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Executive Summary
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.
This paper proposes an analytical framework for improving the coherence of strategic thought about Space Frontier Areas. It postulates four strategic purposes served by activities in Space Frontier Areas (prestige, governance, security, and resources), and a framework in which each purpose can be weighted by its importance and immediacy in a given time frame. Relying on data derived from research interviews with several experts in space operations, it demonstrates that this framework can produce more coherent strategic perspectives about activities in Space Frontier Areas.
Reducing bipolarity in strategic thought about Space Frontier Area improves the realism and nuance of the context in which leaders must make decisions about time, attention, and resources to be devoted to space operations.