Five cities want Trump’s new space academy. He should make them earn it

President Donald Trump wants America to establish something it has never had: a national academy dedicated to preparing Americans for the space age.The decision should not simply come down to which governor offers the most land or which congressional delegation has the most influence. The country should consider existing its military infrastructure, NASA expertise, aerospace engineering, commercial spaceflight, and the kind of identity it wants the new institution to develop. Five places deserve serious consideration:1. Colorado Springs, Colorado Colorado Springs begins with the most obvious advantage: the Space Force is already there.The region contains some of America’s most important military space infrastructure and is home to the Air Force Academy. That creates an enormous concentration of officers, engineers, researchers, and national security expertise.A space academy could collaborate with the Air Force Academy while developing a curriculum centered specifically on the challenges of operating beyond Earth’s atmosphere: satellites, orbital warfare, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, communications, and space engineering.But Colorado Springs’s greatest strength is also its biggest weakness.If the space academy sits practically next door to the Air Force Academy, Americans could reasonably ask why the country needs two institutions instead of expanding space education within the academy that already exists.2. Huntsville, Alabama Few cities have a stronger claim to America’s space story than Huntsville, Alabama.The “Rocket City” helped turn American ambitions in space into engineering reality. Today, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Redstone Arsenal, and a massive aerospace and defense industry make the region one of America’s premier concentrations of space expertise.That ecosystem could become Huntsville’s greatest advantage.The next generation of space leadership will require more than military officers. America will need engineers, scientists, cybersecurity specialists, and policymakers who understand how government, defense, and private industry work together.Students in Huntsville would essentially have an aerospace laboratory surrounding their campus.3. Houston, Texas If Huntsville represents the machines that helped take America into space, Houston represents the people who went there.NASA’s Johnson Space Center has trained generations of astronauts and managed some of the country’s most consequential human-spaceflight missions.That makes Houston particularly attractive if America envisions the space academy as something broader than another military service academy.Space is increasingly a shared environment among the Space Force, NASA, intelligence agencies, universities, and private companies. Tomorrow’s leaders will need to understand all of them.Houston already lives at that intersection.4. Florida’s Space Coast Then there is the place where America actually leaves Earth.Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, and nearby military space operations give Florida’s Space Coast an advantage no other candidate can completely replicate.Cadets could watch launches as part of everyday life. That matters for more than aesthetics.America’s service academies build cultures as well as curricula. Their locations become part of their identities. Midshipmen at Annapolis are surrounded by naval history. Cadets at West Point inhabit a landscape connected to the Army’s origins.Imagine generations of space academy cadets standing outside their barracks watching rockets climb over the Atlantic Ocean.Florida also offers proximity to the rapidly expanding commercial space economy. The students preparing to lead America’s military presence in space would be studying alongside the companies and government agencies actively launching America’s spacecraft.5. Hampton Roads, Virginia Virginia deserves a place in this competition, but perhaps not where many would initially look.Hampton Roads possesses something few regions can match: more than a century of American aerospace research combined with one of the largest concentrations of military power in the country.NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton predates NASA itself.Founded in 1917 as the nation’s first civilian aeronautics laboratory, Langley helped solve the problems of flight before America ever contemplated putting humans on the moon. Its researchers later contributed to America’s early space program, including Project Mercury and the work that helped make human spaceflight possible.The location should define the mission Choosing the location should involve more than calculating construction costs or counting existing federal facilities. The choice will help define the institution.OPINION — BIG TECH’S AI FUTURE RELIES ON AN UNLIKELY HERO: THE BLUE-COLLAR WORKERIf the United States is going to establish an academy devoted to preparing people to lead in that environment, its home should reflect the magnitude of that mission.Colorado Springs, Huntsville, Houston, Florida’s Space Coast, and Hampton Roads can each make that case. America should make them prove it.Jeff Bennett is the author of The Black Belt of Virginia: Untold Stories of African American History, published by the History Press.