This makes sense, from both a manpower and long term stance.
First, Colorado is going to survive climate change much better than Alabama will. Not having to do PT at 2am because that’s the only time it’s cool enough is kinda nice.
Second, since Alabama keeps rejecting and making things illegal that the majority of Americans want (e.g. Abortion, porn), moving there doesn’t make sense for the military. When you have to ship people to other states for medical care, it’s better to just build in other states in the first place.
Not to mention the massive civilian/contractor force that supports it. That’s a bunch of highly educated people that probably don’t want to live in Alabama either.
You’ve never been to Huntsville. Alabama has a surprisingly large number or rocket scientists living there.
Yeah, but you’re still in Alabama.
Luckily, I’m not. But I did find Huntsville to be surprising—both for the beautiful landscape and clear uptick in IQ points compared to the rest of the state. Great German food—bet you can’t guess why.
As the story goes, the ex-nazi scientists that the US brought in to work on rockets were first stationed in Houston, but they all hated the heat. They requested a transfer to Huntsville because the landscape was similar to the German countryside.
And that is how the US government allowed nazis to decide the primary location for NASA rocket research, which also happened to be in the same state as the headquarters for the KKK. Clearly, nothing could go wrong.
Fascinating.
Yes, and Huntsville is very pleasant itself because of this. But they all assure me that you have only to drive a half hour out of Huntsville to know for certain that you are in Alabama. (The thank-god-for-Mississippi Alabama, that Alabama).
This is going to matter to some aerospace engineers and particularly the ones with spouses and children.
I grew up in Alabama but live in Colorado now. If I were forced to live somewhere in Alabama, Huntsville would be at/near the top of my list. But it’s still Alabama, and I’d still waaay rather live in Colorado. It obviously doesn’t keep everyone away, and there’s a lot of inertia there with all the existing space/rocket/defense industry in Huntsville. But is Space Command even going to be hiring heavily in the engineering fields that are concentrated in Huntsville? (That’s a real question- I’d guess they’re not hiring primarily engineers that they’d find in Huntsville, but I don’t know.)
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Historically fo sho.
I wonder how long that’ll remain. If you consider, the vast majority of that development @ Huntsville is legacy support or done. New rockets are coming from private companies / conglomerates, sure, Huntsville built the saturn 5, but they aren’t building SpaceX or Lockheed or Rocketjet Aerodyne’s babies.
IMHO, Huntsville was awesome, but it’s time as a giant NASA player is over. We can get rockets elsewhere.
They’ve been transitioning that brainpower into other types of government work up there. The FBI recently opened a large office, and there is still a lot of military development that is going on, even if the space program has wound down.
They still have a rocket on every corner and every school is named after an astronaut though, so it is clearly a deep part of the local culture. Even the baseball team (the trash pandas) has a logo of a raccoon riding a trash can rocket.
Aerojet moved their operations from Sacramento to Huntsville. Blue Origin is moving their manufacturing of their BE-4 engines for New Glenn and Vulcan from Kent to Huntsville. Saying that Huntsville is no longer a major aerospace hub for private companies is off the mark.
I don’t think anybody wants to live in Alabama.
I’ve found that most of the Alabama residents I’ve met are somewhat afraid of other (especially non southern) states and they couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
Plus AFAIK the stargate is still in NORAD so it makes sense to keep them close
They actually have a janitor closet labeled “Stargate Command” inside Chyanne Mountain, lol.
“Janitor closet.” Sure.
The closet looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/vD53jtu.png
I just really noticed how mild and wet this summer has been in Colorado Springs. As expensive as it is to live here, we’re not roasting to death like the Southeast.
Plus we keep getting all of the regional fast food in one location.
It used to be that summer afternoons on the Front Range of Colorado frequently featured thunderstorms, but then a long-term drought took hold, the summer storms became much rarer, and Colorado became frighteningly dry for approximately the first two decades of the 21st century. Yes this has been a wet year, and a welcome return to the old normal, but will that persist in the face of climate change or are we just seeing a brief respite before the “new normal” of warmer, drier weather returns? Plus many areas along the Front Range are depleting their aquifers at an unsustainable rate, drought or not.
According to the people on my local (Colorado) Nextdoor, our water company should drop their new drought fee because this year has been pretty wet 🙄
Colorado is going to survive climate change much better than Alabama will.
