Heading for Outer Space. Part 2: Topography

(pixabay.com)

 

The story is largely the result of a “romance” (I call it this because of the passion that has allowed me to endure pandemic times) with the outstanding achievements of Professor Everett C. Dolman, a strategy lecturer at US Air Force Air Command and Staff College, dealing with the relations of geopolitics and astropolitics, as well as the work of other strategists dealing with the new domain of human exploration, which is outer space. We will present this achievement at Strategy&Future.

The use of rules on Earth, understanding terrain features and space properties, as well as all the consequences resulting therefrom, served to gain an advantage over competitors. And at least it was to prevent them from gaining advantages by blocking competitive activities in key geographical locations determining strategic flows. Gdańsk, the Danish Straits, the exit from continental Europe to the Atlantic next to the British Isles, Gibraltar, the Fulda Gap, and today the Suwałki Corridor, all designate places important for the fate of nations and for the grand strategies of major powers.

 

Logic is unrelenting: political organisms wishing to be sovereign in decisions must prevent other states from gaining exclusive control of access to key locations, transport corridors and communication chokepoints, which give military advantage and thus the possibility of control and participation in economic undertakings giving wealth, strength and prestige… Such places are also in space!

 

When technology appears that enables new connectivity to previously inaccessible places (as during great geographical discoveries), or if the technology of using new resources arises (oil discovery in the Middle East), there is an inevitable need for a correct strategy to support new variables in order to follow the interests of the state.

 

As Clausewitz – the pioneer of our field – says: strategy is simple but never easy; because it is an art, so it is impossible to learn it even after learning the canon of principles, readings and historical cases. That is why powers and civilizations fall, which is why the history of the world is so interesting and the future remains inscrutable. Although you can try to forecast it.

 

Even when technology has been mastered, a bad strategy wipes out technological advantage. Technology changes the characteristics of competition, but if the need for a strategy to master new technology for broader goals is neglected, it often leads to disaster. That is why continuing technological development is so closely associated with strategic art. On Earth as it is in space.

Strategy – for natural reasons – must remain within the realm of geographical and topographic conditions. Knowledge about such things is a great value. And here, for some, is a surprise – the cosmos also has its “geography” and its “topographic” characteristics. Thus, space is also an “area” where we move, replenish supplies, consume fuel and need logistics.

The Earth itself, of course, also has its own astropolitical value, which I will talk about in more detail in the following parts of the story of astropolitics. In general, all celestial bodies have features that determine their astropolitical value. Here the most important are: mass (to determine the force of gravity), orbits and relationships with other space phenomena.

 

From the point of view of strategy, space seems to resemble the Earth’s world ocean. Much more than airspace, which may surprise a layman, and why we will devote to this topic an additional separate text in Strategy&Future.

 

Mahan described the seas and oceans of the Earth as a wide path on which people can move in all directions, but on which, however, certain repetitive communication routes emerge due to the need for control. This control resulted from the need for efficient movement of goods, and Earth’s geography dictated natural trade corridors. Mahan identified seven of them: the Dover Strait, Gibraltar, Malacca, Cape of Good Hope, Malta, the Suez Canal, and the St. Lawrence River. Thanks to Mahan’s efforts and achievements, the Americans built the Panama Canal and were able to freely transfer the fleet from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean and vice versa, which contributed to their victory in the World Wars and the position of the USA in Eurasia throughout the 20th century, until today.

The power controlling the communication corridors gained huge commercial benefits and dominated the military and politics of others through the wealth it thus accumulated.

At first glance it seems that in space you can move in all directions. As a rule – it’s true (though not always – more on that to come), but efficient travel and transport require navigating specific and economically achievable routes. These communication lines are easy to identify, guess and trace – just like on Earth.

 

Gravity is the most important factor in terrain topography in space. It dictates how to travel, how much it costs and determines the places of basing or parking. Hills and valleys in space are the gravity wells that travel through space involves.

 

For this reason, traveling is different than on Earth, and the weight of distance is something else: less on distance, and more on the energy effort spent to reach from point A to point B.

For example, a journey of 35,000 kilometers from the Earth’s surface requires 22 times more effort than traveling the same distance from the Earth’s moon, because Earth’s gravitational well is 22 times deeper.

