Dr. Roy Naor and his Creation Space partners want to turn Mitzpe Ramon into Israel’s space city, with Nvidia-backed labs, control rooms and startups developing technology for Earth, the moon and MarsDr. Roy Naor, CEO of Creation Space, has used the same gimmick dozens of times. Thousands of people have already seen it at lectures, conferences and investor meetings: He pulls out two large, rigid photos of a dry, rocky desert landscape, places them side by side and asks the audience: Which one was taken on Mars, and which one was taken in Ramon Crater, a few hundred meters from my home?“They always get it wrong,” he says. “Everyone. NASA researchers and nature experts from Mitzpe Ramon. You simply can’t tell the difference.”8 View gallery The planned space-tech hub in Mitzpe Ramon (Photo: Creation-Space)So what connects this energetic planetary scientist from the Weizmann Institute, a native of Kibbutz Na’an and a self-declared space geek, to Mitzpe Ramon, a small and sleepy town in the central Negev, isolated and remote, with no hospital, no port, no airport, scorching heat during the day and freezing cold at night?“First of all, my wife,” Naor says. “She is the granddaughter of the legendary Hagai Avriel, one of Mitzpe Ramon’s founders in the 1950s and a former head of the Ramat Negev Regional Council. And second, and of course most importantly, the incredible connection between Mitzpe Ramon and space.”What incredible connection?