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.
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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.