Frank B. Golley suggests that we need to answer two questions before building extraterrestrial ecosystems or space colonies: “First, can we design a space-colony ecosystem? And, second, should we design space-colony ecosystems?” (1). Patrick Moore, Michael Collins, and Ian Stoner consider the practical and ethical issues involved in colonizing Mars.

By /

Question for the January 2019 WPE Portfolio Reading Set 

Establishing a Colony on Mars in the 21st Century 

(Due by 4:00 PM on Wednesday, January 9, at CC-01-1313)

Context:

Ever since the completion of the Apollo missions to the moon, the photographic surveys of Mars by the Mariner spacecraft in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and the Viking probes of the Martian surface in the mid-1970, the establishment of a human colony on Mars has been contemplated as a major goal of space programs in the 21st century. In a speech at the National Air and Space Museum on 20 July 1989 – the twentieth anniversary of the first human landing on the moon – President George Bush set a goal of the fiftieth anniversary in 2019 for a landing on Mars. While that goal will not be achieved, Trump has reasserted the importance of the Mars mission, stating in March 2017 that NASA’s goal date for human spaceflight to Mars should be 2033.  In October 2018, Elon Musk, owner of the private space exploration company SpaceX, announced that he plans to have people on Mars within ten years.  The essays in this reading set deal with the technical and ecological challenges that may be faced by 21st century human beings if we attempt to design a permanent colony on Mars.

 

Question:

Frank B. Golley suggests that we need to answer two questions before building extraterrestrial ecosystems or space colonies: “First, can we design a space-colony ecosystem? And, second, should we design space-colony ecosystems?” (1). Patrick Moore, Michael Collins, and Ian Stoner consider the practical and ethical issues involved in colonizing Mars.

 

Based on their practical (can we?) and ethical (should we?) concerns, is Mars colonization a goal worth pursuing?

 

In developing your argument, incorporate ideas that support your position as well as ideas that disagree with your position. Your essay must quote and/or paraphrase and work directly with material from all four readings in this reading set.

 

In addition, define and employ key terms that seem to be central to the arguments of your sources and, therefore, to your argument as well. Primary among these key terms is “space colony.” Other key terms that might help you with your argument are: ecosystem; terraforming; scientific-engineering vs biological-ecological approach; innately driven; moralconstraints; and minimally invasive techniques.

 

Note:

It is essential that you include in your essay specific references to all four essays in the reading set. You must attribute any material that you summarize, quote, or paraphrase to its source (using the page numbers of the reading set for quotations and paraphrases). Your own ideas and thinking are necessary and important. However, you should base your essay on the information contained in the set of readings, not on your own life experience, on outside readings (including the internet), or on courses you have taken.

 

You may only receive assistance with writing your paper from employees of U-Mass Boston—not from friends, relatives, or outside tutors.  Plagiarism in a portfolio, whether it is in the new essay or in one of the supporting essays, will be treated in the manner as outlined in the Student Code of Conduct, which can be downloaded in PDF form at: https://www.umb.edu/life_on_campus/policies/community/code.

 

The consequences of violating these policies are serious and may include suspension or expulsion. 

 

 

January 2019 WPE Portfolio Reading Set Question

University of Massachusetts at Boston

Colleges of Education and Human Development, Honors, Liberal Arts, Nursing and Health Sciences, Public and Community Service, and Science and Mathematics

 

Writing Proficiency Evaluation (WPE): Portfolio

 

Portfolio Reading Set: Establishing a Colony on Mars in the 21st Century

 

Due on Wednesday, January 9, 2019, 

No later than 4:00 PM 

In the Writing Proficiency Office, CC-1-1300

 

Table of Contents

 

  1. Golley, Frank B. “Environmental Ethics and Extraterrestrial Ecosystems.” Beyond Spaceship Earth:

Environmental Ethics and the Solar System. Ed. Eugene Hargrove. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1986.

  1. Collins, Michael. Mission to Mars. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990.
  2. Stoner, Ian. “Humans Should Not Colonize Mars.” Journal of the American Philosophical Association (2017) 334–353.
  3. Warmflash, David. “Forget Mars. Here’s Where We Should Build Our First Off-World Colonies.” Discover. Kalmbach Publishing Company, n.d. Web. 8 September 2014.

 

Articles reprinted with permission

 

Notes:

It is essential that you include in your essay specific references to all four essays in the reading set. You must attribute any material that you summarize, quote, or paraphrase to its source (using the page numbers of the reading set for quotations and paraphrases). Your own ideas and thinking are necessary and important. However, you should base your essay on the information contained in the set of readings, not on your own life experience, on outside readings (including the internet), or on courses you have taken. You may only receive assistance with writing your paper from employees of U-Mass Boston—not from friends, relatives, or outside tutors.  Plagiarism in a portfolio, whether it is in the new essay or in one of the supporting essays, will be treated in the manner as outlined in the Student Code of Conduct, which can be downloaded in PDF form at:

https://www.umb.edu/life_on_campus/policies/community/code. The consequences of violating these policies are serious and may include suspension or expulsion.

Your portfolio must contain an essay that is at least five full pages (double spaced in 10 or 12 point type) that answers the question above; at least 15 pages of supporting papers, each one attached to a completed Certification Form; and a completed Portfolio Submission Form.

The exception to the 15-page supporting-paper requirement only applies to new transfer students who have not yet completed their second semester.  Review details on our website, http://www.umb.edu/wpe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 2019 WPE Portfolio Reading Set Table of Contents

Environmental Ethics and Extraterrestrial Ecosystems By Frank B. Golley[1]

 

Development of extraterrestrial ecosystems or space colonies is a major element in the space adventure. As far as we know space is hostile to life. If we are to live in space it will be necessary to design and construct ecological systems that can support humans indefinitely. In this essay I intend to address two questions. First, can we design a space-colony ecosystem? And, second, should we design space-colony ecosystems?  Ecological systems or ecosystems are the focus of much ecological research. The term “ecosystem” was coined by the English ecologist, Sir Arthur Tansley (1871-1955), in 1935 to describe natural systems composed of living and nonliving components. Tansley used the word “system” to stress the physics-like character of his conception and the importance of equilibria in ecosystem dynamics. Since the 1950’s ecosystems have been intensively studied by ecologists and the word has become part of our technical vocabulary. Ecologists believe that ecosystems are organized hierarchically.

We can begin with the planet Earth as an ecosystem containing an atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere. The Earth system or ecosphere can be disaggregated into a variety of subsystems, each of which is an ecosystem. These subsystems might include oceans, tundra, and forest ecosystems. Disaggregation can be continued until one recognizes systems associated with single leaves or puddles. In these ecosystems there is usually a producing component that converts solar energy into chemical energy through the process of photosynthesis. There is also a decomposing component that breaks down organic materials into molecules that can be recycled to other components. And we can identify consumer components that help maintain system stability and development. The dynamic behaviors of these components are frequently described as ecosystem production, decomposition and stability—three features of ecosystem performance.

Humans did not design or build the Earth ecosystems we live in, yet we depend upon these systems for life. The problem of design has both a direct utilitarian and a metaphysical aspect because we understand “ecosystem” to mean a complex of living beings and environments that cannot be dissected; that is, the ultimate unit of ecology is an ecosystem. A living system cannot be operative and, indeed, is not conceivable alone. No living being exists separately from an environment. And thus, [humans] cannot be treated separately from an environment. Design of a space colony means designing both for [humans] and environment; one or the other is influenced reciprocally. Since we do not truly understand our terrestrial ecosystem, nor our relationship to our environment, we are limited in our capacity to design an extraterrestrial ecosystem. There is no immediate possibility of our obtaining full knowledge of ecosystems, and therefore we must approach the design problem experimentally.

Experimentation may involve design of an Earth-like ecosystem to support a colony of humans or reforming the environment of a planet to accommodate human life. This latter approach is called terraforming. Let us consider each of these two methods briefly to determine if there is a feasible way to design and construct a human colony in space.

Design of a Space Colony

One can define “space colony” in many ways. According to G.S. Robinson, a space vehicle in orbit around the earth is a colony (or at least a proto-colony) since it successfully holds [humans…] in a physico-chemical system for days and months. At the other end of a range of possible states is an independent colony functioning all by itself in space or on another planet. In between are all sorts of scenarios. The object is to create a space system in which humans can live a full life and reproduce with no (or minimal) material and energetic inputs from Earth. What would be required to accomplish this goal?

This question has received a large amount of technical attention in the United States and the Soviet Union. As an example of the scientific-engineering approach to the question, Frieda Taub quotes Garland Whisenhunt’s description of the daily balance of humans under normal conditions. About two pounds of oxygen are required, and about 2.2 pounds of carbon dioxide are expelled daily; requirements for ingested water are about 4-5 pounds; and so forth. The question then phrased is how does one supply these weights of oxygen and water and absorb carbon dioxide at an appropriate ratio to support humans? The initial approach was to create a mechanical system to supply

 

humans their requirements. As Howard Odum has pointed out, a mechanical solution is the instinctive approach of the engineer and has dominated the NASA discussions of space colonies. The problem with the mechanical approach is that resupply of parts, repairs, and fuel are required so that while it is obviously possible to sustain humans in space, it is probably not possible to supply them with the requirements to sustain life (food, waste removal, water, and so on) while maintaining the mechanical system at a tolerable cost. Such a space colony would function as a parasite on Earth and would never be independent.

