Brian Patrick Green's Space Ethics serves as an introduction to the area, exposing readers to potential issues involved in going into space while asking important philosophical questions about life, risk and virtue. The book takes the form of a textbook, written in an introductory fashion for those new to the area or to philosophy. Chapter 1 serves as an overview of the text while providing duelling accounts of why we should or should not go to space. This chapter serves as a 'why' of the book, motivating the topic and making the case for philosophical investigation into issues in space exploration. Applied ethics books often need to figure out how to balance introducing ethical theories with the issues at hand, and Chapter 2 serves as a crash course in ethical theory, covering a lot of ground, some of which inevitably reappears in the analysis of the later chapters. While Green covers a wide range of material here, classics of consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics make consistent appearances (Green often favours teleological and virtue-based analysis). These subjects are undertaken in a relatively short form here, so instructors may wish to expand on this content in their courses. Green also introduces questions of justice, human rights and other ethics traditions, such as environmental ethics, feminist ethics and intersectional ethics, though not all the approaches introduced here make an appearance later in the text. In my opinion, some of this content could have been cut if not reappearing later, to provide more depth of explanation of the approaches that will be utilised. Alternatively, some of them could easily be woven into later chapters (for example, feminist ethics could be brought into conversations regarding the ethics of reproduction in space, and intersectionality plays a role in issues of who gets to go to space, tourism and the politics of future space settlements).
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