Todd Pennington
Distant reaches of space loom as a strategic horizon. The vast majority of space operations have, so far, been limited to a few families of near-Earth orbits. However, space beyond geostationary Earth orbit, or xGEO, is likely to become important for strategic purposes in the near future. This is especially true of cislunar space, that region of space in which the gravity of Earth’s moon is significant. This paper refers to xGEO and cislunar space as Space Frontier Areas, since missions there have not yet reached sufficient scale to cluster into patterns of use.
Current strategic thought on activities in Space Frontier Areas is largely bipolar, with some experts emphasizing their near-term security implications and others emphasizing much longer term economic potential. This bipolarity tends to suggest a zero-sum choice between imminent security needs or long-term economic opportunity, constraining policymakers’ ability to identify trade-offs and make nuanced choices about risk and priorities in space operations.
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