HELLO FUTURE: Space Symposium Preview: The Future of Space Takes Center Stage in Colorado Springs

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The largest space gathering in the space industry. The space
business is occurring next week and over the next few
days really by the time this airs in Colorado's Springs.
It's called Space Symposium. Hello Future, It's me Kevin. This
is a dispatch from the Digital Frontier. The planet is Earth,
but increasingly we could be on the Moon. The year
is twenty twenty six, and I guess today a friend
of the program, a friend of meet the future. Rich Cooper,
who is the guy for Space Symposium, handles all of it,
all of the legit. There's like twelve thousand people in
the space industry that come into Colorado Springs every year,
and I'm thrilled to get a preview of what I
went last year for the first time because Rich invited me.
And this year, Rich, I have to be honest, I
feel like there's even more energy because of Artemis two
and everything happening with the Moon, and I'm so excited
to hear from everyone Space and Posium give us a preview.
What should we all be looking out for.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Kevin, It is always.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Great to talk to you, but I'm going to I
have to level set you at the beginning. I am
one of a team of fabulous people that are working
to bring the global space community and its ecosystem to
Colorado Springs at the symposium. I am one of again
a very hearty team, and again we have three hundred
and fifty plus volunteers that also provide support to this
and we have great support in the community. But Kevin,
the stars are truly aligned this year with Space Symposium
as we are on the cusp of splash down of
the Artemis two crew. To say that we had it
planned this way, I would love to say yes, but
the Stars everything sort of fell into place here and
we're really excited because this symposium will be the first
assembly of the larger global space community since Artemis, and
there's a lot to celebrate, but there's also a lot
to learn from and there's a lot to work on
as we move forward. So we're going to do all
of those things with SIMPS this year. We will have
a very significant NASA presence with Jared Isaacman as well
as doctor Fox and other members of his leadership team
and the NASA centers. But then we've also got Space
Force leadership that is coming in significant numbers, but we
have plenty we're looking at over fifty, we may cross
the threshold of sixty countries in attendance for what is
the premier assembly of the global space community. And there's
a lot to talk about. Space is certainly no static environment.
We are, for no, we are never in lack of
something to talk about and what's happening. But the nice
thing that we see about this is all the new partnerships,
the new innovations, and the new potential. And that's where
again Artemis is one of those things. It's certainly in
the history of Space Foundation and Space Imposium. This is
the first crude man mission that we've had with the move. Yes,
we've had probes and all of that, and those are
always wonderful.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Now we got people, we're.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Going to do a specific deep dive with you on
Artemis and beyond Artemis. I mean, you just mentioned there's
sixty or so countries that are going to be represented
in Colorado Springs. What are some of the threads that
Space Symposium this year is focusing on. I would imagine
there's a lot about the economy as well as satellites
and connectivity and a host of different things. But what
are some of the threads that are unique to this year,
I will say international collaboration and partnership.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
With the announcement that the NASA administrator made about and
again I know we're going to deep dive on Artemis. Yeah,
how he's looked to reset Artemis. You have a lot
of different countries as well as companies are looking to
figure out what that reset means. And again, we have
a very active national security landscape that's going on. How
are we working with our partners and how are others
working with us? What role do you companies play in
the protection of that critical infrastructure, let alone mission support.
All of that is on the agenda. In addition, you're
also going to be taking a look at what's going
on with the workforce. Now what do I mean by workforce?
That is that pipeline of talent that we've got to
have that space force needs, at industry needs, that NASA needs,
that countries need. We have got to do everything we
can to make that pipeline bigger and stronger because there's
a lot of potential and we want to make sure
all of that potential can be filled. That can't be
filled with unless we have the talent. And that's a
critical issue with well.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Let's mythbus for a little bit, because we talked about
this frequently, you and I, as I've gotten to know
you especially, which is a lot of folks that are
not in the space industry or following it are as
passionate about it as you and I are. They hear
of space job and they only think of one word astronauts.
