Ethical considerations for the age of non-governmental space exploration
Allen Seylani, Aman Singh Galsinh, Alexia Tasoula, Anu R I, Andrea Camera, Jean Calleja‐Agius, Joseph Borg, Chirag Goel, JangKeun Kim, Kevin B. Clark, Saswati Das, Shehbeel Arif, Michaël E.T.I. Boerrigter, Caroline Coffey, Nathaniel J. Szewczyk, Christopher E. Mason, Maria Manoli, Fathi Karouia, Hansjörg Schwertz, Afshin Beheshti, Dana Tulodziecki
Abstract
Mounting ambitions and capabilities for public and private, non-government sector crewed space exploration bring with them an increasingly diverse set of space travelers, raising new and nontrivial ethical, legal, and medical policy and practice concerns which are still relatively underexplored. In this piece, we lay out several pressing issues related to ethical considerations for selecting space travelers and conducting human subject research on them, especially in the context of non-governmental and commercial/private space operations.