Tuesday, October 7, 2014

You want answers?

I'll give you answers... to astroethics.
...is it ethical to recruit astronauts for a one-way trip
Yes. I hope they're all this simple.
Lifeboat ethics?
Who do you kill, really? Those on the lifeboat decide. This isn't about space.
The habitation modules of Mars One will be a fragile oasis of [life support]...
Which is why they should be only for temporary emergency use. Let them immediately build permanent habitats from local resources that have gradual forgiving failure modes. Who wants to live in a can when you have an entire planet to work with?
Pregnancy?
It's called informed consent. People are not your property. They will make their own adult decisions. They should not be prevented from knowing the facts as best we know. They decide. Clear?
Mental health issues?
You send enough crew to deal with isolated cases. I recommend at least a dozen. To avoid the problems of isolation you go with the two proven mitigations... 1) more people. 2) private ownership.
Confinement? Lack of physical privacy?
See fragile oasis solution above.
Discrimination?
This is not a space ethics issue. Roll the dice. Sue if you like.
U.S. federal laws and regulations don’t reach into outer space.
Don't let Nanny hear that. They are under a different delusion.
Crime?
Humans on the scene will deal with it. Another reason not to send too few.
Could zero-gravity or increased radiation environment cause unpredictable changes in our gut bacteria?
Let's find out. Like when we broke the sound barrier. Do we have to keep imagining the bogyman?
We need to think about the quarantine of astronauts.
Quarantine Ebola first.
With space exploration, we have a clean slate in front of us to reinvent society, without being bogged down by legacy systems for property, economics, governance, and even ethics.
Finally, some sense.
Anybody born on Mars would very much be a stranger in a strange land.
Not to other martians. Grok that?
We don’t want it to devolve into nationalistic land grabs.
Right. So we get that property into the hands of as many as possible, as soon as possible. This could actually unify us here on earth.
Outer space and the future of humanity don’t belong to any one nation-state but to all of us.
Screw that. It can't belong to all of us. That's not ownership. Without ownership you get trouble without end. Let's start by getting this right.

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