President Joe Biden has decided to keep U.S. Space Command headquarters in Colorado, overturning a last-ditch decision by the Trump administration to move it to Alabama and ending months of politically fueled debate, according to senior U.S. officials.

The officials said Biden was convinced by the head of Space Command, Gen. James Dickinson, who argued that moving his headquarters now would jeopardize military readiness. Dickinson’s view, however, was in contrast to Air Force leadership, who studied the issue at length and determined that relocating to Huntsville, Alabama, was the right move.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the decision ahead of the announcement.

The president, they said, believes that keeping the command in Colorado Springs would avoid a disruption in readiness that the move would cause, particularly as the U.S. races to compete with China in space. And they said Biden firmly believes that maintaining stability will help the military be better able to respond in space over the next decade. Those factors, they said, outweighed what the president believed would be any minor benefits of moving to Alabama.

  • Hot Saucerman
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    1 year ago

    Good.

    No more sending tax dollars to net-negative contributors to the tax base, when all those people do is claim we use their tax money, when it’s the other fuckin’ way around.

    EDIT: To be clear, I don’t actually support taking financial support away from the weakest in our nation. It’s rather the issue that they would rather use the tax money given to them to do things like take away abortion rights or codify legalized discrimination than help their impoverished fucking citizens.

    • magnetosphere @beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      “It’s clear that far-left politics, not national security, was the driving force behind this decision.”

      Yeah, no. The decision not to move isn’t political, as much as he’d like it to be. The Space Force headquarters already exists. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

      Also, somebody should tell these conservative crybabies that shouting about “far-left politics” every single time they don’t get their way really dilutes the term. Haven’t these people ever heard about the boy who cried wolf?

    • millie@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I honestly do absolutely support taking tax dollars from those states, because they’re using them to undermine and delegitimize our democracy. Take a map of the states that deny voting rights to former prisoners in perpetuity and you’ll be pretty close to a map of the states that draw the most financial support. These states push out minority voters or disenfranchise them with antisocial and discriminatory laws and policies, then use their abuse of the system to secure a disproportionate level of representation.

      Things on the national level won’t improve as long as we’re letting all these red states take advantage of the system.

  • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    Space Command was not created by Trump and has been around for a while under the USAF. The reason it’s in Colorado is because NORAD is there and because our satellites over north America focus their communications beams on Colorado giving that state the strongest signal.

    • almar_quigley@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Fuck you for generalizing the population down there. Which is one of the things REPUBLICANS do, not southerners. And while they have an artificial stranglehold on politics down there don’t forget republicans in your state are just as fucking bad.

      • SenorBolsa@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Yeah I don’t like this kind of rhetoric and I’m a mean old Yankee. Certainly plenty of problems, but there’s a lot of genuinely good people down there too. Also good reasons to be down there, a lot of the space industry has set up shop there for logistical reasons and there’s a great pool of talent to draw from because of that.

        Aerospace is one of those industries that flys under the radar (pun intended) I live in CT and I can’t tell you how many people are surprised when you explain to them just how chock full of high end manufacturing our state really is. You can hardly swing a cat without hitting a machine shop making airplane and/or rocket parts here.