More than 60 years after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel beyond Earth’s atmosphere, human exploration and exploitation of space isn’t just a matter of technological innovation… it continues to raise many ethical issues
Astrophysicist and lifelong space travel enthusiast Erika Nesvold was participating in what she describes as “a really fun” research A program, based at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, when she experienced something of a “conceptual breakthrough”. “We got introduced to a lot of people working in the commercial space industry,” she explains. “At the time, space mining was the really big thing everyone was talking about. I met several of the entrepreneurs and had conversations where I would ask them about things like labour rights or environmental protection and got sort of dismissive responses, which I found concerning.”
Nesvold decided to consult some experts in the field by launching a podcast called Making New Worlds – Exploring the Ethics of Human Settlement in Space. This project, she says, “was a lot of fun”, enabling her to explore many of the themes which she has since expanded upon in her first book, Off-Earth: Ethical Questions and Quandaries for Living in Outer Space. She has also co-edited Reclaiming Space: Progressive and Multicultural Visions of Space Exploration, an anthology of essays exploring similar themes.
“I’m certainly neither the first nor only person to start thinking about space ethics,” she insists.
“Everyone I’ve met who’s interested in space ethics started thinking about these ideas independently, felt alone in what they were beginning to be worried about and were so happy to meet other people thinking along the same lines.” Along with astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz, Nesvold co-founded the nonprofit organisation The JustSpace Alliance in 2018, which works towards “an inclusive, ethical future, both on Earth and beyond”. As well as promoting education and debate, “one of the things we do is serve as a hub to connect all these people into a network to collaborate about various aspects of this problem,” she says.
What exactly are the issues Nesvold and others are concerned about? One big concern is simply how we, as a species, will interact with the space environment. “That’s not just for practical reasons, but also ethical ones: how do we share the space environment and its resources with each other? That’s an ethical question as well as a political one,” she says. “Also – this is something philosophers love to talk about – what is the intrinsic value of the space environment itself? What do we owe the environment in terms of protection, or any p
