Humanity Should Begin Efforts to Colonize Mars

Introduction:Kind words. Recognition of debate. Assertion of my correctness.C1: Practical InnovationsFunding: Pro wants to take money from national defense. The US defense budget funds most of the globe's security. Cutting the budget will limit the US's ability to provide security with, for instance, its fleet in the Sea of Japan. There would be global political opposition to this plan, and it would result in a lose of global trade. [1] Interest rates would rise due to increased risk and globalization would be reduced, lowing the rate of economic growth. These costs clearly far exceed the benefits of Mars colonization. Extend. It's just a coincidence that some inventions are byproducts of the space program; they could have been discovered in some other way. Dedicated research in a specific practical error is more effective than hoping for byproducts to result from research in some other technology-intensive field. Pro says the space program is not wasteful because it creates jobs and technology. He commits the Broken Window Fallacy [2]. If the space program is not worthwhile, the labor and research are being misallocated. Counting all the grains of in the Sahara Desert would create jobs and technology, but it's wasteful because it doesn't satisfy consumer demand. Go home, Keynes. The space program will necessarily produce wasteful technology if its goal is itself wasteful. Pro cannot wave a magic wand and make these agencies more efficient to cut costs. If NASA were privatized, it would not attempt Mars colonization because it's a bad investment. We know it's a bad investment because there is no private Mars colonization project, and the law of demonstrated preference [3] tells us that means there is no demand for such a project. C2: Economic BenefitsI. Resources Aerospace engineers cannot engage in economic calculation, only speculation. Without a price mechanism and profit and loss accounting, it is impossible to perform economic calculation. Only a private organization, considering its own goals and resources, could rationally determine if an investment is worthwhile. On this see [4]. Con also concedes that this is risky. Extend my time preference analysis. It is reasonable to assume that firms would consider this a bad investment because of the high costs, risks, and delay of returns. Adding more gold to the economy will not help people buy rice. First, it is likely that all the benefits of Mars colonization would be reaped by a small group of wealthy investors. Second, the price of gold would just fall in response to the increase in supply and the world's total purchasing power would remain constant. It is impossible to evaluate the exact utility of deuterium. It costs less than gold, so it is presumably less valuable. Pro says this is a tiny fraction of what Mars has to offer but does not elaborate. He has not given us any definite evaluation of how much revenue would be generated to justify a huge expense, high risk, and long delay of return. II. Terraforming Pro says this plan isn't necessarily to set up colonies. The resolution says otherwise. Pro does not address the core of my criticism, which is that he cannot derive benefit for his case from a project that would take thousands of years without taking discount rate into account. We must consider these colonies as miners and scientists living exclusively indoors as far as present results are concerned. Venus has an induced magnetosphere as a result of solar winds from the sun [4]. Mars lacks any magnetic field. Scientists believe that Mars formerly had a thicker atmosphere and that its atmosphere was depleted [5]. Regardless of why it was depleted, all things being equal the same process would likely occur again. Because Pro wants to spend hundreds billions of dollars, he has to justify that the risk is not too high. According to this, humans would always have to wear suits on Mars to avoid radiation. Other forms of live may also be harmed. The gravity on Mars is 1/3rd of that on Earth, which is significantly less than what humans are adapted to [6]. My source 12 from the previous round discusses this. Also, Pro should show that this is not a risk instead of just claiming there is insufficient evidence because he is the one proposing the spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a hazardous plan. C3: ScienceExtend my arguments on all of this. Scientific secrets on Mars are not important enough to justify the costs. There are limitless alternatives besides beetles on Earth. No one cares enough about these canyons and volcanoes to justify the expense.C4: Survival Pro drops my argument that survival on the species level doesn't matter. We're paying for the potential survival of a very small number of people. This also assumes that the Mars colony can be self-sufficient forever. Because terraforming is basically impossible, it won't be self-sufficient and humans will die out anyway. Pro has the obligation to explain how such a colony could last forever if he thinks otherwise because it's his plan. There is no guarantee that Pro won't get hit by a bus the next time he goes for a walk, so he should stay home instead? We must take proportionate precautions based on the likelihood of a bad event. Fastening my seat-belt does not cost hundreds of billions of dollars. The sky does not appear to be falling, so there is no need to take precautions against the possibility of an apocalypse. Pro concedes the superiority of my counter-plan. The only advantage Pro could possibly gain from this is that we wouldn't have to build vaults. But if the world is ending then cost accounting becomes unimportant and we would build vaults with or without a Mars colony to save more people. C5: Counter-ProposalsWe could do these proposals and go to Mars, but I am arguing that whatever funding Pro claims we should use for a Mars colony should go to these projects instead. In any case, I have a much better source of funding than the military budget Pro wants to draw from: funds can be reallocated from NASA to my projects. The benefits of agricultural technology are not subsumed by the Mars plan. We are not looking for better ways to grow rice indoors in low gravity. Research on agriculture for a Mars colony cannot provide more knowledge about agricultural on Earth than research on agriculture for Earth, so the Pro plan cannot be a better alternative. We need ways to eliminate pests, reduce pollution, and grow food in low-income areas under poor conditions. The research for Mars will not help with this. Means of producing energy on Mars are likewise not analogous to producing energy on Earth. How can hydrological energy technology be of any use on a planet with no liquid water? We will need magically invent everything by trying to colonize Mars, and, again, research on energy for Mars cannot outperform pure energy research. Pro drops my point about infrastructural development and just vaguely implies that the benefits of building roads in Third World countries is somehow subsumed by sending spaceships to another planet. Remember, even if all of this is subsumed by the Mars plan, and it clearly isn't, there are still two clear reasons why these plans are better alone: Pure research on X will yield more knowledge of X than research on X just will regard to X's usefulness to a Mars colony. We can research these things without going to Mars at a much, much lower cost. The Mars plan must stand alone without these benefits. Conclusion:Pro proposes an extremely costly plan with dubious benefits. Almost every benefit he suggests can be achieved at a much lower cost and reduced risk. There is no compelling reason to begin colonizing Mars at this point in our history.Sources:http://www.debate.org...