BRITISH ASTRONOMER SIR MARTIN REES, whom I have taken to task in the past for his antipathy to space development, seems to have partially rethought his position in this article in Foreign Policy.

But only partially. Rees concludes with this paragraph:

Still, while I am optimistic about the ability of private enterprise to colonize the moon and lead us to Mars, I am less sanguine about what space pioneers will do once they establish a presence there. Will they be as scrupulous in preserving the natural environment as, say, the governments involved in the Antarctic project have been? Or will they simply exploit the planets they conquer, much as was done to the American West? Ultimately, how we get there is less important than what we do when we arrive.

Antarctica is, as I have suggested elsewhere, a lousy model for space — unless, that is, you’re a space scientist who wants space kept as your private (taxpayer-funded) playground. At any rate, as the experience of the Soviet Union — and of government-controlled land in the American West — illustrates, one generally finds that state managers are less scrupulous with regards to environmental matters than are private property holders.