Mars

We may have covered this already, but there’s a decent bit over at Slate on the ethics of colonizing Mars. The author seems mostly for it, but has a couple of exceptions in the event we find ANY life on Mars.

To heck with that, I say. Unless we find sentient life on Mars, on the order of, say a stoned comparative lit major at a second rate state school (not looking for much besides the realization of something besides basal instincts), I’m not too concerned about what we as a species do to Mars.

I can understand environmentalism on Earth, to a point, as this planet is pretty well evolutionarily tuned ot our survival, and it’s in our best interest to keep it that way. But isn’t that all out the window once we leave the planet, provided we’re not infringing on another sentient species? What would be our interest in, say, keeping the moon desolate and barren? Or in not draining the methane seas of Io (if that’s the right moon of Jupiter) to provide for interstellar rocket fuel?

Posted by jank at January 8, 2004 11:01 PM