In other words, the unit’s measure is the propulsion effort (Delta-V) required to get from A to B. Delta-V is the key to understanding the principles of space travel, efficient commodity movement, and strategic space flows in general, i.e. the movement of people, goods, and eventually investment and capital.

 

It’s cheaper – when it comes to Delta-V’s energy expenditure, to send a spacecraft from the Earth’s moon to Mars (56 million kilometers along the shortest line, average 225 million) than it is to send the same spacecraft from the Earth’s surface to the moon (only a distance from Earth 385 thousand kilometers). To this new continent of the Earth, rich in numerous raw materials, with an area more than three times larger than Africa and almost five times larger than Australia, the journey now takes app. three days.

 

The Delta-V determining the energy expenditure necessary to reach from the low orbit of the Earth located just behind the atmosphere of our planet to the orbit of the moon is 4100 m/s. So much “effort” is absorbed by this “jump” and it is only 300 m/s more than to get from the same low orbit to the planet’s own geosynchronous orbit, and therefore not to the moon or its orbit. Simply most of the effort is spent on the first 100 km to get out of the Earth’s surface through the Earth’s atmosphere beyond the so-called Karman’s line (the conventional boundary of the Earth’s atmosphere) into low orbit. For context – the International Space Station orbits between 435 and 535 km above the Earth’s surface. Therefore, boosters are needed for the main spacecraft engines starting out from Earth. Strikingly, it takes several days to fly from Earth’s low orbit into the moon’s orbit, but less than half the effort required to get out of Earth’s space port into Earth’s low orbit that takes in a few minutes.

 

This means that places distant from each other in distance and time of travel are quite close in the sense of the propulsion effort required to move between them. This is a very important observation from the point of view of control and execution of power in space, which we will talk about.

 

Understanding this regularity is the key to functioning in space and resembles the “otherness” of former sailing skills: tacking, sailing close-haul (‘beating’ or ‘working’ to windward), beam reach, running downwind, overcoming sea currents. Though, don’t overdo these comparisons. Space is not a place intended for human life, and movement is subject to different rules. So it’s not a literal comparison, but a devotion to “otherness” – just like today’s sailing differs from that which has tamed the Earth’s world ocean since the fifteenth century.

In addition, the spacecraft uses less fuel in a stable orbit and this is the best configuration in terms of energy expenditure. Therefore, efficient travel is a journey from one stable orbit to the next with the least energy expenditure of propulsion.

Thus, in space there are orbits and communication routes determined by energy efficiency, which determine strategic flows and commercial activities of all kinds in space. In exactly the same way Mahan or Corbett described communication routes on the seas and Earth’s assessments.

 

Space, like the ocean, can theoretically be traversed in almost any direction, but due to gravity wells and the great costs associated with fuel, its transportation and replenishment, certain routes that are most frequented will naturally arise.

 

Therefore, Elon Musk has a plan to replenish fuel for future SpaceX interplanetary ships in low Earth orbit after leaving the planet’s atmosphere and thus overcoming the most difficult part of the gravity well. Mastering technology and refueling procedures in orbit would facilitate interplanetary flights within our solar system.

 

There will be much more about orbital mechanics in the next parts of our astropolitics series, especially since the consequences of its principles are sometimes contrary to our intuition acquired on Earth and often other than those resulting from flying an airplane, but key to understanding the principles of space motion.

 

Therefore, by way of introduction it is only worth pointing out that maneuvers in orbit can be carried out anywhere, but for proper fuel management there are some places where only the use of thrust should be used. The most efficient way to change to a higher or lower orbit is the so-called Hohmann transfer (the Russians call it the Hohmann-Vietchinkin maneuver) by using the engines twice. The transition from one orbit to another is initiated by the first firing of the engine, which increases the current orbit. When the ship reaches the target orbit, the engine is used again. It aims to adapt the speed to the orbital speed required by the target orbit. The Hohmann’s transfer maneuver also allows you to bring a spacecraft from a higher circular orbit to a lower one, only the thrust must reduce the speed of the ship. Slow flight results in a lower orbit. The second impulse adjusts the ship’s speed to the new speed required in the new lower orbit.

