(Loose transcript of a 2015 talk I gave at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center)

SpaceX’s Elon Musk recently released his plans for colonizing Mars.

Allow me to reiterate for appropriate impact: One of the world’s most wealthiest humans at the forefront of space innovation intends to spawn an entire new human society within the decade.

Whether or not SpaceX actually achieves their goal of a manned mission to Mars by 2024, this topic deserves profoundly more attention than it receives. There’s more talk today about one man’s twitter account than the possibility of human civilization version 2.0.

At risk of belittling serious modern issues — namely climate change, rising social inequality, digital surveillance, etc — it’s also worth emphasizing we’re standing at the dawn of historical enormity. Life as we know it has gone from sea to land, slithering to standing, and very soon Earth to Mars.

The philosophical implications of colonizing Mars intrigue everybody I meet, but there are worrisome scenarios that, if left unchecked, could derail one of the greatest projects in human history.

This was the main subject of my talk at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in 2015. Given space travel's increasing economic and technological viability (much has changed in the last couple years), I felt it important to share these concerns. My purpose here is not to exaggerate risk, presume answers, or even gesture toward paths forward, but to scour the landscape of our colonial possibilities, a vast landscape well beyond my ability to explore alone. My intent is to start a conversation with you the audience (/reader), and hopefully our broader human family.

Let's start this conversation by considering our problem from an alien perspective.

Any civilization equipped with the wisdom to wield their technology sustainably and safely must take great care of their data. Understanding their biology, ecology, and the surrounding planetary environment would be useful — perhaps indispensable — for everlasting survival. Therefore, these hypothetical mature alien species would have colossal databanks packed with information, from the formations of stars within their cosmic horizon, to the emergence of life throughout their visible universe. Suppose that somewhere within that databank lies a folder containing our planet. Now double click on it. The extinction of the dinosaurs, the shifting of the continents, the draining of the Mediterranean sea, the entire history of the Earth lay documented on some indifferent “hard drive” as though the information were utterly custodial.

Within that data we find ourselves: A physically flimsy yet cognitively clever bipedal primate. We may even be pooled alongside our fellow mammals: Chimpanzees, Elephants and Dolphins under the distinct category “socially intelligent tool users.”

What would spark interest in Homo-Sapiens? When do the aliens take special note of us? The successful transfer of our DNA from one world to another? Perhaps when Neil and Buzz stepped foot on the moon, a notification popped up - An alert which caused a heightened mix of scientific curiosity with a pinch of paternal worry to permeate our cosmic cousin’s minds. Perhaps they’ve witnessed the noteworthy transition of extra-planetary activities before, and know that its technological underpinnings often coincide with new capacities for self-destruction.

Suppose the Homo Sapiens survive this dangerous phase and begin colonizing nearby worlds, opening the doors to true cosmic longevity. Backup civilizations mean they’re likely to survive critical failures on Earth, but their data shows that's no guarantee. Intelligent civilizations sometimes duplicate the fatal flaws of their terrestrial states, while others crumble because their social experimentations are too radical. A backup plan is valueless when the backup plan also fails.

This hypothetical alien data takes on greater significance behind the eyes of human readers. There are 7 billion of us alive today, and although there is tremendous variance across cultures about how to structure our world, the debate has always been about this world. Very soon however, our worlds will multiply.

Mars is a true blank slate. We will soon have a fresh canvas with which to paint civilization. The vastness of this responsibility and the enormity of this opportunity is difficult to overstate. Here we have a unique opportunity for social experimentation brewed from the best sociological, philosophical, and scientific knowledge available. It would be nice to not mess it up.

So, how do we create an independent, self-sustaining, human civilization on another world?

Importantly, this is not a question for scientists and engineers. Shielding humans from harmful radiation is a complex puzzle with calculable answers. So too are questions of maximizing fuel efficiency, the effects of micro-gravity on the human body, and how to produce high-yield agriculture in Martian greenhouses. Yet, some questions can’t be solved by mere calculation, and if we don’t begin tackling emotional, spiritual, and philosophical questions now we run the risk of creating a Martian civilization as deprived of foresight as Earth finds itself today. The sooner we have these kinds of conversations, the better we can avoid the mistakes we’ve made here on Earth.

Who gets to go to Mars? The first humans to step foot on the red planet will be astronauts qualified to do so, but what wave of inhabitants will follow? It seems likely that the rich will take the reigns of the second wave, as the early adopters of new technologies often do. Over time, economic efficiencies will reduce costs and soon Mars will become accessible to more.

But is there a danger in treating Mars like a free market commodity? When capitalism works well, their is a healthy and sustainable relationship between human beings, their access to goods and services, and the long term survivability of our environment. Seeing smartphones in the hands of 3rd world civilians is an empowering sight, which enables the least fortunate humans to have more access to information than the most powerful humans on Earth mere decades ago.

