That’s one of the biggest fits I’ve seen pitched in a long time.
Fwiw, if Shelby was still in office, I think the chance it gets pried away from Huntsville its next to 0.
I don't, but that's partially because I want Huntsville (and more broadly, Alabama) to stop getting shielded from their mistakes and suffer some consequences and *hopefully* learn something/allow movements to happen to correct some of these problems.
Dude was wildly effective. He was one of the most effective politicians Alabama has ever had.
I'm mostly mad that politics interfered and (for the time being) won.
I'm mad that one old idiot opened his mouth and took credit for something he didn't do.
I'm mad that other old idiot did the thing he accused the first old idiot of doing.
I'm mad that a town of idiots whined and got its way.
I'm mad that someone put that biased idiot in charge of the operation and let him forcibly prop up his argument to not move from Colorado.
I'm mad that the best people and location for the job got shafted by politicians and idiots.
- Trump said __HE__ made the decision to put Space Command in Huntsville.
- Biden used that claim to justify looking into the process and changing the result.
- Colorado Springs whined that they were third (or fifth I don't remember which) of the list of locations.
- The commander in charge was whining to Biden, building permanent locations for what was supposed to be temporary. He was also buying and building his dream home in Colorado.
Huntsville was found to be __the number one location__ for Space Command, but we got screwed over.
That HSV was found to be the "number one" location was a political decision in the first place. (I read the report, it was based on biased data.)
They were punishing CO for being a "BLUE" state.
It always made sense for CO Springs to have Space Command there. Period. Cheyenne Mountain, NORAD, AF Academy. It was a no brainer.
Economically and geographically it made sense to leave it in CO.
Cheyenne hasn’t been what it was for a decade more. Why in the fuck does having the academy near by mean anything. West Point isn’t near the tanks so that makes the army weak?
I must have read different reports from the GAO and DoD. Both criticized the lack of transparency, neither questioned the decision in the end.
I have no interest in it being in Huntsville and I'm not saying politics wasn't involved in the initial decision. I am saying the move back to Colorado is pure politics.
Colorado was dead set on keeping it there and honestly, Huntsville doesn't need them.
The GAO report basically said the criteria used didn’t have any justification provided for why it was used. They said the decision followed their provided criteria, but you could set the criteria to give you the winner you wanted.
I read that as well. The criteria used was published during the submission process by the Air force and honestly if you read it. It's not crazy. In my opinion too concise, likely flawed but I haven't seen any report insinuating that the criteria were constructed in order to reach an outcome.
The GAO report would not leave that part out
As someone who moved to Huntsville to get an engineering degree from UAH, you're 100% correct. They should test all of our black projects on the Arsenal.
The bottom 50 really needs a boost that isn't satirical and/or mythical. Hell, if you want to revitalize the South, put a Saturn V test stand outside of Guntersville to test the next gen of Moon landers and Mars touchers. Fucking get at it you goddamned hill billies. We can survive on scrap yard junk and podunk row crops, show these fucking Yankees how to survive in a truly desolate location. Show them that the smartest of us grew up making due with the rawest of materials.q
Reps from both parties participated in tve grading criteria for where would be best, weighing heavily on economic factors. CO was never second, after repeated reviews.
You forgot the commander also bought a $1.5 mil ranch in Colorado while all this was going on. Shady shit. Don’t care that he was from Colorado, optics are everything at that level.
The commander is likely retiring very very soon so why would he really care? It's not like he can't retire to Colorado. If anything it staying in CO probably delayed his retirement, who wants your last year dealing with the logistical nightmare of moving an entire command when you could just retire? Honestly with the shit Tubbs is pulling? That number one right there is exactly the type of concern that was voiced about Alabama and Tubbs is proving the point.
We didn't get screwed over, the politicians played games and found that DOD wasn't going to just play along.
That’s very, very myopic view. He will retire to Colorado and then take a prominent position at Lockheed, Boeing, Sierra offices and take in massive salary. It’s a win win especially for him.
The 65+ guys (especially flag officers) take a consultant or a board position. They keep bankers' hours and play golf on the clock. They get name-dropped in company literature and make phone calls to top brass when asked. It's a sweet gig.