In the 1960’s ecologists suggested that this problem could not be solved over the long term by mechanical, physicochemical devices. Rather, biological organisms need to be coupled to [humans] in some way. The biological part would supply food, gases, water, and process wastes. Protection from the space environment, control and monitoring of biological resources, the built environment, recreation, work and so forth are all supplied and maintained by physico-engineering methods. Current space technology has moved in this direction and experiments have shown that at least the initial steps are feasible. For example, Taub discusses a mixed algae-invertebrate-fish system using dried human feces as the only source of nutrients. R.D. MacElroy and M.M. Avemer have examined the problems of buffering changes within closed systems and concluded that physico-mechanical methods are required to maintain the space-ecosystem in the desired state. They state: “The temptation to develop a closed ecosystem mimicking [humans’] terrestrial environment becomes very strong. However, some generally unappreciated aspects of the real world become obvious when closure is attempted: because of lack of sufficient buffering capacity and the absence of certain energy requiring functions, such as atmospheric circulation and rainfall, closed systems over long or short time, periods become sterile. Recognition of this fact strongly suggests that mechanical or physico-chemical methods must be used to maintain, an ecological system in a desired state.”

It is important to recognize that all of these scientific engineering studies rest upon several assumptions that affect their application to space-colony design. First, the search for links between cause and effect (for example, between human need for food and food production) assumes that the indirect effects coming from linked system components would be unimportant or sufficiently well enough known that they could be accounted for. Second, systems are in a balanced or equilibrium condition over space and time and, therefore, one could detect deviations from the nominal state and correct the system. The first assumption may be true only for very limited cases and short time intervals. Indeed, most ecologists are aware of the difficulty of accounting for the influence of indirect effects in their experiments and observations. Unlike experimental laboratory sciences, ecologists seldom can control the environment and eliminate its effects. Similarly, the second assumption also may be true for a limited case, but it not only depends on the definition of balance but also contradicts our earlier observation of continual change in both the physical part of the planet and in the biological and cultural parts. In general, I think that many ecologists would feel uncomfortable with these assumptions.

Neither the physical scientists-engineers nor the biological-ecological scientists have considered the human part of the ecosystem. In these studies, humans are a separate element outside of the problem and are not treated as either a dynamic subsystem or as a dynamic linked element in a larger system. However, social scientists, humanists, and novelists have considered the human aspect of space colonization. Social processes are frequently a major element of space science fiction. The technological environment of main concern to the engineer biologist is the passive stage on which the all too familiar behaviors (romantic, violent, competitive) of space persons are acted out. Clearly, the confined, homogeneous, and highly controlled space environment, even on a large space colony, differs from our familiar earth environment. The monitoring of each entity, from the molecule to individual, in each part of a colony and the control of performance of the parts to sustain the whole presents such a Draconian[2] vision that one wonders how the adventure of space travel could ever compensate for the loss of the freedoms we enjoy on Earth. And most seriously for survival, how does one maintain the creative innovative impulse in an environment where every process and action is known and controlled for today and every day into the future?

Ecologists have been led by these problems to argue that a colony ecosystem needs to be large enough and to contain sufficient biological diversity for the essential processes of production and regeneration to be carried out by evolving, adapting biological organisms, operating in ecological systems. As mentioned above, this suggestion cannot be expressed in cause –and-effect or linear terms. Even accurate models of components and links are not available. The Earth systems are too complex, and our study is too young to approach the problems in this way. Thus the suggestions of the ecologists are not operationally feasible for the space engineer designer. This is probably the reason why NASA generally stopped support of ecological studies of closed space systems in the early 1970s.

Nevertheless, how could we approach the design problem, without total knowledge of the system? Rather than designing a complete system, we could experimentally change a system in small steps to discover how it responds. It is a long way from the orbiting space station to a space colony, but, as several ecologists have suggested, a series of experiments could be employed to create a space ecosystem. G.M. Woodwell’s committee [of the Ecological Society of America] stated that “if a serious effort is to be made in the development of livable space colonies, research should be started on the design and construction of closed agro-industrial ecosystems on Earth.” Howard Odum suggested multiple seeding experiments where collections of apparently useful organisms would be placed in appropriate colonies and allowed to evolve and reproduce, with cross-seeding across colonies. In this way, organisms may evolve a system that could provide the services a space colony would require. I can see no other way to develop space colonies than by this incremental, experimental approach, coupled with the recognition that experimentation requires failures. This approach could lead to organisms capable of living in a space-colony environment. Thus, our answer to the question of the feasibility of space-colony design is a tentative yes. Given adequate resources and singleness of mind, it is conceptually possible to design a series of experiments that would lead ultimately to a colony in space. However, scientists have suggested another way called terraforming. Let us turn to this alternative.

Terraforming

Terraforming means wholesale rearrangement of a planet’s environment by modifications of its energy balance or its material composition so that the planet can be made habitable to life. James Oberg’s[3] vision conveys the nature of the idea exceedingly well:

For Mars, a goal would be to provide the planet with thicker, breathable air, at temperatures high enough for lightly protected human beings to venture forth on its surface. Plant and animal life would spread across the now-barren surface, tingeing the red rocks with green, and turning the red sky into a beautiful dark blue. Liquid water would flow again on the surface and the eons-dry channels and gullies would become wet with new rains. Rainbows would appear in the sky, symbolizing not the restraint of floodwaters (as in Genesis after the Flood) but their release from eons of imprisonment within the permafrost.

The methods of terraforming require a threshold or critical point where application of energy or materials within the capability of Earthlings would tip the physical processes into a different pattern. The idea, for example, of transforming the crushing atmosphere of Venus, which is largely composed of carbon dioxide and a surface temperature in excess of 900 degrees F, by seeding the clouds with algae depends upon conversion of the atmospheric carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen by the algae. If the oxygen is chemically combined with the crust of Venus, the total pressure would decline, decreasing atmospheric infrared absorption reducing the greenhouse effect, and low g e temperature. It is difficult to evaluate these scenarios. They seem imaginary in the extreme. For example, how many algae would need to be released on Venus, how would they be transported, how would they be grown, held, and packaged on Earth, and so on? Would there be an impact on Earth? Yet the idea has proponents.

As a biologist, it would seem to me that terraforming might be best accomplished by contamination of appropriate planets or moons with lower forms of life such as bacteria, algae, or protozoa. If the conditions were favorable for life, these organisms would survive, grow, and begin the evolutionary process that transformed this planet into a habitable one. If contamination was successful, possibly we could guide the process into directions congenial to human goals and also speed the process. Whatever the method, terraforming provides an alternative to direct space-colony design. Motivation and Purpose

The question—should we design a space colony? – seems to have been answered in the affirmative as far as public support of NASA and the widespread interest in science-fiction themes indicate. Apologetics for space colonies take a variety of forms. These include the utilitarian interests of obtaining resources in space, escaping from Earth, building utopian societies, and the psychosocial interest in meeting a challenge or pursuing an adventure.

Certainly development of space colonies is an acceptable theme in Western, as well as other, human societies. Why should there be such widespread support for an idea that seems technically very difficult, even problematical, and very expensive?

I feel that this question is very important, and I will speculate about some of the motivations for public interest in space colonization. First, while the space-colony concept has a variety of utilitarian values I think that public support in terms of tax dollars to fund research and experiment is more a response to the idea or concept than to the resources or industrial possibilities involved in space colonization. Space colonization fits our culture. While there are many elements of our culture that are germane to space colonization, I will focus on four elements that may suggest why we want to create space colonies and why we are willing to devote such a large share of our resources to the task.

First, we want to construct a space colony to escape from Earth. The problems that [humans] faces on Earth seem insurmountable. The intensity of concern mounts as humans become more and more tightly tangled in webs of exploitative, often violent interactions. Security is impossible in some great cities, such as Beirut, and our preoccupation with personal security in all cities grows. Governments everywhere seem to practice folly, in historian Barbara Tuchman’s sense of the word. In such a dilemma, escape is attractive. The situation is not new to Western cultures. First, we escaped to America, then Africa and Australia. Now there is no land with weaker or more vulnerable inhabitants left to be conquered, but we continue to dream. Space beckons. Keith Laumer in his space novel Star Colony has a character say, “Maybe here on Omega we’ll have a chance to try it all again—and get it right this time.”

