Geography of Space
Building upon Halford J. Mackinder's divisions of Earth's geography into strategic regions, astrostrategists divide space into distinct areas with unique strategic characteristics. The key to each country's strategic relationship with the various regions is transportation technology, especially as it concerns military mobility. If a state could not physically control a strategic area, then it must at least endeavor to deny control of the area to other powers. Because of the vast resources available to those who can control territory and locations in space, any state that could command space would exercise tremendous influence over all others.
- Earth
- This area encompasses the physical Earth stopping just before the altitude at which unpowered orbit is possible. Just as a coast is to the ocean, the atmosphere here is to space—Earth is the transition region between astrostrategy and geostrategy. It is the crucial territory for transport, take-offs, landings, communication, production, and maintenance.
- Earth Space
- Between the lowest possible orbit, and the geostationary orbit, this area is the operating region for all military and communications satellites and networks, including reconnaissance, navigation, and space-based weaponry. It also includes the zone through which medium and long-range ICBMs make their highest altitude stage of transit.
- Moon Space
- This region encompasses the band of space beyond geostationary orbits to just beyond the Moon's orbit. Within this space lies the Moon itself, as well as the strategic Lagrange points.
- Solar Space
- This region is simply everything within the Sun's gravitational field, outside the orbit of the Moon. Current ability to exploit this region is quite limited, but its resources are vast, including the possibilities of colonization, terraforming, and planetary mining of the other planets in the solar system, as well as their moons, and asteroids. This area is the future potential "lebensraum" for an extraterrestrial population.
Read more about this topic: Space Geostrategy
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