But you and I know that that's totally nonsense, because
space jobs are space collar jobs, are manufacturing jobs, they're
trade school jobs. They're really building the future.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
And as you.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Mentioned, so many businesses. I mean, I get asked by
young people all the time, where are the bright spots
in the economy. Space industry is where they are.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
They are. And again let's just use as an example
birth imagery again, a picture maybe the phrase you used
to a picture used to be a thousand words or
whatever the phrase may be. One image taken from space
has millions of potential uses by any number of different industries.
And that's everything from the weather production to the real
estate development, to supply chain navigation to economic investment, all
of those. I mean, those are four or five things
right there, but there are so many other pieces that
are there. Birth observation is huge anything that deals with
supply chain and the criticality that Space provides to supply chain.
People are getting a Space service, whether they realize it
or not when that Amazon package shows up at their door,
because that package has been tracked from the minute that
they hit the buy button to when it arrives on
their doorstep. That has been tracked via Space new works
and systems all the time, as well as providing the
network that provides the security for financial transactions to go
through Space. I mean, it's amazing in everybody's life in
ways that they don't fully realize.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
It's it's really amazing when you when you put it
like that, because I was talking to someone earlier this
week and they were saying to me, oh, I don't
really you know, work in the space industry, And I said,
get your clients do. They just don't realize it, you know,
And it's it's really this this I would almost call
it an imagination problem, which is why I think the
industry as a whole is just so incredibly important, especially
as we start to think of future based systems and
you know, I'm wondering, just give us a preview. I mean,
space oposium is going to be dominating over the next
couple of days again in Colorado Springs. It's been going
on for decades. But give us a preview this year.
Who are some of the top level speakers. Who are
some of the folks that are new this year, or
what are some new folks I know Jared Isaacman, the
NASA administrator, is going to be there speaking.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Who else is coming? Give us the greatstan the Cso
who is coming we've got And again you talked about
new people coming last year there was a change of
administration here within the United States, but.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
Change is going on all the time in the space community,
whether that be in a government space or a military
space or industry space all the time. So we have
all of these different leaders that are coming that are
new to these roles, and what a lot of them
are going to end up doing is starting to roll out.
What is their vision, what is the strategy that they're
working for. We have the Secretary of the Air Force coming,
We have the representatives from the Office of Science and
Technology Policy that are going to be here. Again, you
can look across the entire lexicon of the ecosystem and
we have representatives that are touching in all of that.
But one of the other facets that we have with
Symposium is the opportunities. We want to make sure that
the emerging young professional, the new gen has the opportunity
to connect with these leaders through mentorship types of sessions
or even the encounters that they have on the halls
or different meeting spaces. Space, like any other industry, comes
down to relationships and relationships. With space, you want to
continually be building and reinforcing a network, and with so
many new people always coming into the industry, into the community,
you want to meet those people. I think one of
the things when people see and again we've got three
hundred and forty three different exhibitors, three sold out exhibit halls,
those are going to have all the parties that you
would expect to see. There your l three ULA's, You're Boeings,
You're Locking, It's You're northruxx. But then again, there are
all of these other emerging companies that are bringing new
energy to the table, new perspective, and all of those companies.
You know, again, it wasn't that long ago that there
were companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX, which were small
companies that no one really had a pretty no one
had an idea what they were doing. These companies are
the ones that are expanding and revolutionizing the entire space ecosystem,
and there are more growing every day, and we want
to make sure that those companies and the people who
are part of them have the opportunity to connect with leaders,
whomever they may be, wherever they may be from, because
when those relationships happen, great things are possible.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
I'm so excited. We're going to have to leave it
there for this preview. Thank you so much for this
preview of Space and Posium. I'll be there. I'm heading
to Colorado Springs. We'll have all of the latest across
everything on the iHeartMedia app and for Hello Future, and
if you want to follow along for everybody, just go
to MTF dot tv and again we're going to have
special coverage of Space and Posium happening in Colorado Springs.
Ris Cooper, thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Thank you, Kevin