On July 11, 1955, 306 cadets took their oath at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver. The Air Force began educating its first academy class there while construction crews built the permanent campus near Colorado Springs. Those cadets also chose the falcon as their mascot and established an honor code.
West Point, Annapolis, the Air Force Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, and the Merchant Marine Academy make up America’s five federal service academies. A sixth could prepare military officers and civilian engineers together for work in space. Kings Point offers the closest institutional precedent: a civilian department operates the school, and graduates repay their education through defined national service.
NASA proposes to open the United States Space Academy with approximately 300 students in temporary facilities in 2028 and a permanent campus in 2031. President Trump established the commission developing the proposal on August 28, and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman chairs it. Congress still has to provide the school’s statutory authority and funding.
GAO reported a 25% gap against the Space Force’s identified personnel requirements in fiscal 2025. That figure covers officers, enlisted personnel, and civilians, and GAO found outdated assessments and inconsistent methods behind the requirements. NASA, meanwhile, is rebuilding its own engineering and operational capabilities after years of concern about dependence on contractors. Both organizations need people who understand working space systems before they acquire authority to approve or command them.
Congress should establish the academy within NASA and attach a service obligation to every appointment. Students would spend four years building and operating spacecraft alongside classmates preparing for military and civilian careers. A permanent faculty would anchor the curriculum from one class to the next, and graduates would owe the country years of work in return for their education.
Four years before the first assignment
Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington argued in 1948 that his new service lacked enough officers trained for their profession from the beginning of college. West Point already produced aviators, and civilian universities taught engineering. Symington wanted the Air Force to take responsibility for the full education of a share of its future officers. Eisenhower signed the academy’s authorizing law in 1954.
Today’s Air Force Academy already offers 29 dedicated space courses, an astronautical engineering major, and a Space Warfighting minor. Cadets study Advanced Astrodynamics and Space Warfighting, build satellites through FalconSAT, and operate spacecraft through the Cadet Space Operations Squadron. Its programs include projects that pass from one class to another and continue after launch. The academy commissioned 93 graduates into the Space Force this May. Its summer programs take cadets into military operations centers and industry facilities.
ROTC and Officer Training School also supply Guardians, and 54 officers completed the Space Force’s Officer Training Course at Peterson in June. Current policy sends newly commissioned Guardians through that specialized course regardless of their commissioning source. The proposed 2028 entering class would finish its degree in 2032, then military graduates would complete the training required for their operational assignments.
NASA can extend the approach already working at Colorado Springs to a school whose admissions, faculty, and projects also serve civilian missions. Civilian students would enter on equal terms as a full part of each class and train beside future Guardians before either group has approval or command authority. NASA centers would commit projects and instructors across all four years, while the Space Force develops its officers through the same technical work.
Beat Navy?
When FalconSAT-X launched on November 11, 2023, cadets watched it leave Earth aboard a Falcon 9, then hurried to their computers to establish contact. Seniors from each class since 2019 had worked on the satellite. Students who had been high school juniors when the project began were now helping operate it in orbit. An academy can offer an eighteen-year-old the chance to help build something that leaves the planet before graduation.
Army has its mules, Navy its goat, and Air Force its falcon. A new Space Academy deserves its own teams, fight song, and uniforms, and eventually the chance to beat the other academies. Division I competition could give it that national stage, although NCAA membership and conference arrangements remain unsettled. Somewhere on campus, there ought to be a “Beat Navy” banner hanging over a spacecraft lab. (This is because, we assume, that the Space Force and the Department of War will see sense and realize that the Space Force should have Admirals instead of Generals, as we have long advocated on this site.)
Students should be able to spend a summer on a launch team and return to their spacecraft project during the school year. Instructors returning from NASA centers and operational units can bring the problems they’re working on into the laboratory. A teenager choosing the academy would join classmates who might spend their careers helping defend American forces or send explorers farther into the solar system.
Defending the satellites
China’s reconnaissance constellations supply optical, radar, and radio-frequency information to targeting systems that could direct long-range weapons against American ships in the western Pacific. Beijing also fields anti-satellite missiles, jammers, and lasers that threaten the spacecraft our forces depend on for navigation, missile warning, communications, and targeting. Guardians defend those systems through orbital maneuvers, ground stations, and contested radio links. A maneuver away from a threat can spend finite propellant or move a sensor’s coverage away from forces that need it. Officers have to judge what they’re preserving, what they’re giving up, and how long the spacecraft must keep working. Four years of progressively harder projects and exercises can teach future officers to carry a fuel calculation through to its consequences for a commander at sea.
