Welcome to the 38th Space Symposium led by the Colorado Springs Space Foundation. Welcome to the country’s most innovative, entrepreneurial city and state.

In Colorado, we look to space and say, “we can.” We see it as a limitless frontier with infinite ramifications for today and beyond.

We hope the more than 10,000 who gather for Space Symposium enjoy their time in Colorado Springs, which offers some of the country’s finest dining and high-end entertainment amid an unfair concentration of breathtaking creations that inspire humanity to reach for the stars.

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Attending Space Symposium is tough duty. It means spending time at the world-class five-star Broadmoor resort in a city ranked routinely among the best places to visit. An annual U.S. News & World Report survey consistently finds Colorado Springs the country’s most desirable large city in which to live.

Symposium attendees are minutes away from the United States Air Force Academy, the premier institution for preparing leaders of aerospace ventures today and into the future. They are in the home of Space Force, which became the sixth armed service branch under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020.

Space Force is the service component of the Springs-based U.S. Space Command, which works with allies and partners to plan, integrate and execute military space power to deter aggression, defend national interests and defeat space-based threats and attacks. The command and service have never been more important, as China, Russia, North Korea and other countries openly jeopardize freedoms the United States protects and facilitates.

This is the home of Space Command for good reasons. It should stay here, rather than enduring the disruption of a cross-country move – one desired by former President Donald Trump as a slight to Colorado – that will only weaken our national defense at a dangerous time.

Symposium attendees are across town from Peterson and Schriever Space Force Bases. They are surrounded by at least 110 leading Springs-based aerospace companies, including Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics Mission Systems, SpaceX, Ball and too many others to list. Colorado hosts more than 300 other aerospace companies in the Colorado Springs orbit.

Public- and private-sector aerospace ventures, combined with leading-edges space programs at institutions of higher education make Colorado Springs and the surrounding area the Silicon Valley of space technology. And we have only begun.

For recreation, the symposium brings attendees within moments of the awe-inspiring Garden of the Gods Park, the spectacular Broadmoor Seven Falls, the world class Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Cave of the Winds Mountain Park, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum, the base of Pikes Peak, the scenic Broadmoor Manitou & Pikes Peak Cog Railway to the top of Pikes Peak, the world-famous Manitou Incline and an assortment other world-class destinations people visit from around the globe.

This week, the epicenter of modern and future space technology proudly and happily hosts the Space Symposium – the most important annual gathering of the world’s most prominent space engineers, scientists, astronauts and others involved in the race into space. We hope all attendees, sponsors and presenters enjoy their time here while collaborating at the base of mountain majesty to make the world a safer, more peaceful environment for generations to come.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board