(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Schriever Space Force Base in Colorado Springs celebrated its 25th anniversary on Wednesday, June 21, and installed a time capsule to mark the occasion.
In June 1998, Falcon Air Force Base was renamed Schriever Air Force Base in honor of General Bernard Schriever. It’s been 25 years since the base was renamed, and now members of the Schriever family gathered to start new traditions.
“It’s great to see all the people that you grow up with and then to pull up in 25 years and kind of see what we were about when we were just getting our feet on the ground as a new Space Force,” said Lt. Col. Michael Schriever, General Schriever’s grandson.
General Schriever pioneered the development of the nation’s ballistic missile programs and is considered the father of the United States Air Force’s space and missile programs. Now in 2023, Schriever Space Force Base is a joint task force responsible for the command and control of the Department of Defense warning, navigational, and communications satellites.
The Space Force Guardians’ mission is in space, but what they do up there is paramount to our lives on Earth. General Shriever was a visionary and he had a passion for what he believed in, which his grandsons say was his adopted country and being first in space.
General Shriever was born in Germany in 1910, and came to the United States in 1917 before becoming the architect of the Air Force’s ballistic missile and military space program.
“It’s the American dream,” said Bernard Schriever II, another of General Schriever’s grandsons. “He was an immigrant, single-parent kid growing up in Texas and being able to make it to become a four-star General, that’s a pretty amazing story.”
The Schriever Space Force Base has grown from a few hundred to thousands of acres, but those who couldn’t be there the celebrate the Team Schriever time capsule were there in spirit as their legacy lives on.
“I think he would just be happy that the United States is still trying to be the best in space, trying to keep pushing the boundaries of technology and science,” Schriever II said.
The time capsule that was buried won’t be seen again for another 25 years. Items from both the Air Force and Space Force Base were put in the time capsule, along with a couple of COVID-19 tests as a testament to what Space Guardians have lived through.
