Yeah, the moral issues are what concern me the most. Life can abound in forms we may not even be aware of as humans, since our senses are limited only to a certain spectrum which we evolved to sense our world. Our senses have not evolved to see certain colors or shapes which may be quite clear to a butterfly, for example. How would we even know if we were destroying an entire race of beings? Definitely more study and testing is needed. And Space can never be the province of any one country. Newt Gingrich's recent comments about building a moon colony would be laudable, except for his rhetorical insistence that it must be an AMERICAN lunar colony. No one can lay claim to the moon! Or any other planet for that matter. Humans will need to work together, in international cooperation, to properly explore the "final frontier." But it will be a long time before we can manage this, I think. Maybe not even in my lifetime or yours. We can barely tolerate the differences in our skin color and language and culture - how could we even begin to contemplate relating to a completely alien, extraterrestrial, species?