Chapter 2. Ethical critique on space exploration

While living on planet Earth, in all its beauty and uniqueness, we still dream about new worlds and this is fine: curiosity was always inherent in people. But behind the dream about of a bright future in space there is also a really big problem: our home-planet started to change because of us and, instead of replacing our bad habits with less malicious ones, we choose to run away and look for a new planet as an answer.

While reviewing space exploration history and current space missions, as well as studies on the topic, I have noticed some blind spots that exist in the field. These spots are either less explored or are not known enough by the broader audience. Nevertheless, it does not make these topics, concerns, or opinions less important. In this chapter, I will describe them and give some critique on the problem of space exploration from an ethical point of view.

Linguistic

The language of colonialism is infecting outer space, thanks to dominance by rich white businessmen and politicians.

Caroline Haskins, The Racist Language of Space Exploration

Many people are convinced that linguistic problems in space exploration are the least essential to be solved. In my opinion, they are as important as the others. And here is why.

The core of the linguistic problem lies in the language and word choice, which we are using when speaking about space exploration. The most common words we hear are: colonization, occupation, and exploitation. They usually stand in one row with neutral, scientific “exploration”. But are these words really synonyms?

Colonization, occupation, and exploitation all have a negative meaning derived from their historical context. The term colonization was developed to describe the process by which a central system of power dominates the surrounding land and its components. A dominated territory, in this case, is called a colony, and the dominating system of power is a colonizer. Colonization is usually accompanied by the oppression of the native culture, the distribution of the supreme culture of a colonizer, and also by the unlimited use of all kinds of valuable resources belonging to the colony such as its labor force, fossils, and so on.

This irresponsible use of resources is also called exploitation when the colonizer is the only one who profits from it and nothing is returned to the colony’s natives and nature. The term exploitation has a negative connotation, because often the economical growth of the colonizer leads to the environmental and cultural degradation of the land.

Moreover, exploitation goes hand in hand with occupation, which has some features of colonization. One of the meanings of the word is connected to war and is used as a military term: it is effective provisional control by a ruling power over a territory, without a claim of formal sovereignty.16 This is a temporary state of the land, but it is far from being a positive one.

Based on this brief term analysis, each of the words colonization, occupation, and exploitation does not have any positive meaning. They are not synonyms of exploration. But the problem is that they are used as such. So, for people who are not prone to critical thinking, these words may mean the same thing. No one asks why Stephen Hawking writes in his books words like “colonizing Mars” right next to “space exploration”.

Yuval Noah Harari explains in his famous book Sapience. A Brief History of Humankind that “the Scientific Revolution and modern imperialism were inseparable.” 17 This is the historical background of such a horrible neighbourship. Europeans colonized the whole world partly because of a thirst for knowledge, and now this world is going to colonize outer space for the same reason. But as much as this thirst for knowledge drives the world, so does capitalism as well.

At a closer look, it becomes visible that the loudest voices in the field of space exploration belong to white rich politicians and businessmen. The majority of people seem happy about Elon Musk’s idea to occupy Mars and colonize it. Furthermore, almost everyone knows about the new military unit of the U.S., founded by Trump, namely the Space Force, which is supported by most people because it will help to “make America great again.” This slogan is actually super racist as well. Americans tend to refer to colonization as a heroic time full of adventures and brave conquistadors.18 This mindset, which not only entitles Americans to colonize but implies it as their destiny, is already incorporated in their identity. And the use of this word in such an engaging way makes the history of violence and dispossession vanish from memory. Colonization does not associate with evil anymore.

But it still is. In colonialism there are always the oppressed and those who benefited from it. As long as we apply this language to our future in space, it will remain this way. When people with the power to make space travel possible, such as Trump and Elon Musk, who are multiplying their wealth by benefiting “from systemic racism and the potential economic glory from new economic ventures,” tell you about the greatness of a spacefaring civilization and believing in a bright tomorrow, there is one thing that they fail to mention. Not everyone will be part of that future.

But is it a problem at all if the world is uninhabited like the Moon? In this case colonial language will not be a big moral problem that could harm someone immediately. However, if we think of a farther future, it could be the instrument of segregation, oppression, and reckless profiting on space exploration.

