@Urban_Hermit

Agreed, we really do need to figure out what we mean by colonise as many people here will refer to what White Europeans mean by that, and to a point White Americans if we look at Native American genocide, slavery and racism.

Or in terms of Musk / Bezos, exploitation of workers

https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.08344

I am all for exploring, setting up bases to help with research but beyond that we need to be careful.

@zleap @Urban_Hermit On the one hand, the good thing about the rest of the Solar System is that everything outside Earth (with the possible exception of Europa and the extremely unlikely exception of Mars) is a lifeless ball with no sensitive ecosystems to screw up or worry about. I’d go so far as to say that resource extraction on asteroids and even larger bodies might actually be an overall ecological positive by reducing demand for mining on Earth (though of course this depends on a lot of factors that themselves should be thought out in advance.)

On the other hand, while I am not worried about Musk oppressing workers en masse in space (he’s a lying con man and will never get anything to Mars), I don’t want to see a future point where humans are exploited in extracting resources in space. Not only would those humans be working in hellish conditions, but the whole scenario can also be avoided; most space exploration is automated and unmanned for good reason.

(Note that anything outside the solar system will take a very long while for humans to to reach, but if/when we do discover life somewhere, then the concerns about colonialism/genocide/ecocide/etc in space become very real, and working to prevent that in advance is very much a good idea.)