Space Exploration: Private Sector Investment vs Public Sector Investment

We negate the resolution, Resolved: Private sector investment in Human Space exploration is preferable to public sector Investment. Public sector investment first is critical to defense, second, private spending is unsafe and efficient and finally public sector investment is critical to the health of the economy. First, public sector investment into human space exploration is critical to US defense and international position. As a NASA press release from October 6th, 2011 indicates, NASA investment into human space exploration often produces a large number of spin technologies that can be applied to the military. All modern military rocketry technologies used in nuclear missiles and conventional weapons were developed by NASA, and outsourced to the military. Aviation Week states on March 5th, 2006 that modern military technology development will lie in space technology in the future, and NASA is critical to that process; the development of military technology would most likely halt if the military was to be refused help from NASA in setting up inter space jets, or satellites that can strike down any unidentified, moving objects from space. Without public sector investment in NASA, the United States would be weakened in military technologies and could easily be defeated by major enemies in a conventional war. In addition, private companies, who often have contracts with NASA, would be broken from their contracts and would release valuable high end military technology to China, India, Russia or Iran in exchange for money. This leaking of valuable US defense technology and the destruction of our own technological progress would destroy our dominant international position built through military superiority and make the US a second class country that can easily be threatened. Second, privatization would result in great safety risks and inefficiencies. As both MIT and NASA Chief Ron Dittemore have said, "an overemphasis on profit can bias decisions, resulting in Program weakness with reduction of critical skills and erosion of checks and Balances."A profit motive will force companies to cut as many costs as possible in order to boost profits. Unfortunately such costs often include the safety measures that can be the difference between life and death if something goes wrong. The risks to everyone involved are also enhanced by the sudden need for inter-agency and even inter-business communication and cooperation. For example, if a private company faces a severe problem in space, it cannot obtain cooperation from a competing company who may have a solution since that competing company does not have a profit motive to help that company; this may pose dangers to astronauts within space. Third, public sector investment ensures local job growth and protects domestic jobs. Each year, as stated by the Guardian on October 10th, 2011, NASA uses its 19 Billion dollars to employ thousands of domestic technical experts and local engineers. A private company, however, would outsource jobs to different countries, and not hire local engineers. Tens of thousands of jobs relating to NASA would be lost as a result, as companies can simply hire equally capable foreign engineers. Also, reducing government spending by cutting NASA would hurt the US economy. As John Maynard Keynes also states in his General Theory of Unemployment, reducing public spending in a recession is one of the worst things a government can do, as it will reduce aggregate demand and cause a cyclical process of job loss, and reduced investment in the economy. Removing 19 Billion dollars of essential spending in this economy would not be a wise decision. In addition, private companies such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Virgin Galactic and Space X often depend on public investment and subsidies to survive. For example, Space X constructed the Falcon Rocket and Design model for an estimated 1.9 Billion. Without public contracts, according to MIT and Space Review, many of these companies that depend on public space investment would go bankrupt; the estimated job losses with a privatization of a space program would lie in the ballpark of 1 million. My partner and I negate the resolution for the following reasons: public sector investment is critical to our defense, private investment is naturally inefficient and unsafe, and space investment is critical to our economy.