The technical curriculum must also cover military history, constitutional government, and the law of armed conflict. Guardians will command people, advise operational commanders, and make decisions about military force. Exercises alongside joint and allied units can require students to explain the tactical consequences of their engineering decisions before they receive commissions.
Civilian work in orbit
Northrop Grumman launched a robotic servicing spacecraft on July 21 carrying a DARPA-funded payload and robotic arms developed by the Naval Research Laboratory. NASA supplies simulation tools, software verification, and flight robot operators. Academy assignments on projects of that kind can expose students to contractor engineering and government acceptance work during the same education. Graduates entering either organization would already understand some of the decisions their counterparts have to make.
NASA’s inspector general reported in 2012 that project managers worried about the loss of in-house development experience as engineers spent more time overseeing contractors and less time building hardware. In 2019, GAO documented how defense space acquisition reforms reduced government systems-engineering and cost-estimating staff and weakened the government’s ability to manage programs. Isaacman is now converting appropriate contractor roles into NASA civil-service positions to restore core capabilities. When a prime contractor presents test results, the public buyer must be able to question the test itself, identify missing evidence, and refuse acceptance. The academy’s civilian track should rebuild that government “smart buyer” corps. Its engineers should have helped build and fly hardware before they sit across from a prime contractor at a critical design review or acquire authority to approve the work.
Engineers planning lunar operations have to provide power, communications, and equipment that crews can maintain far from Earth, and Mars missions add long communication delays and limited opportunities for resupply. Undergraduates should tackle those power, thermal, and communications problems in laboratories and flight projects well before they receive assignments in the mission directorates.
Education in return for service
The Maritime Administration, part of the Department of Transportation, operates the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point. Graduates can commission into the armed forces or serve as licensed merchant officers under a separate reserve commitment. They generally owe five years of qualifying service, alongside licensing and reserve obligations.
The STARS Act introduced by Senator Ashley Moody and Representative Byron Donalds would place the academy within NASA, require a Florida location, and call for proposals on curriculum and service obligations. Congress should add an explicit division of authority across NASA’s Title 51 responsibilities and Title 10 military authorities. NASA would administer the campus and degree programs and seek independent accreditation, while the Department of the Air Force would control Guardian commissioning standards, military discipline, and military security requirements. Operational command would remain in the military chain of command.
Congress can require five years of active-duty military service or designated civilian federal employment after graduation and establish repayment provisions for graduates who fail to fulfill their agreements. NASA and participating agencies need funded positions for the civilian students they appoint. The Space Force must identify the officer specialties and billets it expects to fill. Recruiting and retention through existing programs need continued investment during the years before the academy produces graduates.
Congress could also permit service on designated industry missions or critical capabilities, provided NASA certifies the assignments in advance and audits completion. If any job at a launch or satellite company counts, taxpayers can end up paying to prepare hires those firms were going to make anyway. NASA and the Space Force would still compete against higher private salaries for the people they need.
A campus near the work
NASA extended the deadline for state proposals to November 16. In September, the Texas Space Commission discussed a possible contribution of up to $100 million to the academy bid, according to the Houston Business Journal. The reported figure described a proposal under discussion, rather than an academy appropriation. States offering support still need to show what their money buys for students.
Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Patrick Space Force Base, and commercial launch facilities give Florida a substantial case. Huntsville offers Marshall Space Flight Center and Redstone Arsenal, while Houston has Johnson Space Center’s mission operations and astronaut training. Congress should let the commission compare those proposals before fixing a state in law. Sustained access to operational hardware and instructors’ time should carry more weight than proximity or the largest proposed check.
Governors need agreements that put students inside the facilities they advertise and give working engineers time to teach them. Laboratory access, recurring teaching assignments, and the cost of reaching operational sites provide concrete grounds for selection. Existing buildings and university partnerships can help the first class begin while the permanent campus develops.
Congress needs separate estimates for temporary instruction, construction, and annual operations. A dedicated appropriation can fund those expenses and require NASA to report per-graduate costs, service completion, and retention to the appropriations committees. Annual admissions should remain near the initial cohort of 300 until documented agency demand and the performance of the first classes justify expansion. Seats on the civilian and military tracks should follow funded positions and credible hiring plans.
Isaacman’s commission owes its recommendations to the president by December 26. Congress should follow with a charter that assigns military and civilian authority, funds the first class, and provides jobs for graduates. NASA needs a qualified faculty, agreements tying instruction to actual missions, and a viable route to accredited degrees before it offers appointments.