Ethics

Overview

Although the science of finding exoplanets is very valuable, there are also many ethical conflicts to consider. Here is a brief overview of the main ideas:

The Environment and Space Waste

Building telescopes is not green! The Kepler telescope, which is known for discovering over 5,000 exoplanets, generated 52,620 tons of CO2 over its lifetime, largely due to electricity and supercomputing power required for operation. In fact, space research is one of the worst sciences for the planet; the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP), in Toulouse, France discovered that 85 observatories have generated 20.3 million tons of CO2 over their lifetimes- an average of 1.2 million tons of CO2 per year.

This is terrible because CO2 in the atmosphere traps heat, warming up the planet. By emitting lots of CO2, space telescopes and observatories are contributing to the intense climate situations we see today.

Another question is how we should deal with waste space material. The Kepler Telescope, for instance, which has recently been retired, has many pieces of metal that cannot be reused.

Economic & Social Concerns

Despite occurring outside our solar system, planet hunting is expensive! 550 million USD was spent on the Kepler Telescope, and an astounding 10 billion USD was spent on the Hubble, a later telescope! With economic crises already occurring on Earth, it becomes a question whether or not it is a good idea to spend outrageous amounts of taxpayer money on pursuits that seem to have very little impact on the world today. Is it worth it to spend money on space when we could be helping the homeless? This also brings up a separate issue: after an over competitive space race during the Cold War, has the public perception of space exploration been tarnished beyond repair?

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