Colonization of uninhabited planets

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Lets say we go to Mars and we continue to find no life whatsoever, would there be anything wrong with terraforming the planet to be more habitable to human and other terrestrial life? What if a planet or planetoid has only bacteria, is it wrong to change that planet in a way that may kill off the bacteria? If there are only plants, then would there be anything wrong with colonizing such a world? If there are extremely dangerous lifeforms, such as the merwin in Outlander, would it be wrong to kill those off or should they be left alone? If the planet has species with which communication is possible, then what would be the best course of action if one needed resources (such as for colonizing one of the less habitable planets or planetoids within the star system) ?

in my eyes it would depend on the planet, if there was no possibility of life to naturally occur, then i actually think that teraforming or mining the planets resources would be a good thing, it would keep a lot of the destructive forces of mankind away from the natural pearls bound to float around out there.

say there was bacteria, then life is possible and evolution should be allowed to play its course without intervention, extreme care should be taken in exploring these places as even a single earthly bacteria on the wrong planet could cause a full collapse of an emerging eco system.

Basically agree with Oodain.

With a dead world like the moon we dont have to worry about preserving the ecologoy because there is no ecology. We can strip mine the moon for metal ores and even use atomic bombs to help strip mine the place. Indeed the more we rape the moon the less we need to rape Earth!

But if an astronaut kicked over a rock on Mars, or on Titan, and found indigenous extraterrestrial bacteria living there that would be a momentous discovery.

We would have to hold off colonizing and exploiting the planet and comb the planet pole to pole to study its lifeforms no matter how primitive to document the extraterrestrial biosphere before we jack it up (accidently or purposely).

Well, if we were to find a flourishing biosphere, I would suggest we leave it be, unless our disparate evolutionary histories somehow lead to compatible biologies, in which case we would probably head down there ASAP and start making alien frog-cow steaks and clear cutting the gigantic fungal mushroom forests (or whatnot )
But even if we found just microbes on Mars, I don't know if we should leave the planet be. I would probably take the time to categorize the indigenous microbes, and try and learn from them what allows them to live on the planet. I would also try and search for a fossil record to see if Mars had more varied life in the past. Likely, it did, and any microbes we find would be the leftovers that were hardy enough to survive gradual ecological erosion. In this case I wouldn't feel too bad because Mars is a failed planet and likewise it's evolutionary tree of life is mostly snuffed out. I suspect life we find there would probably be somewhat related to Earth life so planting new organisms might not be a big deal. Not to mention that Mars is the only viable target for terraforming (easily- relatively speaking) in our Solar system. So it comes down to us, our biosphere, or a couple of species of chasmolithic microbes.
I think we know who wins out, and frankly it is not that much different from disparate biologies travelling between islands on Earth. It is evolution

Any form of life = It's a no go. No life = Colonize away.

I think you mean terraform away.

Probably. I'm not all that good with the terms..

all very valid points, if all evidence shows a planet is already in its last stages of bearing life, then intervention would be a good thing, one might be able to salvage a sliver somewhere, maybe through cross breeding, maybe through intentional means.
what i mean is if bacteria on mars and earth were compatible, then introducing low levels of earthly dna might catayze a reaction instead of being the primary actor, essentially extending the martian bioshpere by hybridization.

and yes mars does hold great promise for terraforming, it would be great to see the first step in our lifetime, even knowing it will take hundreds of years before its a real biosphere, upside is we know we are good at emitting green house gasses and thats excactly what is needed before one can seed bacteria.

If there's no life then to properly colonize it for use, terraforming would be the first major goal.

well unless we make dome cities, on the moon you would have all the silica you could ever want for that purpose.

That's true but terraforming would be beneficial for enabling better sustainability for those colonies.

I don't see any ethical issue with it baring there being no intelligent lifeforms. I don't consider bacteria significant.

Exactly
Though maybe e.t. bacteria could become infectious

Some part of me suspects one way to increase the success of terraforming would be a small population of native microbes. One could adapt some of the traits of these microbes to Earth bacteria/archaea that would be used to alter the atmosphere. Having a microbial template there (so to speak) would definitely help

In any case one argument that could be used in favor of terraforming regardless of native life is the fact that this kind of thing happens on Earth. There are always invasive species replacing old ones, it is a natural cycle. Just because Humans are involved doesn't make it any less unnatural, we are after all a part of a natural system (even if most people are unaware of this)
A long time ago on Earth, before the Cambrian, when our 'style' of life really appeared, the Ediacaran biota dominated the Earth. They were quite alien, perhaps the first genesis of life on Earth. Our kingdoms of life replaced them. So I see little ethical concern, honestly, though there might be some future-hippies who would disagree with me

If there is intelligent life though, it should be left alone.

I doubt the issue will be relevant when the time comes because I don't think any biology outside our solar system will be compatible with us in any way. Likewise, if there were other genesis of life in our system, there is a chance that it spread to Earth & Mars, or originated on one of the two, or Venus... But it could also have happened independently on each

The vast majority of life on Earth is microbial. Many of them can kill you. They are found in the deepest pits and in the stratosphere.

Finding any life whatsoever on a planet means there is a good chance of encountering an organism which can completely destroy us. I'd suggest quarantining it unless one has a method of utterly sterilizing the entire planet.

On a related note, the Great Filter hypothesis: why we should worry if we do encounter extraterrestrial life. The premise is that encountering even microbial life would indicate that life is common. Yet since we do not see Dyson spheres and other signs of very advanced intelligent life, we'd have to account for there being some great obstacle between the emergence of life and the rise of advanced intelligent life. But if that obstacle doesn't seem to be in our evolutionary past (the emergence of life itself, the emergence of multicellular organisms, the emergence of intelligent life), then this obstacle must be somewhere in our future...

It could just be that intelligent life isn't that uncommon, but the uncommon thing is for intelligent species to exist near each other or ever notice one another
Not to mention, how would one see a Dyson Sphere? It would totally block all outbound light from the star
But that is still a very interesting hypothesis

Perhaps (very hypothetically) when a species reaches a certain level of technology and scientific understanding, they simply leave the universe for one they have deigned to create, perhaps with the virtually limitless processing power of a Matrioshka Brain (Link)

now thats what i call a computer

and i agree space is vast and we know so little, life might just happen everywhere it has a chance.