‘Spaceport of Call’: Developing a geopolitical-criminological perspective on spaceport crime and policing

Earth-bound spaceports, like NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston, are crucial for spacefaring and space habitation. Just think of the famous ‘Houston, we have a problem’ quotation from the radio communications between Apollo 13 astronauts and Mission Control in 1970. Without spaceports, there would be no rockets launched into space, no communications with astronauts in distress and no contact with cosmic pioneers setting off to the Moon and beyond. As vital nodes in the transport of people and goods, like maritime ports have been throughout history and still are, spaceports are subject to policing in accordance with rules set at different levels, from the interpersonal relations among dock workers, to international law and norms to geopolitical contestation over trade and legal orders. Criminological research on these topics is virtually non-existent, and the policing of ports, let alone spaceports, is hardly represented in geopolitics literature despite the interlinkage of the spatial dimension of power and its enforcement. Therefore, this chapter provides geopolitical-criminological insights to set a critical research agenda on spaceport crime (control) and policing. To that end, the chapter will explore what a spaceport comprises, followed by important considerations for understanding spaceport crime and policing. Afterward, we situate the conceptual understanding of spaceport policing into the broader context of geopolitics, to conclude on how to move toward a geopolitical-criminology of spaceport crime and policing.