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So. Colorado Business Forum & Digest
Global Space Community Unites in Colorado Springs
To examine critical space issues from multiple perspectives
BY KERI KAHN, Staff Writer for The Digest
More than 12,000 professionals and government personnel from 60 countries converged on The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, April 9-11, for Space Foundation’s 39th Space Symposium.
With the global challenges and opportunities of modern times requiring collaborative efforts amongst commercial enterprises, government agencies and defense organizations – the annual gathering is considered a “must-attend” in all sectors of the space community.
Panel discussions, forums, and programming tracks fostered conversation around topics like space governance, military developments, innovation, exploration, sustainability
and more. The two sold-out exhibit halls featured 245 exhibits across 153,000 square feet of space, many of which rivaled Broadway stage sets. For scale, last year’s exhibit space included 700,000 pounds of freight, which is equal to 700 grand pianos or 350 Mars Curiosity rovers.
Space Symposium illustrates the enormous impact felt on Earth by activity in space and the considerable breadth of the Colorado Springs space ecosystem. Colorado boasts the nation’s second-largest civilian space economy per capita, with more than 1,000 aerospace firms employing 35,000 workers and bringing in $15 billion of Colorado GDP (defense and aerospace combined). The state of Colorado benefits as well — noted Space Foundation CEO Heather Pringle in a Colorado Springs Women’s Chamber of Commerce luncheon in March — bringing in more than $307 million dollars in state tax revenue from the industry.
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Collaboration is key to Symposium
Jim Lovewell, COO of the Colorado Springs Chamber + EDC, notes the collective efforts between civilian space and military space.
“Look back at when Ukraine was first invaded by Russia,” he says. “Space X was able to reposition satellites — civilian satellites — so that when the Russians were trying to deprive the Ukrainian people of having internet, U.S. civilian satellites were brought into orbit to overcome that, an example of a civilian space asset having an effect for national power.”
The Chamber + EDC shared a Symposium booth with Colorado Springs-based Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Space ISAC) which focuses on these types of collaborative efforts by bringing together the global space community to share information about threats and vulnerabilities for space systems.
According to Space ISAC Executive Director Erin Miller, “There’s enough unclassified commercial data out there to inform when systems are under attack that we can share that information with our members and partners which span across the globe.”
Adding to the military and civilian collaboration is the international component of Symposium which provides an outlet for partner nations to share solutions and technology.
“At the end of the day, if we do go to war, we would normally go to war with our partners together,” says Matt McGuire, Booz Allen Hamilton’s Colorado Springs site lead. “That’s why I think NATO is such a force in Europe is because it’s everybody together and a lot of those same partners in NATO are countries that bring relevant technology not just to European nations but also to the U.S.”
Symposium offers a unique opportunity for government to discuss their needs and requirements with industry players who then gain a better understanding of what they could provide to solve problems.
“We have engagements [at Symposium] where we’ll listen to some of the senior government folks in sessions explain what their plans are for the future and what their needs are, what they’re seeing in terms of threat environment,” McGuire continues. “Industry has an opportunity not only to invite the government over but to talk to each other and say ‘How can we team up to provide a more holistic solution that our client is looking for?’”
Mark Stafford, who is CEO of local service-disabled/veteran-owned Delta Solutions & Strategies, says his group planned meetings with senior leaders from the Air Force, Space Force, and Army to understand their needs, and planned on “meeting with businesses to form new relationships or expand existing relationships to look at future work we want to go after.”
Space systems affect more than national defense and military operations. The solutions provided by the aerospace and cybersecurity companies present at Space Symposium play a significant role in day-to-day life here on Earth. For everyone.
Why space matters when it comes to life on Earth (and in Colorado Springs)
When humankind first landed on the moon in 1969, it was a space race between two nations. Today, governments and private companies around the world operate space programs.
Systems in low Earth orbit (LEO) control many aspects of daily life: the GPS directing a ride share driver to an office or a delivery driver to a home; imagery helping farmers monitor crops; satellites enabling cell phones, internet and television broadcasts.
Vulnerabilities in space infrastructure also affect emergency response, U.S. military operations, financial transactions and energy grids.
Earlier this year, Space ISAC’s Erin Miller told The Digest,
“The critical nature of that infrastructure is such that all humans across the globe are dependent upon that infrastructure — yet we don’t necessarily recognize on a daily basis how dependent we are on those systems and how essential it is that we protect them.”
During Space Symposium, Space ISAC and Capella Space Corp. announced a successful kick-off of the LEO Owner Operators Affinity Group, for commercial owner-operators to better understand threat and security concerns. It is a significant milestone in enhancing security collaboration within the space industry.
According to Frank Backes, CEO of Capella Space, in a press release, “We are honored to co-chair the LEO Owner Operators Affinity Group to help facilitate collaboration with other leading commercial owner operators in the field. Capella Space’s expertise in low Earth orbit signals intelligence will bring unique value in better understanding threats to space infrastructure.”
Monitoring threats to space infrastructure means more than looking for potential attacks by adversaries. While the deployment of space infrastructure has brought a host of benefits, advancements and business opportunities, it has also created space debris which can include nonfunctional or abandoned equipment.
