My paper, “Building to Shape Civilization: Space Ethics and the Burden of the Highway Planner,” is now available in the JOURNAL OF SPACE PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 14. No. 2, Fall 2025.
ABSTRACT
Taking, as a point of departure, a Peter Fleming quote, the prayerful attitude of infrastructure planning and development is considered, especially in the light of the future buildout of civilization that will follow in the wake of space exploration and development. How the space frontier is developed, now and in the near future, will determine how future generations live, work, and play in space. How these developments will unfold is examined through the lens of what philosophy of religion has said about prayer, and further through the lens of the Rawlsian conception of reflective equilibrium.