Getting it right is the second cultural element to consider. Our culture tends to organize reality into simple dichotomies. Right-wrong is one of these. In a sense appropriate to this discussion, right fits an ideal. The ideal is when all the right things happen. It is a utopia. Utopian thinking has guided Western cultures for centuries. In the age of discovery and conquest, Western cultures had numerous opportunities to experiment with ideal societies. While utopias have almost always failed, the ideal, especially in the context of facing the real unsolvable problems we mentioned above, persists. The Marxist ideal represents a typical pattern within this tradition. It can accept control of individuals for larger social ends, it has a vision of the ideal state, and it is willing to design a path to get from here to there. […S]pace is interpreted by the artist, poet, novelist, school teacher, musician as a great human adventure leading toward a better world.

The third cultural element concerns the mechanical focus in the space colony. We live in an increasingly machinedominated world. Machines wake us, feed us, transport us, provide us work and entertainment. We have faith in machines. We have even interpreted our biological nature in machine language; witness the TV documentary on the body entitled “The Magnificent Machine” and the “Spaceship Earth” metaphor of the environmentalist. Machines are created and maintained by scientists and engineers, who have high status in our society. Thus, we are not repelled by a machine world in which [humans] must function as part of a machine. Our faith in machines leads us to overlook the implications of such a world.

And finally, this machine focus stresses one other element in our culture. The colony is anti-nature. The living nature we experience on Earth does not exist in space. Space is only physical. As far as we know life does not exist anywhere else in the universe. The space colony designer aims to recreate life in space, but the form of life is narrow and constricted. In contrast, this Earth is exceptionally complex and interacting; the level of noise, in a cybernetic sense, is very high; randomness seems important. Living nature is also ever changing. It reacts to environmental forces by evolution and adaptation.

Our only way to know and interact with the natural world is to directly experience it, and to evolve with it. Built environments and machines are static and discontinuous. They limit our capacity to experience and evolve. And thus, they break our links with life. The space colony is the ultimate step in this progression—all links with life are lost, and [humans] and [their] domesticated creatures become adjuncts to machines. Through the space adventure [humans] overcomes life and recreates it in his own terms. The space colony is the modern city extended over the entire Earth. In a sense, this is the ultimate challenge to [humans], and it is not hard to understand why we are attracted to such Faustian[4] opportunities.  These various examples suffice to show how the space colony metaphor fits into our mythical world of imagination. Our children are raised before images of space men and women on television and in the comic book. The violent and strange worlds portrayed do not bother us since they actually represent our conception of Earth and mirror our own fears, hopes, and beliefs faithfully. But even so, the action of designing and experimenting with space colonies raises ethical questions.

For example, the space effort of the United States and the Soviet Union is frightfully expensive. From 1969 to 1979 space research in the United States cost about $33,829 million as compared with $30,341 million for health and $10,819 million for environment. While these funds represent a massive expression of public support for the program, they come, of course, from the soil, water, rock, and labor of the world. A concentration of funds for the space adventure represents an extreme concentration of power and an aggressive monopoly of resources. What problems on Earth could be solved with these funds?

Frankly, I can see no turning back from this adventure. It is built into our very bodies and souls, and it will perish only when we do. It represents in a particularly clear way the myths of Western cultures. To change it, to focus on the Earth, human relationships with the natural world, and so on, requires a fundamental reorientation of the culture. While such a change may be occurring, it is slowly adaptive and is not a conscious effort of government.

Conclusion

Is it possible to build a space colony? No one knows for sure, but we can visualize how a colony could evolve through a series of experiments. Should we build a space colony? That is quite a different question. Ecologists considered it in the mid-1970s and stated the answer as follows:

Yet the problems of expansion into space also seem nearly insurmountable. If these challenges were to be solved on Earth, one might be considerably more optimistic about the possibilities of a space colony. To solve them first in space seems highly unrealistic.

 

Mission to Mars

By Michael Collins[5]

Oxygen, water, food: those are the three primary consumables that Mars colonists must produce.

First water: There are three sources: the permafrost layer, the polar ice caps, and the atmosphere. There may be a fourth, reservoirs of underground ice or water, but certainly there are three. On Earth permafrost is extremely hard and tends to break drill bits. It won’t be any easier on Mars. Once permafrost is excavated, it must be heated to yield liquid water. In all likelihood this water will not be potable6, but will be a brine that must be purified. The polar ice caps will be much easier to work with than permafrost, but their location makes them inaccessible from a base near the Martian equator. Equatorial locations are preferred, at least initially, because from them it is easier to ascend to orbit.

That leads us to the third source of water. The Martian atmosphere is composed of 95 percent carbon dioxide, 2.7 percent nitrogen, 1.6 percent argon, and a trace of water vapor–.03 to .1 percent. Water can be extracted from the air simply by compressing and cooling it. All that is needed is electricity to power a compressor and a refrigerator. Some calculations indicate that it would require the power output of a small nuclear reactor (100 kilowatts) for about two and one half hours to produce one gallon of water. Not bad. Solar power might be used in lieu of nuclear, but dust storms can impede the functioning of solar panels, not to mention that—at an average distance of 140 million miles from the Sun, a huge array of panels would be required.

Once water starts trickling in, the colonists’ situation will be much eased. By passing an electric current through water, breathing oxygen can be obtained. Water can be used inside greenhouses to irrigate plants growing in a carbon dioxide atmosphere. The hydrogen in water can be combined with the carbon in carbon dioxide to produce methane fuel (CH4). Methane and oxygen burned in a rocket motor produce a specific impulse of 340 seconds, which is low by Earth standards but acceptable for a locally produced propellant. This means that as the colony gains experience in manufacturing, rockets arriving from Earth could bring more cargo and less fuel, relying on Mars-produced methane and oxygen for the return trip.

The Martian soil consists primarily of oxides of silica, iron, sulfur, magnesium, aluminum, calcium, and titanium— roughly in that order. It is not known whether there is enough phosphorous to permit healthy reproduction of plants and animals, but the other constituents seem well suited for agriculture. On Earth, plants have flourished in lunar soil brought back by Apollo astronauts and Martian soil should be equally fertile. It will be relatively easy to erect inflatable greenhouses, pressurized to some extent. Carbon dioxide plus sunlight plus water: the first two necessities are readily available. Colonists will have to supply the water and perhaps some phosphorous and other fertilizers. Human waste will certainly be used for fertilizer, as it is in many countries on earth. A by-product of growing plants will be oxygen, and there may be practical ways of extracting it from greenhouses. The first colonists will be vegetarians, or at least will rely on freeze-dried meat brought from Earth, but gradually that too will change.

Chickens and rabbits both seem likely candidates, and perhaps goats for milk. I would not like to contemplate transporting a horse or cow to Mars.

The Martian soil must also provide shelter. The atmosphere is thick enough to incinerate meteorites weighing up to a pound or so, but it is too thin to protect animal life from ultraviolet radiation. To shield themselves, the new Martians will have to pile about a yard of dirt on their roofs or burrow into the soil. For millennia on Earth, caves have served humans well, and they will also on Mars.  Inside a cave the temperature will be lower and more stable than outside, wind will be nonexistent, and the problem of pressurization will be eased. Later the Martian soil will be mined to produce cement, glass, and metals—and more elaborate structures can be built. Cement is composed of the silicates and aluminates of calcium. All three of these elements are abundant on Mars. To produce cement, soil needs to be heated, and then more water is required to mix with the soil plus sand to form concrete. Again the availability of water will be the key. The hydrogen in water can also be used, in combination with carbon, to produce plastics and polymers.

As the colony grows, its inhabitants, like pioneers anywhere, will want to know what is over the next hill, around the next bend. Mobility is a big problem. Unless inside a vehicle, travelers will have to wear pressure suits. Rovers, perhaps methane powered, will grow larger and capable of greater range.  Small, remotely controlled airplanes (unmanned) may be used for reconnaissance, as may balloons or dirigibles, manned or unmanned. The polar ice caps will be destinations that Martians covet. Eventually some will make it there (the North Pole is preferable because it contains more water ice and less frozen carbon dioxide than the South Pole). The explorers will take deep core samples and from them will read a partial history of Mars, just as scientists on Earth have done by boring through the ice of Greenland and Antarctica. Martians may establish a polar outpost and they may figure out a way to get water from the poles to equatorial regions, perhaps through a pipeline, as oil is transported on Earth.

In some ways they will wish Mars were more Earth-like, especially in regard to the atmosphere.  Living under a dome will be restrictive, as the Soviets have learned in Siberia, but on Mars it will be essential, perhaps forever. The alternative is something called “terraforming”—making the entire atmosphere of the planet breathable by generating gases with a suitable combination of temperature, pressure, and chemical composition. Heating is the key to terraforming and various schemes have been proposed to raise the temperature of the planet. For example, if the polar ice caps were black instead of white they would absorb more sun light and would eventually melt. Released water vapor and carbon dioxide would thicken the atmosphere, which in turn would trap more heat from the Sun, and Mars’s temperature would slowly rise.

Some have suggested using [the Martian moon] Phobos as raw material for blackening the surface of Mars. Phobos is very dark in color; pulverized dust from it, shot down onto Mars, especially onto the poles, would gradually start the temperature rising. Other ideas for heating Mars involve the generation of greenhouse gases such as Freon, or placing huge mirrors on Phobos to beam sunlight to the poles.