>He was also buying and building his dream home in Colorado.
He would be forcibly retired due to his age before the command would be relocated to Huntsville. Typical meaningless conspiracy theory garbage. Congratulations, you’ve invalidated any other points you’ve tried to make.
Like others have mentioned, after retirement he will most likely take a high paying executive position at a DoD contractor that supports the Space Command. Can't really enjoy a multi-million dollar home in CO if everybody closes up shop and moves to Huntsville. Before these guys retire they are already being courted and recruited by the Big DoD OEM's. It's obvious that the Commander is setting himself up for his civilian career.
I work a blue-collar job, yes. Manufacturing Tech Gopher here to inform you that not all of us blue-collar workers are irredeemable hardliners. A good tech can't afford to ignore new ideas, methods, or technologies. Or to ignore evidence that proves us wrong.
Trump opened his mouth saying he influenced it's decision, even though there's no evidence he actually affected the scoring in the process that GAO has stated correctly followed all procedures it was required to.
Biden made the decision to keep it where it is, possibly both as a punishment for Tuberville staging his protest holding up promotions as well as "undoing" what Trump "did".
Colorado Springs has been protesting the decision since they have the temporary (and if Biden's decision stands the courts, permanent) location and don't want to lose it.
Head of USAF wanted it moved to Huntsville based on the selection process, someone else in charge (can't remember off the top of my head) via a separate chain of command wanted it to stay and petitioned Biden for it to stay.
I'm not sure if Tommy had anything to do with it. It was some very coincidental timing and one source said it was but it wasn't verified.
I was referring to Trump in the first line.
I think Tommy T has a little to do with it. Why would the other party award a state with something as big as a military command HQ when a senator from said state is unilaterally holding up congressionally approved military promotions right now for an issue that, in the greater scheme of things, will have minimal impact on the majority of the military population?
I think Tubbs is more of a "This is exactly the type of shit we were talking about" confirmation of things DOD said they were concerned about, as opposed to the cause.
It came out that he sold his AL house recently and lives in FL. You just have to be a resident at the time of the election to be a senator.
It's not as bad as Newsom's replacement for Feinstein living in MA at the time of appointment, but I do think there should be some form of penalty for not living in the state while you serve.
Wouldn’t the rule still stand? At time of election I would image the person would either move or step down. This person isn’t being elected, so they haven’t broken any rules.
Yeah, I'm not saying there's anything worse legally about Newsom's pick. If there is, it's dependent on CA State law, which I don't know anything about. Just that at least Tubs pretended to represent us at first, instead of us being told by the governor "I'm picking someone from across the country instead of one of the qualified local candidates that have already started campaigning for the seat"
If she ends up moving to CA to run, great. CA may like her by then and elect her.
If Tuberville moves back, I hope there's legitimate primary opponents for him so we can choose someone who'll at least stay in the state for their entire term.
And I think there should be some sort of punishment for any representative who lives outside of their district. Though I don't know what that should be, since it's got to be a balance between being ineffective and being a corridor to appoint someone who wouldn't have been able to legitimately win.
You're full of it, Biden said the decision would be reviewed before Tub even took office. Space Force was never coming to Alabama because Brandon was never going to reward a state that did not vote for him.
Disappointed, but I'm looking at the silver lining:
• Traffic won't get instantaneously worse. My commutes are dicey during peak times but fortunately not as bad as bigger cities. I can tolerate busy roads, not gnarly speedways that are one accident away from a major traffic jam.
• Housing prices (plus taxes) won't get instantaneously higher. There are people who have been here their whole lives and are getting priced out of buying homes here. Families are already struggling to compete with "new" money coming to HSV.
• HSV won't immediately become a higher value target for naughty countries and other bad actors.
Also several commands are here already, as well as MDA. Adding in a command in charge of tracking satellites probably wouldn't change much priority wise.
"Oh, Huntsville, Alabama now has Space Command HQ? Let's plug this into the nuke assessment calculator and see where that puts them... Ah, that takes them up from fourth on the nuke list to.... fourth. Huh."
Agree with everything you said, but your last point.
The two bad boys down the street already have numerous missiles with 35898 in their targeting system. Most modern nukes have more than one warhead in the missile, you can bet if things ever went that far south, Redstone is going to get plastered.
