Ethics and NASA's Moon to Mars Program
Reflections on last week's workshop
Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a workshop at NASA Headquarters in DC that invited a variety of social scientists (and physical scientists who work on space ethics, like me!) to comment on the ethics and implications of NASA’s Moon to Mars program, the Artemis lunar missions, and the Artemis Accords. Over three days, we gave talks on what we saw as the relevant ethical issues and useful approaches that other scientific research programs have taken (like the Human Genome Project, or Antarctic research). Several NASA folks were in the audience, including architects of these research programs and engineers working on them.
This was a really interesting experience! And while it remains to be seen what— if any— effects there are on NASA’s plans, there were several useful takeaways for people working on the space ethics side of things.
For example, it was really clear that communication between the social science side and the NASA/technical side is a big challenge, even when both sides are eager to communicate. A lot of this is due to the language differences between the fields: as someone who came to these conversations with a background in physics, I can attest that there’s a learning curve when it comes to following legal, philosophical, and sociological arguments when you have to parse terms like “perpetual purpose trusts”, “coloniality”, or “imaginaries”. And the social scientists have to be able to track not only the technical language of the space exploration planners, but also NASA’s acronym-filled governmentspeak on top of that (I heard three different definitions of what the “A” in LEAG stands for over the course of the week).
I did get the sense that both sides are eager to communicate: Many people both inside and outside NASA want us to do space exploration ethically, but it was clear from the workshop that there are obstacles to this collaboration, even beyond the language gaps. One example, pointed out by one of the NASA engineers at the workshop, is that it’s hard for the “technical people” not to get defensive when we challenge the ethics of NASA’s plans, because they can hear it as an attack on their personal, individual ethics. Another obstacle, which came up again and again at the workshop, is that external commenters don’t know enough about NASA’s inner structure, especially how decisions are made and input is sought.
All of these challenges can be addressed by further and continuing conversation, and by including more voices and experiences in those conversations. It was especially useful to see talks on participatory research programs in other fields that have tried to include conversations on ethics right from the start, like the ELSI Research Program that explores the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of the Human Genome Project, or the European Union’s RRI process for Responsible Research and Innovation.
My Talk: What does it mean to benefit “all humanity”?
My talk focused on the rhetoric of NASA’s Moon to Mars program. We’d been provided with several pre-workshop talks and videos about Moon to Mars, many of which referenced the program’s numerous benefits for “all humanity”. (See, for example, NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy’s talk at IAC Paris in 2022.) I pointed out that there are several groups participating in the Moon to Mars program whose interests might at some point conflict with those of “all humanity”, and that it’s important to be aware of these potential conflicts so we can plan for them.
For example, NASA has welcomed private companies into the Moon to Mars plans (e.g., SpaceX’s Starship, which will soon attempt its first launch, will be adapted into a lunar lander to be used to take Artemis astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon and back). But private companies’ obligations are, by law, to their shareholders, not to “all humanity”, and this contradiction can lead to things like environmental damage or labor exploitation in the absence of regulation.
But it’s not just private companies: the government side of the Moon to Mars program may also find themselves at odds with the interests of “all humanity”. I noted that while international partnerships were listed as a benefit to humanity provided by Moon to Mars (Pam Melroy called them “the way of the future”), there were even more references to “American leadership in space exploration”. So which is it: are we leaders or partners? (This actually led to a bit of a debate after my talk, when one of the NASA planners argued that leadership and partnership are not contradictory ideas, and that leadership doesn’t necessarily imply a hierarchy. Other attendees disagreed.)
And finally, I suggested that even the interests of scientists may come into conflict with the interests of “all humanity”. There may be land use conflicts over special locations on the Moon or Mars between a number of different groups, including scientists, private mining or tourism companies, environmental or heritage protection groups, or even settlers. And while NASA loves to argue that spinoff technologies provide benefits to humanity, I also wondered whether the Moon to Mars objectives would include any goalposts for humanity-benefiting spinoff development, or if they’d just keep aiming their research and development goals towards Mars and hope that useful spinoff technologies appeared serendipitously.
Other News
I’m at Space Week in Boston this week! I participated in a panel on space mining at Harvard Law School yesterday. Tonight I’ll be at the MIT Sloan Space Industry Club’s Space Film Festival showing of First Man, and then I’ll be on the panel discussing astronaut selection. Later this week, on Thursday night, I’ll join the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students’ Space Film Festival to watch Star Trek VI and then have a panel on Space Ethics & the Artemis Accords. And on Friday afternoon I’ll be at the Space Consortium’s Space Career Fair, signing copies of my book, Off-Earth: Ethical Questions and Quandaries for Living in Outer Space. Come say hi!
Thanks for that perspective on the LEAG (Lunar Exploration and Analysis Group) meeting. The term "all humanity" which derives from the Outer Space treaty, was from the beginning an ambiguous term, leading to a wide spectrum of interpretation. Herein I believe, from reading your post, is the issue. The Apollo 11 plaque proclaimed "We came in peace, for all mankind", which we metaphorically meant to say, all humankind. Such is the way that word definitions themselves change over time, or are redefined to provide greater clarity or the perspectives of a new generation.
The NASA folks at an LEAG meeting (and NASA itself) is dominated by scientists who have science as their lifeblood and livelihood. For many in NASA, to use an example, would quite proudly proclaim that finding life on Mars would be beneficial to all humanity. However, there are entire subcultures on the Earth that would see this as a contradiction to their closely held beliefs, and thus would exclude them as part of "all humankind". Others would welcome this. Another example might be, what if we found on Mars and Venus definitive scientific proof that the climate change is driven by variation in solar output and not CO2 as is the scientific consensus (not arguing that, just stating it as a postulate). The global political ramifications would be enormous. Some, if not most, would argue that the truth will out, and that if this was the case, then so be it. However, there are wide swaths of advocates around the world that would reject this as not beneficial to humankind, no matter the scientific proof. There is even a school of thought that is popular in some circles that the very concept of industrial civilization is wrong, bad for the planet, and thus by extension, anything we do in space is not for all humankind and indeed is acting against the interests of all humankind. (I see this argument all too often online).
Thus, it would be interesting, and I would ask you, to exposit on what your thoughts are regarding "benefits for all humankind". Often it is the case that we must establish a common definition of a term before fruitful discussion of the implications of that term/definition can be more than shouting across the room at one another.