Informant38

ad astra per:

Under the theme "Why should we go to space?" the newly elected Chairman of the Committee, Ciro Arévalo Yepes, cited Professor Stephen Hawking in his opening address:

"In a way the situation was like that in Europe before 1492. The discovery of the new world made profound differences to the old. Spreading out into space will have even greater effect. It will completely change the future of the human race and maybe determine whether we have any future at all. Hopefully, it would unite us to face a common challenge," he said

UN/ScoopNZ 22.Jun.08
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If the situation is "like that in Europe before 1492", then the situation is also like that in the so-called New World, the Western Hemisphere, in 1492. What happened then, what was done to the people already living in that New World, can't be seen as right except by abandoning right and wrong altogether.
Bringing those same attitudes to the stars, the arrogance and self-righteousness that ignored the lives of those already living there, that allowed their genocide and enslavement, may not be the best thing the human race is capable of, even now. The common challenge is internal, this should be more obvious now than ever.