According to NASA, there are millions of tiny objects of debris, measuring between 1 millimeter and 10 centimeters, currently in LEO. Traveling at high speeds, even a tiny piece can seriously damage space assets. Cross-agency conversations at Space Symposium surrounded the topics of trash in the cosmos and challenges to long-term sustainability. Even in the days since Symposium ended, NASA confirmed an object which crashed through a Florida home in March was a piece of space debris, further evidence of the problem innovators seek to solve.
Colorado Springs and its workforce benefit from the city being a hub for solutions & advancements in the cosmos
With five military installations, the National Cybersecurity Center, Space ISAC, the Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM), and Space Systems Command (SSC), Colorado Springs has a strong reputation as a critical hub for all things space.
The city’s aerospace and cybersecurity ecosystem also boasts more than 250 aerospace and defense companies which address space-related challenges and advance humankind further into the final frontier.
One company new to the region is Spectrum Advanced Manufacturing Technologies which announced during Space Symposium it has selected Colorado Springs for their expansion.
Spectrum provides quick-turn product development and manufacturing services for aerospace, medical, industrial and commercial marketplaces and, according to a statement, expects to create 100 new net jobs at an average annual wage of $85,407 (which is 135% of the average annual wage in El Paso County.)
The Chamber + EDC’s Lovewell says that, for Colorado Springs to remain an important aerospace hub and to continue attracting employers, it’s important to preserve the military missions as government and military spending accounts for more than 40% of the gross domestic product in the region.
Booz Allen Hamilton, for instance, employees 525 people in its Colorado Springs location and, according to local spokesperson McGuire, his company is an employer wherever there is a large military presence.
“Regardless of the clients being here, it’s a great place to live so it attracts top talent. We’re able to pull a lot of that talent from all over the country, particularly in the STEM fields, to develop the next generation and capabilities for space,” he says.
Lovewell adds that there is a real competition in the U.S. for technical and skilled trade talent. With those fields fueling the local economy in the Pikes Peak region, it is important to keep an eye on talent recruitment and workforce development. (See sidebar)
“It doesn’t hurt that we live in a beautiful, wonderful, prosperous, thriving outdoor-oriented location,” he says. “All of those things tie into each other to create a great proposition for our region.”
Every mission starts in the classroom: Developing the workforce for tomorrow
As Heather Pringle, CEO of Space Foundation said during Symposium, “It’s imperative for the space ecosystem with the growth that it’s seeing to have the talent pipeline, a robust talent pipeline; a workforce that is skilled, inspired and inclusive.”
As a retired U.S. Air Force major general who now sits at the helm of the nonprofit that organizes Space Symposium, Pringle is talking about her group’s partnership with The Aerospace Corporation on an initiative called Space Workforce 2030. The alliance of 29 companies works to eliminate the talent gap by igniting interest in space amongst K-12 students, forging pathways for future space careers through internship programs, and bolstering recruitment and retention of the workforce.
It was at Space Symposium two years ago that a group of CEOs from partner companies came together to put their name on a pledge. Melanie Stricklan, who is now executive director of the initiative, was one of those CEOs.
“The reason we put our names down on that pledge was to make sure it’s not just the workforce we’re looking at today,” she says. “It’s the workforce for tomorrow. Can we collectively reach K-12? Can we collectively reach the undergrad and graduate students that need to understand their place in space? Can we collectively understand how to work together and open up communication lines across the competitive landscape? We did that and we will continue to do that.”
Since the group’s inception in 2022, Space Workforce 2030 member companies report data that show meaningful increases in the percentage of women and People of Color (POC) in both technical staff and intern hires. POC in technical positions rose from 32.7% to 34.1% in 2023 while women in technical positions rose from 18.5% to 19.4%, according to the group’s second annual report.
There may be competition for technical talent across the nation, but as the Chamber + EDC’s Lovewell points out, the local military presence is a huge benefit when it comes to winning talent that will feed into the region’s aerospace ecosystem.
“Locally, 250-400 personnel are retiring or separating from the military each month,” says Lovewell. “Think of all the trained talent coming out of there, many of whom have security clearances. Multiply that even more by spouses of military, their children who are making decisions to go into higher education.”
Retired military personnel can use their GI bills to fill gaps in fields they’re not already trained in, and Lovewell adds that last month alone 275 people attended Cyber First Friday at the National Cyber Security Center. Many of those attendees were transitioning military personnel looking to break into cyber careers.
Stafford of Delta Solutions says, when it comes to hiring space operators, there is an excellent pool of candidates in Colorado Springs. Where his company sees gaps is in cyber, software testing and
top secret level security clearances so they bring in veterans and transitioning veterans for a six-month internship after leaving the Air Force, Space Force, or Army.
“One thing I find surprising,” he says, “is that everyone focuses on the technical. I think one thing we could all get better at here in Colorado is accountants, finance people, HR, recruiting. We need that to run the company. People focus on the STEM work and forget about that.”
Booz Allen Hamilton’s McGuire talks about his firm’s internship program which gives college juniors or seniors the chance to complete a tenweek project competition called “Summer Games.”
“That’s a great resource for us from a recruiting perspective,” he says, “but also for young people who are in school to get exposure to industry, to understand what different companies are doing so they can get a better focus of how they transfer their academic life into stuff they want to do when they graduate.”
Many local groups, including Booz Allen Hamilton and the Chamber, also work with the city’s higher education institutions to develop that talent and retain it locally.
Pringle concludes, “What we like to say at Space Foundation is every mission starts in the classroom. So that’s why generating this interest in the classroom at the local level is where it all begins.”
