Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Science Fiction

Ethics & Interplanetary Exploration

Dan McArthur wonders how we should treat the locals…

Recent discoveries of planets in orbit around other stars, and recent publicity surrounding the activities of the international space agencies have revived enthusiasm for planetary exploration. There is even talk of the manned exploration of Mars, something that not long ago seemed quite impossible to many, given our financial and political inability to even carry the Apollo programme to its completion. Human beings will be visiting other objects in the solar system again, and this activity raises a host of ethical questions for those still earthbound. These questions range from labour relations to business ethics to equitable resource distribution to architectural aesthetics and quality of life issues, and finally to questions of ethical interaction with any life that may be discovered in some extraterrestrial environment. However, the literature that examines these questions is still extremely small.

…