距离第一轮区域联赛第一场郑州赛区开赛只剩一个多月的时间，各位辩手们准备得怎么样了呢？来一起听听NSDA资深教练对于辩题的看法吧。

Vicente Alvarez

　　曾担任斯坦福大学辩论与演讲联盟运营指导，并在旧金山州立大学、湾区辩论与演讲联盟等多所专业辩论组织担任教练。在全美多项辩论与演讲比赛中获得名次及年度最佳辩手等奖项。2014年初来到中国，负责广东地区辩论教学与指导工作。

　　This fall debate students from all over China will turn their collective brainpower to question what the future ofhumanity should look like.

　　“Resolved: Humanity should establish aspace colony by 2050.”

　　In Elon Musk’s presentation to the 67th annual International Astronautical Congress outlining SpaceX’s plans for traveling to Mars, he asked a simple question: Why go anywhere? Keeping this question in mind is a great way for debaters to keep their heads out of the clouds and more grounded when considering the pros and cons of humanity establishing a space colony by 2050. In this article I want to give a brief overview about some of the important questions at the heart of this topic.

　　What is space colonization?

　　While some people disagree on some insignificant details, most people agree that space colonization is permanent human habitation beyond earth. Those four qualities (permanent, human, habitation,beyond earth) will largely define what this topic is and is not about. In this way these qualities limit what debaters should be talking about. The permanent quality of "space colonization" means that long-duration space flight projects like the International Space Station and other space agencies’ projects are outside the scope of this topic. It also implies in much of the research that space colonies are multi-generational, and so would need to be able to sustain multiple generations of human habitation. Furthermore, I apologize to those of you that were excited to talk about ant colonies on the Moon or plant colonies on Mars, but the humanand habitationqualities of “space colonization” mean that these are, unfortunately, outside the scope of this topic. Habitationhelps to further limit purely scientific projects from the topic. If a central feature of the space colonization is not humans living beyond earth, then it is probably not space colonization. The final quality of space colonization is that it should be beyond earth. Initially, this quality actually gave some of the debate coaches some consternation. Most of the literature on the topic speaks of space colonization in two ways: 1)colonies that are on celestial bodies aside from the earth (Moon, Mars, asteroids, moon of outer planets, et cetera), 2) large orbital settlements that are beyond both the atmosphere and orbit of Earth. Again, here small space modules like the International Space Station don’t really qualify as beyond earth.

　　Why should we colonize space?

　　Now that we have a framework with which to understand exactly what space colonization is, we can turn our attention to a much more interesting question: Why?

　　In the talk I mentioned above, Elon Musk posited that the future of humanity will go alongone of two paths:

　　"One path is we stay on Earth forever, and there will be some eventual extinction event. I do not have an immediate doomsday prophecy, but eventually, history suggests, there will be some doomsday event. The alternative is to become a space-bearing civilization and a multi-planet species, which I hope you agree is the right way to go."

　　There are many scenarios for the extinction of all human life on Earth. Things like climate change and a potential nuclear military conflict are both examples of human caused catastrophes that could end of all life on Earth. Stephen Hawking, perhaps the world\'s most well-known space colony advocate, acknowledges the seriousness of those eventualities, but doesn’t see them as the most dangerous of all the potential futures that may exist. In an October 2001 interview with The Telegraph, a UK-based newspaper, he stated:

　　"In the long term, I am more worried about biology. Nuclear weapons need large facilities, but genetic engineering can be done in a small lab. You can\'t regulate every lab in the world. The danger is that either by accident or design, we create a virus that destroys us. I don\'t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can be fall life on a single planet."

　　Aside from a super-virus, scientists have recently been ringing the alarm bells about the speed at which humanity may develop a super-intelligent/artificially-intelligent entitythat could annihilate the human race.

　　So … that’s fun.

　　Aside from the rather grim—though likely—prospect of an extinction-level event of the human race, there are other reasons to establish a space colony. Perhaps chiefly among them are the vast resources that exist in the solar system. Consider every object in your life: every piece of glass, metal, plastic, wood, every shiny object, all of it, every single human-made object that exists—or has ever existed—has come from resources that have been extracted from the Earth. If a space colony could extract a fraction of a percent of the resources of Earth from the planets, moons, and/or asteroids in our solar system then that space colony will have been worth the expense hundreds of times over.

　　The next reason is the lessening the effect of humans on Earth. It is now a widely agreed upon fact that human industrial and technological advancement has caused climate change, as well as a host of other negative consequences on Earth. Creating a human presence beyond Earth would serve to alleviate some of the consequences of continued advancement.Global warming—while horrible for Earth—would be a godsend for future Mars-dwelling humans.

　　Ultimately, the limits of human growth and expansion only extend as far as the limits of Earth—and the extent to which we want to make Earth a more comfortable place to live may mean turning to space for relief.

　　The last reason that I want to mention is this: Space is cool, and I hear the views are amazing. Humans have been fascinated with space for all of human history. Now we are at a point in that history when we could actually go and live beyond Earth’s. It is totally possible that one of you students reading this article may one day live on Mars. That possibility is incredibly cool.

　　In an interview with The Washington Post former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said of human involvement in space that, "...the goal isn\'t just scientific exploration ... it\'s also about extending therange of human habitat out from Earth into the solar system as we go forward intime..."

　　To the NSDA China students who will debate thisresolution this fall: I encourage you to have fun with it and explore the topicwith a sense of wonder and excitement. In that vein, I’ll remind you of our guiding question: Why go anywhere?

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