The Ethics of Colonizing Mars
Human has always been wondering how life can be different in Mars, especially after Apollo 11 had successfully brought astronauts to Moon’s surface. The exploration and colonization of Mars provide a unique opportunity to find new lives in outer space and ensuring the continuity of humankind while also rediscovering our ethical identity, as it offered a new perspective without the same constraints that we faced on earth. The rapid development of aeronautical technologies, such as spacecraft, rockets, and interplanetary navigation systems made by governmental institutions like NASA, or a private company like SpaceX, has opened new doors of interplanetary explorations and would make a human landing on Mars possible shortly. Subsequently, this paper discusses the sensibility of prioritizing Mars colonization over solving Earth domestic problems, and also the responsibility of Martians colonists in handling Mars natural ecosystem. The discussions of these issues will be evaluated based on act-utilitarianism perspective to decide which options will provide more pleasure over bigger populations of earth in the long term.
1.1 Introduction
As a living organism, we were coded to perpetuate our genes. However, to rely on a single home, Earth, for supporting the continuity of our species can be proven as fatal. There is no guarantee that someday in the future, an apocalyptic event would not come and wipe our entire species out. Incoming asteroids, volcanic eruptions, or other unpredictable cataclysmic events could claim our species anytime. It is also naïve to believe that Earth can solely sustain the growth of our species, contemplating from how we have treated our world. The extensive use of Earth resources by human without proper maintenance and damage control has resulted in pollutions of air, acidification of water, water scarcities, frequent forest fires, and are all signs of climate change (Mitchell). As a result, Elon Musk, the CEO of aerospace manufacturer SpaceX, revealed his plan to do interplanetary travel and colonized Mars, during a conference in Sept. 2016. Included in Musk’s speech, the idea of colonizing Mars came to ensure the survivability of human species, as there always is a chance of an extinction event that could wipe all living soul on earth (Wall). The exploration and colonization of Mars should be a priority that is held by all humankind, and a collective source that incorporates government and private sectors resources, technologies, and labors should be gathered to make this mission possible. In this massive mission, the direct stakeholders are Space X and NASA as the executors of the program, US government as an investor, and also various governmental and private sectors that collectively contribute to the mission. While the indirect stakeholders are humankind as a whole as the opportunity to grow as a species will affect everyone.
1.2 Descriptions of the Technology
Interplanetary Transport System or ITS, a branch of Space X, projected to send around one million people to colonize Mars within 100 years by promising affordable traveling tickets (Wall). ITS is trying to achieve this goal by developing reusable rocket technology, to enable multiple uses of rocket parts. These reusable parts were calculated to bring the traveling price to Mars down by 40 percent (Selding). ITS rocket consists of a booster, a spaceship, and a propellant tanker. The booster works by using 42 Raptor engines that are capable of bringing up to 500 tons of payload to low-earth orbit. The launching of ITS rocket will be once for every 26 months, whenever Earth and Mars are aligned to minimize fuel consumption and increase payload capacity (Wall).SpaceX also divided their interplanetary expedition launching process into several steps to optimize cost. First, reusable ITS rocket will launch and stop in low-earth orbit (LEO). At the orbit, the rocket will drop the booster back to Earth while the spaceships head to park in LEO. On the Earth surface, the propellant tanker is loaded into the booster. The booster will then relaunch to deliver propellant tanker to the spaceship. Then, the propellant tanker will refill spaceship with propane fuel, and back to earth surface once it is done. Meanwhile, the spaceship will continue its interplanetary journey by employing both methane fuel and also a set of solar arrays (Wall).