Even after the atmosphere became warm and thick, it would still be poisonous to humans.

The preponderance of carbon dioxide must be replaced by oxygen and probably nitrogen.  On Earth, some 3.5 billion years ago, algae and lichens began the process of converting primitive gases (ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide) into oxygen. They and other plants could be used on Mars. So might bacteria that could feed off the chemicals in the Martian soil. Some bacteria excrete oxygen, others nitrogen—both good for humans. Plants and bacteria would have to be protected against ultraviolet radiation, at least in the early stages of terraforming. That would be less of a problem for the bacteria, which can burrow underground. Some bacteria also reproduce as often as every twenty minutes. As the atmosphere improved, more complex plant forms could be introduced, and animals as well. Bioengineering is an emerging discipline today that might prove invaluable to Martian settlers. Certainly a resistance to radiation would be a desirable characteristic to develop in Martian flora and fauna. Likewise an appetite for carbon dioxide at very low atmospheric pressure. Genetic mutants that scientists would be reluctant to release on Earth could be tried on Mars. Biological research might become a major industry for a Mars colony, with the most successful new life-forms becoming candidates for export to Earth.

Certainly the gardening of Mars would be vital for its long term prosperity.

Another idea involves the massive importation—by collision—of raw materials. Phobos is a modest candidate. The orbit of Phobos is decaying and the tiny moon sooner or later will crash into Mars. On a cosmic scale, it wouldn’t take much of a nudge to accelerate the process. But water from Phobos, although valuable, would not be sufficient to terraform Mars. Comets, asteroids, moons of Jupiter or Saturn: all have been proposed as megasources of water and other raw materials. The problem is how to alter the trajectory of one of these bodies enough so that it collides with Mars. Usually hydrogen bomb explosions are suggested. If a big enough projectile hit Mars, some experts believe, the impact would release interior heat and activate volcanoes.

This activity, independent of the material added by the interloper, would trigger or accelerate the terraforming process.

By whatever methods, the terraforming of Mars will be an extraordinarily slow process by the standards of terrestrial civilization. A NASA scientist, Christopher P. McKay, breaks it down into Phase 1, warming the planet, and Phase 2, converting atmospheric carbon dioxide and soil nitrates to the desired mixture of oxygen and nitrogen. He estimates two hundred years for Phase 1 and a hundred thousand years for Phase 2. Of course, humans can still live successfully under domes in the meantime, but still… On the other hand, human creativity working in a new place with new raw materials might accelerate the process by means we cannot today imagine.

Certainly Martians will have an acute desire to improve themselves and their surroundings.

The Mars chamber of commerce will boast of one quality unmatched—and unmatchable—by Earth: reduced gravity. At 38 percent of their Earth weight, settlers will revel in their new found physical, freedom of movement. A fifteen foot high jump, a fifty-foot broad jump? No problem, and you don’t have to be a trained athlete to do them. Almost every record in the terrestrial book will have to be annotated “record for Earth only.” Ballet on Mars will offer possibilities far beyond terrestrial choreography. Dancers will stay off the ground much longer and while airborne will be able to perform with a languid grace and depth of expression not possible with abbreviated terrestrial leaps.

The wonder of the Martian gravity, like any new sensation, will fade with time. When the first child is born, a child who has never known Earth’s gravity, a new era will begin. Martians will no longer have to import people, although they will continue to do so for breeding stock and for acquisition of expertise. For those who wish to leave, returning home will not be inordinately difficult because the demand for Earth’s goods—at first necessities and later luxuries—means supply ships will be returning to Earth with room for passengers. And new techniques, such as drug-induced hibernation, may make the trip seem much shorter. But little, by little, Mars will become independent and self-sufficient, psychologically as well as economically. A child born and raised there, in a biologically isolated environment, may be too fragile to endure a visit to filthy, bone crushing Earth. If some tragedy should befall Earth, Mars will still be there. Partially, on the basis of the analysis of Apollo’s Moon rocks, scientists now believe that the Moon most likely was formed when a huge object—about the size of Mars—collided with Earth. This wanderer from deep space struck the Earth early in its formation and with such force that it knocked off a huge chunk. The moon congealed from the solid and gaseous remnants of this collision. It is doubtful that human beings could survive on Earth if a second such collision occurred. The chances of that happening are almost infinitesimal, but the consequences are almost infinitely large. To me, this possibility is not sufficient justification for going to Mars, but a colony there would preserve the human race in the event of its death on Earth.

 

 

 

 

Humans Should Not Colonize Mars

By Ian Stoner[6]

 

[…] Why Should We Colonize Mars?

Mars is the easiest planet for Earthlings to reach, but it is not exactly easy to get there. What reasons do we have to invest the resources required to establish a human presence on Mars? I identify five reasons offered by advocates of colonization, and argue that one alone withstands reflective scrutiny.

[Reason 1:] We Should Colonize Mars to Exploit its Natural Resources

Earth is finite, and we will eventually exhaust its natural resources. When that happens, we will have to turn to space for more. Mars is rich in many resources that are important on Earth, and models of Martian geology suggest these resources are probably grouped in deposits that make them mineable. We should therefore colonize Mars as an instrumentally necessary step toward the goal of effectively exploiting its resources.

Reply: There are moral reasons to worry about space-mining solutions to resource shortages on Earth. But we need not resort to moral arguments to reveal the failure of a resource-based justification for colonizing Mars. If at some point our refusal to manage Earth’s resources makes it economically appealing to turn to space for more, it will always be cheaper to mine asteroids than Mars, because asteroids are not stuck at the bottom of a gravity well. In fact, many resource-rich asteroids are less fuel-intensive to reach than the surface of Earth’s moon—let alone the surface of Mars. The resources of Mars provide no economic justification for colonization.

[Reason 2:] We Should Colonize Mars to Fulfill our Pioneering Nature

The drive to explore, to expand, and to pioneer is a deep feature of human nature. Settling frontiers is what humans do; it is who we are. [According to Robert Zubrin,] colonizing Mars is therefore a question “of reaffirming the pioneering character of our society” and failing to colonize Mars “constitutes failure to live up to our human nature and a betrayal of our responsibility as members of the community of life itself”.

Reply: Zubrin appears to believe that humans are innately driven to expand and that this drive is noble. But the claim that we have an innate drive to discover and subdue wilderness appears to be descriptively false and to characterize such a drive as noble is morally dubious. Though expanding knowledge is usually an ennobling undertaking, the lessons of centuries tell us that expanding our footprint is (at best) of ambiguous moral valence.

More generally, the claim “it is what humans do!” has never been a good justification for anything, anywhere, ever. Humans apparently harbor drives not only for expansion, but also for revenge, war, sexual assault, scapegoating the socially marginalized, exploiting the downtrodden, denying the humanity of culturally unfamiliar people, stigmatizing disabled people, and arrogating to ourselves every kind of resource beyond all reason. Zubrin and others who endorse some version of the pioneer argument owe us an explanation of why humans should unleash expansionary drives when we ought to keep a tight leash on so many others.

[Reason 3:] We Should Colonize Mars to Secure Fresh Opportunities for Experiments in Living

In an unpublished manuscript titled “A Space Traveler’s Manifesto”, Freeman Dyson wrote, “It is in the long run essential to the growth of any new and high civilization that small groups of men can escape from their neighbors and from their governments, to go and live as they please in the wilderness. A truly isolated, small, and creative society will never again be possible on this planet.” Settlements in space are thus our only realistic opportunity to experiment with alternative social and political structures. Of all possible space destinations, Mars is the most welcoming. We should colonize Mars because such a colony would provide a clean break with history and for the first time in a long time would give a new generation the opportunity to form a fresh and vigorous society that will replenish the human spirit.

Reply: Suppose, for the sake of argument, that as a matter of descriptive fact, small groups of people must live in wilderness in order to reinvent institutions, loosen the strictures of custom, and experiment with new social organizations. There are two related problems with citing the need for fresh opportunities for experiments in living as a reason to colonize Mars. The first is that there are plenty of isolated places on Earth that have yet to be settled. It might, perhaps, be true that there are no hospitable places left unexplored, but our planet presents us with a cornucopia of forbidding possibilities: raft cities in international waters, settlements deep in unpopulated deserts, wilderness areas within failed states, Arctic tundra, and Antarctic ice shelves. Every one of these places is much, much friendlier to human bodies than is the surface of Mars. (The atmosphere of Mars is 95 percent carbon dioxide—poisonous to humans. There is so little of it that no moisture can remain liquid at human body temperature. Brief exposure on the surface of Mars would result in the moisture on your eyes, skin, and lungs rapidly boiling away. The surface of Mars is pummeled by radiation more severe than anywhere on Earth. Also, it is cold.)  If accomplishing isolation in pursuit of experiments in living were some kind of moral or prudential imperative, the instrumentally rational way to discharge that obligation would be to settle isolated regions of Earth, not to colonize Mars.

