Our Future Amoung the Stars

The Earth, our home. A small, rocky spherical planet, a mere 13,000 km wide, which orbits the sun around 150,000,000 km away. The sun, our closest star and life source, is just one of the 250,000,000,000 others in our galaxy, the Milky Way, which, in itself, is just one of 150,000,000,000 other galaxies in the known universe. And yet the closest thing beyond Earth we have ever laid foot on is the moon, only 380,000 km away. For a highly intelligent race of beings, this could be seen as pretty poor going. Many people argue we should be exploring the cosmos, settling on new planets and building communities at the furthest reaches of the universe. But should we be? What advantage could we gain from space exploration? What makes us entitled to settle other worlds when it can be argued that we can’t even run our own in peace and prosperity? In this essay I will be discussing the ethical debates surrounding space travel and exploration, as well as considering whether this fantasy, that so many people dream of, will ever come to pass.

Space is an enormous expanse, filled for the most part by nothingness. By comparison humans are incredibly needy, and there are many physical barriers we must overcome before space travel is at all plausible. Primarily, food, water and air are the basic components needed to support human life – lucky these are relatively easy to come by. Technically we don’t need food, just nutrients and calories, which we can make sufficiently efficiently to sustain humans for a long time. Granted, these types of ‘foods’ aren’t exactly three course banquets, but space travel does demand sacrifice. Secondly, water is absolutely essential for sustaining any life form. Lucky water is made up to two of the most fundamental elements – that is, hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the entire universe, making up more than 95% of all matter and oxygen (though it pales in comparison to the quantity of hydrogen in the universe) is still the third most abundant element. Despite the huge amount of hydrogen and oxygen in the universe, it would still be easier to take hydrogen and oxygen with us went we went to space as the majority of elements in the universe are locked up inside stars. Still, these elements can easily be recycled meaning not too much of either element must be taken on board a space craft in order to sustain life. Oxygen is also needed to allow humans to breath, and it can also be transported on the spacecraft. Coincidently, the oxygen which we breath can easily be recycled as we breath in oxygen, O2 , and then breath out carbon dioxide, CO 2 . Therefore, it is possible to split the oxygen from the carbon then breath it in again. There is one catch though – this process requires a lot of energy. That brings us onto the next necessity for human space travel – energy.

The most commonly used form of energy for space travel (which spacecrafts and robots currently use) is solar power. Solar panels are relatively light weight and don’t use a very complex process, making them reliable. Their only issue is that they are highly inefficient at transferring the energy they receive from sunlight into electrical energy – the figure for this lies around 12% 2 . For highly powerful processes such as splitting carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen this is simply not enough, so much more efficient solar panels will need to be developed to make solar panels a viable power source. The other issue associated with using solar panels is that they might not always be suitable, for example during deep space travel stars will not be near enough to provide star light for the solar panels to be powered from, making them an unsuitable option. Therefore, in order for deep space travel to become a possibility, we must develop a different, lightweight and simple process to transfer huge amounts of energy, without relying on starlight – most probably nuclear energy with all its own issues.

Besides food, water, air and energy there are a multitude of other issues which must be overcome to achieve human space exploration. When properly thought about, this seems to add up to an insurmountable challenge to human intelligence, but I encourage you to remember that despite all these challenges, we have been to the moon and walked on the lunar surface. Granted, it only took three days to get to there, so you could imagine that the challenges of food, water and air where not that great. However, it should still be considered an incredible achievement. By building on the technology developed to go to the moon, it seems possible that we should be able to overcome the many challenges of space exploration.

But once we develop this technology, where should we go with it? Where in the solar system, or even the universe, is worth visiting with humans, rather than humanoid robots and automated technology? Well, it depends on our aims – to explore or to settle. If we go looking for other life forms, then there are four main possibilities in our solar system, and probably limitless possibilities outside of it. Within our solar system, the four possibilities of homes to other life forms are: Mars, our neighbouring planet; Europa, an icy Jovian moon; Titan, the largest moon of Saturn; and Enceladus, a small Saturnian moon the size of the state of Arizona. No actual life forms have been found on any of these extra-terrestrial bodies, but on all four of them there are promising signs of the ingredients of life. Sending people to these planets and moons could certainly be a worthwhile endeavour, provided the suitable technology existed. However, if our aim was to find a new home, then we would probably have to look further afield to other planetary systems orbiting other stars, and that would require a lot more effort. To get to our nearest star, for instance, it would take six times the amount of time that humans have been around, and that star may not even have a suitable planet for us to inhabit. Deep space travel would be so demanding that the technology is nowhere close to being developed, and so I will only briefly consider this issue later in the essay.

