What Exactly is Space Logistics?

The realm of space has been dramatized and glamorized in popular books, television series, movies, and video games. Such phrases as the final frontier from the opening lines of Star Trek or the ultimate high ground from Department of Defense and Air Force space doctrine documents appeal to the adventurous side of our human spirit. On the other hand, the word logistics usually brings to mind very unglamorous and perhaps mundane aspects of our lives miles-long trains of coal-filled hopper cars on our nations railway system, semi-trailer trucks hauling freight on the interstate highway system, or ships carrying containers of goods across the oceans. It might even include the service department of your auto dealer, if maintenance and repair are part of your concept of logistics. You may have seen information on the space shuttle in the news and have inferred by now that resupply missions to the International Space Station, Hubble Space Telescope repair missions, and satellite deployment missions are space logistics--and you would be technically correct. The science of logistics as applied to our military space systems, however, is simultaneously very much like, and very different from, the examples of logistics given in the previous paragraph.