And so we arrive at the second problem: why think that there is a moral or prudential obligation to settle new wilderness so as to rejuvenate the culture via wilderness-mediated experiments in living? The American pioneers Zubrin lionizes were not responding to any such imperative; they were responding to more immediate economic and social pressures. To the extent that the social and institutional patterns they ended up with differed from those they left behind, this was an effect of their decision to move, not its cause. […]

[Reason 4:] We Should Colonize Mars as a Backup Planet

We have an obligation to ensure the long-term survival of our species. We ought, then, to expand beyond Earth, because once humans are established elsewhere in the universe, our species will no longer be vulnerable to catastrophes on Earth. Because Mars is by far the best prospect for an autonomous human colony in the foreseeable future, we should settle it. As Larry Niven once said, according to Arthur Clarke, “the dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don’t have a space program, it’ll serve us right”.

Many people celebrated for their smarts endorse this argument for colonizing Mars. This is Elon Musk’s[7] reason for pushing for Mars. Carl Sagan, Ray Bradbury, Stephen Hawking, and Paul Davies have all endorsed some version of the species-survival argument for space colonies. Everyone on this list agrees that establishing an autonomous colony on Mars is a rational response to the moral imperative to hedge against the risk of an extinction-level catastrophe on Earth.

Reply: The range of species-level threats addressed by a Mars colony is relatively narrow. A Mars colony would not insure against large-scale threats to the solar system, such as nearby supernovae, invading extraterrestrials, or an early expansion of the sun. Nor would it insure against threats we pose to ourselves, such as war and environmental destruction. We carry these threats to ourselves everywhere we go, and we would carry them with us to Mars.

A Mars colony would only protect us against externally imposed large-scale environmental threats specific to Earth. A colony on Mars would be unmolested by, for example, a Chicxulub[8]-scale asteroid or comet strike on Earth. But is a Mars colony the best way to hedge against this risk?

First, note that while it is relatively easy to imagine an asteroid or comet impact knocking civilization back a few hundred years, it is genuinely difficult to imagine a sapiens-extincting impact. Contra-Niven, Chicxulub did not kill the dinosaurs because they lacked a space program; it killed them because they lacked blankets.

Now, imagine that you have no vested interest in colonizing Mars, and your concern is to do a flinty-eyed cost/benefit analysis of various proposals to hedge against asteroid-based threats to civilization and species survival. You are presented with the following options. The first is the Musk option: invest the resources required to establish a million-person settlement on Mars that might possibly be self-sustaining in the event of a civilizationending asteroid strike on Earth.

Option two: invest in detection and redirect capabilities for near-Earth objects. Invest in seed arks[9] and hardened knowledge repositories[10] and energy sources. With proper investment we could come close to eliminating the chance of a civilization ending, let alone a species-ending impact. This course would be cheaper and more effective than establishing a Mars colony. Even if planetary defenses fail and a strike happens, there is virtually nothing an asteroid could do to Earth that would make it as hostile to human life as Mars already is; even Chicxulub II would leave Earth with nonlethal atmospheric pressure, a radiation-blocking magnetic field, and oxygen, all of which Mars lacks.

Musk and others promote Mars colonies as required by a cost/benefit analysis of the best way to discharge our obligation to ensure the survival of our species. But their cost/benefit analysis only appears rational because they have carefully loaded the comparison scenarios in a way that guarantees a pro-colonization conclusion. Musk is surely right that colonizing Mars is more prudent, from a species-preservation perspective, than sitting on our hands. But once we supply a third option it is clear that if there is a moral obligation to take instrumentally effective steps to safeguard the species, then investment in planetary defense and civilization protection, not Mars colonization, is what is morally required. (Of course, it is not self-evident that there is any such duty to promote species survival…)

This conclusion regarding investment in planetary defense is not a consequence of pinchpenny aerospace budgets forcing a hard choice between promising options. If the goal is species survival, and given that the Martian environment is much less survivable than even a post-strike Earth would be, then there is no remotely realistic budget point at which the marginal dollar would be more effectively spent on Mars colonization than on protecting Earth and the creatures and civilizations that evolved to live on it.

[Reason 5:] We Should Colonize Mars in Order to Learn the Answers to Important Scientific Questions

Freeman Dyson, once again: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our present-day science. And we shall only find out what they are if we go out and look for them”.

This, finally, is a genuine reason to go to Mars. The previous subsections have all highlighted values that, if worth pursuing at all, are most effectively pursued on Earth. But Mars’s scientific value provides a genuine reason to go there, because questions about Mars most certainly cannot be better answered here on Earth. In order to understand

Mars’s history, geology, geography, weather, chemistry, and so on, we have to go there and look. […]

Mars is also an excellent destination at which to pursue broader scientific questions about the nature and scope of life. Is Mars currently abiotic?[11] Has it always been? If there is no evidence of present or past Martian life, how seriously should we take the possibility that life on Earth is unique in the universe? If we do find evidence of life, is it built on DNA and RNA? If so, which version of the panspermia hypothesis[12] does that evidence support? If Martian life is fundamentally different, what does that tell us about the prospects for the spontaneous appearance of life in other environments and our own odds of survival? These are huge, tectonic questions that Mars can potentially answer, and it is our best bet, in our lifetimes, for answering them.

We can learn things on Mars that cannot be learned on Earth, and some of the discoveries promised on Mars would reverberate through a variety of disciplines. That is a powerful reason in favor of studying Mars. In the following section I argue that the same scientific value that gives us good reason to study Mars gives us moral reason not to colonize it.

The Principle of Scientific Conservation

Some scientific investigations do not alter their object of study. (Observing the migratory patterns of birds, for example, does not affect the birds observed.) Some scientific investigations destroy the object of study. (Performing an elemental analysis of a rock using an ICP-MS machine requires grinding and dissolving the rock.) Between the extremes of no contact and total destruction is a spectrum of investigatory invasiveness.

While ignoring the large and vague middle of the spectrum, we can reasonably easily identify a group of minimally invasive techniques that scarcely alter the object of investigation, and we can reasonably easily identify a group of significantly invasive techniques that profoundly alter the object of investigation. There are moral constraints on the use of destructive or significantly invasive techniques; some things ought not be damaged or destroyed in the name of answering empirical questions about them. I propose the following principle as a rough guide to the permissibility of significantly invasive scientific investigation.

The Principle of Scientific Conservation. Destructive or significantly invasive investigation of an object of scientific interest is morally permissible only when (1) significantly invasive investigation does not threaten the scientific or nonscientific values instantiated in that object and (2) no adequate alternatives to significantly invasive investigation are available.

The principle of scientific conservation is not a theory of ethics, intrinsic value, or anything else. It is, rather, a pretheoretic principle providing guidance in a particular domain. Like all such principles, it must be understood as providing pro tanto[13] guidance; it identifies a wrong-making feature of some scientific investigations, but it cannot by itself decisively settle the question of whether an investigation is wrong all things considered. (If destructive investigation in violation of the principle were the only way to generate a vaccine that would save millions of lives, it is probably right, all things considered, to proceed with the investigation.) The principle effectively says: “any principle-violating investigation is impermissible unless the principle of scientific conservation is outweighed by a countervailing, and more important, moral value”. Illustrations of the Principle of Scientific Conservation

A few examples will illustrate the plausibility of the claim that a scientific investigation that violates either clause of the principle is pro tanto morally wrong.

A real-world illustration of a violation of clause #1: Currey meets Prometheus. In 1964, Donald Currey, a graduate student using tree rings to study the Little Ice Age of about 500 years ago, attempted to take a core sample of an ancient looking bristlecone pine in Nevada. Unfortunately, his borer stuck fast in the trunk. He cut down the tree to retrieve his borer, sectioned the trunk, and counted its rings. To his horror, he counted 4,844 rings, which made Prometheus, as the tree was subsequently named, the oldest known living organism on Earth. When Prometheus sprouted in Nevada, the city of Troy was newly founded, hieroglyphic writing had just been invented in Egypt, and some Neolithic tribes in England were beginning to grumble about the build quality of their wood and dirt version of Stonehenge.

In virtue of being the oldest known organism on Earth, Prometheus had aesthetic, historical, and other nonscientific values that should have been preserved. Prometheus also could have been a key subject for scientific investigations other than Currey’s. In felling the tree, he foreclosed those possibilities. Currey had no idea what he was cutting down when he cut it down; he unwittingly violated the first clause of the principle of scientific conservation. The widespread moral outrage directed at him when the story broke, and the personal burden of guilt he apparently carried for the rest of his life, lends support to this claim: employing a destructive technique in violation of the principle of scientific conservation is a moral failure.

[…] Realistic examples of violations of clause #2. If you want to know the age of single aspen in a clonal colony, you ought to bore a core sample; you should not cut down the tree. If you want to know what an owl has been eating, you ought to wait for it to throw up a pellet; you should not kill it to open its stomach. If you want to know the metallurgical composition of some common nineteenth-century coins, you ought to use X-ray fluorescence (a common and accurate noninvasive method); you should not melt them down for a fire assay. In every case, the second clause of the principle properly dictates that because an adequate noninvasive method is available, it is (pro tanto) wrong to use destructive methods.

