The ethical dimensions of space settlement

While proposals for settling in the space frontier have appeared in the tec hnical literature for over 20 years, it is in the case of Mars that the eth ical dimensions of space settlement have been most studied. Mars raises the questions of the rights and wrongs of the enterprise more forcefully becau se: (a) Mars may possess a primitive biota; and (b) it may be possible to t erraform Mars and transform the entire planet into a living world. The mora l questions implicit in space settlement are examined below from the standp oints of four theories of environmental ethics: anthropocentrism, zoocentri sm, ecocentrism and preservationism. In the absence of extraterrestrial lif e, only preservationism concludes that space settlement would be immoral if it was seen to be to the benefit of terrestrial life. Even if Mars is not sterile, protection for Martian life can be argued for either on intrinsic or instrumental grounds from the standpoints of all of these theories. It i s argued further that a strict preservationist ethic is untenable as it ass umes that human consciousness, creativity, culture and technology stand out side nature, rather than having been a product of natural selection. If Hom o sapiens is the first spacefaring species to have evolved on Earth, space settlement would not involve acting 'outside nature', but legitimately 'wit hin our nature'. (C) 1999 International Astronautical Federation or the Int ernational Academy of Astronautics. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.