Ethics of Manned Mars Mission

     In an opinion piece for the BBC, Dr. Alexander Kumar questions whether humans are worthy enough of a manned mission to Mars. Dr. Kumar, at the time of writing stationed at Concordia station in Antarctica, where conditions are as close to an extraterrestrial environment as any on Earth, reflects on the approaches to Antarctic exploration taken by explorers such as Shackleton and Scott. Scott, in his last diary entry before his death during the race to the South Pole, wrote, "For God's sake look after our people." Living on a planet that suffers continual environmental abuse at human hands, is our species ready to explore and colonize Mars? Terraforming Mars may just give humans an avenue of escape when Earth becomes inhospitable, though it becomes increasingly important that we stop to consider the damage we do to our own planet.

     I think that Dr. Kumar's ethical evaluation of Mars exploration is completely impractical. I think that the human population has grown too huge for us as a species to actively desist from polluting our environment. If Mars will provide humans with an avenue of escape when an extinction event occurs on Earth, then so be it that we will take advantage of it. In history, when have explorers ever thought themselves unworthy of taking advantage of their discoveries? The tide of humanity cannot be stopped, and it will be heading for Mars soon enough. Dr. Kumar refers to HG Wells and his stories of humans "spoiling" other planets by bringing germs and other foreign contaminants from Earth. I think it impossible to prevent spoiling just as it is impossible to, say, build a machine that is one hundred percent efficient.



Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19666057