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Moral Maze · BBC Radio 4

Artemis 2 and the ethics of human space flight

April 2, 2026·57 min·4 clips
A climate scientist who once wrote to NASA as a child now argues Artemis II is self-indulgent and morally indefensible.
Less than four hours remain. NASA's Artemis II is presented as a 10-day trip around the moon, the first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years. The programme starts with money. Tonight's launch is put at $2 billion, and the mission so far at more than $90 billion. That number forces the moral question: is this bold investment, or an expensive luxury while poverty, disease, and climate crisis still press in? Another worry arrives fast. Does a new space race risk dressing up old colonial habits in language like manifest destiny? Tony Milligan joins as witness. A philosopher at the University of Sheffield and author of Nobody Owns the Moon, he does not sell space as romance. His strongest defence is about Earth. He compares the planet to a terrarium, a sealed garden that can thrive until the system starts to go wrong. At that point, someone has to pop the cork. Space, for him, could move humanity from a mostly closed planetary system to an open one. The panel presses the point. Is the moral duty to use space to support life on Earth, rather than search for another home? Milligan accepts that as the main goal. He allows for small settlements on the moon, Mars, Vesta, and Ceres, but makes clear how brutal survival gets beyond Mars, through the asteroid belt, and farther out.

As heard by us

A sober test of Artemis II, weighing lunar ambition against Earth's urgent claims.

Moral Maze frames NASA's Artemis II as a moral test case for human space flight: a $2 billion launch, more than $90 billion spent so far, and a plan to return humans to the moon while poverty, disease and climate pressure remain urgent on Earth.

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Why you'd press play

An Artemis II moon launch becomes a live moral maze about cost, purpose, and what space is for.

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