On April 10, 2019, scientists produced the first image of a black hole, a century after Einstein’s work had implied the existence of such extraordinary objects. You didn’t need to know a lot of physics to be impressed by the image. The black hole it showed was some 55 million light-years distant from us and had a diameter about 3 million times that of the Earth. Like the famous “Earthrise” photograph taken by William Anders during the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, showing the Earth rising over the surface of the moon, the image of the black hole calls on us to assess our place in the universe, but the two photos pull us in different directions. “Earthrise” allowed us to see our planet as a sphere in space and emphatically displays the importance of making that sphere sustainable. Seeing the black hole, in contrast, forces us to grapple with the strangeness of the universe of which we are such a tiny part.
In the same week that we marvelled at the black hole, a private Israeli lunar probe, Beresheet, experienced a technical glitch and crashed onto the surface of the Moon. Its venture into space, like Elon Musk’s SpaceX venture that plans to colonise Mars, raises ethical issues about humans’ exploration and use of the universe beyond their own planet. Are the solar system and the entire universe beyond now open for everyone to colonise, for whatever purpose they wish, if they have the means to do so?
One outcome of both public and private ventures beyond our planet is already evident: the vast quantity of debris circling the planet. Space Surveillance Network is tracking 22,300 objects and the European Space Agency estimates that at the start of 2022, there were more than a million larger than 1cm, 36,500 of them larger than 10cm, and 130 million between 1mm and 1cm. In 2007, a single event – China’s deliberate destruction of one of its own satellites in order to test an anti-satellite rocket – added 3400 new trackable objects, and two years later another 2300 were created by the accidental collision of two satellites.
At low orbit levels, where most of the debris is, we can predict the more objects there are the more collisions there will be, and the more collisions there are the more debris there will be, creating a vicious spiral that will eventually make frequently used orbits dangerous to occupy. The debris could also be a hazard for traffic between Earth and the Moon and Earth and Mars, which some think could increase significantly in decades to come.
In February 2022, Nasa wrote to the US Federal Communications Commission about SpaceX’s plan to put 30,000 Starlink satellites into orbit (in addition to the 1800 already there). The safety of spaceflight was unsurprisingly one of Nasa’s concerns, but the agency also referred, in a phrase that could portend a different way of looking at space, to “the long-term sustainability of the space environment”.
The European Space Agency is also concerned about space debris because “modern life depends on the uninterrupted availability of space infrastructures” that are being destroyed by collisions with debris. There is also a risk to people on the ground from re-entering space objects.
These concerns are reason enough to avoid the creation of more space debris, and they also suggest removing some of the junk already in orbit is a moral imperative. That is, however, such a difficult task that Space Force – the newest branch of the US military – is offering substantial prizes for anyone who can come up with the technology to do it.
Messy people
The risks that space debris pose imply there is something wrong with littering the atmosphere. In debates about environmental ethics, it is common to distinguish between those who think protecting the environment is important only because of the benefits it brings to humans and those who think the preservation of wilderness is important for its own sake. A similar distinction can be applied to the extraterrestrial environment. Should we protect it because doing so will benefit humans? Or is there some intrinsic value in preserving places beyond our own planet as they were prior to human contact?
André Galli and Andreas Losch, from the physics institute and the faculty of theology, respectively, at the University of Bern, have discussed the implications of extending the idea of sustainable development to space. One way of doing this that fits within an anthropocentric ethical framework is to recognise that a time may come when humanity is able to survive only because it has expanded beyond the Earth. That thought lies behind both Elon Musk’s desire to colonise Mars and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which envisages a day when Earth’s resources will be insufficient to sustain humanity and we will need to draw on the Moon or other objects in space.
But what if our foray into space posed a threat to life – possibly even sentient life – outside our orbit? The biological contamination of extraterrestrial environments may be of greater concern than littering space with pieces of metal or plastic. After all, Europeans have a terrible record of contaminating the parts of the world they colonised, introducing not only diseases, but also plants and animals that have forever changed the ecology of previously isolated regions such as Australia and New Zealand. Are we about to repeat the same mistakes when we explore space?
The Industrial Revolution and everything that has followed it, including our growing population, have undoubtedly damaged ecosystems around the world and polluted the atmosphere. Indeed, the electricity we are using to write these words has made the nights less dark and dimmed the stars. Still, technological advances have made our lives more comfortable. Ultimately, the awe we experience when confronted with the immensity of the universe is not in itself a compelling ethical argument against leaving our traces in those parts of space we are able to reach.
Reason enough to care
There are, however, many good reasons why, even without attributing value to the stars themselves, we should strive to avoid treating our corner of space as nothing more than a quarry, a rubbish dump and a lawless frontier. Here the idea of sustainable development is key.
We can start with concern for our own safety and the sustainability of our environment. We can extend this by recognising that we should not discount the interests of future generations, who seem likely to travel at least to our nearer planets. Nor can we exclude the possibility of other sentient or intelligent life outside our orbit. And if we fail to respect the extraordinary and still mysterious universe in which we live, then perhaps one day our descendants, or these other forms of life, will regret that failing, as we now regret the damage we have done to Earth.
Reprinted with permission from Ethics in the Real World: 90 Essays on Things That Matter, by Peter Singer (Text Publishing, RRP $30).
