MIDLAND, Texas — For years, the city of Midland has been growing its aerospace community.
Their hard work has not gone unnoticed, as the Space Force Association announced today that they will be establishing their first Texas chapter headquarters in Midland.
The announcement was made alongside the Midland Development Corporation, who approved a promotional agreement with SFA Texas for at most $250,000 through September 30th, 2025.
“We started talking about this about a year ago and I think it's really unique—the location and geography of Midland, because of the open airspace, allow for hypersonic testing," SFA President/Founder/CEO Bill Woolf said. "Then it's uniquely situated between both the east and west launch ranges and very close to Colorado Springs, where a lot of the headquarters are for the U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command.”
Midland has been beefing up their aerospace programs at the Midland International Air and Space Port alongside the Midland Spaceport Business Park, which was one of the key factors in getting SFA to come to the Tall City.
"It's really exciting what's happening in Midland with the development of the Air and Spaceport and the advancements in the availability of technology to come to Midland and really create a very unique infrastructure to help cut down on the technological gaps that exist to prevent our adversaries from controlling the space domain," Woolf said.
SFA does plan on bringing in new infrastructure around the Space Port and Business Park, but they are also hoping that their presence will inspire the next generation of space explorers.
“We're looking at other things, were how can we bring analog astronaut testing, but in a way that helped that's for education," SFA Texas Chapter President Eric McManus said. "We can have camps so to speak for children to participate in that they can experience what it's like in space."
One of the overall main goals is to provide the youth of Midland with new opportunities they may not have had if SFA hadn't come into town.
“We want to come into Midland and help diversify some of the industry here that provides a different economy, especially education and training to the young students of our community so that they can be aware of what's going on in the space industry," McManus said. "Also just how to get involved everything from rovers, space debris remediation, or just rockets, all the cool stuff. we want them to know and be aware about.”