Would polluting other planets be unethical?

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

3 hours ago, YNM said:

Well other planets might be other creature's Earth !

Eldar? Orkz? Necrontyr? Or Tau? Maybe Tyranids?

 

[YNM]

@kerbiloid Parentheses makes big difference.

[Thor Wotansen]

First off, 'pollution' is a pretty vague term in this regard, that could mean anything from leaving a slurm can on Mars to strip mining Olympus Mons.  Frankly, as long as the ecosystem here on earth isn't destroyed, I see no reason not to strip mine here, except in the case of destroying places of ecological or cultural significance.  Any other rock with no life out there is fair game in my mind.

[kerbiloid]

Human civilization is 10³..10⁵ years old (depends on criteria).

Earth is 10⁹ years old. 10⁴..10⁶ times older than human civilization.

If still nobody had robbed those planets, probably we can presume that all these worlds are ours. Except Europa. Europa, too.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Thor Wotansen said:

First off, 'pollution' is a pretty vague term in this regard, that could mean anything from leaving a slurm can on Mars to strip mining Olympus Mons.  Frankly, as long as the ecosystem here on earth isn't destroyed, I see no reason not to strip mine here, except in the case of destroying places of ecological or cultural significance.  Any other rock with no life out there is fair game in my mind.

Pretty much this, 

[Gargamel]

13 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Unless you use lakes of chemicals while mining. And you usually do.

Mining hydrocarbons you have to pour rivers of methanol solution and surfactants.

Well, if we're talking about the moon or some such body, you'd have to transport those chemicals there, so you'd want to refine and recover as much as them as possible, as we all know it would (most likely) be far cheaper to recycle than ship new ones up there.  And any excess that can't be recovered, could possibly be shot out of a large hose into space.  The lack of atmosphere and low gravity might make this a feasible process. 

[Lisias]

45 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

 And any excess that can't be recovered, could possibly be shot out of a large hose into space.  The lack of atmosphere and low gravity might make this a feasible process. 

You would need to expend a serious amount of energy anyway, as you need the thing to reach escape velocity - otherwise you will end up with a "ring" of wastes orbiting over your facilities. What I don't think will make your extra-terrestrial life easier...

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Well, if we're talking about the moon or some such body, you'd have to transport those chemicals there, so you'd want to refine and recover as much as them as possible, as we all know it would (most likely) be far cheaper to recycle than ship new ones up there.  And any excess that can't be recovered, could possibly be shot out of a large hose into space. 

Happily, there's probably nothing to mine on the Moon (at least hydrocarbons - for sure), while on Mars we can produce them from "air" and ice.
_{(And methanol should be one of the mainest products there, probably even mainer than methane.)}

And those chemicals by definition stay in/on ground, they aren't recovered,
Say, water is used to fill the underground porous layers, soaked with hydrocarbons, displacing them. Surfactants allow to do this easily. Methanol is to prevernt the drill from clathrate ice growth when methane from below meets the water ftom above.
All these substances stay there instead of hydrocarbons.

When an ore is getting enriched, they use acid solution to dissolve admixtures, surfactants to separate the particles by flotation _{(funny, English wiki doesn't know this word)}; most of the ore stays there as crushed stone waste; making the pellets in turn gives its own wastes to drop just there.

So, any mining place is a toxic wound

Shooting the wastes/excess into space is not an option: Too much to shoot, and unlikely a second asteroid belt made of wastes is better than the wastes buried in ground.

Though, to the moment when the people start utilizing other celestial bodies, they will already face and solve these problems on Earth, and need so much resources to mine.

[YNM]

13 hours ago, Thor Wotansen said:

Frankly, as long as the ecosystem here on earth isn't destroyed, I see no reason not to strip mine here, except in the case of destroying places of ecological or cultural significance.

If only you'd consider the inside of Antarctica or the Sahara to be the only two on the list.

The two extremely rarely matches up.

[Wjolcz]

14 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Europa, too.

I'd vote to study it thoroughly before performing any mining operations.

That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if life on Europa would be that much different from what we have here (I'm talking about single celled microbes since I don't think there could be anything more complex there). I can easily imagine panspermia being a thing that happens within a star system very often.

Edited June 4, 2018 by Wjolcz

[kerbiloid]

19 minutes ago, Wjolcz said:

That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if life on Europa would be that much different from what we have here (I'm talking about single celled microbes since I don't think there could be anything more complex there). I can easily imagine panspermia being a thing that happens within a star system very often.

I would be less surprised if found the life in a glass jar with brine without pickles forgotten in a fridge.