The Future of Geography by Tim Marshall

After the bestselling ‘Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall returned with the ‘The Power of Geography’, another engaging and informative look at geopolitics. Both are books that I’ve reached for during these tumultuous times, sometimes on a daily basis. ‘Prisoners of Geography - the quiz book’ was a fun way of testing that knowledge.

Having covered the planet Earth, it’s only natural that the author would turn his attention to the final frontier. Given the current sh*tshow of geopolitics, it’s not a surpise that the potential for exploration and exploitation mean that many of the earthly power struggles are being replicated in the starry firmament above.

Heavens

For as long as we’ve been walking upright on the earth, we’ve been looking towards the stars. Marshall starts of by looking at how previous civilisations used the stars for navigation, informing mythologies and using lunar cycles to track time and seasons. The push to understand the universe lead to technological advances through the centuries, with figures such as Oberth, Goddard and Tsiolkovsky becoming pivotal.

The Cold War leads to the advancement of rocket technology, both sides pushing each other and resulting in Sputnik, Gargarin, then Armstrong and the moon landing. Marshall does a great job of surmising all of this into a pacey and always informative section.

Space Dominance

We then move onto the current state of Astropolitics, where we look at the major players such as the US, Russia and China, and the cooperation, or rather the lack thereof between them. Other nations are up there too, but it’s the big three who are determining the landscape.

It’s hard not to be wowed by the idea of lunar bases and Mars exploration. It really feels like mankind can really push the boundaries and expand across the cosmos - the stepping stones are there.

What becomes depressing is the potential for conflict, and how control over near space allows for dominance on the planet below, especially in terms of weapons. There’s lots of talk about kinetic kill vehicles and directed energy weapons, whilst the idea of private space companies being able to create adverts in the night sky, blocking our view for the first time since we gazed at the cosmos, is horrifying. As is Bezos and his floating space cities, but there’s no doubt that space travel and space tourism is becoming big business.

Marshall does outline some grounds for optimism by looking at the coalitions developing between some nations, such as Japan and Australia, though of course that comes from a mutual concern at the activities of China. Tackling scarcity of resources is also something that can be explored on lunar and comet surfaces, and the potential is enormous.

Small signs of hope in terms of cooperation, but the increasingly militarisation of space is something unsurprising but depressing. The lack of regulation makes it resemble the Wild West at times, and there is competition between countries to claim resources and influence for themselves.

Summary

As I enjoyed the previous books by Tim Marshall, no surprise that I gobbled this one up. He has a knack for blending research with an informative writing style to make this a really engaging read.

It’s not a surprise that countries are taking their earthly squabbles into space, but it makes for uncomfortable reading at times. Perhaps I’m being hopelessly naive in thinking humanity could come together for the common good of space exploration, but only yesterday the trump administration talked of sticking their flag on Mars.

This was an engaging read, always informative, sometimes depressing but still offering some hope that through working together humankind can sustain long term space exploration - for all of our benefit.

256 Pages

First published April 2023 by Elliot Thompson

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