The Hohmann’s transfer maneuver allows spacecraft to move from a low Earth orbit to a far distant geostationary orbit in a few hours; from Earth’s low orbit to the moon it takes a few days, and from Earth to Mars in elliptical orbit, but under strict conditions and remembering that the planets are in constant motion, at different speeds and in different orbits – within 6 to 9 months, if we are going to be ready to use more fuel. Then flight can take less time (Elon Musk wants to do it in the average 115 days with the help of the Martian transport infrastructure planned by his SpaceX).

Moving further distances outside the immediate vicinity of the Earth using the Hohmann maneuver therefore takes a long time, although it is quite energy efficient. Although – for comparison – in the seventeenth century, traveling with a cargo ship from England to America took from one to two months, to this should be added the time required very often to undergo quarantine for passengers.

 

For this reason, travels to further planets of the Solar System and beyond the System itself (as in the case of the famous Voyager 2 probe, which left the solar system a few years ago and is now in interstellar space) are currently taking place with the help of gravity assistance, which is used even many times.

 

Gravity assistance, sometimes called the gravity sling, is very simply a change in the speed and direction of space flight using the gravitational field of a planet or some other large celestial body (like a trampoline), next to which a space ship passes. Having been developed by the Soviets, it is now a widely used method of obtaining speeds to reach the outer planets of the Solar System.

Maneuvering in interplanetary space always requires taking into account the gravity of the Sun, which dominates the solar system. Vehicles sent towards the inner planets – Venus and Mercury, approaching the sun, gain speed, and to enter their orbit they must somehow reduce it. On the other hand, vehicles sent towards outer planets must acquire adequate speed to be able to move far enough away from the sun. Implementing this with rocket propulsion requires large amounts of fuel – that’s why other methods are being sought.

For travels to the nearest planets: Mars and Venus, the traditional Hohmann transfer maneuver is used, which consumes the minimum amount of fuel, but the journey is slow. A travel like this to outer planets would take decades, and the fuel consumption would be very high anyway.

In addition, the main limitation of gravity assistance is, unfortunately, the need to adapt to the current location of the planets. Another type of restriction is the atmosphere of the planets, which is used to assist. The closer a spaceship travels to the planet, the more force it acts on it. However, with an excessively close zoom, the resistance of the atmosphere causes a loss of speed.

Over long distances it is also possible to use a slow but energy-efficient interplanetary transport network. Under this technocratic name is a collection of space paths, resulting from the rules of gravity of planets and other celestial bodies, whose location requires very little energy for a spacecraft to travel. In particular, it is about connecting the marked space paths, so-called libration points (which allow a spacecraft to orbit around them despite the absence of a celestial body around which they would orbit themselves). We will also talk about the significant strategic importance of libration points, further.

When people were learning the Hohman’s maneuver before World War II, computers did not exist, when gravity assistance was conceptualised in the 1950s and 1960s, computers were slow, weak and inefficient in conversion. The progressive conversion powers and the growing importance of artificial intelligence enable the mapping of the hardly perceptible and hardly quantifiable space features of the gravitational celestial bodies that determine communication routes where almost no fuel is consumed every year. Such movement within the interplanetary transport network, although much slower even than the Hohmann maneuver, may eventually be a solution for unmanned missions. And above all for the great cosmic ‘freight trains’ loaded to the brim with cosmic raw material, without human casting, traveling great human distances to colonies in the solar system. Or not to go that far into the future – much earlier, when a real “new economy” will be created, based on the exploitation of space resources and raw materials on further planets of the solar system, their moons and asteroids.

 

It will then be possible at libration points, and therefore at the natural intersections of communication routes, to create material bases and space stations. They will probably not be a place of permanent human life and industrial production, as Gerard O’Neill wanted in his famous book on space colonisation – The High Frontier, which inspired the richest man in the world – Jeff Bezos to set up a company to explore space – Blue Origin in 2000. However, they can serve as temporary stopping and resting places, in conditions of artificial gravity caused by rotation, the transhipment of goods or necessary repairs of the spacecraft. From a military point of view, they can be advanced observation posts and force garrisons to maintain control of communication routes and projections of power, such as terrestrial Singapore, Gibraltar or Cape Town at the Cape of Good Hope, controlling traffic around Africa.