A Human Colony on Mars Would Violate the Principle of Scientific Conservation

Any human presence on Mars is likely to constitute a significantly invasive or destructive investigation of the Martian environment in violation of both clauses of the principle of scientific conservation.

We know that a wide variety of Earth organisms can survive on Mars. The European Space Agency has run experiments on the International Space Station that expose organic and biological samples to vacuum and radiation outside the station’s hull. Among the things we have learned from these experiments: spores of Trichoderma longibrachiatum, a common soil fungus found all over Earth, can remain viable for nearly two years exposed to vacuum and unmitigated solar radiation. Black fungi native to Antarctica can survive exposure to simulated Martian conditions, and a small portion of cells can, after exposure, proliferate. Most lichens are impervious to the brutal conditions of total exposure to vacuum, UV, and cosmic radiation, recovering full health within 24 hours of return from exposure.

In accordance with international agreements, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and other robotic probes currently on the surface of Mars were assembled in a clean room, their surfaces regularly swabbed with alcohol during assembly, their heat tolerant parts baked to kill any remaining microorganisms. Despite these cleaning protocols, we can be confident that microbial hitchhikers on landers and rovers survived the trip and are currently living on the surface of Mars. Indeed, we have a roster of species we have inadvertently sent there. They are, by and large, the very sorts of hardy extremophiles that could survive indefinitely on the Martian surface. Though contamination is nearly certain, there is good reason to believe that the Earth microbes that now live on Mars cannot grow and reproduce under the conditions at their landing sites. This is in part because landers have thus far avoided the “special regions” of the planet, where scientists believe Earth organisms would not just survive, but could, perhaps, successfully reproduce.

Our current contamination of Mars is probably limited to dormant microorganisms confined to the spacecraft we landed there. A human colony on Mars would be a different story. Human colonists, like all humans, would be coated in and stuffed with bacteria, yeast, and fungus. Humans on the surface of Mars would continuously inoculate the planet with new strains of Earth life, constantly sowing possible progenitors of eventual Mars-adapted life.

Seeding Mars with life from Earth violates the first clause of the Principle of Scientific Conservation. Many of the important questions about Mars concern Martian life. If we contaminate Mars with Earth life, we risk making these questions impossible to answer.

There are adequate noninvasive alternatives to colonization. Robotic probes can already gather excellent data and they can be carefully cleaned. Available science packages improve every year, and an ambitious space program could massively increase the speed and flexibility of future probes were they teleoperated[14] by crews stationed in Martian orbit instead of on Earth’s surface.  […]

Since the early days of space exploration, the International Council for Science’s Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) has maintained a planetary protection policy for missions to other planetary bodies. The components of the policy that protect against forward contamination are justified in terms of risks posed to later scientific investigations, and the policy is generally understood not in moral terms, but rather in terms of a professional best practice, a way to keep different researchers and agencies from stepping on each other’s toes. […]

COSPAR’s precautions against forward contamination are also generally understood as temporary, to be relaxed or eliminated once agencies get to the point of landing astronauts on bodies that could support life. According to Conley and John Rummel (chair of the COSPAR panel on planetary protection), “The expectation that humans will eventually land on Mars has been implicit in COSPAR planetary protection policy from its earliest development”.

To treat planetary protection as a short-term requirement of professional best practice underestimates the moral force of the principle of scientific conservation.

In order to override the pro tanto moral obligation asserted by the principle of scientific conservation, we need a significant moral reason to go there. No such reason is currently on offer.

The principle of scientific conservation includes ambiguous terms. It enjoins us not to threaten the scientific or nonscientific “value” instantiated in objects of scientific interest, but it tells us nothing about whose assertions of value are authoritative. Thus, the principle is unhelpful in cases in which there is disagreement about the value of an object of scientific interest. Similarly, the principle asserts that invasive investigation is ruled out when “adequate” noninvasive alternatives are available. But what is the standard of adequacy? How much more expensive, slow, or limited must a noninvasive alternative be before it counts as inadequate relative to the invasive option?

These ambiguities need to be worked out before the principle can be brought to bear in areas of genuine controversy about values or adequacy. But we need not answer those questions before we apply the principle to the case of Mars colonies because there is no genuine controversy about values or adequacy in this case. Everyone urging colonies as an effective means of supporting scientific research already acknowledges that Mars has immense scientific value. And though some people chafe at the sleepy rolling speed and limited flexibility of robotic probes, those probes are orders of magnitude cheaper than human explorers; they have the same flight time to Mars and much longer potential mission durations, and there are few or no empirical questions about Mars we could not design a probe to answer. Under no plausible specification of adequacy could a noninvasive technique that gathers the desired data in a broadly similar time frame and at lower cost than its invasive competitor count as inadequate.

The Tread Lightly Principle

The principle of scientific conservation entails that humans should not colonize Mars. This is not the only reason to avoid the planetary contamination colonization would bring. In this section, I introduce a moral principle governing appropriate human behavior in wilderness. This principle, too, rules out colonies on Mars.

[…]  The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on the Minnesota/Canada border is a protected wilderness area. There are no roads; no motorized vehicles are permitted on land or in the water. Visitors must not leave anything behind and must not carry out anything they find there. Those rules have worked well enough that, by all accounts, it is often difficult to avoid setting up camp in spots that give no evidence of any previous human presence.

Imagine a group of canoers on a small lake deep in the Boundary Waters. One of them finishes drinking from a plastic water bottle and proceeds to sink it in the lake. I expect you judge that this is not morally permissible, even if the litterer is very careful to sink the bottle reliably, in a deep part of the lake, so that it is highly unlikely that any other canoers would ever discover it. […]

The “Tread Lightly” Principle as Best Explanation of the Described Cases

Our judgments in these cases cannot be explained by direct appeal to some popular theories of environmental value.

Conservationist-style direct appeal to harm done to other or future people, fails to explain at least two of the cases. We can declare littering in the Boundary Waters wrong before we establish whether or not that litter will be discovered by future hikers. […]

Rather than appeal directly to a theory to explain what is wrong with the behavior of the characters in these cases, I suggest we seek a pre-theoretic principle governing our interactions with wilderness. In fact, the Boy Scouts have already gone a long way toward explaining these cases in their long-standing injunction to “leave no trace” when visiting wilderness […].

A bit of clarification is sufficient to turn the Boy Scouts’ handbook guidance into a plausible pre-theoretic principle. “Leave no trace” cannot mean “leave no evidence of human presence”, for that would be too weak. […] Nor can “leave no trace” mean “have zero impact”, for that would be too strong. People can visit wilderness areas without having done anything wrong, but no one can spend time in any environment and have literally no impact on it.

The injunction to leave no trace is best understood as suggesting a kind of counterfactual comparison. It means that after visiting a new environment, the traces you leave should, before long, be indistinguishable from counterfactual worlds in which you did not visit. “Zero impact” most plausibly means that “whatever impact you do make should be indistinguishable from the effects of natural processes after a suitable period of time”. We should tread lightly enough on wilderness areas so that natural processes quickly erase our footprints.

The Tread Lightly Principle. When we visit areas of wilderness, we have a moral obligation to conduct ourselves in such a way that the impact of our presence is indistinguishable, after a suitable period of time, from counterfactual worlds in which we did not visit that wilderness area.

Like the principle of scientific conservation, tread lightly is a pro tanto moral principle—it identifies a wrongmaking feature of some interactions with wilderness, but it does not by itself establish whether a given interaction with wilderness is wrong, all things considered. Treading heavily can sometimes be warranted by countervailing and weightier moral considerations. (Landing a helicopter in the Boundary Waters would be morally permissible were that the only way to rescue a group of stranded children.) As with the principle of scientific conservation, we need good moral justification for overriding the tread lightly principle.         

A Mars Colony Could not Tread Lightly on the Martian Environment

[…I]t would be nearly impossible for a human colony to tread lightly on the Martian environment. If Mars is currently abiotic, then the introduction of Earth microbes would likely convert Mars into a biotic environment. That would fundamentally alter the planet compared to the counterfactual worlds in which we did not settle there.

In a thriving ecosystem, homeostatic[15] pressures make it relatively easy to tread lightly in wilderness. (People who responsibly trek through the Boundary Waters, for example, can reasonably expect that a month after they have left, the ecosystem will be no different than if they had not visited at all.) If Mars is currently biotic, we have little reason to believe that it is a thriving ecosystem, teeming with the varieties of interdependent life that generate tendencies toward homeostasis. In the worst case, Earth microbes could prove invasive, threatening the survival of native life. But even if introduced life could coexist with Martian life, that introduced life would leave the planet permanently different from the counterfactual world in which its biota was left alone.

Whether or not Mars is currently biotic, introducing Earth life would violate the tread lightly principle.

