Space is about to get a funding boost but there are ethical questions to consider, experts say – ABC News

Updated October 19, 2019 12:05:54

In 1968, NASA astronaut Bill Anders took a photo which had a profound impact on the way humankind saw itself.

Known as Earthrise, the photo taken from a spacecraft in lunar orbit showed our planet rising above the horizon of the moon.

When it was published, the image had a galvanising effect on the environmental movement, fulfilling a prophecy of English cosmologist Fred Hoyle.

Two decades earlier, Professor Hoyle had written that a photograph of the Earth from space would create "a new idea as powerful as any in history".

The Earthrise photo made it easier for humanity to see itself as a whole, and to glimpse what was at stake if we trashed our planetary home.

Ever since, the image has been regarded as a moral stimulant a reminder of the fragility of human existence and of our collective destiny on "spaceship Earth".

But not everybody who shared those concerns was on board.

A few years before Mr Anders took his iconic snap, an ebullient English historian and pacifist, Arnold J. Toynbee, began publicly voicing reservations about the entire space program.

Professor Toynbee's main objection was an ethical one; space was costing money and vital resources at a time when humanity faced bigger challenges, such as poverty and the threat of nuclear war.

He dismissed the space race as a "childish competition" between two superpowers, and suggested it was premature to be looking to the moon and stars when our own house was not in order.

"It's rather scandalous, when human beings are going short of necessities, to do this," Professor Toynbee said.

There has been a lot of hype around space.

Last year, the Federal Government announced the creation of a new Australian Space Agency (ASA), while the United States President, Donald Trump, has committed NASA to a five-year plan to go back to the moon and push on to Mars.

To do that, Mr Trump wanted to increase the agency's $US20-billion budget for 2020 by $US1.6 billion, and Scott Morrison has pledged $150 million to secure Australian involvement in the project.

But the deadline has led some of the industry's most prominent supporters including astronaut Andy Thomas to express concerns.

"Unrealistic schedule expectations can be very dangerous in the spaceflight business and we know that from experience," Dr Thomas told ABC Radio Adelaide last month.

Climate change has also caused some to rethink human involvement in space.

"Let's be clear. If we had the same enthusiasm and the same budget available for the technologies to solve some of the problems we have now, we'd probably be able to do it," said renewable energy advocate Giles Parkinson.

"Money that's thrown at things like space travel, and exploration for oil and gas that's money that could also be spent on addressing the climate change issue."

Mr Parkinson said he was not opposed to space exploration, but he questioned levels of investment at a time when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted dangerous warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius within decades.

"The other thing that disturbs me is this idea that space travel might be our saviour," Mr Parkinson said.

"It seems to be loading the dice and taking enormous risks to think that if we stuff this planet up, because of global warning and other environmental impacts, then we can all live happily on another planet."

One person who proposed to do just that was Elon Musk, who joked that he wanted to die on Mars but not on impact.

"He's done a lot of great things for space," said Nikki Coleman, a Canberra-based researcher and military chaplain.

"He has inspired a whole generation of young people, but I still think he needs oversight.

"I don't think we should be allowing people to just be able to invest and do whatever they want."

Dr Coleman and her husband Stephen Coleman are experts in an emerging field called space ethics at the University of New South Wales.

They have both been proponents of human involvement in space, but believed ethical considerations should play a stronger role in steering it.

"We rely so much on space now in ways that people don't even realise," Professor Coleman said.

"I don't think it's possible to say 'well, let's just leave space alone'.

"It costs a lot to do this, but what does it cost to not do it?"

There have been plenty of examples of space technology leading to ongoing benefits on terra firma: food production, communication, transport navigation (including planes), and weather prediction all heavily rely on satellites.

"Climate projections are using a lot of space-based technology," Professor Coleman said.

"Realistically, there's no climate scientist in the world who's not using space-based resources and space-based research to assist them if you look at what's happening in Greenland with the ice sheet; they're using satellites for that."

But there have been concerns about the so-called "militarisation" of space, and fears of a space arms race in which countries compete to launch satellites with hostile intent.

"In June of last year, President Trump announced the forthcoming formation of a sixth branch of the US military a so-called Space Force," said physician and anti-nuclear campaigner, Tilman Ruff.

Professor Ruff helped to establish the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, and believes more thought needs to be given to how space could trigger nuclear conflict.

"If satellites were disrupted to provide a false alert of an attack, or to disable communications between facilities and forces in different places, then it's a real can of worms in terms of unpredictable escalation."

One of the ways in which space could become a de facto military frontline is through the weaponisation of space junk and debris.

It sounds bizarre but it would involve a hypothetical scenario known as the Kessler syndrome, which describes the potential effects of space junk colliding with a satellite.

"One collision might create so much junk that it starts a chain reaction where you just can't avoid collisions again, and you get more and more pieces of junk piling up, more and more satellites being destroyed, more and more pieces of debris," Professor Coleman said.

Experts have said it was more than plausible, and it has been on the ASA's radar, which has committed to minimising space junk.

"Applications for the launch of an Australian satellite overseas, or a launch to space from Australia, include consideration of the space environment, including space debris," the ASA said in a statement.

Currently, there are millions of artificial objects in orbit around the Earth.

"We keep putting more stuff up there and it's really hard to keep track," Professor Coleman said.

"In low-Earth orbit, it's moving around at many kilometres per second, so an impact between these things has huge consequences."

Recent research by Dr Coleman has focused on the likelihood of terrorist groups trying to trigger this scenario, especially as the cost of launching satellites decreases.

"Non-state groups can actually use space debris deliberately against developed nations to knock out our infrastructure," she said.

Another hot topic in space ethics has been safety, including for astronauts and future space tourists.

While the nature of space means there will always be a huge risk, Dr Coleman described Elon Musk's push to get to Mars as "ethically really problematic", and her husband agreed.

"One of the main issues there, for example, is radiation," Professor Coleman said.

"If that's literally a mission that takes years for those astronauts, what are the effects of years of exposure to that level of radiation?

"We really don't know."

So should we be looking to the stars to secure our future, or should we be focusing our efforts closer to home?

"There's one area of potential use of space-based technology that I think we should develop and invest in further," Dr Ruff said.

"Of all the existential threats, one that is not of our making is [the] potential for [a] collision of the Earth with a large celestial body.

"A collective effort to try and predict such dangers and address them effectively does seem to me one of the few things we should be doing in space."

Topics:astronomy-space,ethics,philosophy,money-and-monetary-policy,stars,spacecraft,the-moon,defence-forces,academic-research,human-interest,human-activities-effects,research-organisations,information-technology,inventions,environmental-policy,defence-and-aerospace-industries,ethical-investment,climate-change,poverty,climate-change---disasters,pollution-disasters-and-safety,space-exploration,federal-government,world-politics,planets-and-asteroids,the-universe,adelaide-5000,sydney-2000,university-of-new-south-wales-2052,canberra-2600,greenland,united-states

First posted October 19, 2019 06:30:00

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Space is about to get a funding boost but there are ethical questions to consider, experts say - ABC News