Critical Bioethics of Space Exploration: Speculating Beyond the “Inevitable” Future of Humans in Outer Space

(Bio)ethical analysis of space exploration calls for critical reflection on present-day material and socio-political contexts. In response to this requirement, this paper first asks how a critical bioethics of space can move beyond a basic four-principles approach. Having set this initial framework, we arrive at the observation that in political and bioethical discourse a common tendency exists to explain away space activity as 'inevitable'. This trope requires (bio)ethical attention since portraying human engagement with outer space as a 'fixed reality' aligns with dominant political narratives that legitimize control over territory. After this, we outline three additional (value-laden) lines of reasoning that further reinforce this ideological work as they sustain unwarranted beliefs about what is considered a speculative future and what is not. We then explore the overarching notion of futurity and its impact on bioethical engagement with space exploration. A closer look at such speculative futurism reveals whose 'humanity' is being centered and who is envisioned as a part of this future. This paper fits within an understanding of critical feminist and naturalized bioethics that not only brings the arguments used in a bioethical discussion into harsh light but also the boundaries that make this discussion possible in the first place. We aim at practicing a bioethics that, firstly, questions itself as a product of a socio-political context and, secondly (and relatedly), one in which the question "What is bioethics?" is turned upon bioethics itself.