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![]() We describe here an instrument, the Agnostic Life Finder (ALF), that is an inexpensive life-detection add-on to ISRU. As such, the study implies that a moral development of humankind may be relevant to the success of the project of becoming multiplanetary.īefore the first humans depart for Mars in the next decade, hundreds of tons of martian water-ice must be harvested to produce propellant for the return vehicle, a process known as in situ resource utilization (ISRU). In order to overcome these obstacles, and by the rationale of the severity of the current crisis, the study concludes that a combination of extensive moral education together with applied moral enhancement by the aid of our technology, may be appropriate and necessary means to promote and adopt this expanded ethic. The study simultaneously identifies significant obstacles for such a moral development in the current evolutionary trajectory of the human being. This is proposed on the basis of a need to navigate through existential risks to humankind and Earth-life. Further, the research suggests that a viable space ethic must with time expand its scope in time and space in order to reach an appropriate size and scale. This proposed ethic considers certain aspects of altruism and ecocentrism placed in a cosmic context, while staying grounded in the realism that is human nature. This epistemology serves as the basis for a proposed ethic for the project of spreading humankind and Earth-life to other planets. The conclusions of the study suggest a need for an updated epistemology which gives justice to the factual holism and relationalism of the world and the universe. ![]() It moves between fields such as evolutionary- and astrobiology, Russian cosmism and posthumanism. At that, the study focuses on the challenge of human moral adaptation in the scenario of human migration to outer space.īy using the methodology of macrostrategy, this study applies a wide scope in terms of time and space, in order to analyse trends, risks and correlations between ethics on the one hand, and political, social and cultural, as well as evolutionary and planetary aspects of human civilization, planet Earth and the cosmos. With an environmental ethics approach to the young interdisciplinary field of space ethics, this thesis thus aims to tentatively and exploratively draft a viable ethic for long-term sustainability of Earth-life in space. Its objective is to explore what ethics may secure and promote long-term sustainability of Earth-life in space, and how these moral values may be promoted and adopted. This thesis operates in the span between these two events. The Anthropocene may entail at least two major civilizational and planetary events the environmental crisis and the project of spreading humans and Earth-life to other planets. One question is: what ethical consideration is due to an alien life form when that life is distinctly different from Earth life, and the members of that life are no more advanced than microorganisms? Will we choose to terraform Mars to enhance the richness and diversity of the indigenous life we find there? In considering our answers to these questions, we should note that for most of Earth’s history our ancestors were microscopic. Further, the discovery of a second genesis of life on Mars poses new questions in ethics. It is important to note that human exploration can be done in a way that is biologically reversible. To protect a second genesis as we search for it, the robotic and human exploration of Mars should be done in a way that is biologically reversible, i.e., we must be able to undo our contamination of Mars if we discover a second genesis of life there. We could finally be confident that we are not alone. Philosophically, the discovery of a second genesis of life in our solar system would suggest that the phenomenon of life is distributed throughout the universe. Many important biological questions may be answerable through the comparison of biochemistry between the life forms on the two planets. ![]() Scientifically, it would provide a second example of biochemistry and of evolutionary history. The discovery of a second genesis of life besides the one on Earth, this time on Mars, would have profound scientific and philosophical implications.
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