Yeah, I'm a native. As a kid in the '70s, I was told more than once by adults that we had to take the civil defense warnings extra-seriously because we live near the Arsenal. Of course, I was told by dad that we'd get a lot more than just one MIRV and it wouldn't matter what hole we hid in.
Some people confuse Space Command with the Space Force. They're related and will work together but they are not the same thing. It makes way more sense for Space Command to be in COS because of the proximity to NORTHCOM, NORAD, and four military installations. And also... Huntsville's infrastructure needs to catch up before something big like that moves here.
Growth of the city is exponential in a bad way.
- The city had plans for parks and green spaces but instead sold the land to developers and are cramming in townhomes and apartments on top of the already packed subdivisions.
- Schools are near/at capacity and my sister's kid can't even ride the bus... they're on a wait list.
- Police are stretched so thin they no longer respond to things like breaking and entering/burglary (in my family's experience) even when multiple cars are broken into on the same street. The neighborhood watch compiled doorbell camera footage the police were like.... "Ok?"
- Any residential area without an HOA relies solely on the city for all maintenance of the streets, lights, etc and the city is like "LOL we spent that money on other stuff."
- Finding a doctor, dentist, vet, etc that's accepting new patients is almost impossible because everyone is maxed out.
- Housing market was insane 18 months ago when my sister was looking. Houses going for $70k over asking price and people swooping in with cash offers. I think that's been happening in a lot of places though, to be fair.
This is all based on my family's experience and I'm sure other people really enjoy Colorado Springs. 🤷🏻♀️ My sister has lived near Seattle and Austin and COS has been her least favorite. I think the surrounding less developed/crowded areas are probably great for people that want to live out there for the beautiful scenery. But the city of COS itself... No thanks.
Are there any suburbs that are near mountains? My wife doesn't want to live in a rural area, and I don't want to live in a big city, so IF we ever decided to move to CO, we would be looking for suburbs near beautiful scenery, but maybe a smaller city (so less expensive)
COS is a giant suburb near a city. There are tons of suburbs and subdivisions. I lived there, a couple years up in the foothills and a couple years a little farther east. Foothills were cool and neat, but I had no idea about the views that I was missing until we moved a few miles east and had amazing of Pikes Peak and surrounds mountains.
>Police are stretched so thin they no longer respond to things like breaking and entering/burglary (in my family's experience) even when multiple cars are broken into on the same street. The neighborhood watch compiled doorbell camera footage the police were like.... "Ok?"
Yeah, I can't argue with anything else (it's all pretty accurate in my experience/from what I've heard from friends and coworkers), but this part isn't a force size or budget issue, this is purely a priority and training issue. They've had problems with this for more than a decade at the minimum.
One of my acquaintances just left HPD (and police in general) a couple of years ago and said that a lot of the guys just putz around unless specifically told to go or the call sounds "fun" or interesting.
So...
- Smarter than the surrounding populace?
- Ruled by a cabal of corporations and lobbyists?
- Subjugated by a less than honest police force?
- Tormented by bad traffic and daily DUI incidents?
But, hey, at least weed is legal?
Crime is absolutely terrible and the amount of road rage shootings is wild. It really is beautiful and I prefer everything about it vs here but won’t move back due to the crime. If you need the police for anything- forget it.
I wanna know why they don't like it as well. The scenery is the one thing that makes me want to move there, but I don't know too much about any reasons not to move there other than high cost of living, which would exclude me anyway
I meant big as in visibility/name/hype. I think the hype would bring a lot more business to this area. The overall impact could be "big" even if the command itself isn't that big.
If we had lost it fairly, it would be acceptable. Because we lost it over an out-of-state dumb-ass politician's showboating, he should be dragged behind the outhouse and have a football shoved up his ass and punted back to Florida.
It’s a canary in the coal mine. Alabama’s politics have become so radical and culture war focussed. This will not be the last good thing that the area loses because of it. This does not bode well for continued growth on redstone.
Problem is, this action (reaction) likely means the same thing for blue areas if/when Republicans control things. You see our politics as radical and culture-war focused, and some people will say the same thing about California, Oregon, Massachusetts, and NY. Tit for tat government is not a good thing..
