In about a week, the Space Foundation will be pulling out all stops to host a lot of companies and organizations interested in space, space operations, launch, and more. The event is the 30th Space Symposium here in Colorado Springs. The venue is the Broadmoor Hotel and Resort. Check-in starts next Sunday evening at 1600. Go the website for more details.
If your company can get you to the symposium and you’ve never been there before, I’d recommend trying to go, if only to see what all the fuss is about. If you are thinking of shelling out your own cash for a ticket, ticket prices are a little steep. Ticket prices are around $2000, varying with what participants want to see. There will be meetings (government agencies and big corporations are there after all), there will be speeches (no guarantee on whether they’ll be interesting), there might even be some interesting events. The exhibitors in the hall are more interesting to me.
What I do know is the hall is the open floor for all the exhibitors to thump their chests just a little bit (or a lot–some exhibitors spend millions on their displays–so I’ve been told). There will be a lot of suits, a lot of uniforms, and more suits. And, of course, there will be networking (I call is schmoozing). Lots and lots of schmoozing. There’s also some SWAG there for those people who love getting free things.
There are a lot of exhibitors at the symposium. A sampling of some of the exhibitors: Orbital/ATK, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada Corporation. Of course the big-government contractors are there: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon. Sadly, I’m not seeing newer space operators like Planet Labs, Skybox, Urthecast, Armadillo Aerospace, and Virgin Galactic. Maybe the price of admission for these guys is too steep? XCor will be there, though. Weirdly, imagery satellite operator, Digitalglobe, doesn’t seem to have an exhibit booth. Of course my old company, Space Dynamics Laboratory, will be manning a booth.
I will also be helping out the first few days at the exhibitors check-in desk. So if you can go and do, please stop by and say “Hello!” Again, for more details, go the website and read away.
The Mad Spaceball 