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Billings.colonize Mars No.T&S.4.15.19

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Linda Billings
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Linda Billings, Ph.D.

billingslinda1@gmail.com

April 15, 2019

Accepted for publication in Theology and Science

Should humans colonize Mars? No.

Abstract

Not only space advocates but also U.S. presidents and NASA administrators have been
talking for decades about sending people back to the Moon and on to Mars, to stay.
Funding has not materialized, nor has public support. In recent years billionaires Jeff
Bezos and Elon Musk have declared that they will launch private expeditions to send
people into space and establish human colonies on Mars, drawing much media attention.

Here I will argue that it would be unethical to contaminate a potentially habitable planet
for further scientific exploration and immoral to transport a tiny, non-representative,
subset of humanity – made up of people who could afford to spend hundreds of
thousands to millions of dollars on the trip – to live on Mars, as Bezos, Musk, and their
advocates propose.

Keywords

Space exploration, colonization, ethics, morality, Unitarian Universalism, humanism

Introduction

This March, the Alliance for Space Development, sponsored by the National Space
Society and the Space Frontier Foundation – both space settlement advocacy groups –
conducted its annual “storm” of Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., lobbying for passage
of a bill called the “Advancing Human Space Flight Act,” which would mandate that
space settlement be a part of NASA’s core mission.1

Not only space advocates but also U.S. presidents and NASA administrators have been
talking for decades about sending people back to the Moon and on to Mars, to stay.
Funding has not materialized, nor has public support.2 In recent years billionaires Jeff
Bezos and Elon Musk have declared that they will launch private expeditions to send
people into space and establish human colonies3 on Mars, drawing much media attention.

I will argue here that it would be unethical to contaminate a potentially habitable planet
for further scientific exploration and immoral to transport a tiny, non-representative,
subset of humanity – made up of people who could afford to spend hundreds of
thousands to millions of dollars on the trip – to live on Mars, as Bezos, Musk, and their
advocates propose.

I am a social scientist who identifies as a humanistic scholar. I also am a card-carrying

Unitarian Universalist. I do not believe in god(s), because I have not seen any evidence to

1
http://allianceforspacedevelopment.org/2019-march-storm/, accessed 4 April 2019.
2
A 2018 Pew Research Center poll asked respondents to rank nine priorities for NASA
to pursue in space exploration, in order of importance. Sending people back to the Moon
and on to Mars were ranked eight and nine, least important. Funk, C. and Strauss, M.
(2018). Majority of Americans believe it is essential that the U.S. remain a global leader
in space. Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center. Also see Billings, L. (2019). Moon-
Mars madness, redux, 2 April. https://doctorlinda.wordpress.com/2019/04/02/moon-
mars-madness-redux/, accessed 2 April 2019.
3 I choose to use the term “colonization” rather than “settlement” because it more
accurately represents the ideology of colonization advocates. See Billings, L. (2019).
Colonizing other planets is a bad idea, Futures, in press. Preprint available at
ResearchGate.net,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329715109_Billingscolonizing_MarsFutures20
18.
convince me of his/her/their existence. My flavor of humanism is not the Enlightenment-
era flavor that elevated humans to a superior position among life on Earth and claimed
that people are governed solely by reason. (The history of the philosophies of humanism
and anti-humanism are interesting, but beyond the scope of this paper.) My flavor of
humanism is described in the Humanist Manifesto III: “Humanism is a progressive
philosophy of life that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to
lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.”4
The seven principles of Unitarian Universalism are principles I try to live by. Two of
those seven principles have guided me in writing this commentary: the first principle,
“the inherent worth and dignity of all people,” and the seventh principle, “Respect for the
interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part.”

Important questions, unanswered

I wrote more than a decade ago,5 “Some important questions must be addressed in
considering future human exploration of space, questions that space-faring nations have
given insufficient attention. How will extending the human presence into the Solar
System affect society and culture on Earth? What legal, ethical and other value systems
should govern human settlements and other activities in space? Do humans have rights to
exploit extraterrestrial resources and alter extraterrestrial environments? Do space-faring
nations have an obligation to share the benefits of access to space with those nations that
do not have access? Do those nations with early access to space have a right to impose
their social and cultural norms on space-based civilization?”

4
American Humanist Association (2003). Humanism and Its Aspirations: Humanist
Manifesto III, a Successor to the Humanist Manifesto of 1933. Washington, D.C.:
American Humanist Association. https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-
humanism/manifesto3/, accessed 4 April 2019.
5
Billings, L. (2006). How shall we live in space? Culture, law and ethics in spacefaring
society. Space Policy 22(4): 249-255.
These questions remain largely unanswered.

I wrote for this journal in 2017:

“In certain segments of the space community, the idea of colonizing other planetary
bodies has been popular for decades. Disproportionate attention to this idea in the mass
media, and lip service from key U.S. government officials, may convey the impression
that the goal of space colonization and exploitation is universally embraced. This…is not
the case, and, further, should not be. Given the current state of humankind’s overall
ethical and moral development, humans should clean up the mess they have made on
their home planet and learn how to take care of one another here before they go off into
space.”6

Since then, some interesting developments have occurred in the ongoing public discourse
about the topic of colonizing other planets. For example, the peer-reviewed journal
Futures is publishing a special issue on the topic this year.7 My position on this topic is
still the same – perhaps even more so, in light of these recent developments. Here I will
address why colonizing Mars, specifically, is a bad idea.