1.3 Benefits and Drawback of Exploring Mars
The idea of exploring and colonizing Mars are exciting because this is an opportunity to discover extraterrestrial life, uncover scientific phenomenon and also a chance for humankind to grow as a species. Many technological advancements and innovations are expected when earth resources are integrated and focused solely for Mars colonization. The sense of unification and urgency as humankind will be intensified, as Elon Musk warned that colonizing Mars is the best option to ensure humankind continuity in the case of apocalyptic event befall planet Earth (Wall). Thus, not only colonizing planet Mars is a path to ensure the continuity of human species, but also to unify humankind on earth.However, there are several issues that need to be addressed before the possibility of sending colonists to Mars can be executed. Sending colonists to Mars would require joint fund by various government and private sectors. NASA projected that the first manned Mars mission on 2035 alone would cost US government around $230 billion (Spudis and Smith). SpaceX also mentioned that Mars colonization would require collective resources of earth’s governments and private sectors. While the possibility of sending a manned mission and even colonizing Mars is appealing, such huge sum of a fund can also be used to address Earth’s humanitarian and ecosystem problems. It is imperative to determine whether collective fund resources should be spent on colonizing Mars or fix living condition on Earth.
Besides, SpaceX does not provide an adequate amount of information for potential colonists on how to survive on Mars, despite their extensive plans on sending humans there. Mars by itself has a dangerous environment with numerous amount of threat for people's health and safety. Martian soil is poisonous as it contains a high concentration of perchlorate, the atmosphere is too thin to block cosmic radiation, low gravity will cause a human to lose bone density and muscle atrophy, not to mention that water only exists as ice and permafrost on Mars (Zubrin 3). To transform Mars into a habitable environment for human requires a reformation of Martian atmosphere, or terraform. Terraforming Mars would result in the introduction of the greenhouse effect to restore high carbon dioxide concentration and warming up the planet’s temperature (Hue et al. 1). However, it is unproven yet whether Mars is sterile or if there is life in existence. If there is life on Mars, terraforming Mars will eventually put them and their ecosystem in danger. There will be a question whether human life is more precious than Martian organisms and ecosystem, and further ethical discussion is necessary before such biosphere-altering decision can be made.
2.1 Methodological Issues of Mars Colonization
Human species endured thousand years of wars and conflicts, but with the advancement of military technology with nuclear weapons, we all only one push of a button away from destroying our planet. The possibility of an asteroid collision, climate change, supervolcano explosions are also lingering around human’s life on Earth and can challenge our existence in an unforeseen future. It is imperative for us to look into our neighboring planets, and seek for an additional place to support and provide a safety net for the exponential growth of our species. Mars possess most of the raw materials we need to build the next civilization, from carbon dioxide gas inside the rocks formations, nitrogen gas, and even water in the form of ice and permafrost (Zubrin 3). Moreover, Martian soil signaled wealthy amount of valuable metals, geothermal power sources, and even deuterium as a fusion fuel. The advancement of aeronautical technologies will allow us to colonize Mars in the near future, and this will be a great chance for humankind to move into the interplanetary stage as a species.A joint effort between international governments and private sectors are needed in order for humankind to achieve a goal of colonizing Mars. Mars colonization requires a significant amount of commitment from all parties in amassing technological powers, resources, and labors. However, while the idea of sending colonists to Mars sounds appealing for some parties, the other half would worry more about what is going to happen to planet Earth as we focus toward expanding our civilization. The idea of ensuring the continuity of our species by sending colonists to Mars is romanticized when we realized that we have never sent any man past the moon. Even with joint efforts from parties mentioned before, SpaceX acknowledged it would take two years and $300 million to send unmanned capsule Dragon 2 to conduct propulsive landing test in Mars (Williams).Meanwhile, climate changes and humanitarian problems such as Syrian refugee crisis, child starvations in Yemen, El Nino drought in Africa, are still running rampant and requires immediate assistance by earth’s collective