COLORADO SPRINGS — There is no recession at the National Space Symposium.
As other trade shows struggle, the space show at The Broadmoor remains the home of the free latte, a top-shelf cocktail night and outrageous displays by defense contractors competing for their piece of Air Force and NASA budgets.
“This is where we want to make a splash,” explained Northrop-Grumman’s Richard Bent as he sat near the firm’s one-story indoor waterfall at the heart of a booth featuring a miniature movie theater and mock-ups of planes, rockets and satellites.
In its 25th year, the symposium has drawn a record crowd of more than 7,500. The number of vendors who bought booths at the trade show also exceeded expectations.
The only sign of the anemic national economy is companies are giving away cheaper freebies at their booths.
“Space is good business and we want to keep it that way,” said Janet Stevens, spokeswoman with the Colorado Springs-based Space Foundations, which hosts the event.
The space industry can afford a little opulence.
The foundation said while the rest of the economy contracted in 2008, worldwide space-related revenues climbed 2.5 percent to top $257 billion.
While governments still put big money into orbit, an estimated 67 percent of space revenues came from commercial satellites.
The symposium brings a pile of cash to Colorado Springs, with a local economic impact estimated at $25 million for the four-day show.
While some booths are dotted with more than a dozen big-screen televisions, and aerospace giant Boeing is dishing out free lattes to all comers, there is concern here, if not panic about what the future will hold.
The federal budget is still being hashed out, but President Obama is already talking about cutting big-ticket military acquisition programs.
Stevens said that’s driven some of the extravagance among the display booths, where wandering congressmen and Air Force officers are being button-holed by industry representatives and salesmen.
“They’re really trying to distinguish themselves,” said Michele Miller, CEO of the Denver-based engineering firm Miller technology group.
There has been some budget trimming, but it is hard to notice.
“There’s a big change in what gets given away,” said Kelly Jackson as she worked at a booth touting the Colorado Springs airport.
Cheap plastic pens have replaced the nicer metal models given away at some booths this year. Free T-shirts have all but disappeared.
Bent, though, said those small cost-cutting moves are outweighed by the efforts businesses make to put their best foot forward at the symposium.
The Northrop-Grumman booth required the services of two 18-wheelers to get to Colorado Springs, and the corporation spent six months planning how to grab attention.
While not much money actually changes hands at the show, corporations make contacts worth billions of dollars later, said Roz Brown with Broomfield satellite-maker Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp.
“We just make connections and network,” she said.
In the space world, there’s no better place to hobnob for dollars.
“This is the premiere space conference, possibly in the world,” Bent said.
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