Where is the boundary between Earth and space? Surprisingly, there is no universal consensus on this.
Heaven and space are not the same. Human beings reached the Moon not so much for their exploratory spirit – which they also did – as for geostrategic reasons. In the midst of the Cold War, the United States decided that it needed to make a splash to trap the USSR in the space race: it was Moscow that launched the first artificial satellite (Sputnik), that put the first mammal (the dog Laika) and the first cosmonaut (Yuri Gagarin) into orbit. Reaching the satellite – and for all humanity to see it live – could give them victory in a match that they had been losing for a long time. And indeed it was.
The conquest of space cost tens of billions of dollars and rubles to the public purse of the two superpowers. If humanity managed to leave the Earth, it was because governments insisted on it. And if they insisted on it, it was because dominating space would be a decisive military advantage. It would allow, for example, to intercept intercontinental nuclear missiles (Ronald Reagan’s famous Star Wars).
Times have changed. The Cold War ended three decades ago and, after several years of widespread disinterest in space, the engine driving its reconquest is private initiative. [NASA and other space agencies have decided to resurrect their programs, with the idea of returning to the Moon next decade and reaching Mars in the next, but this time the rockets will be provided by companies.]
The business initiatives of tycoons such as Elon Musk (SpaceX), Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) or Richard Branson (Virgin) are just the spearhead of an industry that moves some 260,000 million dollars annually and that, according to estimates by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, will reach 2.7 trillion dollars by 2045. From a commercial point of view, the immediate future of the space race lies in exploiting low orbits.
A blurred border
The first question that entrepreneurs who want to bet on this industry should ask themselves is: how much do my rockets have to rise? Where does the sky end and space begin? One thing is not the same as another, not only because of the physical laws that prevail on each side of the border but, above all, because of legal issues. Thus, countries claim sovereignty over their airspace (piloting a device over it is considered an act of aggression), but nothing happens if a Chinese or Russian satellite flies over US territory: space is accepted as free territory, available to all.
Where, then, is the boundary between Earth and space? Surprisingly, there is no universal consensus on this. The United States considers that to jump into space you have to exceed 50 miles in altitude (about 80.5 km). Russia and other countries have asked the UN to setthe border at 100 km, although the US has blocked these efforts on the grounds that the lack of definition suits its interests (to carry out high-altitude surveillance flights or launch ballistic missiles without provoking international crises).
More recently, an instrument developed by the University of Calgary established the end of the atmosphere about 118 km from the Earth’s surface. NASA’s mission controls, meanwhile, draw the line at 122 kilometers because that’s “the point at which atmospheric drag begins to be perceived.”
Will we ever get out of doubt? Experts believe that as spaceflight continues to grow, the need to establish a sharper boundary between the sky and space will grow. The regulation that prevails in the latter, on the other hand, is another matter.
If you want to know more about space, check out the trend analysed by the Future Trends Forum “The commercialisation of space”.
