"....
In this century’s fight for Eurasia, like that of the last century, Mackinder’s axiom holds true: Man will initiate, but nature will control. Liberal universalism and the individualism of Isaiah Berlin aren’t going away, but it is becoming clear that the success of these ideas is in large measure bound and determined by geography. This was always the case, and it is harder to deny now, as the ongoing recession will likely cause the global economy to contract for the first time in six decades. Not only wealth, but political and social order, will erode in many places, leaving only nature’s frontiers and men’s passions as the main arbiters of that age-old question: Who can coerce whom? We thought globalization had gotten rid of this antiquarian world of musty maps, but now it is returning with a vengeance.

We all must learn to think like Victorians. That is what must guide and inform our newly rediscovered realism. Geographical determinists must be seated at the same honored table as liberal humanists, thereby merging the analogies of Vietnam and Munich. Embracing the dictates and limitations of geography will be especially hard for Americans, who like to think that no constraint, natural or otherwise, applies to them. But denying the facts of geography only invites disasters that, in turn, make us victims of geography.
..."
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4862&print=1
Linked from http://michaeltotten.com/ [Eurasia's Shatter Zones]

Obviously the first thing I have to address, is what does this have to do with Space [or science]?
Well, in the simplest terms, I believe that the opening of the space frontier would alter the significant of Earth's geography.
And if opening the space frontier would alter the significant of Earth's geography, the question is in what way according to the geographical determinists worldview would this change Earth's geological "realities"?

Now, I'm not a fan of determinists or geographical determinists as a general rule, but I wouldn't be against them "being at the table" and I would "honor them" as much as or perhaps more than "liberal humanists". Or said differently, I will grant there might be some truth to the way they see the world.

In the article, "The Revenge of Geography", by Robert D. Kaplan, it mentions that geographical realities are altered somewhat due to technology [such as steam and rail] and therefore it seems to me that in the same ssense space travel could also have effect upon earth geological realities- assuming one accepts this general premise.