There is a central ethical dilemma at the heart of our human expansion into space. It does not concern the issue of state versus the private sector, and it does not concern whether or not we should go.

As a point about realpolitik, we are going. Even if Presidents Trump and Putin, as well as Xi Jinping in China, were to reverse their current positions and instead say ‘no’ to space, their opposition would not stick. The next set of political leaders, or those who came after, would simply reverse it. The political and economic dynamics for expansion are too far advanced to be put into reverse. We may argue about whether or not there is an innate human urge to find new frontiers (I think there is not), but the economics and politics of the thing are enough to ensure that this is going to happen.

Rather, the ethical dilemma concerns a conflict between two kinds of justice. On the one hand, justice across the current generation of humans. This points towards a need to broaden inclusion, and to increase the number of players in the space sector. On the other hand, there is the issue of justice between generations. This points towards the importance of sustainability, and the importance of avoiding too rapid an expansion of our overall human activities in space.

A broader conversation, involving many more stakeholders, is more likely to yield an approach with which includes voices capable for speaking up for the interests of future generations.

At the moment, the issue of inclusion appears to be more pressing. Our emerging space programs show strong signs of the domination of a small number of big players. Not just the US and Russia, but China, Japan and some other Asian countries too. India’s space program, for example, is ambitious, and includes a recent (failed) attempt at a soft lunar landing in the south polar region of the Moon, in August 2019. Eventually, they will get there. They have the resources, and at some point they will have the technology too.

A number of the gulf states are also looking for the next big thing, after oil. Western Asia’s economic hub, Dubai, the super-tech city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been particularly active among those showing interest in moving heavily into the space sector. The UAE formed its own Space Agency (UAESA) in 2014, but it has been pushing the idea of a much broader pan-Arab space agency, on the model of the European Space Agency, for more than a decade. And Europe itself, through the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Union, has a significant stake in space, as well as ambitions for manned launch.

The race to space, this time around, is not repeating the Cold War model, which involved only two key players. However, the number of serious players remains limited. Broadening the process, and the associated conversation, to include many more voices, at both state level and below, is a difficult task. But it is also an important one. Not just in the sense that it is nice if more people are involved. Rather, a broader conversation, involving many more stakeholders, is more likely to yield an approach with which includes voices capable for speaking up for the interests of future generations. Narrower conversations can easily be skewed by the interests of powerful nations.

The Moon is a culturally significant object for all of us. Some have cosmologies which would sit poorly with any attempt to treat it simply as a quarry or as a convenient source of rare resources.