As it stands, the tread lightly principle is not completely developed. Before it could be usefully applied to hard cases, we need answers to the following questions: First, how long is the “suitable period of time” that should pass before we make the counterfactual comparison? (Too short—a few minutes—and no interaction with wilderness would qualify as treading lightly. Too long—a million years—and scandalous abuses of wilderness would count as treading lightly.) Second, should the counterfactual worlds used for comparison include environmental effects of other humans, or only the effects of natural processes? (If the impact of my interaction with wilderness would be erased not by natural processes, but rather by the activities of other people, does that count as treading lightly?) Third, what counts as wilderness? Philosophical definitions of the concept are contested. I intend “wilderness” in the colloquial sense, as picking out undeveloped, or minimally developed land. But the question still remains: at what level of development does the tread lightly principle stop being relevant because the developed land has ceased to be wilderness?

Though these questions need answers before the tread lightly principle is useful in a broad range of cases, the principle is applicable to the question of Mars colonies before we answer any of them. First, a Mars colony would very likely permanently alter the Martian environment, and thus fixing the duration of “a suitable period of time” is not necessary. Second, there are no existing human activities on Mars that could erase the impact of a new colony there. Third, Mars is currently very nearly pristine, and therefore it is a limiting case of wilderness; if anything counts as wilderness in the colloquial sense, Mars does.

Concluding Remarks

I have introduced two pre-theoretic, pro tanto moral principles—specific principles governing action in specific domains. The tread lightly principle holds that we ought to tread lightly when we visit wilderness. The principle of scientific conservation holds that we should avoid significantly invasive or destructive research methods if they would threaten the value of the subject of study or if there are minimally invasive methods available. Because a colony on Mars would very likely contaminate Mars with microorganisms from Earth, fundamentally altering the Martian environment forever, both principles entail that colonizing Mars is morally wrong.

If I am right that these pre-theoretic principles are broadly accepted, then one of the tasks of a theory of normative ethics will be to explain and justify them in theoretical terms. The ability to account for widely held, credible pretheoretic principles […] is, after all, an adequacy condition of any theory of ethics. It is, for example, easy to justify the principle of scientific conservation in rule-utilitarian terms because this principle, if adopted as a rule, seems likely to generate the best consequences. The tread lightly principle is similarly easy to justify in virtue ethical terms. But if these pre-theoretic principles are plausible, then other theories of ethics will have to account for them as well. Adopting the practical-controversy-centered mode of applied ethics, as I have done here, is not to repudiate theory; it is to make a different kind of contribution.

Critics of my arguments might accept the principles on which they are based but may argue that they do not, in fact, rule out Mars colonies. The consensus among space scientists is that Earth organisms pose a contamination risk to Mars. That consensus is not unanimous. Fairén and Schulze-Makuch, for example, argue that if Earth organisms

can survive on Mars, they are probably already there as a result of lithopanspermic[16] transmission at some point in the 3.8-billion-year history of life on Earth. If there are currently no Earth organisms on Mars, then that suggests that the Martian environment reliably kills Earth life. It follows that we need not fuss so much about killing microorganisms before they land on Mars; Mars will finish that job for us.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the scientific consensus is wrong and that Fairén and Schulze-Makuch are right; suppose it will be easy for colonists to protect Mars from microbial contamination. The following two consequences still follow from the principles I have introduced.

First, preserving the Martian environment should be a controlling factor in every decision we make while there. Even if our current protocols are more conservative than they need to be to protect Mars effectively, effective protection is morally required; it is not a secondary objective, not a stretch goal, not icing on the cake.  Any benefit we would like to glean from Mars must develop within the side constraints of scientific conservation and wilderness preservation.

Second, terraforming Mars, that beloved topic of science fiction writers, should remain, forever, science fiction. Any presence we establish on Mars should tread lightly and be minimally invasive, and that goal is incompatible with terraforming the planet.

Both of these conclusions stand, even if it turns out, against consensus expectations, that basic biocontainment protocols will be sufficient to keep Mars pristine. To reject these conclusions—to begin terraforming or otherwise to ignore issues of planetary protection, as Musk and Hawking and Zubrin and the United Arab Emirates and so many others do—requires direct critical engagement of the principle of scientific conservation and the tread lightly principle.

Of course, when making weighty and irreversible decisions, it is better provisionally to accept the consensus view of scientists working in the field. Fairén and Schulze-Makuch are probably wrong, and a human presence on Mars would probably contaminate the planet with new life from Earth. Absent successful critical humans engagement of the tread lightly principle and the principle of scientific conservation, we should refuse on moral grounds to establish any human presence on Mars.

 

 

Forget Mars. Here’s Where We Should Build Our First Off-World Colonies

 

By David Warmflash[17]

The collective space vision of all the world’s countries at the moment seems to be Mars, Mars, Mars. The U.S. has two operational rovers on the planet; a NASA probe called MAVEN and an Indian Mars orbiter will both arrive in Mars orbit later this month [November 2014]; and European, Chinese and additional NASA missions are in the works. Meanwhile Mars One[18] is in the process of selecting candidates for the first-ever Martian colony, and NASA’s heavy launch vehicle is being developed specifically to launch human missions into deep space, with Mars as one of the prime potential destinations.

But is the Red Planet really the best target for a human colony, or should we look somewhere else? Should we pick a world closer to Earth, namely the moon? Or a world with a surface gravity close to Earth’s, namely Venus?

To explore this issue, let’s be clear about why we’d want an off-world colony in the first place. It’s not because it would be cool to have people on multiple worlds (although it would). It’s not because Earth is becoming overpopulated with humans (although it is). It’s because off-world colonies would improve the chances of human civilization surviving in the event of a planetary disaster on Earth. Examining things from this perspective, let’s consider what an off- world colony would need, and see how those requirements mesh with different locations.

Creating a Mars Colony

First, let’s take a look at what the mooted Mars settlement schemes are offering. The Red Planet has an atmosphere containing carbon dioxide, which can be converted into fuel while also supporting plants that can make food and oxygen. These features could allow Martian colonists to be self-sufficient. They could live in pressurized habitats underground most of the time, to protect against space radiation, and grow food within pressurized domes at the planet’s surface.

Over decades, continued expansion in that vein could achieve something called paraterraforming. This means creation of an Earthlike environment on the Mars surface that could include not only farms but also parks, forests, and lakes, all enclosed to maintain adequate air pressure. (The natural Martian atmosphere exerts a pressure of only 7 millibars at the planet’s surface – equivalent to being at an altitude of 21 miles on Earth!)

Furthermore, in addition to adequate pressure, we’d need a specific mixture of gases: enough oxygen to support human life, plus nitrogen to dilute the oxygen to avoid fires and to allow microbes to support plant life. While the small spacecraft in which astronauts fly today carry food and oxygen as consumables and use a simply chemical method to remove carbon dioxide from the air, this type of life-support system will not swing on a colony. As on Earth, air, water, and food will have to come through carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles.

While it would cost a ton of money to build, paraterraforming sections of Mars with a sample of Earth’s biosphere inside pressure domes, caves, and underground caverns is something that we could achieve within years of arrival of the first equipment. Moving beyond paraterraforming is a more ambitious goal that could require centuries, and that’s full-scale terraforming. This means engineering the planet enough to support humans and other Earth life without domes and other enclosed structures.

Terraforming Mars would require that the atmosphere be thickened and enriched with nitrogen and oxygen while the average temperature of the planet must be increased substantially. To get started, terraformers might seed the world with certain microorganisms to increase the amount of methane in the Martian air, because methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. They also would seed dark plants and algae across the surface, thereby darkening the planet so that it absorbs more sunlight.

With the right combination of plants and well-selected microorganisms, planetary engineers could generate the needed oxygen and nitrogen. During all of the centuries needed for terraforming, colonists would inhabit and expand the system of paraterraformed structures.

That’s a vision that’s relatively cohesive. Still, there are some aspects of the plan that are less than ideal – and indeed, might point our skyward gazes toward a different destination altogether.

The Problem of Distance

A colony totally isolated from Earth would need significant genetic diversity to avoid the disease risks that plague smaller populations. According to a study published earlier this year, a multi-generation starship carrying people whose descendants would colonize a planet orbiting a nearby star would need a population of at least 10,000 and possibly closer to 40,000.

It’s been reported that Elon Musk wants to build a Mars colony with a population of 80,000. This certainly would fulfill the population requirement, but a further distance is a challenge both in fuel and in time. First, fuel. The Musk plan involves sending multiple crafts each with a total payload of 15 tons per trip. To convert that to people onboard, consider that that’s just under half the tonnage of NASA’s new Orion spacecraft which carries a maximum of six astronauts. This gives us a ratio of approximately 5 tons per person.

Some of the tonnage is due to the fuel needed to accelerate the ship from low Earth orbit to escape velocity, and this may not differ between Mars and closer sites, such as the moon. But the tonnage per person also depends greatly on the travel time, because of life support and other issues related to consumables, so it’s fair to say that for a given number of voyages we’ll be able to relocate more people to sites in the Earth-moon system than to Mars.