Despite all the research and technological advancements we have made and continue to make in order to begin exploring space, there are still questions of moral and ethical importance which must be addressed. Many people are unhappy with the thought of space exploration because of these arguments, which I shall now discuss. First of all, there is a thought that by exploring and settling in space, we are effectively running away from the issues we have here on Earth. It is argued that rather than spending time, resources and money on getting ourselves off the planet, we should really be working to overcome the challenges that are already here. Millions of people worldwide are starving, entire governments are accused of being corrupt and power-hungry, and our insatiable need for energy has pushed our planet towards self-destruct mode. It is the view of many people that these issues are more important than space exploration, and the billions of dollars spent each year on space travel could be much better spent helping the people here on Earth, as the needs of humanity should always come first and keeping the human race alive is a necessity. It is easy to suggest that when the people on Earth need help, they should be helped, rather than diverting the resources to help them and firing them into space.

On the contrary, it is other peoples views that actually space exploration is helping to solve the many issues which plague the world today. While issues of poverty and injustice should not, and cannot, be ignored, equally space exploration should not be ignored either. By developing the technology for space exploration, we are indirectly developing technology which can be used to make the world a better place. For example, engineers at NASA developed a water purification system which helped to recycle water aboard the International Space Station (the ISS). This technology was later applied to help communities in sub-Saharan Africa, central America and Western Asia gain access to healthy drinking water, which subsequently improved their quality of life. Now, citizens of different countries across the globe benefit from the water purification processes developed by NASA, with cities in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Malaysia and Pakistan employing the technique, to name but just a few 3 . This is just one example of technology developed for space travel which benefits human lives worldwide.

Additionally, there is an interesting argument promoting support of space exploration which a thought-provoking question. Lets suppose that we agreed not to fund space exploration until the issues in the world had been resolved. This argument questions when we can truly state that we have not got any issues on the Earth which need resolving, because as soon as we solve one problem, more will undoubtedly come to light. Therefore, there is no point waiting until all our issues have been settled, as this day will never come. It is best just to continue developing space travel, this argument claims, as we will never have a time when we are totally happy with the way the world works.

Lets suppose now that we have the technology to create a thriving extra-terrestrial civilization. From this situation come many interesting questions of moral and ethical importance, for example, who would govern a settlement like that? To answer this question you have to look at the direction space exploration seems to be heading towards. More recently than ever, space exploration has been advanced by independent companies, like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the innovative Lockheed Martin or the cutting-edge new-comer Relativity Space, while old timer national agencies like NASA or the European Space Agency becoming one among many, rather than forging the path alone. While these independent companies come fully equipped with new ideas and ways of thinking as well as lots of private investment, they are just that: independent. A colony set up on Mars by SpaceX – as is the company’s founder Elon Musk’s dream – would have no obligation to follow any laws set out by any country as they are owned by a private group rather than an official political territory. For many people, this is troublesome, as the citizens are free to act according to their own free will rather than be bound by any laws or regulations. This could potentially lead to other worlds becoming commercial investments run for economic gain rather than countries concerned by the well-being of their citizens. This in itself could lead to unjust and chaotic communities which could be inhumane and corrupt.

On the other hand, there is an argument that communities set up with no ties to any countries or governments are free to revolutionize the modern society and economy. Imagine a small colony of people set up in total isolation from the people on Earth. By creating this model society, we would be able see what is wrong with the various societies which have naturally evolved on Earth and perhaps begin to gain an insight into how to improve the struggling system we have in place here. This model society would also allow social scientists to run social experiments with minimal outside influences, which could help us gain a deeper understanding of how society and the human conscience works. Other experiments including economical models could also be run to find out about different economical situations without causing an economic crisis on Earth. It would also allow us to simulate ideas and changes which we could implement on Earth without he fear of them going terribly wrong and wreaking worldwide carnage. Therefore, this idea of a society free of any obligations to individual countries could help us to completely revolutionize and reform our way of thinking about the modern society and help us to improve the lives of the citizens of Earth.

Unfortunately, there is a fear that a model society such as the one previously described could do more harm than good. The fear (although it sounds like it is taken straight from the plot of a sci-fi story) is totally rational and potentially very threatening. The premise of this fear is that the people you would send to colonize an extra-terrestrial body would have to be the best and brightest the human race has to offer, as living in space would be extremely challenging and require a level of intelligence high enough to ensure survival. This could eventually lead to a superior race of highly intelligent human beings which could, potentially, decide that they are much better off governing themselves and not listening to advise or guidance offered to them by the people on Earth or even worse, they would do a better job of governing the people on Earth than the people on Earth do. It may sound a little silly at first, but in reality it could very well happen. A highly intelligent race of humans would be able to spot the issues within society on Earth and innocently believe they could help. While it is unlikely that they would become violent overlords – as some people fear (they would most likely have the intelligence to realize conflict is never helpful or productive) – their help would most likely not be helpful at all. This is because they would have developed and evolved in a community of exceptional people, and would likely not recognise that not many people are as smart as them. Additionally, they would certainly have grown up in a society very different to the ones found on Earth and therefore they would not understand the issues which arise from social stigma and other similar societal related conflicts.

Conversely, a highly intelligent race of humans living in near isolation from Earth could help develop the world at an even faster rate. By grouping together the best and the brightest the world has to offer and giving them an environment where they are exposed to minimal negative outside influences, such as arguably anti-science politics leading to the budget cuts to leading space exploration corporation like NASA are endlessly facing 5 , the rate at which their knowledge could increase could be unparalleled by any Earth based science projects. This would help to accelerate our progress towards a fairer and more prosperous world for everyone to thrive in.

