• Should humans should seek to exploit and/or colonize other planets, and if so, how should it be done? The author's position is no. • The idea of colonizing another planet likely appeals to a small fraction of humankind and suggests an inevitably elitist enterprise. • Though space laws are devoid of references to colonization and exploitation, the ideology of space exploration calls for those goals. • This ideology is a pastiche of other belief systems: manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, libertarianism, and cosmism. • For more than 500 years, these ideologies have wreaked havoc on Earth, and they should not be exported to other planets. Should humans seek to colonize outer space? I say no. I have worked in the space community for 35 years with a variety of programs and projects ranging from science to human space flight. My view as a social scientist is that humans are not sufficiently advanced, technologically and socially, to be establishing colonies on Mars, or any other place in space. Except for the threads of Russian cosmism, the ideology of space colonization and exploitation is largely Western, and Christian, as noted above. It appears to be some interpretation of Christian dominion, or dominionist, theology that drives colonization advocates to declare that humans are destined to fill the universe, that humans "must" colonize Mars, that outer space resources are there for the taking.The ideology of space exploration is in need of rejuvenation. The author advocates a visionof a human future in space in which humanity finds its way to a collective peaceful existence on Spaceship Earth, a way to work together to preserve life here and to look for life out there. Perhaps at some point in the distant future, humans might be ready –technologically and socially – to live together peacefully on other planets. But we are not there yet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]