Since it was now a mechanical medium, the energy per unit volume was out of this world, but the density was too small to interfere with objects passing through it. Einstein denied its existence by renaming it the space-time continuum. The point to be made is that there is nothing out there. Oog, the son of Moog, observed that as the days passed and the seasons came and went, up remained up, down remained down, and the whole shooting match continued as before. This could not be true unless the space of the earth was a part of the earth and continued to be so with time.
Space can have no existence apart from the mass object which determines it.
Since the mass object is finite, so is its space. There is a flaw in physical theory that creates a gap so wide that a Mack truck can be driven through it and never touch on either side. This is to the effect that an inertial force does no work. This error in concept required that an applied contact force acting through a distance to accelerate an object caused a mass increase in the object. The reasoning is flawless.