Moral injury can occur when social or organisational environments restrict or prevent someone from acting in accordance with their personal values, for example, emergency room nurses who feel they are unable to provide timely and compassionate care due to conditions of resource scarcity. Compromises to moral integrity have been shown to contribute to burnout and psychological distress and are thus a concern from an occupational health and safety perspective. Moral habitability refers to how supportive an environment is for people seeking to behave in alignment with their moral beliefs.

When it comes to the harsh environment of space, living according to our values might be prohibitively difficult due to extreme resource constraints, lack of agency and conflicting ethical duties. This talk will consider ethical obligations to human space travellers, the space environment and other potential forms of life, as well as practical applications of human space exploration, including off-world mining and planetary defence.