population (Esslemont). Solving these crises also requires humankind to join efforts in providing both labors and resources to protect both the balance of earth’s ecosystem and also its human population. There seemed to be no point in trying to send colonists to Mars for expanding a civilization that failed its home. Humankind needs to focus on ensuring that our species is being responsible in taking care of our kin and our home planet, Earth. Therefore, there is a question between prioritizing our resources and labors on expanding our civilization to Mars to ensure the continuity of our species, or ensuring that our civilization on earth is in good shape.Another interesting point in exploring and colonizing Mars is the possibility of finding extraterrestrial life. While this alien life might not have the same level of consciousness as human, scientists predicted that this would help them to observe the unadulterated process of biological infestation and evolution on the red planet. This scientific observation could have resulted in the revelation of the origin of life from a simple compound that was transformed by various energy sources into a replicating molecule (Hue et al. 1). Up until now, both Viking landers that were sent to detect life on Mars had not generated any consensus among scientists whether life does exist in Martian soil (Klein 8). However, if life could be found on Mars, it is our responsibility to keep it in a pristine condition to avoid interfering with the evolutionary process.However, several changes to Martian ecosystem should be made in order to support human activity. Living on Mars will be very challenging for the future colonists because of its thin atmosphere, isolated water on ice caps, and its barren lands. NASA’s technological advancement enable astronauts to recycle fluids and oxygen, but to be able to fully colonize Mars, human will need to start transforming Martian atmosphere to be similar to Earth’s atmosphere. Many works of literature offered some steps to turn Mars atmosphere to be habitable by humans. One of the examples is the introduction of cyanobacteria such Matteia sp. to release CO2 content from Martian soils and rocks into the atmosphere (Hue et al. 1). This organism will help to create a greenhouse effect to warm up Martian temperature and slowly transforming the atmosphere. However, this method of introducing new organisms on Mars and other plans such as bombing Mars atmosphere with CFC, or orbiting mirrors to provide greenhouse effect in Mars will directly damage the existing Martian ecosystem (Zubrin 2). Thus, human activity in altering Mars could endanger extraterrestrial life that we tried to observe in the first place. Therefore, an ethical evaluation is necessary to decide whether the need to build a sustainable environment for Martian colonist beat the need to preserve pristine condition of Mars ecosystem.
2.2 Ethical Decision on Colonizing Mars
There are two points that need to be addressed regarding colonization of Mars. First, whether allocating earth’s resources to ensure the continuity of humankind by sending colonists to Mars is more important than solving earth’s humanitarian and climate change problem. Second, either we have to prioritize the provision of a habitable ecosystem for Martian colonists or preserving Martian soil for possible extraterrestrial life on Mars. Act utilitarianism will be used to analyze these ethical conflicts and to decide the case of colonizing Mars. Act utilitarianism was chosen among other ethical theories because the case of colonizing Mars is unique and could not be generalized by using other theories such as rule utilitarianism (Smith et al. 24). The colonization of Mars also involves all the human species; therefore, the usage of act utilitarianism is important in finding a decision that will produce collective good for humankind.There are several implications that will possibly happen in Mars colonization. On the positive side, colonizing Mars would enable humanity to be an interplanetary species and also increase the possibility to discover extraterrestrial life. Being an interplanetary species would provide us with the sense of security over the extension of our genes. If a terrifying scenario of an asteroid collision, nuclear winter, or any catastrophic events happens and erase humankind existence on Earth, Mars as our second world would be our safety net to ensure the continuation of our species. Mars colonization is not only the interest of US government, or private parties such as SpaceX’s Elon Musk, but is for the benefit of all humankind. It is hard to quantify the pleasure of all humankind behind this action since the consequence of this action is distant, unless we all realized that we only a push of a button away from nuclear winter, or one asteroid away from apocalyptic collisions. Then, building a new civilization on Mars will prove to be extremely pleasurable for humankind as one species.
