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Space Topic

I think that the debate community's dismissal of the space topic has been a 
bit premature.  I think there are some great reasons for a space topic:

1. New area of discussion--Unlike any of the proposed topics, space has not 
been discussed at all by anyone who will be debating next year, except for 
upcoming seniors who debated their 9th grade year, and that was of course 
novice debate.

2. New and interesting impact and disad areas--space junk, militarization of 
space, space technologies, asteroids(depending on wording), aliens, 
colonies, etc. are all very cool debate topics.

3. Testimony about past space topics--Almost everyone who I talk to about 
past space topics both at the high school level and at the college level 
says that the space topic was among their favorite topics ever.  That should 
not be taken for granted, because it reflects not only the interesting 
nature of the topic but also how well it works within a debate context.

People offer a few arguments against space exploration as a topic, and 
here's my reply to those:

1. The Cold War made it cool:  this is true, but to say that this has ended 
the military relevance of it is ridiculous.  Satellite technology is 
important in every single military hotspot in the world.  While much of this 
is US-supplied, that is changing--the number of countries with space 
programs is growing.  Also, the military implications are only one aspect of 
the space debate.  The many other functions of space exploration continue to 
be relevant.

2. It is not relevant to our lives: I will concede that the space topic does 
not have the social relevance of civil rights.  My reply is this: debate 
does not have to be our only tool for discussing and tackling relevant 
social problems.  This does not deny that debate can be valuabe in this 
sense, but I refuse to believe that debaters will not learn about issues of 
race, gender, or sexual orientation without a civil rights topic.  We can 
debate space and recognize that running fun positions on the aff and neg is 
not something we should feel ashamed about.

I guess these are the two main objections to space.  There has been a 
general reluctance to take it seriously for some reason, which seems silly.  
Just 'cuz you heard war stories about wormholes affirmatives from long ago 
doesn't mean space is a joke.

Carl Engstrom
Harvard Debate
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