War in the photon empire

An interesting thing occurred to me. Space cannot be as easily delimited as is depicted in science fiction. How exactly do you mark a line that is the space between the Klingon empire and the Romulans, when every object in space is in constant relative motion. You could mark boundaries by the planets and suns, but lines between them and groupings would become far more complex than gerrymandering maps of the states. Sections of empires would become isolated pockets in which boundaries changed on a daily basis. If property and dominion were identified by lines between Sol and Alpha Centauri, for example, the entire Earth would become property of the space it occupies. It isn't an idle curiosity because the logistics of ownership in space is vastly more complex than those in cyberspace, which is already problematic. An object may not even be known to exist in some frames of knowledge. I suppose it comes down to dominion and the ability to apply coercion, force, or fear to a goal. It implies that ownership is based on the limited and isolated effect of being. In my opinion, that concept is outdated. If life existed in the space between planets, who would own that space? Assume that Mars has one government and Earth another, would Venus be owned by the planet closest to it in its path through space and time?

Someone or something can claim dominion upon anything, but implementation in a complex space and time is not in any way sensible. In order to control a situation it must be encircled in some logical or literal fashion. In space that means spherical containment in space as well as time, since the relationship of included space would not be consistent with the physical association of subjective space.

The flatlander concept of static maps drawn to delineate the dominance of some entity seems a bit absurd in the 4 space universe. There are other complications that make it completely untenable, as time is subjective in velocity space. What it means is that two instrumentalities can identify two different and valid causal relationships. I suppose it just gets down to force and the application of force, but the dominant strategy in space does not evolve from the same mechanism as a culture bound to a surface. We can interact at the speed of light upon the Earth's surface and it creates no conflict of dominion, however, if I am associated with other entities some spatial distance away, and communicate at the speed of light, there is no method I have ever seen which would allow control of space which is encompassed only by the speed of light and its motion outward. There are some very unusual situations that arise in the interaction of matter, time, space, gravity and acceleration, which cannot have a causal or existential determination.