The exploration of Mars by colonist will be favored by scientists, as it increases the possibility of finding life outside of Earth. Observation in the evolutionary process in Martian soils will reveal the origin of living organisms that can be used to resolve the question of our existence.Setting a colony on Mars, however, can also be detrimental to Mars ecosystem. To ensure the continual presence of humans on Mars, we will have to tweak Mars by terraforming. However, terraforming could spell a disastrous effect on any living organism on Mars (Hue et al. 1). While we are trying to adjust Mars ecosystem to be livable by humans, we might ruin it for Martian organisms. Scientists would also have a hard time analyzing potential living organisms on Mars if our activity cleared them away. Therefore, terraforming will concern both scientist and extraterrestrial life on Mars. Given a condition that there is a sign of life in Mars, the pain from scientists’ perspective will be intense, certain and near because terraforming will drain their chance of observing the extraterrestrial life. While for Martian organisms, if they exist, the pain will also be intense, certain and near since human activity on Mars will eradicate them. However, act utilitarianism dictates that the pleasure of a bigger group will outweigh the few (Smith 24). Therefore, since the exploration of Mars is a matter of importance that bring pleasure for all humankind, it defeats the pain that is felt by scientists.
Meanwhile, the living organisms that are suspected to exist on Mars do not signify to have consciousness. Otherwise, there would be an interaction between human and them as of now. Without consciousness, Cartesian theory stated that a living being would not have a will or interest, thus should not be included in consideration of act utilitarianism (Armstrong 5).Sending human to Mars would also require an immense amount of collective resources, whether it is technological, fund, or labors, between international governments and private sectors. Setting our priority for colonizing Mars would mean there will be less attention on some humanitarian crises and climate change that our species experiences on earth. The effect of all these crises is near and certain for all humankind.
Reviewing from all those perspective above, it is decided that the colonization of Mars by human species is ethical and should be continued for several reasons and conditions. First, act utilitarianism dictates that a decision must be made to provide the biggest pleasure for the most number of people. Referencing from previous discussions, the colonization of Mars will both bring tremendous pleasure but at the same time near and certain pain for humankind. This difference happened because humans can ensure the continuity of their species by living interplanetary, but at the same time putting less attention on various earth’s crises. However, colonization of Mars decided to bring more pleasure in a long run since there would no promise that other conflicts and crises will not arise if human just focuses on solving our problems on Earth. Focusing on the consequences in the future, an end of human time on earth is unavoidable, but the continuity of our gene information can be prolonged by colonizing other planets such as Mars. Second, colonizing Mars might also mean the invasion of Martian ecosystem and living organism by humans. If living organisms exist and have rational thoughts (possessing conscious mind at a human level), then Cartesian theories would argue that invading their home and endangering them into extinction would be unethical (Armstrong 5). Therefore, it is imperative that before the colonization of Mars can be done, scientists must discover the proof that no conscious living organism resided on Mars and made consensus on it. Only then, the colonization of Mars can be considered as ethical by the act utilitarianism analysis.
Act utilitarianism would concede that transforming Mars ecosystem to suit human habitat is ethical because Martian organisms do not possess a conscious mind. However, virtue ethics would argue on the contrary. While act utilitarianism emphasized on the consequence of the action, virtue ethics emphasize on the ideal character of human on decision making (Smith 41). The ideal character of human itself is very flexible, as the virtue ethics does not provide clear guidance on what to do when human try to colonize Mars. However, the idea of bringing people to Mars, transforming the local ecosystem which will devastate potential living organisms on Mars is not an ideal reflection of how a human should act. This action shows how human turned to be greedy and destructive to ensure the continuity of our species. A virtuous person should care not only about him/herself but also the need of other, and in this case we should also show our virtue to the Martian living organisms by letting them live. However, since it is unknown whether live does exist on Mars, the more urgent need is to send people to Mars and ensure that colonizing Mars will not harm any potential life in there.
3. Conclusion
Exploring and colonizing Mars provide a unique opportunity for humankind to be an interplanetary species and perpetuate our gene information, while at the same discovering extraterrestrial life. Act utilitarianism shows that allocating earth’s resources for Mars colonization is more ethical over solving earth’s internal problems. This happened because even though both will affect all humankind, colonizing Mars provide bigger pleasure and importance in the long term. Act utilitarianism was also used to decide that terraforming Martian ecosystem to be ethical as there is a lack of proof that conscious organism exists on Mars. Therefore, the exploration and colonization of Mars by private companies, such as SpaceX, must be supported to ensure the growth of human species.
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