#186 - Is a U.S.-China Space Race Good for Humanity?

Open to Debate

Education, Society & Culture, News, Government, Politics

4.5 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2020

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

China is ramping up its national space industry with huge investments in next-generation technologies that promise to transform military, economic, and political realities. Against this backdrop, we ask: Would a new U.S.-China space race be good for humanity? Michio Kaku, Avi, Loeb, Raji Pillai, and Bidushi Bhattacharya join us for a debate on the potential U.S.-China space race in our second episode of “That’s Debatable," our new series presented in partnership with Bloomberg Media and sponsored by IBM. A note from our sponsor: There’s nothing to lose from gaining a fresh perspective. IBM Watson® was built to help us look at an issue from all sides—from cultural debates to customer reviews. Using advanced natural language processing, Watson is making sense of data from a range of topics to help give us more informed perspectives, so we can make more informed decisions. See how Watson informs a human debate at ibm.com/debatable Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm John Donovan, your host and moderator and debate referee.
0:06.0	And today we have four luminaries on the topic of space.
0:09.0	Let's just go ahead and call them stars, who will be debating for and against this motion
0:14.4	a US-China space race is good for humanity.
0:19.2	And first off, I want to say thank you to our sponsor, IBM, for helping to make this
0:22.8	all possible.
0:23.8	All right, now the next order of business is the voting.
0:27.0	Yes, voting.
0:28.7	We're timing on this one, but in this debate you get to decide who wins the debate and
0:34.6	you do that by voting.
0:35.9	We have you vote two times.
0:38.3	Once before you have heard all the arguments, which means you'll be doing in just a few
0:41.5	seconds.
0:42.6	And once again, after you have heard all of the arguments, and I want to explain now that
0:47.1	the way we do this is the team that sways the most votes from one side to the other,
0:52.9	from the first vote to the last vote that has declared our winner.
0:56.1	All right, it is time to meet our debaters.
0:58.4	First, the team arguing in favor of the motion of US-China space race is good for humanity.
1:03.9	First he is a physicist.
1:05.2	He was the longest serving astronomy chair at Harvard.
1:08.0	Avilobe is the author of the upcoming book Extra Terrestrial, the first sign of intelligent
1:13.8	life beyond earth.
	...

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