Even if we did successfully set up a stable civilization on an extra-terrestrial planet, there are other issues regarding our behaviour which still need to be discussed. For instance, human beings have not had the best track record for looking after their planet. Our current global catastrophe of climate change shows that humans cannot even look after our own planet, let alone a different planet which we barely understand. This has prompted many people to argue that we should not be settling on other planets when we cannot look after ours reliably. It can also be argued that these other planets are not our own, so therefore we have no right to settle on them. we have been given one planet to live on and look after, and we cannot even do that correctly, so why do we feel entitled to colonise other planets and potentially wreck them as well? This is a very valid argument which is highly debated, since colonising other planets will undoubtably result in a dramatic change to their existing – although probably minimal – ecosystem and atmosphere. It is almost inevitable that colonisation by humans would cause bacteria or other micro-organisms to be released onto the planet’s surface (either intentionally or not), which would pollute the planet and could cause catastrophic changes to the planet’s environment. While this could benefit the humans who colonised the planet, as it might allow for arable soil or other useful purposes, it does ultimately cause pollution of the planet, which is something which we are heavily invested in combatting on our own planet. This raises the issue of whether we are actually entitled to land on other planets and change their natural make up, since they are not originally our own.

Some people would argue that actually this is okay since it is allowing for human survival, and most planets do not – to the best of our knowledge – have any form of ecosystem or even life to being with. By colonising such planets and contaminating them with life-bringing bacteria, it could allow the planet to flourish and begin to support a healthy and complex ecosystem of its own, humans are effectively giving the planet in question a purpose and a life of its own, which in some peoples opinion is better than allowing the planet to follow its natural course of being a barren rocky landscape habitable by no living thing. This is still a highly contested view point, which causes a lot of debate between specialists in the field of extra-terrestrial ecosystems.

The final subject of debate is a topic which in some peoples eyes is highly controversial. That is the issue of generation ships, a proposal for deep space exploration 6 . The idea behind this so far fictional proposition is that traversing deep space will take thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years, and therefore well in excess of the span of a human life. For instance, our nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is over 40 trillion km away, and travelling at 300 km/s, a thousandth of the speed of light and a speed which could potentially be realistic (although it is much faster than anything which has been currently be achieved), it would still take us over four thousand years to get there. Therefore, a long term plan needs to be in place for deep space travel to be a possibility and this is where generation ships come in. This idea is that a group of selected individuals board a ship which is capable of travelling for many thousands of years. Then they simply live on that ship, reproducing and growing old, then their children following suit, and so on and so forth right down through the generations. The people who arrive at the new planet would be distant descendants of the people who first boarded the ship, and they would be the ones to populate the new planet. While it sounds like a great storyline for a science fiction movie, the idea of generation ships actually raise serious moral and ethical questions. When properly thought about, the idea of putting people on the a ship only to reproduce then die is questionable at best. This is especially problematic when you consider the fact that the children born onto this generation ship will have very little freedom in their lives, as they will be required to pick up the jobs of the older generations, which will all be geared towards contributing to the maintenance and running of the generation ship, as well as only living in one ship for their entire lives. There are also other dubious issues, for example; the small gene pool which all the descendants will originate from, which could ultimately lead to in-breeding and the possibility of deformations and disabilities with in a small society where every person must fulfill their purpose; the necessity of every person on board the ship to breed and reproduce, which forms a heteronormative and possibly unaccepting society where things like homosexuality cannot be catered for; the need for a healthy cultural mix and ethnical representation, yet simultaneously the need for the small society to conform to the same ideals, religion, culture and way of life for the enterprise to be successful and avoid conflict, which would be challenging in such a diverse group of individuals. The list of issues goes on, but unfortunately generation ships are one of the only sustainable and realistic ideas for deep space travel, which may have to be achieved for the survival of the human race if we cannot find a second home within our own solar system.

Ultimately, space travel is an adventure which humanity will inevitably embark upon – provided we don’t force ourselves into extinction first – and whether it be in 10 years, 100 years or 1,000 years there will always be technical, moral, and ethical issues surrounding it. As human beings, it is in our nature to strive forward and do our upmost to overcome the challenges and the issues associated with our next big adventure, and as history strongly suggests we will eventually come to fulfil our dream of space travel and exploration. However, the key word here is eventually. We are not yet ready to enter into a new age of easy and cohesive space travel, but our time will come, as it always has. There was once a time when humans couldn’t cross the Atlantic ocean, or when they couldn’t soar thousands of feet in the air. But these are common place experiences in the 21 st century, and so it seems only reasonable and natural that space travel will follow suit. There will be challenges, and we are certainly not yet ready to delve into the greatest unknown, but in time we will be ready, and when that time comes we will need to seriously consider some of these ethical and moral issues for our endeavours in space be both sustainable and humane.