Resolved: The United States Federal government should mine asteroids.

Rebuttals "As I brought up in my first contention last round that the Federal Government needs to be involved in the early stages of new projects to help get them going and to show that doing such a project is worth it. I turn to my example of the Rail Roads and the Panama Canal the Federal Government passed a bill in 1862 to help rail roads get a huge kick start and helped them get involved. (http://www.ourdocuments.gov......) This lead to the many rail roads popping up everywhere and after the government started breaking up monopolies they helped make riding the Rail affordable. As for the Panama Canal, it was a gold mine. it meant cheaper shipping and receiving goods faster. The thing was that no one wanted to do it due to the malaria in the region (just ask the French) and because the Federal Government stepped in there the project got completed and good became cheaper. (http://www.infoplease.com......)" - I completely agree that the government needs to give incentive and be involved, but there is a difference between the government providing incentive and the government actually mining these asteroids. There is already an incentives program that has worked quite well. There are numerous X prizes and many have to do with space. I won't pinpoint one particular prize as there are many but here is their site. (http://www.xprize.org...) Additionally there are already rapidly growing private space companies such as Virgin Galactic and Space X. In fact in light of Russia threatening to cut off rocket resources to the US Space X has rapidly stepped up to the plate and have already docked their dragon capsule to the ISS. They also are in late development stages for their Falcon 9 heavy rocket. (http://www.spacex.com...) Also my opponent uses the railroads and Panama Canal as examples. There are two major flaws with this. 1). Both of these projects occurred before the UN and space travel. Territory on earth is not neutral and has and will be fought over for a long time. 2). Both of those projects were government contracts. Yes the government kick started both by throwing money in but it was the private companies contracted that actually built them, not the government. NASA is not a private company, it is a government organization for space research and development. Currently NASA is planning to capture an asteroid; but not for mining. They want to land on the asteroid to test numerous systems including life support. It is considered a massive waste of taxpayer money (billions of dollars) and you can get the same if not better results with landing and establishing a permanent base on the moon. This directly correlates back to my point of economic risk. ( http://science.time.com...) - Another point I would like to make is you can't run if you haven't learned how to walk. We have to effectively and afford-ably get supplies to and from orbit regularly. The government is about as far away from effective and affordable as one gets. A golden example is a news article released recently saying that NASA doesn't even have the money to get their own rockets off the ground (http://news.yahoo.com...). How are you going to mine an asteroid if you can even get the supplies up there in the first place let alone back down and processed? You can't fix the deficit by creating more deficit. A negative and a negative never make a positive in the world of economics. It would cost trillions of dollars that are desperately needed in many other sectors of our economy and logistics to make this happen. Even if it were to be successful you risk running this country into the ground and collapsing everything in the process. Then it won't matter what you bring home; there will be nothing to spend that money on. Private corporations are the only realistic answer to mining asteroids. and to say " I have also shown last round that private companies do not want to chance it yet, because private investors don't want to wait too long as they think that they might not see a return on investments. In order to compensate the time that it takes" is conceding your arguments. If private investors don't want to chance it then why would the government? If a company fails it affects a lot, if a government fails it affects everyone. Which is the safer risk? My opponents graph/picture shows the very lucrative business space mining provides. It does not support his position that the government themselves need to mine the asteroids though. And businesses are already taking incentive ex. Virgin Galactic and Space X. Rebuttal II "The OST does not apply to asteroids, the only reason it was created in the first place was to prevent a winner of the Cold War between the US and the USSR. Each nation was fearing the other with territorial disputes as well as nuclear weaponry on the moon. The next question is is the asteroids really a celestial body? Andrew Tingkang stated in an Article for the Seattle University that, "If you can move it, then it isn't a celestial body." (http://www.popularmechanics.com......)" Let me just pull some excerpts from this same source "But remember that open question. If you go get an asteroid and bring it back, is it yours? On Earth, of course, no one would open a mine without being sure they owned the land or at least the mineral rights. The same is true in space. But while mining law on Earth is pretty much settled, asteroid-mining law isn't so clear yet. " "Most experts"including me"believe that a ban on "national appropriation" doesn't prohibit private property rights. The Outer Space Treaty was designed to prevent the winner of the 1960s space race from claiming the moon for itself." "An agreement called the 1979 Moon Treaty did try to outlaw private property on the moon and beyond, but no spacefaring power signed on, and it's generally considered a failure. It certainly wouldn't bind any American"or Chinese or Russian"company that headed for space. " http://www.popularmechanics.com... - I am not sure how this source supports your argument. It clearly prohibits any nation from claiming anything as national property. Even if class M asteroids were considered non- celestial bodies we would still have to go out and bring them back which given our current political atmosphere good luck with that. Multiple times the article says that nothing is preventing private space industries from moving in and setting up shop. Any time you put a flag on something you are creating boundaries. Which in a boundary scarce environment like space creates a very large ticking time bomb. - Most every source my opponent uses constantly refers to private corporations and does not show how having the government themselves mine asteroids would be of any benefit besides creating international tension and bigger deficits. If my opponent continues to support the government "kick-starting" the industry then he concedes to my statement that private corporations need to mine asteroids and agrees with me.