1. After a prolonged interstellar voyage, the temptation to increase velocity and interior free space by ejecting unnecessary mass, especially tons of accumulated human feces.

a) Spectacular! A gigantic fart that precipitates a cosmic crap, the sight of which could make elephants feel like amoebas.

b) A technological advance that would have delighted Thomas Crapper, the renowned English inventor of the commode: The use of interstellar space as a toilet.

2. Perils of dumping feces at relativistic speeds.

a) What if intelligent extraterrestrials would encounter our flying feces? They might retaliate for being bombarded by a contaminated biological weapon traveling at near-light speed, pursuing the human “starlings” for contaminating the cosmos by their wanton defecatory act. Or, they might dismiss humans as being undeserving of pursuit, as being members of a feces species that must be “full of it.”

b) The greater danger? That human voyagers will foul their own cosmic nest. When they decelerated as they approached an idyllic landfall, their shitty past might catch up to them. As they dispatched exploratory fan jets the shit might hit the fan — at over 185,000 miles per second! Need for powerful “shit shields” to protect from catastrophic collisions that would produce incredibly “hot shit” in the refrigerator of interstellar space. To keep from being pulverized by a pebble or smacked by an odorous diarrheal emission.

3. Need for pre-mission screening-out of potential voyages those so fixated at the anal stage that they might feel compelled to dispose of their accumulated wastes in space.

4. Any would-be dumpers should, at the very least, comply with the exhortation that adorns some toilets: “We aim to please; you aim too, please.”

5. Better yet, voyagers aboard starships traveling at relativistic speeds need to follow the First Ecological Commandment of Space: “Thou shalt not dump at relativistic speeds.”

The Morality of Space: Don’t do to others what you would not have them do to you.