["Bioethics, Volume 40, Issue 6, Page 597-605, July 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\n(Bio)ethical analysis of space exploration calls for critical reflection on present‐day material and socio‐political contexts. In response to this requirement, this paper first asks how a critical bioethics of space can move beyond a basic four‐principles approach. Having set this initial framework, we arrive at the observation that in political and bioethical discourse a common tendency exists to explain away space activity as ‘inevitable’. This trope requires (bio)ethical attention since portraying human engagement with outer space as a ‘fixed reality’ aligns with dominant political narratives that legitimize control over territory. After this, we outline three additional (value‐laden) lines of reasoning that further reinforce this ideological work as they sustain unwarranted beliefs about what is considered a speculative future and what is not. We then explore the overarching notion of futurity and its impact on bioethical engagement with space exploration. A closer look at such speculative futurism reveals whose ‘humanity’ is being centered and who is envisioned as a part of this future. This paper fits within an understanding of critical feminist and naturalized bioethics that not only brings the arguments used in a bioethical discussion into harsh light but also the boundaries that make this discussion possible in the first place. We aim at practicing a bioethics that, firstly, questions itself as a product of a socio‐political context and, secondly (and relatedly), one in which the question “What is bioethics?” is turned upon bioethics itself.\n"]