Reaching out from Earth to the stars
AbstractOver a decade ago, Stephen Hawking cautioned, ‘I don't think that the human race will survive the next thousand years unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars’ (in Highfield 2001, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/01/stephenhawking-dangerous-time-planet-inequality). With plans afoot to pack our bags for life on the red planet in the 2030s, we should expand our ethical thinking from the Earth deep into space. This chapter proposes the development of a set of reasoning tools in the form of principles and virtue to guide scientists, the public and policy-makers in creating an ethical framework to steer and constrain our reaching out from Earth to the stars.