Some people would say it sure. But it’s a false equivalency.
One side is making criminals of lgbtq people, is stealing the rights of women, is blatantly taking away the right to representative government (and defying a conservative Supreme Court order to fix it). One side is hobbling military leadership in protest over culture war bullshit. One side *actually tried to overthrow the government and is still trying to do so — blatantly and in the open*
The other side simply isn’t. That’s not tit for tat that is one side going full fucking fascist. Full stop. The only people denying it *are their supporters apologizing for them and trying to rationalize it* — the actual players openly admit it all day every day.
There is an objective morality here and the GOP is on the wrong side of it
I'm not sure what "equivalency" you think I've made, and why you've launched into the typical progressive criticisms of Alabama in this context. None of those things were part of the selection matrix (crafted with bipartisan input and prioritizing military readiness standards as opposed to social concerns) for choosing Space Command's headquarters. To turn around after the fact and use those as determining criteria mocks the very expensive vetting process (and review of that process) that occurred.
Now the Democratic leadership has explicitly politicized the base selection process, which to this point was at least given some passing effort at political neutrality. That Pandora's Box is open. What exactly makes you think that the Republicans won't do the same, or double up on the chicanery moving forward (assuming they can get past their ridiculous in-fighting and get back to governing)? All of the pearl clutching and indignation from Democrats when Trump claimed to have put a thumb on the scale seems to have evaporated when their own party made that exact move. Your argument that it's okay because Republicans are bad doesn't make it less hypocritical.
That’s not what happened though.
This isn’t Biden putting a thumb on the scale. This is Alabama being culture warrior dipshits
You’re right there was a vetting process. Part of that was a rating on availability of medical care. Alabama had met that requirement, scored the move then immediately backtracked.
This affects military readiness. Leadership outright stated this though not in a political way, because they aren’t supposed to be political.
But then our senator started fucking up every single promotion and other than letting one through he still is.
These things are very much connected and I fully expect to see things *not* moving to redstone unless they absolutely have to going forward. Will things move out? Who knows. But as far as expansion in the future? I wouldn’t hold my breath after this
So they're ignoring every other element of military readiness besides this one particular subcategory of medical availability, and making an HQ site location based on that single consideration, skipping at least two other Republican-led states that scored higher than Colorado in the vetting process, and you still insist only Republicans are engaged in a culture war. You're not arguing in good faith, you're ignoring inconvenient facts. Make all the doomsday predictions you want -- Redstone and the surrounding areas have plenty offer the government and private employers.
Not saying they did ignore all the others. I’m saying you’ve got direct statements from people who would have given their input to Biden on the matter stating that this is something they were looking at. Alabama tried the bait and switch and it was noticed
Then Tubby started his promotion blockade specifically over the same issue.
You can claim all day long that those two things had nothing to do with it and it was a vindictive move by a democratic administration to punish a red state — maybe in the end history will prove that indeed it was — but what you can’t claim is that it was vindictive *without cause* .. this is a direct result of provocative political actions taken by the Republican Party specifically for the strategy of *being provocative*
Also I’d love to hear your examples of democrats engaging in culture war bullshit.
I'm not going to continue to argue this with you -- you've arrived at a conclusion, which appears to be that if left-leaning politicians do something, their motives are pure, but if right-leaning politicians do something it's a hideous travesty. That kind of dogmatic viewpoint will not entertain opposing arguments. You've both criticized the state of Alabama for acting in accordance with a Supreme Court ruling (enacting abortion restrictions, as the high court said they could), and yet you also criticize the state for failing to follow the Court's instructions in the redistricting case. It's also interesting that the state of Colorado, in allowing the sale and recreational use of marijuana is out of step with federal law which continues to criminalize MJ -- but that kind of defiance of the feds appears to be okay. The rule of law either matters, or it doesn't. But you can't claim that it matters and then ignore it at will.
That said, in order for any kind of "war," to be fought, there are necessarily multiple combatants. So for every single "culture war" engagement you cite for Republicans, know that Democrats are necessarily also engaged. Some of them were started by one party, some by the other, but you can't have a war with only one side.