 

In order to implement an effective maritime strategy, Mahan and Corbett called for establishing bases in strategic locations: in Hawaii, the Philippines, the Caribbean, in the Mediterranean Sea to be able to replenish fuel and supplies for the fleet guarding communication lines: food, masts, gunpowder and ammunition, then coal, oil. Space forces will need such bases on the moon and at libration points, just like the British fleet needed coaling stations in the Indian Ocean. The range of the fleet and merchant navy ships at that time – as well as the imperial sea route to the British colonies – determined their locations.

As Mahan picturesquely wrote: without them, ships would be “like land birds unable to fly far from their own shores.” This is also in line with the claims of the air war strategy propagators Giulio Douhet and Billy Mitchell, where air operations are also limited by terrestrial topography for the simple reason that the exact route and sensibility of air routes are due to the prevailing climate, weather, season, winds, but above all from the technical security systems and repairs which are necessary in the operational theatre and the most important airfields for aviation.

 

Since we have already discussed the strategic importance of libration points, the most important pivotal potential place for future confrontations (we will devote a separate study on warfighting in space) are the libration points between Earth and the moon (also known as Lagrangian points).

 

These are five places where the gravitational effects of the Earth and the moon balance out and as a result erase. The object found in these points, or rather in their strict orbit, would always be stable without fuel consumption. Importantly, the libration points themselves remain in constant relationship with the moon and Earth. Lagrange calculated these dependencies and defined these points back in the 18th century. When people began to fly into space, it turned out that in practice it is a little different. Perturbations in space resulting from solar flares, drift in orbital motion, natural wobble in orbits, or micrometers mean that only two vibration points designated as points, L4 and L5, are de-facto stable, but others need corrections from space ships. Points L4 and L5 are on the sides of the relationship between the moon and Earth and seem to be the most strategically important points in the distant Earth space due to their flanking control position while remaining at the top of the Earth’s deep gravitational well. This is an excellent control position for communication routes between the Earth’s low orbits, its other orbits and communication to the moon, and from there into the solar system – if we wanted to use the moon and lunar raw materials or establish a permanent base on the moon, develop an area of ​​industrial exploration or an area of ​​industrial space production. And these are currently plans which are not so distant in time.

 

To prove that these considerations are not a purely theoretical song of the future: the Chinese, getting ready for landing in January 2019 on the invisible side of the moon, set up a communication satellite at the L2 libration point (located “behind” the moon) to be able to connect with its mission to the invisible side of the moon and in future to keep in touch with the Chinese exploration base, which they apparently want to build near the moon’s southern pole.

 

They called it (after holding a public plebiscite to find the best name) Queqiao, or “magpie bridge”, which in Chinese mythology refers to a well-known story in which a bridge made of magpies stretched over the Milky Way (in Chinese culture, the Silver River) allowing a pair of lovers – Zhi Nu – the seventh daughter of the goddess of heaven, to connect with her husband on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar. Being at the L2 calibration point at a distance of 60 thousand kilometers beyond the moon, the satellite is in fact a communication relay, which is responsible for everything that happens on this more interesting and invisible part of the moon.

After the great success of this mission, which aroused enthusiasm for space exploration in China, the people of the Middle Kingdom were able to send messages to the moon. A total of 120,000 messages were reported, of which 8,000 were selected to be sent. And from among their broadcasters, three of the highest-rated messages were selected, who were given the opportunity to enter the spaceport in Sichuan, where they could watch the space launch.

 

For a full picture of the topography of space around the Earth (except for the description of orbits, which will be described in follow-up parts), we cannot forget about the so-called Van Allen belts, i.e. the area of ​​intense radiation surrounding our planet.

 

It consists of charged high-energy particles trapped by the Earth’s magnetic field. These particles can cause damage to the electronic components of spacecraft, staying for a long time in the zone of influence of the Van Allen belts. Radiation belts have a donut-like shape, circling the earth inside the magnetosphere, which catches charged particles and holds them. A spaceship flying through radiation belts may be damaged and the crew may die. The belts are quite well marked on navigational space maps and can therefore be avoided. The inner belt appears at an altitude of 100 to 1200 km above the Earth depending on the Earth’s latitude and reaches up to 10,000 kilometers with the highest concentration of danger zone at an altitude of 3,500 km.

