Are we ethically ready to set up shop in space?

A new book asks hard questions about whether we've thought through life in space.

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[NomadUK]

As cynical as I am (and it's never enough), I still read these now and again and think, yes, that's how it should be, and I hope will be.

Now, let's start by getting one thing straight. I'm not a do-gooder. If you're a bum, if you can't break off of the booze or whatever it is that makes you a bad risk, then get out. Now, I don't pretend to tell you how to find happiness and love when every day is just a struggle to survive, but I do insist that you do survive, because the days and the years ahead are worth living for. One day — soon — Man is going to be able to harness incredible energies, maybe even the atom. Energies that could ultimately hurl us to other worlds in some sort of spaceship. And the men that reach out into space will be able to find ways to feed the hungry millions of the world and to cure their diseases. They will be able to find a way to give each man hope and a common future. And those are the days worth living for.

— Star Trek, 'The City on the Edge of Forever' (Edith Keeler's speech), 1967.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on Man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that Man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all Mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

— John F Kennedy, speech at Rice University, 12 September 1962.

 

[NomadUK]

In "The City on the Edge of Forever", which is in my opinion the best episode in the original series, if not the entire franchise

You are, of course, absolutely correct.

Given the current state of human civilization, I think the Expanse provides a more optimistic vision of human civilization in space than what will most likely actually develop.

Well, as I said, I'm never cynical enough to keep up, but hope springs eternal. That said, I'll take The Expanse if that's the only option. I give Bezos a certain leeway for having rescued that show.