If a space superpower could dominate the exit points from Earth and the routes out from the atmosphere, it could prevent other nations from engaging in space travel. And if it dominates low Earth orbit, it could command the satellite belt and use it to control the world.’ He has written for many of the national newspapers including the Times, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, and the Sunday Times. It has been a long time getting from there to here” as the cheesy and divisive theme song to Star Trek Enterprise begins. The author starts the book by charting the historical course of how we humans have over generations sought to understand what is beyond our atmosphere. At first, I was a bit impatient with this chapter, having heard much of it before. But I gradually come to appreciate the point the author was trying to make and the accessible way they wrote about it. Essentially mankind has been building from one detective case from another. Using careful observation, recording those same observations and drawing conclusions from them. As time has gone on or methods have improved. Different empires learned from each other. The Romans learned from the Greeks. The Muslim Empires learned from both of them. Christian powers learned from all of them and so on. Each new discovery owed a debt to not only the curiosity, but also the bravery of those who worked hard to bring them about. Bravery was important because all too often these discoveries went against the static worlds imposed by organised religion. The boundaries of what we know have been pushed even in relatively recent years. I was amazed to find out in this book that it was only in 1992 when the existence of planets beyond our Solar System were confirmed.

Hearing the mapmongers ply their trade, you wonder if anything has changed since the 13th-century world of Genghis Khan, where strategy was a matter of open steppes and mountain barriers. Geopolitical thinking is unabashedly grim, and it regards hopes for peace, justice and rights with scepticism. The question, however, is not whether it’s bleak, but whether it’s right. Past decades have brought major technological, intellectual and institutional changes. But are we still, as Marshall contends, “prisoners of geography”? The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World is a book on geopolitics by the British author and journalist Tim Marshall. It was published by Elliott & Thompson in 2021 and is the sequel to his 2015 book Prisoners of Geography. Geography is unfair,” Ian Morris writes, and if “geography is destiny”, as he also contends, then this is a recipe for a world in which the strong remain strong and the weak remain weak. Geopoliticians excel at explaining why things won’t change. They’re less adept at explaining how things do. In the densely populated and diverse city of the future, historical heritage is preserved and celebrated.The three main space powers, the USA, China and Russia, agree with the mantra that ‘space is a war-fighting domain’ and all have versions of a ‘space force’. The rationale is that they can’t allow one of the others to call the shots in space, as it has become an integral part of warfare on Earth. Satellites are part of surveillance, targeting, missile delivery and nuclear early-warning systems. These three, along with India, have successfully tested anti-satellite weapons by firing a ballistic missile from Earth and destroying one of their own satellites. Machines designed to clear space debris can grab defunct satellites with their robotic arms, but this means they could seize a rival’s working satellite, a possibility that will tempt countries to create defensive measures. France is already talking about deploying ‘bodyguard satellites’. Thought-provoking. . . . Marshall’s assessments intrigue, and he provides valuable insight into an overlooked aspect of space exploration.” — Publisher's Weekly There are many very positive things going on in space about solar power, medical experiments, which will benefit all of humankind. But I just wanted to write a book that talked about where we are now, that there’s a geography to this and there’s an international relations to this. This book represents one of the first critiques of humanistic geography. It outlines several ways in which humanistic geography can benefit the discipline, broadly speaking, and also suggests the need for expanding methods because of what some consider to be inherent weaknesses.

Space is already central to our economies and as the realisation grows that satellites are part of our critical military and commericial infrastructure, the temptation to arm them with laser weapons will grow. less about the future of geography but more on the future of space development and astropolitics. I didn't know much about both so this book was great base knowledge.👍👍 The Future of Geography, however, doesn’t just explore the future of space exploration but explores our earliest expeditions and the growing competition between the USA and USSR who based their own expeditions on the pioneering engineer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, whose equations helped the USSR dominate space throughout the 1950s and 1960s.When discussing how he manages to keep his book engaging and accessible for a wide audience, Marshall described how he realised that “almost everything is interesting”. He said it only really becomes hard “when I don’t understand something”. This created problems when writing his new book because “I don’t understand science, and there’s some science in this book and I had to go over and over it until I thought I understood it, and then write it […] in a way that I thought I might understand”. Marshall is an engaging writer, good at explaining the science as well as the politics, and with an eye for a telling fact." — New Statesman I had very high hopes for this book, which have been very much met :) A superb 9 out of 12, Four Star read. Not only did he identify that the space race will be tripartite, he convincingly pointed out that the acrimony will eventually classify into two major camps respectively led by the US and China, surrounded by scattered weathervanes if not rogue nations.

The career path you choose may depend on whether you have studied physical geography or human geography. The former is a natural science, focusing on the Earth’s physical materials and processes, while the latter is a social science, focusing on issues relating to human communities and cultures. Tuan, Yi-Fu. “Humanistic Geography.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 66.2 (1976): 266–276.This is a Theatre and livestreamed event, where the speaker and audience in our Theatre are joined by an online audience. You will have priority access to the recorded video for two weeks after the event has taken place.

Insightful, hopeful and endlessly fascinating, Marshall’s latest non-fiction masterpiece sets out the possibilities and pitfalls that lie ahead." — Daily Express So much in our life is absolutely connected to it, whether it’s your mobile phone, your car, jeeps, your delivery, the next day, the military, international systems. There is now there’s no real separation between the two.” That’s a good thing; you can get hold of a defunct satellite and you can throw it out of orbit and put it into the atmosphere to burn up to get rid of space debris.”

Finally, a Conversation on the Future of Physical Geography II is planned for the Chicago annual meeting to continue the thoughtful discussion from Tampa, and especially to hear more from early career scholars on how to enhance physical geography within the AAG. Please watch the AAG Geogram for information on location and time, and send along suggestions for discussion topics. The spark for writing a book on the subject came after overcoming what George Orwell described as a constant struggle ‘to see what is in front of your nose’. Once the blindingly apparent became obvious – that international relations have moved into space – it was a small step to putting fingers to keyboard. The race for dominance in space is shaping the future of humanity. From the discovery of space metals worth more than most countries' GDP, to the possibility of humans on Mars within the next decade. This talk will examine the cosmic strides Russia, China and the United States have made and what it means for the rest of us on Earth.