Today’s anniversary of the liftoff of Apollo 11 back on July 16, 1969, seems like an appropriate occasion to ponder the implications of the unresolved permanent location of U.S. Space Command.

It’s long been suggested that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When it comes to where this unified combatant command of the U.S. Department of Defense should be ultimately based, good and smart people can be looking at the same reports and come to very different conclusions.

In May, a report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) seemed to have something for those who support keeping it in Colorado Springs as well as grist for those advocating it be moved to Huntsville, Ala.

Our representative, Jeff Crank, said the choice was “clear.” Writing on X, he stated, “Colorado Springs is the best home for U.S. Space Command’s headquarters. Continued efforts to move the headquarters only hurts our national security.”

Not surprisingly, Rep. Crank’s friend and colleague, Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, disagrees.

“This blatant interference and politicization of a critical decision on national security would cost the taxpayer over $420 million,” Rogers wrote.

Both statements can be true, but one is closer to reality. The GAO report didn’t make clear with any specificity how moving to the heart of Dixie would save so much money. Yet, the idea of government saving anything seems overly optimistic if not fanciful.

Call me a homer and even extravagant, but I don’t think critical military decisions should be based on money. There is no excuse to be wasteful, but the quality is always remembered long after the cost is forgotten. We don’t want our military positioned where it’s the cheapest for them to be — but where they’re best positioned to protect the homeland as well as dominate and deter our foes.

I’m glad President John F. Kennedy didn’t let the cost of the U.S. space program stop him from championing our nation’s historic moonshot back in the 1960s. The Apollo 11 mission cost upwards of $355 million or $3 billion in today’s dollars. When visiting Rice University on Sept. 12, 1962, JFK inspired the country when he explained why we were going at all.

“We choose to go to the moon,” he told those gathered. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

When President Kennedy asked Wernher von Braun, the German-American rocket engineer, what it would take for us to get safely to and back from the moon, the scientist answered in five words: “The will to do it.”

It’s that same aspirational spirit that fills our city and that especially permeates and defines the Peterson Space Force Base. But there’s an added bonus. These brilliant and talented women and men are members of our churches, coach Little League, and add a dynamic flair to our city in major and minor ways. Many of them operate quietly and even anonymously.

The prospect of losing the U.S. Space Command threatens more than our national security. It also threatens to drain our city of extraordinary minds and remarkably resilient and innovative men and women who possess the will to do hard and seemingly impossible things.

Often referred to as the “ripple effect,” the reverberations of their departure would be felt everywhere. That’s because everything affects everything else.

As a child of the 1970s and ’80s, evidence of the “space age” was everywhere. Our neighborhood park had a giant rocket slide. After school, we’d watch “The Jetsons.” From CAT scans to cellphone cameras, cordless vacuums, ear thermometers to freeze-dried fruit, our world is now full of good things thanks to those who had the courage to reach for the stars.

It’s been 56 years since Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins embarked on mankind’s greatest and most wondrous adventure. Their pioneering spirit lives on at Peterson and at the park down the street. May it always be so.

Paul J. Batura is a local writer and founder of the 4:8 Media Network. He can be reached via email Paul@PaulBatura.com or on X @PaulBatura.