Space ports must be locked down on the grounds of interstellar forward contamination
Premises:
1: Evolution of life on exoplanets or any of the dozens of solar system ice moons (even if just indirectly per natural, so-called ballistic litho-panspermia off of other celestial bodies), if it happened, would (also) entail an enormous amount of animal suffering.
Evolution—depending on countless influential factors for the path it takes—can unfold in millions of very different ways.
The window between best and worst versions in terms of well-being or suffering of potential far-future wild animals to come from it surely is astronomically gigantic.
Any near-future microbial contamination of planets at most will lead to an abysmal version (and likely negative, for in the order of magnitude of octillions—namely quintillions at any time for billions of years—of animals, since according to evolutionary biologists, wild animals—see sources on the wild animal suffering Wikipedia page—mainly suffer on average).
Conclusion:
Even by current risk assessment response measures or standards applied in other cases, humanity must at the very least have discipline and hold itself back for many years from risking interplanetary and interstellar forward contamination, and so space ports must be locked down (if not stricter safety measures were to be warranted this way).
Short post but should more people be interested more about this subject shall come
Links or Footnotes:
Independent research paper references:
Prof. Gary David O’Brien’s scientific paper ( https://philpapers.org/rec/OBRDPW-3 ) from 2021, titled “Directed Panspermia, Wild Animal Suffering, and the Ethics of World-Creation” and Oskari Sivula’s scientific paper ( https://philpapers.org/rec/SIVTCS ) from 2022, titled “The Cosmic Significance of Directed Panspermia: Should Humanity Spread Life to Other Solar Systems?”.
The internationally binding Outer Space Treaty’s Article IX strictly prohibits all forms of harmful forward contamination.
Ethics on Cosmic Scale, Outer Space Treaty, Directed Panspermia, Forwards-Contamination, Technology Assessment, Planetary Protection, and Fermi’s Paradox
(Cat for reference)
Space ports must be locked down on the grounds of interstellar forward contamination
Premises:
1: Evolution of life on exoplanets or any of the dozens of solar system ice moons (even if just indirectly per natural, so-called ballistic litho-panspermia off of other celestial bodies), if it happened, would (also) entail an enormous amount of animal suffering.
Evolution—depending on countless influential factors for the path it takes—can unfold in millions of very different ways.
The window between best and worst versions in terms of well-being or suffering of potential far-future wild animals to come from it surely is astronomically gigantic.
Any near-future microbial contamination of planets at most will lead to an abysmal version (and likely negative, for in the order of magnitude of octillions—namely quintillions at any time for billions of years—of animals, since according to evolutionary biologists, wild animals—see sources on the wild animal suffering Wikipedia page—mainly suffer on average).
Conclusion: Even by current risk assessment response measures or standards applied in other cases, humanity must at the very least have discipline and hold itself back for many years from risking interplanetary and interstellar forward contamination, and so space ports must be locked down (if not stricter safety measures were to be warranted this way).
Short post but should more people be interested more about this subject shall come
Links or Footnotes: Independent research paper references: Prof. Gary David O’Brien’s scientific paper ( https://philpapers.org/rec/OBRDPW-3 ) from 2021, titled “Directed Panspermia, Wild Animal Suffering, and the Ethics of World-Creation” and Oskari Sivula’s scientific paper ( https://philpapers.org/rec/SIVTCS ) from 2022, titled “The Cosmic Significance of Directed Panspermia: Should Humanity Spread Life to Other Solar Systems?”.
The internationally binding Outer Space Treaty’s Article IX strictly prohibits all forms of harmful forward contamination.