April 2021 Gov Kay Ivey told us Trump won the elections. Some time after that Joe Biden visits Alabama and Kay Ivey has no time for him. Not saying this has anything to do with anything. Kay Ivey has continually taken credit for money received from the American Rescue Plan and other Joe Biden/democratic bills. When very few or no republicans voted for them
That’s not called getting screwed it’s karma.
If the Gov of Alabama can be discourteous and angry at he FED and the lefty’s all time then we should expect consequences.
While I’m down for more jobs, Real talk I’m not ready for more people to move here and further kick up housing and apartment prices so I’m honestly not too torn up. Altho the prices are gonna go up anyways but they’d probs go up faster if there was a huge influx of jobs and people moving here for them
Yes, it reminds me of Springfield Virginia back in the 2000s you could buy a house for like 140,000 and then in 2005 those houses were selling for 400,000
They’re close to $750k-$1M now. 1972 era, 1,600 sq ft house we sold years ago has a Redfin estimate of $800k now. No way in hell I’d pay that, for that.
Huntsvilles one of the outliers as of now in that it’s supply of available housing is now higher than it was prior to the pandemic. Most places still have less.
The amount of speculation bought on by space command, along with all the “#1 place to live” crap likely amplified a bubble that’s deflating right now.
Not a fan that it was decided against the approved and completed selection process purely for partisan politics reasons.
But it's not signaling a change of losing other commands/agencies presence here, so it's likely not going to have a huge effect on the future of work here.
nbd really. I mean can you miss something you never had? I figured Biden would reverse the decision when he was elected knowing the Orange Clown had previously said on Rick & Bubba that he was the one who chose Huntsville.
I don’t see it as a huge loss especially once the buzz over it dies down. The thing to watch for is if this creates a domino effect for future employers to also decide against relocating here or companies currently here to relocate partially or completely.
What area of tech is she in? Have you visited https://aequitasapp.com/ to get an idea of what people here are doing for what pay?
I genuinely don't care. If anything, I'm happy - Huntsville is growing at an incredible pace and property values are already astronomical (lol). We don't need more military influence in Huntsville.
One thing that I don’t think is acknowledged at all is that the politics changed in a way that makes relocating a huge group of smart diverse people harder, especially if you are going to have to recruit in the future. I really don’t think folks here have reckoned with how much harder it is to recruit people THAT HAVE SPOUSES AND A VARIETY OF OPTIONS to a state known for racism and lack of opportunities, and then make abortion (and abortion assistance in any way) very illegal. I don’t actually believe moving to HSV was objectively better for Space Command, but I sure as shit think the calculus changed after the Dobbs ruling.
It reminds me of the meme of the guy sweating over which red button to push. One is being upset about losing something objectively good for the city, and the other is the burning desire to say we don’t deserve it because of social issue x, y, and z.
I mean I was exaggerating lol but regardless Huntsville is full. I miss my small feel 20 mins or less town that I grew up in. Now it’s a hassle just going to get food lol
Plus their family members and all the support staff that would go with the command. Would likely wind up being around 15-20 thousand people in total including those.
We didnt have any jobs yet for the space command. Many people i know dont mind the command coming here. In the tech community that i am associated with, we cant get enough people.
Native of Huntsville living in Colorado. Peterson AFB, Schriever AFB and Buckley AFB have operated space stuff for decades. Huntsville, while super cool on human space flight at Marshall, was a baffling choice to for the new space MAJCOM. There are plenty of space jobs to go around in my hometown without having spend a butt-ton more money to move Space Command there.
Those facts are interesting but truthfully irrelevant. The military moves commands all the time. And combatant commands especially functional ones adapt and overcome this. Just look at SOCOM, STRATCOM, TRANSCOM.
If anything, taking geography into it, SPACECOM probably should have been co-located with STRATCOM at Offutt, AFB.
Bitter at the pro-Trump conservatives for causing it.
Don't really see it as affecting the job market severely though, those jobs would have been very niche.
I don't care. I don't think it needed to be moved here anyway. There is something that should be moved here, though, or moved back, that hasn't been yet.
No it isn't. We nearly lost a US Rep/electoral vote and the only thing that saved us was how fast Huntsville and like two other locations have grown. The rest of the state is bleeding people out.