Language does shape our minds. And the time to ask ourselves, if this is how we want to live is now. Is not this negative context not enough to stop using these words? In how far should space exploration differ from the colonization of continents and countries? Do we not have better words for that, than exploitation, colonization, and occupation, in order to be more careful with what and how we inhabit?

And we do have a better lexis to frame our future in a more ethical way. For example, instead of “colonizing” and “occupying”, we can “inhabit” other worlds, “settle” on other planets, “accommodate” on them, and just simply “move” to Mars. Sometimes it sounds ridiculous that simply changing the words we say we could change our whole attitude. But language is a great tool which we should use. And if there is any chance to change the approach to space exploration and to living in general, we should grab it with both hands. Nothing terrifies me more than a world that wants to continue applying this old imperial mindset that caused so much pain, deaths, and oblivion of cultures and nations, to the future.

Aesthetic

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, Molly Bawn

Another critique on space exploration, and on inhabiting Mars in particular, has an aesthetic background.

It is no secret: people love beautiful things and beautiful places. For us, beauty was always a measure of value. We want to surround ourselves with it, that is why we build extraordinary houses in extraordinary places. But some prefer the mountains instead of the sea to accommodate themselves. And here the problem is born – aesthetics is a matter of taste. But even if some people like waterfalls more than forests, this does not allow them to destroy what they do not like. The importance of preserving the beauty of the Earth is undeniable. The Earth is beautiful no matter what. But is Mars beautiful enough for us to save its indigenous appearance?

And from what do we have to protect the red planet? The answer is terraforming. Terraforming is a hypothetical process by which an environment of a celestial body (either a moon or a planet) is deliberately modified to reach Earth-like conditions with the purpose of making life on it possible.

Some scientists believe that terraforming is a necessary step in colonizing Mars and, therefore, in the survival of our civilization. Moreover, terraforming is the only way to accommodate and sustain the whole population – “billions of interplanetary refugees.” 19 It could also be the biggest scientific eco-project in history, from which we can learn so much, even though it is going to change Martian landscapes forever. And there is always an opportunity to enhance Martian beauty with Earth-like nature. As one can see there are a lot of arguments pro terraforming. But still: is all of this enough to justify destroying its environment to make it suitable for us?

The genuine beauty of Martian landscapes is the only counter-argument. Some say Mars is objectively not beautiful: Humanity had so many fantasies about this planet, and Mars failed them as we learned more about it. That is why in the media we still see mostly terraformed pictures of the planet: images of Martian landscapes which were edited to look more exciting and closer to our assumptions for more audience engagement. It seems that we have certain beauty standards even towards planets.

But looking at NASA pictures on Google and actually stepping on this distant, unknown, mysterious planet are no doubt two very different experiences. We have never even seen Mars with our own eyes, but we already trying to decide whether we should sacrifice it or not.

For me personally, Mars is extremely beautiful. It is different and definitely less saturated than how the most renderings and movies depict it. But the iridescently colored craters and dust waves are beautiful too. We need to make more space in our heads for different kinds of beauty: of planets and of humans. To change the identity of the whole planet in order to make it look like the Earth is a very problematic intention because the Earth itself already does not look like it did 200 years ago. So instead of thinking about changing other worlds, I prefer to focus on keeping the red planet red and the blue planet blue as it is supposed to be.

Dunes and craters on the Martian surface made by HiRISE

Source: beautifulmars.tumblr.com © NASA / JPL/ UArizona

Environmental

The whole focus on the mission turned to the Earth after we saw the Earth coming up over the lunar surface. And the Earth was the only thing in the universe that had any color. It was very lonely and the universe is pitch black. I think it gave us a sense of ‘We better do our best to take care of this little blue marble that we have.’

Frank Borman, 1968

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the idea of having space colonies exists in the world. The shape of this idea was always changing, as every enthusiast proposed his unique vision, but the core was the same – in their opinion humanity should have colonies in outer space.