But without a re-evaluation of our current trajectory, the greatest sociological experiment in human history will become a story of evolution, one in which we select for wealth. A sort of eugenics of the dollar. Whether we do so consciously remains to be seen.

Are the poets, teachers, nurses, priests, comedians, photographers, or any of the other highly socially but minimally economically valued vocations necessary to the ecology of human flourishing? Should they not be given an opportunity to participate? The answer to that question I believe is a glaringly obvious yes. Those are the people humanity needs for a healthy, vibrant society, but we seem to be proceeding as though the answer were otherwise.

Whether we’re aware of it or not, those who go to Mars will be selected for. Nobody will find themselves there accidentally. There will be no refugees hiding under wagon tarps, no boats washing ashore with exhausted migrants, and no intrepid explorers crossing borders into uncharted land. Mars will be populated by those we select, and only those we select. Whether the criteria is wealth, merit, lottery, or something else altogether, we must acknowledge the selective nature of this endeavour and navigate the selection process openly and wisely.

Question #2— Government?

Law and Systems — Will Mars have its own government? Will Mars be a completely autonomous entity, free even from the UN charters that bind all nations on Earth?

Will Mars become an extension of whatever nation first lands there? If a private company like SpaceX beats them to it, will they angle to seize the reigns of territorial authority? The burgeoning field of space law already addresses some of these questions, but these laws are theoretical and untested, merely anticipatory. That gives the public a greater influence than they may realize in shaping the legal framework of our future in space.

Terraforming — In the distant future, we could engineer Mars’ atmosphere to accommodate our naked bodies. Using tricks we learned unintentionally on Earth, we could pump greenhouse gases to raise temperatures and produce breathable air that we need to survive. Presumably, there’s nobody on Mars that will care if we dial up the thermostat.

But humanity has never attempted an engineering feat so large, and therefore predicting its success is fraught with incalculables. It’s plausible, however, that we could learn something about controlling environments that becomes enormously useful for the ongoing climate crisis on Earth.

What responsibilities do we have to look for microbial life on Mars before terraforming and transforming their potential habitat? Microbial life may have evolved to live in niche environments, and a drastic alterations to Mars’ atmosphere may annihilate it. When do we pull the trigger to turn Mars into a human planet, versus a cosmic ecological reserve for our sacred observation. Is it ethically sufficient to look for life in all of the candidate hotspots, or do we owe it to the field of biology to scour every nook and cranny before terraforming? Or ought we abstain from terraforming, living only in artificial environments whilst maximally preserving nature’s billion year work of art that is Mars. Many arguments could be made, and again I need to reiterate my intent here is not to “find answers” but to consider our options.

Conflict — Will Martian misbehavior be met with prison sentences? Should Martian wrongdoers be punished for their actions or rehabilitated? How much risk can a Martian colony afford for the possibility of reoffense? What happens when the inevitable first sociopath is born on Mars? A single saboteur could wreak enormous, perhaps literal world-changing damage. Given the vital significance of Mars’ resources (food, water, breathable air), might attitudes towards forms of extreme punishment enjoy a renaissance? This question is not meant to be provocative, rather to confront to uncomfortable but inevitable reality of primate conflict, and to understand that our intuitions about social disincentives are tailored to a different world.

Who gets to decide?

Those who enabled the mission? The first inhabitants of Mars? Legal bigwigs here on Earth? Humanity collectively? A collection of our “smartest”?

Colonizing Mars lifts every philosophical question we’ve ever had for human civilization and returns it to the limelight. Whenever questions are posed in an Earthly context, there’s a practical understanding that government isn’t going anywhere tomorrow, but small changes could be made. But on Mars there is no government. We are not working from a half-way point, we’re starting fresh. If we do not fully appreciate this, we will unconsciously carry over an uncountable number of irrelevant and happenchanced systems.

Let me be a little bit more clear about the conversation we need to have:

I don’t have answers to these questions, but these are the questions we need to be asking ourselves as citizens of humanity. Sometimes I lie awake at night, worrying that one day we’ll wake up on Mars and find that gay marriage is illegal, cannabis is considered interplanetary contraband, and The Bank of America will be foreclosing on Martian plots of rock.

The sooner we have this conversation, the better we can avoid the mistakes we’ve made here on Earth. That’s the bottom line, because we are going - That appears to be a foregone conclusion barring a catastrophe. The human ambition is too strong, our technology is increasing at an accelerating pace, and the costs will soon become too low.

NASA is in a special place to answer these questions, and should assume some responsibility. It’s too easy to think of NASA as just some sophisticated engineering entity - A greyhound bus service to the cosmic neighbourhood.

But NASA’s feats of engineering are SO GREAT, that they enable shifts in human consciousness. And culture. And colonizing other worlds would arguably be the greatest shift in human culture since language itself. Therefore, NASA as an enabler of these technologies, assumes responsibility in addressing the philosophical questions they produce.

Let’s have the conversation.