Space Exploration Needs Extraterrestrial Ethics

An anonymous reader writes "Professor Andy Miah notes there's already international government policies taking hold on outer space — and a need for new ethical guidelines. 'For instance, what obligations do we owe to the various life forms we send there, or those we might discover? Can we develop a more considerate approach to colonizing outer space than we were able to achieve for various sectors of Earth?' And what rights do astronauts have? 'Could our inevitable public surveillance of their behavior become too much of an infringement on their personal privacy?' But more importantly, professor Miah notes that 'the goods of space exploration far exceed the symbolic value,' pointing out that 'A vast amount of research and development derives from space exploration ... For example, the United Kingdom's 2007 Space Policy inquiry indicated that the creation of space products contributes two to three times their value in GDP.'"

Comments

Re:I Don't Think It Matters

[forkazoo]

If/When humans first encounter extraterrestrial life forms they'll be so blown away that everything goes out the window. And if they even think they smell a hint of danger they'll kill anything and everything ... and if it's anything like in Twilight Zone, they'll kill each other, too.

Yeah, any of the major steps in discovering aliens will instantly make a lot of people lose their shit, and insist, "but things are different now!" Sadly, part of me expects that the discovery of a microbe on Mars would result in a crazy fervor whipped up by a modern McCarthy and a new Red Scare. The end game would be something ompletely nonsensical, like 100% government surveilance of every person at all times, tomake sure they aren't really a secret alien invader. "Because we face unprecedented dangers now..."

And, oddly, it'll be somewhat justified. If we actually had a NrNgvunt BattleBall show up in orbit, we'd have no real way of understanding their intentions, or motivations, or what the real context of the visit was. Consequently, almost any course of action would be potentially correct. Maybe the global Mexican Hat Dance at 1:33 pm is actually the only thing that can save us!