While the media continue to beat the drum about billionaire dreams of colonies on Mars,
a growing number of scholars in the social sciences and humanities are questioning the
ethics and morality of such an endeavor. Some scholars who actually advocate for the
eventual human exploration of other planets are now arguing that humankind is not
ready, morally, ethically, or socially, to settle other planets.

6 Billings, L. (2017). Should humans colonize other planets? No. Theology and Science
15(3): 321-332.

7
Billings, L. (2019). Colonizing other planets is a bad idea. Futures, in press. Preprint
available on ResearchGate.net,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329715109_Billingscolonizing_MarsFutures20
18.
The scientific argument against colonization

First and foremost, there is a scientific argument against colonization. Once humans
arrive on Mars, the planet will be contaminated by human biology. No spacesuit, habitat,
or other means of containment will be capable of preventing elements of the human
microbiome from seeping into the martian environment. Both NASA and the
international Committee on Space Research have planetary protection policies in place to
ensure that terrestrial biology does not contaminate extraterrestrial environments and that
extraterrestrial biology, should it be found to exist in samples returned to Earth, will not
contaminate the terrestrial environment. Compliance with NASA policy is mandatory.

An ad hoc committee of the Space Studies Board at the U.S. National Academies of
Science, Engineering, and Medicine recently conducted a study of planetary protection
policy development processes at the national and international level (Committee, 2018).
Current NASA planetary protection policy does not cover human exploration and calls
for “a significant number of tests and experiments before sending humans there…. The
planetary protection challenges generated by human missions to Mars will require policy
makers to adapt existing approaches and develop new strategies. For example, rather than
thinking about forward contamination in terms of an entire body, assessing the effects of
human presence on local and regional scales might be more effective” (pp. 79-80).

Some advocates of colonizing Mars – such as Robert Zubrin, a contributor to this issue –
have long argued that planetary protection policy stands in the way of colonization and
should be weakened or even abolished for human expeditions. And yet, researchers
continue to publish papers making the case that Mars could have been habitable billions
of years ago or could even be habitable today, in the deep subsurface.8 Until and unless
scientists reach agreement that the robotic scientific exploration of Mars is complete,
humans should not land on the planet.

8
See, for example, Yung, Y.; Chen, P.; Nealson, K. et al (2018). Methane on Mars and
habitability: challenges and responses. Astrobiology 18(10): 1221-1242.
https://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2018.1917
Moral and ethical arguments

Beyond the scientific argument, the other reason why colonizing Mars should not
proceed in the foreseeable future is that the way proponents argue for it and propose to do
it is deeply flawed.

Astrophysicist Lucianne Walkowicz, serving as the Blumberg Chair in Astrobiology for

2017-18 at the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, undertook a study of the ethics
of the human exploration of Mars. She has critiqued the way that advocates of colonizing
Mars characterize the endeavor – perpetuating a long-outdated way of thinking, that
humankind was put on Earth to do what it likes with all available resources – a way of
thinking now extending to the “land” and other resources of outer space. In an interview
with space.com9, she said, “what really draws me to this particular line of research is the
opportunity to closely examine our past history so that we can move forward in a way
that is more inclusive for our future… We currently speak about exploration” in ways
that echo historical narratives of conquest and exploitation. “We constantly recycle these
narratives from history that were actually quite harmful…. So, as we move forward to
trying to explore places like Mars, I'm curious as to how we can acknowledge these
harmful past events and move forward in a way that is more inclusive for everyone who
might choose to explore the universe, whether by leaving Earth or by studying it here.”
Her aim is to work, with a diverse community of scholars, on “decolonizing” the way the
space community tends to think about and plan for the human exploration of Mars.

Andrew Russell, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at SUNY Polytechnic Institute
in Utica, New York, and Lee Vinsel, an assistant professor of science and technology
studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, have observed,

9
Salazar, D.E. (2017). “The ethics of Mars exploration: Q&A with Lucianne Walkowicz,
space.com, 2 August. https://www.space.com/37679-lucianne-walkowicz-talks-mars-
ethics.html, accessed 4 August 2017.
“Musk’s plan to colonize Mars is a sign of an older and recurring social problem. What
happens when the rich and powerful isolate themselves from everyday concerns?” Musk
claims colonizing Mars will save humanity. “But Musk’s concept of humanity excludes
most living and breathing humans.” He claims “that a fully self-sustaining civilization on
Mars would need around 1 million people. From Earth’s current population of
7.125 billion, the Musk Million would bring 0.014035087719298244 per cent of it to
Mars…. Shouldn’t we be ashamed for having given up on protests against inequality?
Shouldn’t we be ashamed for spending so much time and effort to raise money to put
Whitey on Mars? How do we get our technology leaders to focus on real societal
problems, including those faced by the least fortunate among us? Until we are able to
answer these questions collectively, Elon’s moral failures are outpaced only by our
own.”10

