Abstract:
As a result of the increasing economical exploitation of outer space, humanity faces a new challenge
that, as well as having economic advantages, also entails a great many ecological hazards. At
present, the human race is encroaching on outer space, particularly in the form of almost 5000
active satellites and the corresponding space debris they produce. For the large part, this debris
burns up on entering the Earth’s atmosphere, yet time and again it still does cause damage.
However, this could change dramatically if, as is now foreseeable, further uses of outer space, such
as tourism, so-called satellite mega-constellations, regular transport flights to the moon or even
Mars and the extraction of water and valuable rocks from celestial bodies, are expanded. There is
a danger that ecological damage like that of the earlier phases of economic development will
become externalised and ultimately pose a threat to the whole of humanity. Sautter’s ‘global
“sustainability trilemma”’ remains unresolved. This trilemma consists in the fact that, in political
resolutions, ‘the growth of resource-intensive prosperity is weighted far more highly than the
conservation of functioning ecosystems and the implementation of inter- and intragenerational
“justice”’ and that there are ‘up until now no efficient and ethically acceptable solutions’ for this
problem. In this situation, it is therefore more important that rules for the sustainable use of outer
space be established and enshrined as legally binding so that it becomes possible to minimise or
even to preclude negative ecological consequences.
CONTRIBUTION : Although the commercial use of outer space does not seem to be a crucial point,
it marks a new step of the dynamics of modern economics that has to be identified as an
important ethical challenge. The article discusses aspects of ethics, law, religion and economy
in a multidisciplinary way.