Well, in some ways. Colorado is already subject to serious drought and water shortage issues; dramatically increased number of/size of/damage from wildfires; temps in excess of 105°f just like, it seems, everywhere else (though CO Springs is higher and cooler than the worst-affected areas of the state, temperature-wise); etc.
Currently in CO Springs it is only 2 degrees (F) cooler than in Huntsville, AL. Humidity is only ~10 pts difference - otherwise yeah I’d say it’s more uncomfortable in AL. Though this is only a snapshot.
I digress.
Point is climate change is affecting (present tense, not future) different areas differently.
You’re absolutely right about the social aspect tho.
The Western Slope is at risk of a climate disaster but the Front Range should be okay.
Plus Colorado is closer to space, so the commute is shorter.
At the same time, couldn’t army bases be used to provide medical services on federal land to people who don’t have access to it because of state laws?
Asking as a Canadian, so please enlighten me people!
People who don’t have any affiliation with the base typically aren’t allowed on most bases, most of the time. The medical facilities on bases are for service members and their covered spouse/dependents. Even civilian employees generally can’t receive care on base unless they are going to die if they don’t receive it immediately.
I think service members and their families would be able to receive care that might be locally outlawed, but federally legal. Everyone else affiliated with the base would be SOL.
Tuberville’s asinine blockade of military promotions presumably played a big part in this. I think it’s a smart idea even in a vacuum though. The types of people that would be interested in serving in Space Command positions are, I expect, going to be the types of people least likely to find living in Alabama to be tolerable. Locating the HQ in Colorado is going to be a lot better for their recruitment efforts.
That’s not to mention the official reasons offered, that it would be a clusterfuck to relocate the HQ. Which is a perfectly sufficient reason on its own too.
Tuberville’s asinine blockade of military promotions presumably played a big part in this.
This is the first I’ve heard of this, what an asshole:
Can they wait until tuber illegal is absent?
Certain things need unanimous approval. Guess that includes people when absent.
Colorado Springs is conservative Colorado, though.
The overall state matters far more than the local area for determining what your government is going to be like. Colorado Springs cannot make abortion illegal for its residents; Colorado can. Colorado Springs cannot ignore the state’s laws on minimum wages, or LGBTQ rights, or any myriad other laws.
It’s why I, as a progressive, would have no interest in living in Austin Texas: as left-leaning as Austin is, the state of Texas plays a bigger part in that governance and would make it an undesirable place for me to live.
Incidentally, Colorado Springs has been moving left. It has a non-republican independent mayor now, and the democratic governor even won the city in his reelection campaign (still lost the county, but came close). Trump won the county by 10% in 2020, after winning it by 20% in 2016. Likewise, Romney and McCain won it by 20%; Bush Jr. won it by 30% and 34%. In 1988 Bush Sr. won it by 40%. I expect the city-only results are even closer at the presidential level but cannot find data for that quickly.
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It’s not the solid red base it once was. The GOP lost the mayor’s office by a large percentage to an independent. It’s a purple city due to so many people moving down from Denver.
A ton of the contractors and civilians that work there don’t live in the springs though.
YES OMG GET FUCKED TUBERVILLE, YOU FUCKING PRICK!
I’ve said before I was terrified of the DoD capitulating to this fucking sorry excuse for a human being, but I’m glad to see his actions have had negative consequences for him specifically.
Ugh, even if this wasn’t done to protect the younger generation of women joining the armed forces, I’ll take it. It’s one less location that they can be sent to (yes of course Maxwell exists, as well as Scott in MO and alllllllll the fucking bases in Texas and Florida, so it’s a small win, but it IS a win)
This is a readiness issue and has everyone to do with Republican culture war politics in the state. Alabama is trying to make it difficult for certain people to exist there. That means the military cannot move certain people in and out and cannot recruit to that state as well.
This has nothing to do with how butt hurt you are about women’s rights or trans rights. The military needs bodies and they won’t put bases in states that make that more difficult. GOP politics are actively removing jobs from these states, period. Not just jobs in the military either. The amount of economic activity around military bases is staggering. Alabama just lost tens of thousands of civilian jobs as well.