Wichita State University philosopher James Schwartz, who is an advocate for the human
exploration of space, also argues that science must come before settlement on Mars and
that ethical issues need to be resolved before people move to another planet. “The social
challenges associated with space settlement raise especially vexing ethical questions,” he
says, “such as whether it is possible to justify placing settlers and their descendants into
the conditions of life in space, conditions which might compromise heretofore non-
negotiable personal liberties, including reproductive autonomy.”11

This year, a group of 15 (mostly European) scholars published “a Manifesto for

Governing Life on Mars.”12 In it the authors “urge that debates on the social and political

10
Russell, A., and Vinsel, L. 2017). Whitey on Mars: Elon Musk and the rise of Silicon
Valley’s strange trickle-down science. Aeon, 1 February. https://aeon.co/essays/is-a-
mission-to-mars-morally-defensible-given-todays-real-needs, accessed 4 April 2019.

11
Schwartz, J. (2019). Mars: science before settlement. Theology and Science, under
review; Schwartz, J. (2018). Worldship ethics: obligations to the crew. Journal of the
British Interplanetary Society 71: 53-64.
12
Cowley, R. (ed.) (2019). A Manifesto for Governing Life on Mars. London: King’s
dimensions of future Martian space settlement can and should be taking place already….
To help move…thinking beyond the purely ‘science-fictional’ [the manifesto] outlines
some key topics for debate in relation to governing Mars: economics, the Martian natural
environment, dealing with dissent among Martian inhabitants, reproduction, the built
environment, and education. It ends by considering the possibility that future settlement
will need to be supported by a guaranteed bill of Martian Rights.”13 Such efforts are a
start, but the dialogue about these issues needs to take place worldwide.

Author Meghan O’Gieblyn wrote in The Paris Review this year, “Elon Musk claims that
reaching the planet will make the future ‘vastly more exciting and interesting.’ But it is
hard to feel excited—to feel anything at all, really—when listening to a relatively
uncharismatic middle-aged man explain how to construct propellant-production plants, or
how solar-powered hydroponics can provide food. Musk, Bezos, and the other
billionaires who have taken it upon themselves to privatize space—men who call
themselves the Orphans of Apollo, an epithet that is meant to convey their
disappointment after the failed promise of the moon landing but makes them sound, in
effect, like the sons of gods—have very little to say about the questions that have inspired
science fiction writers: How will labor be divided on Mars? Who will be in charge? What
kind of legal code will be implemented? Will heath care be free?”14

Conclusions

As I have written elsewhere, “the ideology of space colonization and exploitation is

largely Western, and Christian... It appears to be some interpretation of Christian
dominion, or dominionist, theology that drives colonization advocates to declare that
humans are destined to fill the universe, that humans ‘must’ colonize Mars, that outer

College London.
13
James Schwartz was a co-author of the Mars manifesto.
14
O’Gieblyn, M. (2019). Obects of despair: Mars. The Paris Review, 27 March.
space resources are there for the taking.”15

According to Jeff Bezos,16 humanity needs to spread itself out into space “to protect this
planet…. We…don’t want to face a civilization of stasis, and that is the real issue if we
just stay on this planet…. This planet is, actually, finite…. A life of stasis would be
population control, combined with energy rationing.” According to Elon Musk, “there is
a strong humanitarian argument for making life multi-planetary…in order to safeguard
the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen, in
which case being poor or having a disease would be irrelevant, because humanity would
be extinct.”17

I do not share their visions of the human future on Earth. These two billionaires have
appointed themselves to be the saviors of humanity – but their conceptions of humanity
appear to be Western-centric and otherwise circumscribed.

Given the state of the world today – the world that human beings have completely
reconfigured, to the detriment of the existence of many species and even (poorer
members of) the human species itself – there is no reason to believe the claims of Zubrin
and his ilk that humans living on Mars would “start anew,” eliminating all their bad
habits and behaviors that have put, and are keeping, our home planet in jeopardy.

It would be immoral to transport a tiny, non-representative, subset of humanity to live on

15
Billings, L. (2017). Should humans colonize other planets? No. Theology and Science
15(3): 321-332.

16
Faust, J. (2019). The cosmic vision of Jeff Bezos. Space News, 5 March.
https://spacenews.com/the-cosmic-vision-of-jeff-bezos/, accessed 10 March 2019.
17
Andersen. R. (2014). Exodus: Elon Musk argues that we must put a million people on
Mars if we are to ensure that humanity has a future. Aeon, 30 September.
https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation, accessed 3
March 2019.
 Mars, as Elon Musk seems intent upon doing. The moral thing to do right now is to take
care of our home planet and all the life on it, life that evolved to live on Earth. We likely
have another hundred years or so of work to do before we will be ready to fairly,
equitably, and safely begin the process of expanding human presence into space.

Linda Billings, Ph.D., is a social scientist and consultant to NASA’s Astrobiology

Program and Planetary Defense Coordination Office. She has worked in the space
community since 1983.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Ted Peters for inviting the contribution of this paper to
this journal. This work was supported by NASA cooperative agreement NNL09AA00A.

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