At the Space Foundation’s 41st Space Symposium, JobsOhio convened NASA, the Space Force, and one of commercial space’s fastest-rising companies for a candid exchange on how civil space, national security, and industry can move faster together.
By JobsOhio
JobsOhio came to the Space Foundation’s 2026 Space Symposium in Colorado Springs with clear proof points. Fifty-seven Ohio companies are supplying the Artemis program. More than $2.4 billion in annual NASA economic output in the state. A spacecraft that orbited the Moon earlier this month was made possible with significant support from Ohio’s space ecosystem.
But proof points alone don’t move the space economy forward. Conversations do. And the conversation we were proudest to host happened during the Space Symposium when three industry leaders spoke candidly about what it will take to carry commercial space, civil exploration, and national security forward — in the same direction, at the same pace.
The Salon Luncheon: A Panel Built for This Moment
The JobsOhio Salon Luncheon brought together Dr. Nicola “Nicky” Fox, NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate; Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisitions; and Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly Aerospace.
Click here to watch the full panel discussion.
Moderating was General Lester Lyles, USAF (Ret.), a JobsOhio Aerospace & Defense Advisor whose résumé reads like a history of American aerospace leadership: former Commander of Air Force Materiel Command, former Commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, former Chairman of the NASA Advisory Council, and former Chairman of the Users’ Advisory Group for the National Space Council.
General Lyles opened with a reframe. The session had been billed as a conversation about commercial space “disruptors.” He prefers “innovators” — and innovation, in today’s environment, isn’t just new technology. It’s new processes, new people, new contracting models, and new ways of thinking about how civil and national security missions can reinforce one another.
Blurring the Line Between NASA and National Security
Dr. Fox made news that resonates beyond the room. Under new NASA leadership, she said, the agency is more willing than ever to work alongside the national security community — to blur the historically rigid line between civilian science and defense missions.
She also put an open call on the table. NASA has a Request for Information on the street for what it calls “Science as a Service,” and the definition is deliberately broad: spare capacity on spacecraft, spare capacity on launch vehicles, lower-cost operations, and any idea that helps NASA do more science for less. The subtext for space companies: the federal customer is changing how it buys, and the companies that learn to move with that change will be the ones that win.
“We Need to Increase Our Pace”
Maj. Gen. Purdy offered the clearest articulation we’ve heard of why Space Force acquisition must keep evolving. The old model — decade-long programs, studies every few years, a stable set of primes — is gone. Every few weeks, new companies are coming up with solutions to problems the government is still wrestling with, and the Space Force can’t afford to miss them.
He was also refreshingly honest about how the government has learned to work with venture capital. When SpaceWERX matches Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) dollars with private capital, the top six companies in its portfolio have seen valuations grow roughly sixfold — and those companies are now winning Space Force contracts on their own. While incremental success has been achieved, Gen. Purdy noted that the “valley of death” the acquisition community has complained about for years is finally being crossed.
A Firefly CEO with Ohio in His Story
Jason Kim’s path to the Firefly CEO chair runs directly through Ohio. While he was in the Air Force, he worked in acquisitions, purchasing UAVs at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He also worked at the Air Force Research Laboratory on space amplifiers before they became a major focus. He earned his graduate education at the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson.
Kim brought the commercial perspective the panel needed. Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down successfully on the Moon earlier this year, accommodating ten NASA science payloads under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. He praised CLPS as a model the rest of the federal government should study: NASA contracted for a service, Firefly delivered it end-to-end, and teams from both organizations worked shoulder-to-shoulder in the control room when it mattered.
Why This Conversation Matters for Ohio
Ohio’s case at Space Symposium rests on an ecosystem: NASA Glenn Research Center’s Lewis Field Campus and its nearby Neil Armstrong Test Facility, where Orion was tested for Artemis II. The 57 Ohio companies in the Artemis supply chain. The seventh-largest aerospace and defense workforce in the nation. And a generation of commercial space leaders, like Jason Kim, whose careers were shaped at Wright-Patterson and AFIT.
Artemis II is not a finish line. The Moon-to-Mars campaign already accounts for 1,280 Ohio jobs and $300 million in economic activity — and those numbers will grow. Ohio will play a central role in that path.
What We Learned
Ohio arrived in Colorado Springs as a credible competitor to traditional space states like Florida and Texas. We left with a clearer conviction that the competitive gap isn’t capability — it’s awareness. The conversations we had throughout the week confirmed that Ohio has the infrastructure, institutions, and industrial base to win the next generation of space work. What we need to do is tell that story louder, more often, and with sharper specificity.
A few things came into sharper focus:
NASA Glenn Research Center is one of the most consequential space facilities in the country — and it is underappreciated outside the aerospace community. When most people picture NASA, they picture Kennedy, Johnson, or Jet Propulsion Lab. As one of NASA’s six manned spaceflight centers, Glenn doesn’t get the same recognition, but its mission is arguably the most critical to the future of human space exploration: power and propulsion, the two hardest problems in sustaining human presence on the Moon and Mars. Every space company evaluating where to build, test, and scale should know Ohio’s strength in supporting this work. We have the opportunity to fly that flag.
Glenn’s work at its Lewis Field campus and the nearby Neil Armstrong Test Facility serves multiple NASA mission directorates — not just one program. The world’s most powerful mechanical vibration facility — known as the spacecraft shaker system — is in Ohio. The acoustic, vacuum, and electromagnetic testing done at Armstrong is work that no other facility in the country can replicate at the same scale. The research at Lewis Field spans human exploration, science, and aeronautics. This is not a single-program asset. It is the backbone infrastructure for the entire American space enterprise, and it is located in our state.
Jim Free, as a JobsOhio advisor, is a signal the space community reads immediately. Jim served as NASA’s Associate Administrator — the agency’s number-three position — and before that as director of NASA Glenn. His decision to advise JobsOhio tells the industry something that no brochure can: that Ohio’s commitment to the space economy is serious, informed, and built to last. We felt the weight of that signal in every conversation we had in Colorado Springs.
Artemis is the clearest proof point we have — and we should lead with it. The Orion spacecraft that carried the Artemis II crew around the Moon was tested and certified for flight in Ohio. Fifty-seven Ohio companies are active in the Artemis supply chain. NASA Glenn is leading development of the Power and Propulsion Element for Gateway, humanity’s first lunar-orbit outpost. These are not incremental contributions. They are central to the mission and position Ohio at the forefront of the conversation about what comes next.
Ohio’s space supplier network is deeper than most of the industry realizes. Beyond the headline programs, Ohio has a dense, capable supplier base serving the commercial and national security space sectors — companies building propulsion components, precision optics, advanced materials, electronics, and specialized manufacturing at a scale that rivals any state in the country. This is one of our most underutilized selling points. Space companies looking to scale don’t just need a test facility or a research anchor. They need an industrial ecosystem that can support a supply chain. Ohio has one. Getting that message into more rooms is the work ahead.
The takeaway from Colorado Springs is simple — ensuring the right people understand how Ohio can advance and propel the space economy in the next decade.