three million telephone calls transmitted by satellite every minute. The United States government sells pictures taken by satellites; but it keeps certain subjects from public review. Sensitive facilities such as military installations are restricted, as are remote pictures taken over Israel. Similarly, private companies use satellites for remote sensing and sell their pictures.
“Can a State gather information about the natural riches and resources of another sovereign State without having obtained the latter’s prior agreement?” asks Arnould. “Is it not up to the remote sensing State to ask for the prior permission of the State [2.81] whose territory is being observed?” [2.3]. This sounds like a reasonable ethical question. Yet, it presupposes the present situation of sovereign nation states, a political system that may have made sense prior to the current thrust toward economic and technological globalization. Satellite surveillance and communication services, right along with other space activities, are playing into an emerging planetary consciousness.
Protecting national boundaries from foreign intelligence or even public transparency may soon be an artifact of history, an era we remember but no longer live in. Perhaps the way forward is to support an ethic of maximal “information without discrimination.” Rather than attempt to police information gathered from remote sensing, it would be healthier and easier to prevent such information from deleterious usage.
2.3.6 Should We Weaponize Space?
Should nations weaponize space? Should militaries establish orbital beachheads from which to launch attacks? No. At least according to the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which stresses that celestial locations could be used “exclusively for peaceful purposes.” The treaty explicitly prohibits the “placing in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction.”
In 2020, the United States formulated the doctrine to guide its new Space Force.
“Military space forces are the warfighters who protect, defend and project spacepower. They provide support, security, stability, and strategic effects by employing spacepower in, from, and to the space domain. This necessitates close collaboration and cooperation with the U.S. Government, Allies, and partners and in accordance with domestic and international law” [2.80] [2.70].
Because of the inability of the UN to enforce its rule, regulations of military equipment in space are today the responsibility of unilateral, bilateral and multilateral agreements, not the United Nations. No global community of moral deliberation exists. At least not yet.
“For modern warfare, space has become the ultimate high ground, with the U.S. as the undisputed king of the hill,” writes Lee Billings [2.7]. “China and Russia are both developing capabilities to sabotage crucial U.S. military satellites” [2.7]. One can only imagine a skirmish that could lead to Star Wars or, more precisely, Satellite Wars.
2.3.7 Which Should Have Priority: Scientific Research or Making a Profit?
Are we about to witness in space the equivalent of a gold rush? An economic and political frenzy for gaining dominance in space may break loose over the next decades. The telecommunications industry is already accustomed to the cost-effective use of satellites. We are on the brink of an era of space tourism, with the first trips to suborbit and low orbit vacations in the planning stages. Visits to the Moon will most likely follow. Establishing research laboratories on the Moon and Mars are being envisioned as is the mining of asteroids [2.91]. Might we be wise to ready ourselves for an El Dorado type of gold rush to the new extraterrestrial world? If so, should we try to put policies and policing mechanisms in place in advance?
Up until this point we have thought of outer space as a sandbox for Earth’s scientists to play in. Governments have found the money to fund modest exploratory adventures; and scientists have organized to conduct experiments which have yielded an abundant harvest of new knowledge about our cosmos. Frequently, scientific goals have been mixed with military goals, because leaders in the military have been willing to share their budgets for scientific purposes.
Scientific experiments do very little damage, if any. Somewhere on the Moon is a golf ball left by visiting astronauts. Landing on Mars or on Titan has not infected or contaminated anybody’s ecosystem, as far as we know. NASA decontaminated its first Mars lander, but more recently NASA has saved the money spent for decontamination under the assumption that a little contamination of Mars doesn’t matter. The impact on our solar system by scientific activity is benign.
This situation is about to change. The private sector is now ogling space for profit. What about space tourism? Simply flying a few wealthy passengers high enough to experience weightlessness is not likely to provoke anyone’s moral ire. But, what about tour busses roaming the surface of the Moon? Busses will leave tire tracks. Perhaps trash. No doubt tourists will want to visit that golf ball as well as historical sites where astronauts first landed. Will the crowds of visitors damage those sites? Are those sites sacred? Protectable? Who will decide and what will be the criteria by which they decide?
The market does not always react the way the marketers predict. Low cost and frequent flights to suborbit heights might actually encourage increased participation by scientists. These scientists will want to do research on the “ignorosphere.” The ignorosphere is a level just above balloon traffic but too low for satellites. Scientific researchers might buy tickets with the tourists and then look out the windows [2.81].
2.3.8 Should We Earthlings Terraform Mars?
Should we earthlings terraform Mars? Or, any other planet or moon, for that matter? Let’s ask two theologians, one Buddhist and one Christian, and then ask a NASA astrobiologist.
Francisca Cho, Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies at Georgetown University, raises the quandary: Should earthlings terraform Mars? “A Buddhist would apply neither an intrinsic nor instrumental value of life or nature to the question of terraforming Mars. The idea of an intrinsic value would go against the principle of emptiness. Instrumental value, on the other hand, would be problematic because one could not ensure that the instrumental objectives and the proper motivations…. There is no intrinsic worth to nature but neither is there intrinsic worth to human beings…. There is no option between them, so you have to transcend that framework all together” [2.12]. From a Buddhist perspective, neither an appeal to the intrinsic value of life nor an appeal to life’s utilitarian value to human beings provides ethical guidance for the terraforming question.
Now, let’s ask Christian theologian Cynthia Crysdale. “We need to think of ourselves as living within an ethic of risk, not an ethic of control. I say this in direct reference to the actions we take in terraforming or colonizing or exploring other planets. My caution is to point out that the conditions of possibility that we establish in the hopes of one outcome may at the same time establish conditions under which totally unforeseen schemes of recurrence become established” [2.21]. Dr. Crysdale has wisely invoked the Precautionary Principle based upon her observations about human nature—that is, human sinfulness. No ethical justification could suffice without acknowledgement of who we are as humans, including our human proclivity to mess things up. Nevertheless, anticipating the unforeseen damage we humans are capable of is a principle one must incorporate into any such project, not merely going to Mars.
NASA’s Christopher McKay provides ethical justification for his plan to terraform the red planet [2.48]. McKay hypothesizes that Mars is lifeless. At least it is lifeless today. The red planet may have been home to life in the past; but Mars must have lost its atmosphere and its ability to sustain life for reasons yet unknown. Its thin atmosphere is replete with carbon dioxide, but not oxygen. Let us speculate: Suppose we would transplant living organisms from Earth that take in carbon dioxide and expel oxygen into the atmosphere? Then, when enough oxygen suffuses the atmosphere, we could introduce oxygen inhaling organisms that expel greenhouse gases. These greenhouse gases would warm up Mars, and life would thrive. A self-regenerating ecosystem could run on its own. In less than a century, estimates McKay, we could establish a biosphere that would last ten to a hundred million years.
McKay