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Space

I must agree that the past Space topics were fun to work on.  I think 
the other posts have explained that in plenty of detail.  i have a few 
caveats.

1)  Reagan's gone.  part of the fun was that the topic came at the 
height of Reagan's push for "star wars" or "sdi" depending on your 
politics.  In many ways, much of the community put the wording of the 
topic aside and participated in a massive debate on this subject matter. 
 I'm not certain whether that type of debate would still be around at 
the same level.

2)  Budget disads.  If you enjoy listening to high quality (and low 
quality) budget debates this is a great topic.  Many teams devoted their 
negatives to the budget questions.  And on this subject matter it is 
actually probably a fairly salient concern.

3)  Science Fiction.  In doing my master's thesis following the space 
topic, i noticed that many authors in policy context's shifted to 
narratives in their persuasive strategies.  However, often the 
narratives also shifted into the realm of science fiction.  Given the 
futuristic nature of much of the discussion, it is very difficult 
without fairly high-level scientific competence to distinguish between 
the probable futures and the possible but unlikely ones.  Often the 
latter are couched in language much more powerful than the former.

4)  Science arguments.  It seems that there would be a much larger 
proliferation of science kritiks under this topic.  That is not 
necessarily bad.  It is simply a difference from the last time the 
discussion was around.  On the other hand, affirmatives could I suppose 
turn these arguments by arguing exploration budgets tradeoff with space 
science research a relatively significant controversy in the literature.

5)  Asteroid Defense.  I think that this case was, especially on the 
high school topic, unbelievably successful partly due to biases in 
debate concerning risk analysis.  I imagine that IF the space topic is 
involved, it will also entail a rather developed re-thinking of risk 
analysis as a component of policymaking.

that's all ... just wanted to put in my 2 cents.

david rhaesa
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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