Erik Persson is a Swedish philosopher, an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Lund University and co-director of its Space Humanities Lab, where his work focuses on the ethics of space exploration. He wrote his doctoral dissertation in environmental ethics and has also studied astrobiology and astronomy, which led him to ask whether the principles we apply to the environment here on Earth can be extended beyond it. His research deals with the moral questions raised by asteroid and lunar mining, planetary protection, terraforming, and the long-term settlement of Mars, and he has published widely on the conflicts between commercial use of space, science, and the possible value of extraterrestrial life. In this conversation he traces how space mining moved from science fiction into a serious geopolitical contest, now that the Artemis programme and a renewed race to the Moon have brought celestial resources within reach. He helps organize a biennial space ethics conference, the most recent edition of which took place at Carnegie Mellon University, with the next planned for Padua, Italy.

Expect to learn what space mining actually means and how mining an asteroid differs from mining the Moon or Mars, why bringing resources back to Earth is rarely worth the energy, how the Artemis programme and China's lunar ambitions have reignited the space race, what the Outer Space Treaty and the Artemis Accords do and do not allow, whether a first come first served approach to space resources is fair, how mining in space could either narrow or widen the gap between rich and poor, what planetary protection is and why we sterilize spacecraft, whether it could ever be ethical to terraform a planet, what we owe to extraterrestrial life if we find it, whether it is right to raise children who never chose to be born on Mars, and why some argue for human settlement of space even when it benefits no one alive today.

Erik Persson Online

Lund University profile: http://fil.lu.se

Popular texts from the Inhospitable Space conference: https://pghrev.com/tag/inhospitable-space-conference-2/

Conference recordings (YouTube playlist): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLob6JXdYejvvQA-UERE1qKM1mVZv-LN1

Book recommendation: Mars and the Earthlings: A Realistic View on Mars Exploration and Settlement

Also worth a look: astrobiologist Charles Cockell, who has written on space and liberty.

0:00 Why space mining matters now

0:45 From environmental ethics to space

1:28 Defining space mining

5:41 Who actually benefits

8:55 Mining as substitution not addition

12:21 China and the new space race

15:12 The Outer Space Treaty

15:36 The Artemis Accords

16:11 First come, first served

25:17 The problem with claiming resources

28:59 Settling Mars ethically

32:04 Surviving radiation and environment

40:46 The value of extraterrestrial life

46:44 Why caring about life is hard

48:47 Planetary protection and sterilization

53:22 The ethics of terraforming

55:56 Could Mars become a second Earth

62:57 Raising children on Mars

67:08 Two human species in the system

70:19 The risk to the first settlers

76:03 What is in it for us

79:07 Where to follow Erik's work