Is Space Travel Unethical? | Unveiled

Is Space Travel Unethical?

The history of humans in space has had its highs and lows. We’ve seen plenty of heroic scientific breakthroughs, but we’ve also seen space used as a blank canvas for political jostling. Today, we’ve sent probes and landers to explore more of the universe than ever before, even reaching the interstellar medium with the Voyager missions. And we’re seriously considering colonizing other planets, now that we think we’ve got the tech to do so. But the right question to ask may not be whether we can or not, but rather whether we should?

This is Unveiled and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; Is space travel unethical?

Broadly speaking, ethics is a system of moral principles that affects how we make decisions in our everyday lives. It’s mainly concerned with the balance between what’s good (or not so good) for the individual and for society as a whole. So, in the case of space travel, we need to consider the level of danger any mission puts its astronauts in plus the level of threat that we might pose to other planets, and weigh those against the overall benefits that that mission has for society.

Taking NASA as a case in point, the first question is; Does it benefit everyone? Well, we actually have research into space and space travel to thank for lots of the technology that we use today. Since 1976, NASA has released an annual publication called “Spinoff” that lists new technologies made available to the public thanks (at least in part) to space research - averaging at around 50 new technologies per issue. Spinoff tech includes things like Laser eye surgery, satellite GPS, artificial limbs, 3D printing, memory foam and water purification. Many advanced surgical procedures have also been made possible thanks to NASA research, while we’ve generally developed a better understanding of the human body - its limits and possibilities - thanks to close monitoring of astronauts. Similarly, we have a better than ever understanding of our own planet Earth - including about climate change, air quality, our water and our soil - because of work carried out by NASA and other agencies. In this way, research into space flight has effectively saved lives, broadened our collective knowledge and helped to build modern society; the benefits for all have been tremendous.

But space travel is still a very life-threatening line of work. Most obviously, astronauts are at risk of mechanical errors, technical malfunctions and crashes. If something goes wrong with how a spacecraft (or a spacesuit) operates either on launch or mid-journey, it can very quickly turn into a major and deadly disaster. Elsewhere, not only is the environment of space (once you get there) completely inhospitable, it can also be damaging to the human body in slower, more covert ways. The weightlessness of space causes muscles to atrophy and bones to degenerate, while blurred vision and changes to the immune system are also common. There are plenty of concerns about the psychological effects space travel can trigger, too, through the extreme isolation that astronauts experience.

Radiation is another constant risk, and something NASA considers to be one of the “most menacing” aspects of space, potentially causing damage to the central nervous system and triggering cancer growth - not only during an astronaut’s time in space, but also during their lives afterwards. While it’s true that modern spacecrafts are more equipped than ever to block against radiation, some scientists continue to campaign against long-term missions into deep space precisely because of the threat.

Clearly, the human risk is very real. Astronauts have died in space, during spaceflight and during training, with others sustaining major injuries through their work. On the other hand, while objective stats on the general health and well-being of space travellers are few and far between, it is thought that astronauts and cosmonauts are actually less likely to die from natural causes like cardiovascular disease compared to the general population - in part because of the intensive physical training they go through. So, astronauts are placed in potentially dangerous situations but their bodies also seem better prepared for hardship than the average human’s. From an “Is it ethical?” point of view, it’s an example of the balance that Agency heads and mission planners need to strike.

We’ve so far only breached one half of the story, though. Because for all the moral conundrums we face in placing actual people in high-tech containers and propelling them off of the Earth, there’s also the wider solar system and the wider universe to consider. We’re in an age when we’re finally considering colonizing another planet - but should we? Do we have that right?

It’s a question rooted in our planetary protection laws and practices. In the late-1950s, efforts to prevent human contamination in space were mostly guided by the international Committee on Space Research. Then, those guidelines were upgraded in 1967 with the signing of the Outer Space Treaty. For as long as we’ve been exploring space, there has been at least an awareness that humans should strive to avoid leaving any kind of biological trace wherever they travel. But that’s now being severely challenged as we look to actually land on and live on other planets. We’re moving toward a time when inter-planetary contamination appears less and less of a concern.

In some ways, it’s us against the great unknown. We can’t reliably predict what effect a human presence would have anywhere else other than Earth because, well, we’ve never been anywhere else other than Earth! For some, though, our time on Earth is exactly why we shouldn’t even be aiming to let ourselves loose elsewhere. Even more than issues like human-induced climate change, nuclear leaks and massive deforestations, our basic biological existence on Earth has impacted the atmosphere, spread bacteria and changed how the planet works. Considering as well that, for us to survive anywhere else in even the solar system, we’d need to mount some serious terraforming work from the very beginning… it’s not even as though our presence on other planets would be allowed to evolve naturally. We’d be enforcing wholesale, fundamental changes right away!

If we get there, is the Martian landscape really ours to do with as we please? Are the Venusian clouds for us to shape as we see fit? And, say in the far-future we have colonized another planet, but we’ve also again depleted it of its resources and hastened atmospheric change… was it still the right choice to move there? Were we to one day become an advanced race of planet-hopping beings then we could wind up leaving a trail of dead worlds in our wake as we continuously search for new hosts. This is an especially gloomy picture of humanity, though, which has even led some to label us as “parasitic” in nature, but it also highlights the importance of debating space ethics in general. Relatively speaking, compared to what we hope to achieve, we’re still in the very early stages of space exploration, so now’s the time to set the ground rules!

And all of that’s before we’ve even considered the prospect of life existing elsewhere in the universe. Were we to find evidence of even primitive bacteria on any planet we visit or hope to colonize, then it becomes more an argument of whether or not we consider all life to be equal. Would we steer clear for the good of an extraterrestrial species? Or continue with our plans and essentially invade?

The problem with the Outer Space Treaty is that it’s in many ways up for interpretation - especially where the safety and preservation of another planet’s ecosystem is concerned. Theoretically, one human footprint could introduce all new and deadly pathogens to anywhere that’s not Earth. Any potential lifeform (basic and microbial or complex and intelligent) could well be placed under immediate threat by our mere presence.

The other side of the argument says that a human influence on the rest of the solar system and beyond could actually enhance wherever we visit. And perhaps it could… After all, for all the negative impacts we’ve had on Earth, there are positives too! But we’re bound again by the great unknown; there’s just no telling how well or how badly another planet would react to our arrival. So, we either analyse from afar, make predictions and risk it; or we play it safe and stay at home. The ethics of space travel are getting more and more complicated by the day… but it’s never been a more important debate as we increasingly look to venture out into the stars.