SPACE ETHICS

Let me start this piece off by saying I am no certified expert on ethics or space! All of this is a personal opinion, and you, dear reader, are completely entitled to your own.

Now, space ethics is the concept of “Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.” However, I believe it’s a little too late to rally against this “shouldn’t” side of things. There have already been numerous advancements in space exploration and understanding, so why stop now?

I do agree that the origin of space exploration was rather petty, as a “space race” between nations is a silly reason to make bounds instead of leaps into the great unknown. However, it did yield results either way, so whom am I to judge!

That aside, many are concerned with the ethics of space exploration as well. It’s hard to ignore our dirtying of Earth, so many turn to Mars or any other planet as a backup plan, which means only a small number of the population would actually be able to immigrate to Mars, leaving the majority of us here on Earth.

Whether that will or should happen is not my concern, but space colonization is a point of worry in many communities. As humans, we don’t really have a fond history of colonization, meaning there a subtle and very real fear that the history of colonization will repeat itself.

Will we lose our humanity when we split the population and bus the probably rich off to another planet? Will we “ruin” yet another planet for our own gain? Is it too late to start over? Many of these questions have arisen and they are not out of nowhere. People, me included, share in the same worries we did when finding out how real of a possibility space colonization is. We as a human race are not perfect, and our past sins may very well follow us into space.