“Colorado has a long history of supporting our nation’s civilian and military space operations, and our state is uniquely positioned to house the reestablished U.S. Space Command headquarters,” Gardner said in an email.

The Air Force has kept its top space operations in Colorado since the 1980s. Peterson Air Force Base was home to U.S. Space Command until it was shuttered in a 2002 reorganization and has remained home to Air Force Space Command, the military’s top space headquarters now.

The state’s prospects were buoyed last month when President Donald Trump announced that the new version of U.S. Space Command would get its start at Peterson, with Raymond, who now heads Air Force Space Command, as the boss. The new command puts the space efforts of all military branches under a single boss, and could pave the way for a separate service branch for space, which still faces an uncertain future in Congress.

Lamborn said the military has spent billions of dollars to create space-supporting infrastructure in Colorado Springs.

“If we want U.S. Space Command to be built quickly cheaply, it must be built here,” said Lamborn, who sits in the top GOP spot on the readiness panel of the House Armed Services Committee.

But behind the battles over real estate, there are real questions about military missions in space, which has become a likely first battleground of any future war. Those concerns were highlighted last month with a successful anti-satellite test by India, which left a cloud of debris in orbit that could impact U.S. missions.

America’s rivals “are doing everything they can to be more powerful in space,” Lamborn said.

Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Marty France, who headed the Air Force Academy’s satellite program and served as a top Pentagon adviser on space issues, said the India test demonstrates the hotly contested theater that space has become for military leaders.

France said he has one big question for the brass who will grace the symposium’s main stage Tuesday: “What are we doing to not only improve our space situation awareness, but to dissuade people from doing stupid things in space?”

Colorado Springs has been the place where military brass have fretted war in space for years. It has been a hot topic of discussion at the symposium since 2007, when space leaders gathered here while pondering a Chinese anti-satellite test that also resulted in a massive orbiting cloud of debris.