Issues
There are numerous environmental issues pertaining to space exploration. Here are a few with relevance to Buddhism, each with its own linked page which includes relevant field data from American Buddhists:
Establishing nature reserves on our moon and Mars
Mining our moon
Potentially finding microbial life in the solar system
Changing the ecology of Mars planet-wide
We can protect the Valles Marineris region of Mars with multipurpose nature reserves and benefit science as well as the Martian environment.
1. Nature reserves: When we further explore new worlds we will want to understand our impacts. Therefore, establishing protected reserves as control samples before humans arrive carries great scientific benefit along with environmental good. In other words, we should protect our moon, Mars, and other places from potential future harm precisely because no humans are there now.
2. Space debris: For more than sixty years we have launched rockets and satellites and simply left them in orbit when their use is finished. Thus, the Earth is encircled by “space junk,” or orbital debris. Some space junk is as small as a screw, but a screw traveling at 20,000 miles an hour can ruin your spacecraft’s day. Some space junk is larger, such as the space station that reentered the atmosphere without completely burning up. It could have landed on someone’s house. Space junk therefore is not just an embarrassing belt of garbage, it also is dangerous both in space and on Earth. Buddhism’s ethic of nonharm, or ahiṃsā, as well as its notions of interconnection can supply antidotes to this situation as we continue to develop technological and policy responses. This ethic can be applied both to the environment on Earth and in orbit, spurring action and funding to clean up our space junk.
NASA tests its Resource Prospector mining robot prototype.
3. Mining our moon: Several private companies, along with national space programs, are initiating plans to mine our moon for water (for habitation and fuel), silicon, or the fusion energy source He-3. Other companies want to mine asteroids. This situation raises property rights as well as environmental impact issues. Further, such mining reasonably may be expected to lead to some kind of permanent human presence to direct, repair, defend, and oversee robotic operations. Indeed, NASA currently seeks to have humans, human habitats, and mining robots resident on our moon by 2024.
Although conditions are currently murky, the environmental outcomes of such mining and colonization could be devastating, including the loss of the “man in the moon” or “rabbit in the moon” that we all see in the sky. In response, American Buddhists from the field express values in support of establishing nature reserves that protect ecologically vulnerable places on our moon.
This pit appears to result from the localized collapse of a roof in a lava tube. Cyane Fossae region of Mars.
4. Finding microbial life elsewhere: Astrobiologists remain confident that we may find microbial life underground on Mars, in the ocean of Jupiter’s moon Europa, in the water on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, somewhere on Saturn’s moon Titan, on Neptune’s moon Triton, or even deep underground on Pluto. For instance, tiny life could be found in Martian lava tubes of extinct volcanoes. The search for, discovery of (if it happens), and curation of this microbial life raises a number of ethical issues. Although microbes do not enjoy the clear place in Buddhist ethics that complex animals do, Buddhism’s strong ethic of protecting life offers a helpful tool for exploring these issues. Buddhism can guide this search by advancing an ethic of default nonharm to microbes, default nonharm to the habitats on which microbes depend, but also the allowance of limited, respectful scientific study.
Because of the planet’s distinctive atmosphere, sunsets on Mars like this one are blue.
5. Manipulating Mars' ecology: A number of writers have suggested that we change the ecology of Mars to make it more Earth-like. Proponents of this plan commonly call this planet-wide alteration of Mars’ ecology “terraforming” or “planetary ecosynthesis.” The idea is to inject gas like carbon dioxide into the Martian atmosphere and create a greenhouse effect that will warm Mars and free its water ice as liquid. However, many critics of this plan often disparage it as “playing God.” Certainly the possible manipulation of an entire planet’s ecology gives an environmental Buddhist food for thought. While the historical Buddha, of course, never commented on changing Mars’ ecology, space age American Buddhists assert that humans do not have the moral right to overhaul an entire planet’s ecology (humans already have altered Earth’s ecology dramatically).