Belt anomalies make the lowest altitudes in the greater latitudes of the southern hemisphere difficult to navigate, especially for polar orbits. It is better to completely avoid these routes in manned flights.

The second radiation belt begins at an altitude of 10,000 kilometers and reaches a ceiling of 85,000 kilometers with the most dangerous point at an altitude of 16,000 kilometers. The border zones of the belt are fairly accessible, so between the belts there is a convenient communication route at an altitude of 9-11 thousand kilometers. In addition, from the side of the Sun, the outer belt is flattened at an altitude of 59,500 km, and reaches its maximum height in the shadow of the Earth.

In 2012, as part of the Van Allen Probes mission, it was discovered that sometimes a temporary, third radiation belt was formed around the Earth. This was discovered after a solar eruption of August 2012. Particles ejected towards the Earth causing the temporary formation of an additional radiation belt, which lasted for four weeks between the two main lanes.

 

Like with nautical charts, navigational space maps must also be updated frequently – whether because of radiation belts or because of the growing amount of space debris in Earth’s increasingly crowded orbits.

 

An interesting (ominously) fact may be that human interactions in the stratosphere and mesosphere, including nuclear explosions above the Earth’s surface can lead to the formation of an artificial radiation belt. This situation took place after a nuclear explosion codenamed Starfish Prime carried out by the United States 400 km above the surface of the earth (specifically the Pacific) in 1962. By causing an electromagnetic pulse much stronger than expected, which in Hawaii, 1400 km away, destroyed communication devices, and the satellites whose orbits crossed the newly formed belt were damaged.

Ending (temporarily) considerations of maneuvering in space, we should mention the art of aerobraking, used to reduce speed by using the planet’s atmospheric resistance, which significantly saves fuel. You just need to be able to do it, which requires navigational skills and an understanding of the functioning of orbits and their eccentricity, i.e. the maximum and minimum distribution of the “width” of the orbit. Aerobraking does not require an Earth-like atmosphere, so it works on Mars, for example, although the atmosphere is much rarer there than on Earth. The ability of such braking is necessary for landing on celestial bodies, and this is the essence of exploration and building a new economy for humanity.

 

Finally, we are constantly hearing that scientists are trying to master non-traditional (or chemical) drives for spacecraft propulsion engines. Ion propulsion is already in use, which works only in space, and solar sails, which in turn do not need fuel using the pressure of sunlight. In the future, nuclear fusion and photon propulsion may prove to be key to interplanetary travel. Both solutions have many supporters in the world of space conquest fans.

 

It is worth mentioning some crazy ideas from the past – like the Orion project of successive dropping of nuclear bombs behind a spaceship, professionally called pulsed nuclear propulsion. Equally original seems to be the idea of a space elevator, thanks to which it will be possible to quickly and cheaply leave the deep well of Earth’s gravitational well. There is no such elevator to build yet, although such an elevator on the moon with its much weaker gravity would probably be within the technological range of humanity today.

 

The gravitational interaction of the Earth extends very far, as much as 900,000 kilometers from the surface of our planet and twice as far as it is from Earth to the moon. It should be emphasised – this is not a small distance and it currently sets our horizons for what we mean by space, which is within our development capacity now. Beyond this distance, Earth’s orbits are no longer possible and the spacecraft will be attracted to another gravitational field.

 

Future communication lines near the Earth, its satellite the moon and the planets closest to us, will therefore be Hohman’s maneuvers for a long time, suitable for short cosmic distances between ports and space stations on celestial bodies, orbits and libration points. Unless breakthrough propulsion technology is created to efficiently achieve further space speeds. Then – just like steam, internal combustion or later the nuclear engine room on ships of the terrestrial world ocean – the parameters of space travel will change. Although it will not change completely, because propulsion inventions on Earth have not changed so much the rules related to the efficiency of movement on the world ocean. Singapore, Suez or Gibraltar are still fundamental to terrestrial geopolitics.

