[Chapter 1. Space, ethics and imagination.]

Abstract

Imagination is at the heart of ethical interrogation when it focuses on space activities, present and future. While the first decades of the space enterprise were driven by extremely proactive policies, its goals, its reasons for being must now be more explicit, more reasonable as well as its consequences. Search of extraterrestrial life forms and projects to exploit space resources are two fields of spatial activity that require the association of ethical and imaginary questioning.