It all started with Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who published a novel Beyond the Planet Earth in 1920 and described the very first concept of people living in space, 41 years before the first manned flight to the cosmos. In the 70s the same utopian idea was proposed by American physicist Gerard O’Neil. What he offered was to build a colony in space to minimize the impact that humankind had on the Earth’s environment by moving a part of the population from the planet to outer space. The scientist believed that if a civilization gains the ability to build space colonies “it becomes unkillable in the physical sense.” 20

It is hard to argue with this point, but environmentalists always have had their objections to it. For the critics of space colonies that were influenced by the environmentalist movement, “the very idea of space exploration is not only unwise, but also immoral.” 21 For Wendell Berry, author and environmental activist, O’Neil was “a space enthusiast, who ignores what is essentially a moral problem and offers technological solutions instead.” Berry considered this approach as wrong because if we wanted to save Earth from us by going further into space, then who would protect from us space itself?

The western approach has presented the world with industrialization and the mentality of constant growth implemented into capitalism. Together they irreversibly changed the environment of our home planet. “Space is, then, a delusion, for it offers more growth and technology to stop the mess caused by growth and technology.” 22 Only changing our habits could stop spreading the damage. It is the only sustainable alternative to our current way of life that would be beneficial in the long run. Because if we do not care about one planet’s nature, we are going to fail every single planet on our way.

Stephen Hawking considered that spending money on space exploration does not mean that there is no need to take care of Earth.23 And I agree. But while Hawking wrote this in 2018, Wendell Berry was pointing out this moral problem already in 1977. That means that we still have not found an environmental solution for our planet, but instead we continue irresponsibly dreaming about colonizing space.

If the perspective of being unkillable planetary nomads is not enough to make people more aware of the consequences of their actions, there is another reason why the ethics of space exploration must be established as soon as possible. We, humans, have a long history of destroying biospheres and erasing species on our planet by profiting from the resources. The same fate could await for other worlds that we encounter.

As I have already mentioned in the section dedicated to linguistic critique on space colonization, science and capitalism usually go hand in hand. By this I mean that all the spheres science has discovered are soon to be commercialized. The same goes for space. Commercial use of it is not a fantasy anymore. The U.S. government has already opened an office of space commercialization and an office for commercial space transportation. The institutionalization of the commercial activities encouraged private businesses to step into the field of space exploration which before was exclusive to science and military.

While the interest of science in new worlds lies in discovering extraterrestrial life, the interest of the commercial sector is in finding profits outside of our planet. The most popular directions for business development in space at the moment are space tourism and mining. “In addition to the monetary return to the investors, there might also be significant values to the rest of humanity in forms of jobs, access to resources and other opportunities.” 24 But any commercial invasion of an inhabited world could lead to catastrophic consequences both for earthlings and for indigenous life. That is why it is so important to start the discussion about the ethics of space commercialization while we are not yet technologically able to start the exploitation of other worlds.

But what does it take to establish that a world is uninhabitable? This question has not received a lot of attention so far, but answering it is crucial prior to deciding whether a world should be exploited. The problem of confirming that a world has no living potential lies in the asymmetry between Proving an Instance and Proving a Universal. To explain briefly: It would be enough to get one positive result to prove that a world has life, but how many ‘negative results’ would be needed to prove that there is no life? It is yet unclear “how many observations we need, how diverse they need to be or how good they have to be for us to be convinced that a planet is uninhabited.” 25

Another grey area is in the kind of moral obligations that would arise once the existence of life is proven. Here we have to decide whether this form of life is sentient (has the ability to feel and experience what happens to it) or not. And this is already an ethical task rather than a scientific one. There is one new branch of ethics that confronts this problem on Earth – Geoethics. But astrobiology seems to require this geoethical approach as well in order to include every potential victim of the process of space exploration and not only humans. That is why it is time to leave behind this anthropocentric mindset and include perspectives of others on the agenda before we decide to exploit what we find. In any case, I find the colonization of other worlds unnecessary until we learn how to take care of our own planet.