Second, the time it takes to transport settlers. A colonization program will be efficient only if each transport ship is designed to make multiple trips back and forth. A 15-ton payload of the Musk plan currently translates into three colonists per ship, but to be optimistic let’s imagine that we could increase that number to 20 people. In that case, transporting 10,000 people to Mars (the minimum number needed for healthy genetic diversity) requires 500 voyages from Earth, while 4,000 voyages would be needed to reach the 80,000 colonist milestone. Assuming that we’d build only a fraction of that number and have the ships go back and forth, we can expect to be waiting around for ships taking a year or two to return to Earth to pick up a new load of settlers. Certainly, the advent of advanced propulsion technologies, shrinking the travel time between Earth and Mars from a year or so down to weeks would change these considerations, but right now the various Mars colonization proposals (at least the developed ones) are based on the old-fashioned chemical engines that have sent the current MAVEN probe toward Mars at turtle speed.

A two-year round trip time and a fleet of 25 ships transport ships gives us 50 years to relocate 10,000 people, and 400 years for 80,000 people. Certainly the time frame would shrink due to early waves of colonists having babies, and certainly technology could accelerate the program, but given that we’re talking about many decades to reach the genetic diversity milestone, it seems worthwhile to make a similar calculation for the moon, for which the round trip time is only a week. Doing this, with the same type of program (25 ships each carrying 20 people), we get the first 10,000 to the moon in less than six months, and the first 80,000 in less than four years.

And, finally, being closer would help with ongoing rapid access to and from Earth. That may sound contradictory, given that the goal is to build a colony that’s self-sufficient. But getting to that point could take some time, and at the beginning some colonists might need to be evacuated. There should be a growing medical capability on the colony, but initially cases of very serious illness and certain injuries might be better handled on Earth. This would not be an option if the travel time were measured in months, or even weeks. And what if there were a planetary disaster on Earth in the early decades of the colony? From a location close to Earth, the colony might actually be able to provide some help.

Close to Home

A colony on the moon, on the other hand, would be within easy reach. Like Mars, the moon has caverns and caves that can be sealed for paraterraforming, along with craters that can be enclosed with pressure domes.

One fascinating lunar colony proposal would utilize the Shackleton crater at the moon’s south pole, enclosing a domed city with a 5,000-foot ceiling and a diameter of 25 miles.  A colony in that location would have access to large deposits of water ice and would be situated on the boundary between lunar sunlight and darkness. Its proponents estimate a Shackleton dome colony could support 10,000 settlers after just 15 years of assembly by autonomous robots.

In the event of an Earth-wide disaster, evacuating people to the moon would be far easier than to Mars. Another, even nearer option would be free space colonies. These would be built using materials mined from the moon or from near-Earth asteroids. The colonies could be located in the Earth-moon system at sites that are gravitationally advantageous, known as Lagrangian points. In these regions, a colony’s distance and orientation to both the Earth and the moon, or to the Earth and the sun, would remain constant. Utilizing Earth-moon Lagrangian points, it would be relatively easy to transport lunar materials to the site of the planned colony and build it, and the travel time from Earth would be similar to the travel time to the moon, meaning a few days with current technology.

The Problem of Gravity

All planets and large moons have enough gravity to hold an atmosphere, so terraforming in theory is widely possible. But in terms of human life not all gravities are created equal.

On Mars you weigh 0.38 your weight on Earth, and we’re not entirely sure what this would do to human health. To keep Mars residents’ bones from demineralizing, for instance, they might need to exercise inside large centrifuges every single day. Thus far, NASA and other organizations have studied effects of partial gravity to a limited extent on humans by producing Mars and lunar gravity for short periods (under a minute) during parabolic flight.

For long-term effects, which in weightlessness involve not only bone demineralization, but also muscle atrophy, immune system effects, and other complications throughout the body, there is no way to replicate partial gravity on Earth. We can simulate it with various contraptions that have allowed researchers to study things like walking on Mars and whatnot. We can put people in bed for long periods with the beds angled so as to simulate the shifting of fluids on Mars or other worlds. But until we actually send animals to those environments, we can’t really be sure what will happen to various systems, including reproduction. The development of embryos depends on gravity and is known to be disrupted in weightlessness, but we don’t know what will happen in environments with a fraction of Earth’s gravity.

And while Martian gravity is low in terms of human physiology and movement (you could jump really high on Mars and that would be fun), it’s high enough that spacecraft would consume a significant amount of energy in taking off from the planet or landing on it. Similarly, while the atmosphere is way too thin to support human life (until we terraform it), it’s still thick enough to cause dust storms that can ruin colonial machinery. So considering the air and gravity along with the distance from Earth, Mars actually may not be the best candidate for an offworld colony. Lightening the Load

Here Venus has one advantage over other worlds: its gravity, which is just a little less at the surface compared with Earth’s. On the Venusian surface, the pull is approximately 91 percent what it is on the surface of Earth. That’s close enough that it seems unreasonable to predict any long-term detrimental health effects from the gravity difference, which is a nice advantage. On the other hand, Venus would have to be terraformed before anyone could live on the surface at all, since the high pressure and temperature would not allow for paraterraforming. Nevertheless, we might be able to terraform Venus just as easily as Mars.

Going in an opposite direction as Mars terraformation, a Venusian project would begin by having planetary engineers interfere with the runaway greenhouse effect that cooked the planet billions of years ago. The process might start using heat-loving microorganisms and various chemical tricks to remove large amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases that we wouldn’t want there.

Another gravitational fix could be found in free-space colonies. We already said that these could be built using lunar or asteroid materials, but another advantage is that we could build them in any shape. If built in the shape of a doughnut, such a colony could be rotated at the precise speed needed to produce the same gravitational pull as we feel on Earth – meaning that keeping our bones, heart, and other body systems healthy would be as easy as hopping on an Earth-style treadmill, kicking a few handstands, playing tennis, or whatever physical activity you enjoy.

A New Home in the Solar System

I support an aggressive Mars exploration program. We’re sending probe after probe there for good reason: geologically the planet is similar to Earth, and used to be even more similar. Moreover, it’s one of the most interesting and vital sites for astrobiology in the solar system. Very likely, the Red Planet will become the first place where we confirm the existence of extraterrestrial microbial life, providing us with a second datum for biology. Since all life on Earth that we know has basically the same chemistry, comparing it with a newly discovered system could stimulate quantum leap advances in biotechnology and medicine here on Earth.

But while Mars science must advance at full speed, it does not mean that the same world is the best first site to settle families with children. Given all that we’ve discussed, until we have much faster propulsion, I think that colonization should begin closer to Earth, either on the moon, or in free space colonies in the Earth-moon system, depending on what studies on early lunar bases tell us about the long-term effects of lunar gravity – including, importantly, whether healthy pregnancies on the moon are possible.

After all, whichever of these locations we choose, we’ve got a long line of future space descendants to think about.

[1] Golley (1930-2006) was a landscape ecologist at the University of Georgia.

[2] Draconian: strict and cruel.

[3] James Oberg’s vision is presented in his 1981 book New Earths: Transforming Other Planets for Humanity.

[4] Referring to a Faustian bargain, “a pact whereby a person trades something of supreme moral or spiritual importance, such as personal values or the soul, for some worldly or material benefit, such as knowledge, power, or riches.” (Source: Encyclopedia

Britannica.)

[5] Michael Collins circled the moon in the command module of Apollo 11 while his fellow astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, became the first people to land on the surface of the moon in 1969. 6 Potable: safe to drink.

[6] Instructor of philosophy at Saint Paul College.

[7] Elon Musk owns a private space exploration company, SpaceX.

[8] Chicxulub is a crater in the Yucatan Peninsula left by the impact of an asteroid or comet that is believed to have led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

[9] Seed ark: (Similar to seed bank) A method for storing and preserving plant seeds to guarantee that the plants will not die out.

[10] A knowledge repository, typically, is an electronic collection of knowledge.  For it to be “hardened,” it would need to be protected from destruction or degradation.

[11] Abiotic: devoid of life.

[12] The panspermia hypothesis suggests life began on Earth when the “seeds” of life, already present in the universe, arrived here from space. (Source: Astronomy.com)

[13] Pro tanto is a Latin phrase which means “only to that extent” and is often used to denote partial fulfillment of an actual or potential obligation.  (Source: Investopedia.com) In this context, the author means that the guidance is limited and incomplete. [Editor’s note.]

 

[14] Teleoperated: Remotely operated.

[15] The tendency of a system, to maintain internal stability, owing to coordinated response of its parts to any situation or stimulus that would tend to disturb its normal condition or function. (Source: Dictionary.com)

[16] Lithopanspermia is “the idea that basic life forms can be distributed throughout the solar system via rock fragments cast forth by meteoroid impacts.” (Source: Universetoday.com)

[17] David Warmflash is an astrobiologist and science writer. He received his M.D. from Tel Aviv University Sackler School of Medicine, and has done post doctoral work at Brandeis University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the NASA Johnson Space Center, where he was part of the NASA’s first cohort of astrobiology training fellows.

[18] Mars One is a privately owned Dutch firm that plans to settle the first humans on Mars in 2031 (Source: Mars-One.com)

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