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354 may be irrelevant to the future of intelligence. We may be ignored as more motivated civilizations go their way. Expansion, with its transcendental implication of infinite wealth and power for Humankind and its progeny, could lead to a new anthropocentrism, a belief that humans and their descendants occupy a special place in the universe. Our descendants could be afflicted with the vice the ancient Greeks called hubris. The time has come to begin formulating an extraterrestrial ethos for Humankind. That ethos must rest on a sense of responsibility to our own species, a commitment to use our growing powers beyond the Earth to better the common lot. At the same time, we may wish to impose ethical limits on our ambition to humanize the nearby cosmos, to make it run on ee : human time. Preserving the Best The first test may be our utilization of solar system resources. For decades, visionaries have proposed mining asteroids and comets for raw materials. Should we place limits on that enterprise? We may choose to exploit only those resources clearly needed for our well-being, balancing growth with other measures of value. We could declare some parts of the solar system off limits. Uhlir and Bishop proposed setting aside space wilderness areas of special interest; Hartmann suggested that we draw up a limited list of sites open to sci- entific study, but closed to exploitation—a parallel with Antarctica. At the very least, we would want to preserve the most beautiful works of solar system evolution—the rings of Saturn and the oceans of Earth. The second test would be terraforming, the deliberate altering of planetary environments to make other worlds more habitable by humans. Proposals to remodel other planets—particularly the atmospheres of Mars and Venus—have become increasingly detailed. Speculations about terraforming bring together many strands of science and philoso- phy in a great thought experiment, proposed Martyn Fogg, one that has Humankind participating in creation as well as preserving it.** How far should we go? we protect endangered species on Earth? Christopher McKay argued that if there is life on Mars, it is not doing well and could use some human help. We would be ethically on good grounds to support it, to encourage it to flourish into a global scale biota The Human Role An Extraterrestrial Ethos What if we find alien life that is not intelligent? Should we protect it, as we nbn we Ad tee we eho