Congratulations to Colorado for keeping your economy running by simply not being hateful pricks and trying to take away freedom from a very small percentage of Americans!
You think taking rights away from all child bearing women in the US impacts a very small % of Americans?
I was more referencing trans folks with that one. Should have been more clear.
As general observations,
It would be costly to relocate an entire Federal agency, and it would take until 2030 according to this article. That can’t help but impair readiness.
No shit it’s political. Everything that is done by politicians is political at some level. Dems want to reward Colorado and they gain nothing by trying to appease Alabama since nothing Dems do is going to flip Alabama blue.
So by your logic they would just completely shut down space command at Cheyenne Mountain while building the base in Alabama? How stupid do you think our military leaders are lol?
It was DOD’s decision to tap Alabama in the first place because of budget and it’s DOD’s decision to pull out because it’s bad for national security. I’m not sure why you distrust or military so much but their just trying to protect us.
Well, Colorado Springs is ~6000’ closer to space XD
I find it interesting that Huntsville AL, where Trump wanted to move space force, is where we sent all the Nazi scientists from operation paperclip:
TIME magazine: How America Educated the Children of Nazis after World War II
The scientists did build the missiles that they were brought here to build. They then went on to [help] build NASA which I think is actually considered a far greater accomplishment. Wernher von Braun, who was the leader of this group, is deeply woven into the history of NASA. So in that sense, yes. But there was definitely a sense that it wasn’t clear why we needed German scientists to do this. A lot protested not just on ethical grounds, but also on the feeling that American scientists were pretty great too and could have produced the same results.
And a good contingent of the Operation Paperclip children [are still] in the Huntsville, Alabama, area because so many of them went on to work for NASA. Some of them had amazing professional careers and were highly successful people. They’re a close group. Everyone I talked to is still in touch with other people from the group.
How is the story of the Operation Paperclip children relevant to today?
The way in which it feels immediately relevant right now is with this idea of happy white children as symbols of democracy. There are a whole lot of culture wars and anxiety around that right now, particularly in Republican states where there’s been legislation about how children [should not] feel discomfort, guilt or anxiety based on race. This sort of concern with protecting white children, or seeing white children’s own sense of self privileged over that of all other children is an echo of [the way that] German children of Nazi scientists were treated far better and seen as far more valuable than their Mexican American peers. Talking about happiness, or guilt or discomfort [is] often really talking about political power, more than emotional truth.There’s a lasting legacy of racism in the area and I’m glad to not be sending the region more federal dollars and exposing more recruits to that culture. Redstone arsenal doesn’t need another government aerospace agency there. I’d much rather support Colorado.
This sort of concern with protecting white children, or seeing white children’s own sense of self privileged over that of all other children is an echo of [the way that] German children of Nazi scientists were treated far better and seen as far more valuable than their Mexican American peers.
spoiler alert for For All Mankind - sorry, on mobile, and I cannot seem to figure out how to do spoiler tags…
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Huh. This is an aspect of Aleida Rosales in For All Mankind that I actually had no idea about. They touched on a lot of the Nazi rocket scientist stuff in there, and definitely presented themes of racial injustice, but I didn’t realize that that whole dynamic was specifically tied to the character in such a pointed way.
Why not just station them at Cheyenne Mountain?
That’s where the Stargate is anyway.
Indeed.
That’s NORAD in there.
That’s the official story at least, but we all know what’s really going on. There are 10 seasons of documentary detailing what’s really happening under that mountain.
General Jumper built a larger Stargate at Vandenberg SFB, the Cheyenne Mountain SFS is a backup site and used mostly for logistics. The tunnels that run all the way to Denver International Airport ferry the cargo back and forth.
Yeah, the top floors. You gotta go deeper to get to the weird alien stuff.
Uh oh, Coach ain’t gonna like this.
But we discriminate against African Americans here even if the Supreme Court tells us not to. That didn’t help us in Alabama?
Makes sense with the SGC being in Cheyenne mountain and all.
Keeping it squarely Located away from all oceans and Canada border in order to prevent eavesdropping and snooping, that is the reason why it remains there and the same reason that we have that listening station in Australia. It’s right in the dead center to avoid people snooping on communications, not hard to figure out. Alabama’s a backwater. They should be flushed down the toilet so who cares?
