THBT space exploration should be pursued by private companies rather than governments.

We will now begin with our rebuttals. ___ Rebuttals: Politics ". .. NASA is underfunded. It is unable to fulfill everything it has been tasked with. " Actually this year (2016), the US Congress has already rewarded NASA with an extra 1.3 billion dollars in funding [1], totalling 19.3 billion dollars. With the extra funding, NASA has become more efficient and effective than ever-"The extra money means NASA has a better chance of pulling off its primary missions on schedule. " [2] Some of the anticipated and completed accomplishments of this year include: -The launching of thirteen science and cargo missions and one commercial crew test -To advance the Nation"s space exploration plan and ensure that the United States remains the world's leader in space exploration and scientific discovery for years to come. -To extend the operation of the International Space Station (ISS) to at least 2024 [3] "There is widespread agreement that NASA does not have the resources to do all of the things it has been asked to do. .. " Your source is unfortunately from 2006 and therefore, slightly outdated compared to our more recent and relative ones above which refute your point. Taxpayer Taste Aversion "Following disasters such as Columbia and Challenger, the taxpayers, those who ultimately fund NASA, have grown wary of manned exploration projects. " Admittedly, that project was a disaster as you say. However, thirteen years later now, the US government are really trying to increasingly improve their national space agency with more funds as we explained in our first rebuttal. "When disaster strikes, taxpayers cringe, and the agency has to push back or cancel future manned missions. " That is not only subject to public space agencies. Whether it is a private or a government-funded agency, when disaster strikes, no tax-payer or sponsor will be happy or impressed. However, the solution to this is not to cut funds or to entirely cancel future projects, it is in fact, to invest more money on planned missions so that future accidents will not occur and that quality space exploration can continue to be carried out. "Privately funded agencies would not be subject to this form of scrutiny, as investors would be conscious of risks and be scrupulous in their spending. " This is not necessarily true. Private agencies are more concentrated and interested in profit and competition rather than being conscious of risks and carrying out every step carefully. A prominent example is SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, which in its hasty race to get to Mars, rushed its development, tested its first launch prematurely and as a result, has delayed their plans and goals. We will be discussing this in much more detail later. "private exploration firms have to be careful and ensure near absolute certainty that the mission will be successful" This doesn't really differentiate public and private companies. We mentioned this point near the beginning of our argument. We agree that private exploration firms have to be careful to ensure that their projects are successful but that is the same with government-funded agencies. Public agencies need to be careful too because they are given a specific annual budget and as a result, their overall performance plays an important role in determining their next funds. Therefore, public agencies too have to ensure near absolute certainty that the mission will be successful. Private firms are already an integral part of exploration "both Obama and the Republican-led Congress are pushing for expaned private ventures in the field of space exploration. .. " We would like to reiterate that one of the primary goals for this year's increased funds for NASA is to "ensure that the United States remains the world's leader in space exploration and scientific discovery for years to come. "[3] No more needs to be said here. "SpaceX is on track to be on Mars between 2020 and 2030, a decade before NASA's SLS craft" Let us compare the SLS craft (NASA) to the Falcon Heavy (SpaceX), both which are currently developing and planning to travel to Mars. Although it may seem as if NASA is "a decade" behind SpaceX, recent facts show that this is probably not the case. Firstly, the Falcon Heavy was supposed to have their first launch early in 2015 [4]. However, due to a technical problem regarding the over pressurisation of the liquid oxygen tank, the launch inevitably failed [5]. SpaceX hopes to repeat their first launch successfully in 2017 but unfortunately, due to the numerous times they have postponed it already, it is likely that a further postponing could be done again- "Following the Falcon 9 CRS-7 [ie. Falcon Heavy] failure investigation in 2015 and repeated rocket development delays (. .. ) the first Falcon Heavy launch is now expected in early 2017. " [4] This shows how excessively ambitious SpaceX is and how they ultimately rush their projects in order to be the first in their competitions. NASA on the other hand are planning to launch their SLS craft in 2018 [6]. So we can conclude that both companies are on the similar track regarding time- ". .. it seems reasonable to suppose that Falcon Heavy will be at least as "operational" in 2018 as the SLS. "[7] NASA is ineffective It is clear that the only reason NASA has really been ineffective was because of the poor government funding in the recent years. This year's increase has proven excitingly successful for NASA and will hopefully be, for the years to come. Therefore, we are not going to go through each of our opponents' individual points as they are very similar to their previous points. Defence We would like to thank our opponents who have kindly allowed us to post some of our defence in this round. We will be extremely brief as this was not initially a part of the framework of this debate. "I do not think a telescope, no matter how fancy, falls under that category. It is not exploring, but examining" Space exploration is defined as "the ongoing DISCOVERY and exploration of celestial structures in outer space by means of continuously evolving and growing space technology" [8]. Therefore we have not gone off topic. "The opposing team is absolutely right when they say that a private company would have rejected (. .. ) Why? Because they don't waste their own money. " The telescope is a huge deal as we already explained in Round 2. It is a revolutionary invention that will immensely aid future astronomers, astronauts etc. Compare that to the relatively lesser missions carried out by private agencies who do not want to invest their money on something that could be unprofitable in the short-term. This only proves again that private companies are more interested in profit rather than benefitting the society. Conclusion The main point of space exploration regardless of what type of funding is involved, is to discover things and to improve our society (and one's country, we might add). The best way to do this, from all our reasons throughout this debate, is for space agencies to be state-owned. The primary focus of this debate has been within the US and I'm glad it has because we have excellent examples of both types of agencies. Government funding has proven to work very well, especially considering America's phenomenal list of past projects (eg. going to the moon) as well as recently. We have also noticed that most of our opponents' sources are quite outdated (dating around 2006-2010) and as a result, do not support some of their claimed points. Thank you everyone for reading. Vote Con! ___ Sources: . http://tinyurl.com...