In the nineteenth century Friedrich List believed that the coming power of the railroads would consolidate Germany located on the continent, thus far changing its unfavourable strategic “middle position”, which was threatened from both opposing directions to a very favourable one – with the central bastion in the Old Continent, with internal operating lines connected by rail enabling projection of power and making favorable strategic flows. Of course, changes in communication caused by rail are hard to compare to space travel, but this new method of transport, rapid collection of information, communication and connectivity, and projection of power and kinetic strikes from space to Earth has the potential to change the relationship between traditional world powers, especially between Eurasian power and America.

 

At the current stage of the development of our civilization and our technology, where the use of space is actually limited to the area between the Earth and the moon, control of the Earth’s low orbit offers immediate operational advantage on internal operating lines according to the teachings of Jomini. A quick situational awareness system plus a quick response and the possibility of a rapid transfer of military forces or strike capability can change the unfavourable tendency about which the Americans and NATO commander General Breedlove have complained to me repeatedly, that in the face of rivalry between Eurasian powers, Americans must project power across the global ocean to Eurasia along the long and external operating lines, while Chinese and Russians only need to operate on Eurasia internal lines and field reliable A2AD anti-access capabilities that exploit this weakness of US naval power.

 

Control of the Earth’s space by the US military would overcome this unfavourable tendency. Poland is also very sensitive to this problem, afraid that the Americans will not be able to reach Poland, which is deeper in Eurasia and within Russian A2AD anti-access systems’ umbrella. Low-orbit control provides the opportunity to maintain dominance in Eurasia, especially with the possession of efficient hypersonic weapons and its own anti-access capabilities in space, which in turn would push Russia and China out of the possibility of projecting power in space that could neutralise American capabilities.

Mahan and Corbett believed that Great Britain was so powerful because it had skillfully used its location at the European sea lines into the world. Astrostrategy should also consider similar arguments. Considering that the sea straits and narrow passages between land masses are pivots, Mahan was of the opinion that the navy did not have to control all points on the ocean to govern it and control its communication lines. Actually, such a strategy would be very expensive and therefore pointless. For too much financial and organisational resources and human resources would be consumed by an unprofitable fleet, devouring the benefits of maritime trade – the then-new economy, which in the meantime became the foundation of the empire’s wealth and power.

For this reason, the Indian Ocean in the nineteenth century was effectively the inner sea of the British Empire, although the Royal Navy did not have many ships on the basin, essentially merely controlling the exit and entry from the basin in Suez and Singapore and intermediate coaling stations. The same principle applies to space – you definitely don’t need to control all orbits and their points. You don’t even have to dominate all space communication routes.

 

All you need is trained and well-equipped units, not many with combat capabilities close to the narrow passages and bottlenecks of space travel, which would give you control of the Earth and strategic flows from Earth to space and from space to Earth. With the current state of technology (along with its progress, this will change – more on this to come at Strategy&Future), the narrow passage is the low orbit of the earth, from where it is already possible to significantly affect the military situation on land, the world ocean and the atmosphere (i.e. the Earth’s airspace) and where you will need to refuel to travel further into space. This is the place where ASAT anti-satellite weapons (soft kill and hard kill) are used, the future redirection of solar energy from space to Earth to supply surface civilisation, and communication systems that support humanity. This is a pivot spot now, a new Rimland in our solar system.

 

Another bottleneck is the geostationary belt located well above the low orbit. This is the only orbit that allows a fixed position relative to a given point on Earth. There is also no space for an infinite number of satellites and spacecraft. Too many of them cause interference. So this will be a new zone of conflict and astropolitical tension, very soon.

Thus, the power that reigns in low orbit, gaining military dominance and controlling the strategic flows of the new economy becomes an arbiter of the principles on which they take place.

Astropolitics describes chokepoints, routes and areas convenient for rest, travel and communication, including planets, moons, libration points and asteroids, where all military and commercial ventures will take place, and where future space ports will be built at key refueling points, whether with human crews or robots. These are the ports of Mahan, Corbett, Mitchell, and Douhet. The strategic implications of the outer spaces features are described impressively in numerous publications by Everett Dolman, who was mentioned at the beginning.

I invite you to the next parts of our story about astropolitics. We will continue this topic at Strategy&Future.

 

Autor

Jacek Bartosiak

CEO and Founder of Strategy&Future, author of bestselling books.

 

Komentarze (0)

Trwa ładowanie...

Załaduj więcej komentarzy