Tony Milligan

Chapter 10 -- Some Ethical Constraints on Near-Earth Resource Exploitation

One of the most common and enduring justifications for space exploration is that resources are limited here but plentiful elsewhere. Exploration has the potential to enable humanity to access the vast store of resources throughout our solar system. Recent discussion (driven to some extent by U.S. legislation and by speculation about the future role of the private sector in space) has tended to focus on what we shall call “near-Earth resources” (NERs), which include those of the Moon and near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). They include: potentially vast stores of water, iron, and platinum-group metals among the NEA population; so-called ‘peaks of eternal light’, i.e. places of uninterrupted sunlight (for solar energy collection) and crater areas in more or less permanent darkness (able to harbour water ice) on the Moon; Helium-3 (He3) in the lunar regolith; and the relatively banal resource of terrestrial orbital niches. What is often lost in the enthusiasm concerning such NERs is that, in spite of the immensity of space, only a small percentage of the NEA population is profitably accessible in the absence of distant, futuristic technology; only so much of the lunar surface (or elevated areas just above it) is permanently illuminated (or shadowed); the He3 concentration in the lunar regolith is very low, geographically differentiated and reduces with depth (the regolith on asteroids is also likely to be less mature and so He3 concentration levels are likely to be even lower); and, as is already well-known, there are only so many available orbital allocations. These practical realities suggest that issues of sustainability will not vanish during at least the early stages of space exploitation, and perhaps at all stages for the foreseeable future. They do not support unrelenting and unregulated utilisation and consumption. In fact, quite the opposite.

Space Ethics Without Foundations

What follows will concern an aspect of space ethics in its normative and metaethical dimensions, rather than the details of some or other particular applied question. My suggestion will be that attempts to uncover or construct ‘foundations’ for space ethics may be both misleading and unnecessary [The metaphor is familiar from discussions of space ethics, e.g. it is deployed by Anna Frammartino Wilks in the present volume and it figures prominently in Smith (2014) and Impey et al. (2013)]. Bodies of knowledge are not buildings and the metaphor of foundations does not seem to be particularly apt for ethical knowledge in general or, more specifically, for ethical knowledge concerning human activity in space. The metaphor introduces a suggestion of fixity which conflicts with our recognition that, although there will be continuity in our understanding of some very broad or general ethical obligations and commitments, no matter where we go, a great deal is also likely to change. This variability does not, however, imply that there are no ethical truths but rather that ethical truths are in many cases sensitive to the particularity of situations. Those which are situation invariant are, because of their extreme generality, also of a sort that are unsuited to play a foundational role because they will gain such fixity at the expense of the kind of salience that foundational principles would require. The concluding section will draw out some points which seem to follow concerning the scope and limits of space ethics, tasks it can perform well and tasks which belong more properly to the domain of science fiction or at least to a domain where the distinction between the two becomes blurred.

Introduction: The Scope and Content of Space Ethics

The contributions to the volume are accessible and state-of-the-art overviews of several of the major “theoretical” and “practical” issues in space ethics. Ranging from matters of inherent value and theory construction, through to the risks associated with nuclear powered space probes. Multiple disciplines, from astrobiology and space law through to philosophy and aesthetics are drawn upon. The volume introduction address both the scope and history of the ethics of space exploration, and goes on to provide a summary of the individual contributions to the volume.

Gandhian Satyagraha and Open Animal Rescue

In his chapter, Tony Milligan notes how the open rescue of nonhuman animals, as practised in Australia by Animal Liberation Victoria, Animal Liberation New South Wales, and by members of a variety of activist networks in Europe and North America, has been compared (by such activists) to Gandhian satyagraha. The latter, Milligan clarifies, may be understood, loosely, as a struggle that is based upon the power of truth and/or spirituality and non-violence. Milligan then argues for the relevance of such comparisons, on the grounds that our best undestanding of dissent need not be constrained by descriptive monism. Animal advocates, Milligan contends, need a rich conceptual repertoire and multiple (sometimes more secular, sometimes more spiritualized) ways of describing one and the same set of events.

Group Privilege and Political Division: The Problem of Fox Hunting in the UK

Consideration of fox hunting in the UK is used to argue that the complexities of negotiation between multiple and competing considerations, associated with multiculturalist theory, are probably an ineradicable feature of any practical animal politics within a liberal context. And in this respect, the analysis is sympathetic to the familiar defence of multiculturalism as a component part of animal politics set out by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka. However, insofar as the question of fox hunting also focuses attention strongly upon cruelty, it departs from the familiar suspicion (which they share) that a cruelty-focused discourse must also tend to reinforce anthropocentric norms.

Ethics for an 'off-world' economy

With asteroid mining set to begin in the coming decades, Tony Milligan warns that ethical questions still need to be answered

Constrained Dissent and the Rights of Future Generations

The following paper will defend the viability, and constructive importance, of dissent within stable and more or less autonomous space settlements. That is to say, settlements of the sort which will come after the establishment of an initial human presence. (Which may have to be carried out under some form of command structure of a sort familiar from existing space programs.) The paper will, however, locate dissent and the entitlement to dissent within a broader cluster of commitments, placing it in tension with various other goods and duties which we are properly concerned to secure and fulfil. The politics of dissent in space are likely to be the politics of balancing out competing concerns. Specifically, it is assumed that some of us have a duty to try and help extend the presence of humans to nearby regions of space; that we also have duties towards future generations (and cannot inflict intolerable conditions upon them; and that we are and ought to be committed to various broadly-liberal freedoms including those concerning dissent). These concerns are individually plausible, difficult to abandon and also difficult to balance. It may be difficult to try to meet our duties without neglecting the legitimate interests of those who come after us and who cannot simply be sacrificed, in an illiberal manner, to our goals. Given that scope for dissent is basic to the freedom of any future generation, but also potentially dangerous, what seems to be important is that dissent of at least some kinds is (up to a point) both tolerated and constrained. The paper finishes with some comments upon the kind of political system which might be able to cope with the arising task of balancing out competing claims.