent also mentions the skyrocketing prices of REE (again, referring to 2011). Unfortunately, the recent history after that needs to be looked into [6]. While there was a massive surge in price because of what China tried to do (again, China had to back off that corning of the market), the prices quickly fell back to Earth, showing that the booming prices were nothing more than a market scare. ==Profits== (this addresses contentions 4 and 1) Obviously, if it can be shown that there is no profit to be made, that negates the contention that it would help our deficit. First thing to obviously look at is that it is cheaper to buy from China than to mine our own land at current prices. If mining our own soil right here in our borders is too expensive, then traveling a million miles through space is going to be even more expensive. However, we will still address some of the "profits" that supposedly can be made. First, my opponent takes about profit of water (technically, his sources do, and he is using their numbers) and claims that it is worth $20,000 a liter. Now, my water bill is pretty high, but not quite that high. This number is obtained because that is the cost to send water from Earth to the International Space Station. However, the ISS does not need 30 million liters of water from an Asteroid. It only uses about 1,300 liters of water a year [7][8]. So, you can, at most, save $20.6 million a year (since it costs $450 million just to get a single ship into space to mine that water, probably not the best use of resources). My opponent pulls $2.7 billion to mine the entire asteroid with no sources to back that up. $2,7 billion will only get you about 5-6 shuttle launches carrying 7.3 tons of material each. There is no way that will be able to mine a multi-billion ton rock. The only options would be to either carry up a completely mining AND extracting facility (which we take countless trips at $450 million a pop) which would then let you carry back completely extracted resources. That means a trip would be $450 million for 7.3 million grams, or $61.43 per gram (not including start up costs that would be insanely expensive). For comparison, gold is currently $38.25 per gram [9] and Platinum is only $43.40 per gram [10] and none of the Rare Earth Metals are even close to these prices [11]. So, yes, there is a ton of money in resources floating out in space. But just like it is not profitable to extract any of the 20 million tons of gold dissolved in the ocean waters [12], extracting the minerals from the asteroids is not profitable, and so, will not solve, nor help, the US debt. I thank you and look forward to our final round. [1] http://www.bbc.com... [2] http://www.usgs.gov... [3] http://www.nature.com... [4] http://investorintel.com... [5] http://www.reuters.com... [6] http://www.businessinsider.com... [7] http://science.nasa.gov... [8] http://www.nasa.gov... [9] http://www.goldpriceoz.com... [10] http://www.bullion-rates.com... [11] http://www.frontierrareearths.com... [12] http://oceanservice.noaa.gov...