With a space symposium at a distance of less than a month, some are disturbed by the fate of the space community’s high trade show among the White House -driven travel restrictions.
Under the Executive Order of the Trump administration, agencies need to justify unnecessary travel to reduce costs, a high topic of conversation at a satellite conference in DC this week, as industry officials wonder what their officials (ie, their consumers).
How do we get here: The order directed the agency leaders and the DOGE staff to develop a system for the approval of unnecessary travel applications, and publicly posted the justification for taxpayers’ financing visits. This order has also frozen federal employees’ credit cards.
Many conferences have already been affected. AFA’s Warfare Symposium in Denver last week According to the notifications There were usually dozens of vacant seats during the full key note by senior military leaders. And at a satellite conference in DC this week, official booths were vacant on the exhibition floor from agencies like NRO and MDA.
Symposium Update: However, the organizers of the Space Symposium have a message to the industry: the show continues.
“This year, like every other year, the Symposium is going to be a Premier Event in the Symposium Space Community,” the Thomas Dorium of the Space Foundation told Payload. “If you choose to attend an event, it should be due to the attendance of high -level leaders.”
Falling: Despite the order, Duram said that senior leaders of the usual suspects, including the Space Force and NASA, will attend the conference. These agencies did not respond to the request to comment on who was attending the show.
However, EO is likely to affect how many junior employees are allowed to attend the show.
“I think the population will be low, but it will not be significantly less because you have the same high -level people,” he said.
The duram said the low number of lower -level federal employees are likely to be less likely to be less traffic and eating waiting hours – though the overall decline in foot traffic may also mean that the show’s signature exhibition halls are less employed in the hall, which has a record of new companies in addition to a record number of new companies.