Psychological

And what we’re dreaming of is not the roar of a spaceport, Not this icily cold and bluish view. What we’re seeing is the grass by our houses. Oh this bright-green, this bright-green lively grass

Zemlyane*, Grass by the home

Besides the points of linguistic, aesthetic, and environmental critique on space exploration that I have already discussed in this chapter there is a psychological side to the problem that even in the scientific field is not discussed widely enough.

Conducted experiments actually do study some psychological aspects of space travel, but they mostly regard short-term events like sending an expedition to Mars. I consider these events short-term because the final goal of all the projects and missions is to allow humans to live everywhere in the universe. Compared to this goal, an exploration mission is a blink of an eye. Whereas an expedition has to return to Earth after a few years, migration to another world could be a one-way ticket.

In the Mars500 and HI-SEAS projects, the psychological effects of isolation on mental health as well as the relationships within the isolated group were studied. These projects were conducted to prepare astronauts and researchers for the mission, but no projects were studying the psychological consequences of interplanetary migration and the relationships between crew members and their significant others who stayed on Earth.

I assume the reason why these consequences are not being explored enough is that it is simply impossible to study them in advance. It would be too inhuman to conduct a life-long experiment. Another reason is that people do not expect interplanetary migration to happen in the nearest future. It seems unrealistic, therefore, any studies at this point are unnecessary. But Elon Musk predicts one million people will live on Mars within 30 years from now, by 2050. And it is not a fantasy, it is a goal. So I believe we better start thinking now about the effects that this migration might have on us. Just in case.

The main psychological critique on space exploration is that as strong as the adventurous spirit in humans is, their bound to their home is just as strong. And while away from home we tend to experience homesickness. In general, being homesick means to feel grief and discomfort while missing a familiar environment. By environment, I understand people who used to be around, routines and rituals, foods and places, etc.

To understand the intensity of homesickness that could be felt on Earth nowadays and to try to imagine its interplanetary equivalent, I conducted a series of interviews with my immigrant friends. Some of them were away from home for 10 years, some of them just for a few months. I expected to see some sort of a pattern or stages of adaptation, but in fact, nowadays we have so good coping instruments that we almost never feel homesick. The internet makes life easier, we always have an opportunity to call back home or watch movies that remind us of it. All of the interviewees admitted that it was comfortable to leave home knowing that you can go back or visit anytime. The same was happening with the participants of Mars500 and HI-SEAS: All of them knew that they were still on our planet. They also knew exactly when they will see their closest ones again and will be able to go back to their lives.

I think the intensity of homesickness in the event of interplanetary travel could be compared to homesickness in times before globalization. When travel from Britain to the U.S. took 2 weeks and was also extremely expensive. For some people, it was a one-way ticket indeed.

But what will be different is that in addition to missing family, friends, home and places we will also miss simple things such as looking in the blue sky, laying in grass, swimming in a cold river or a warm sea. The same thought came to the mind of astrophysicist and author of the Planet Nine Hypothesis Konstantin Batygin. In one of the interviews he says: “If you maximize Mars’ potential, it’s still gonna be a total shit compared to the Earth.” 26

That is why it is so important to think of extraterrestrial habitats from a design point of view. At the moment most of the projects in the field of space exploration are aimed at the survival of civilization, not its thriving. But people who are going to move to Mars will need Mars to be their second home to support their mental health in the long perspective.

One of the projects that was trying to solve this problem was actually a Martian habitat concept from the studio Hassell, which participated in NASA’s 3D-printed habitat challenge. The goal that the authors were pursuing was to “provide a degree of comfort and familiarity” in the places that were traditionally designed for “achieving maximum performance and maximum efficiency for technology and machines – but not for people.” 27 And what people really need is home. Even on Mars.

Out of all the objections, the psychological consequences of space travel are the least explored and the least discussed. But to study them before actually moving to Mars is crucial for the happiness of our species. People are social animals and relationships mean a lot for them. So how will this migration affect the relationships of those who were separated? How will they cope with ‘planetsickness’? And finally, do we really want to move to Mars? These questions still need to be answered.

Fullsize model of the Martian habitat by the studio Hassell at the exhibition “Moving to Mars” in Design Museum, London

© Felix Speller for the Design Museum

*Zemlyane – rus. Earthlings