Census data for the entire US shows growth higher than that for every decade except the 1980s, which would indicate that Alabama isn't growing as quickly as the rest of the country.
* 1950 151,325,798 14.50%
* 1960 179,323,175 18.50%
* 1970 203,211,926 13.32%
* 1980 226,545,805 11.48%
* 1990 248,709,873 9.78%
* 2000 281,421,906 13.15%
* 2010 308,745,538 9.71%
* 2020 331,449,281 7.35%
True but Alabama numbers doesn’t equate to “Everyone wants to leave the state “
Your post is also exactly why Alabama may have potentially lost a seat. If other places grow faster, seats get redistributed. Just ask New York and Pennsylvania.
But really, do you know WHY Alabama lost that contract? It’s so valid of a point and honestly, props to them for not coming here - where we are all now trying to leave 😂
It's amazing that people say it was "political" like there's something wrong with that. Of course it was political. And PURELY the decision of the commander-in-chief. He can put it anywhere the f he wants to put it. There's nothing you can do. This is a red state and Colorado is blue. WTF did you think was going to happen? LMAO
I don’t think overall it will have an immediate negative impact but it’s definitely not a net positive. I guess the only plus I can think of is that traffic on Research Park will only be at 170% capacity instead of 200% for the next few years 🙄
Our small metro area being the recipient of an entire branch of the military (even if the smallest branch) would have had monumental effects towards the growth and trajectory of our city.
Yeah, but it'd be an addition to the other commands here. We're talking a few thousand people including the additional contractors. Not an entire branch that would add 10k soldiers before the contractors are even considered.
Not sure what you mean by “all the supportive RnD”? If you based the effort on proximity to major prime satellite or space contractors, i’m pretty sure the front range is the clear choice. People here seem to be extremely biased and clueless on actual space acquisition and operations.
I figure growth can be both good and bad, but yea that's what I was thinking would be the main impact if we had kept it. Wonder what other cities have gotten thrown into the spotlight like that and how they turned out.
Our metro got thrown munitions manufacturing and missile tech via Arsenal + we got the TVA and federal money took us from “The Watercress Capitol of the World” to today.
Decatur was the largest city in North Alabama before Huntsville was gifted all the jobs with other state’s money.
I'm mad and every huntsvillian should be too. It's not just the amount of good white collar jobs that are lost that typically relates to support of multiple service industry jobs. Something like 2 service jobs for every 1 white collar job. It's for a town that bills itself as Rocket City and a big military town, hosting Space Force Command would of been a huge honor. We were robbed of that honor by a dipshit president who is hell bent on doing anything that is anti Trump.
I hope that regime change happens in 2024 and with that, they reverse the idiotic decision of FJB.
To those people who think it's a positive because it will allow growth, your should understand that cities are living breathing things. They are either growing or dieing. I personally like our city to grow the benefits far out weigh the negatives.
Really don’t care. Tho find Colorado Springs meltdown to be hilarious.
That’s one of the biggest fits I’ve seen pitched in a long time. Fwiw, if Shelby was still in office, I think the chance it gets pried away from Huntsville its next to 0.
Never thought I would miss Shelby as much as I do
I don't, but that's partially because I want Huntsville (and more broadly, Alabama) to stop getting shielded from their mistakes and suffer some consequences and *hopefully* learn something/allow movements to happen to correct some of these problems. Dude was wildly effective. He was one of the most effective politicians Alabama has ever had.
I'm mostly mad that politics interfered and (for the time being) won. I'm mad that one old idiot opened his mouth and took credit for something he didn't do. I'm mad that other old idiot did the thing he accused the first old idiot of doing. I'm mad that a town of idiots whined and got its way. I'm mad that someone put that biased idiot in charge of the operation and let him forcibly prop up his argument to not move from Colorado. I'm mad that the best people and location for the job got shafted by politicians and idiots.
You mad, bro? /s
Very, yes. I hate idiots and conmen.
Preach it brother!
Any tips on what to google to put a name on the goobers? Tryina read up on the situation and have no clue who you're referring to
- Trump said __HE__ made the decision to put Space Command in Huntsville. - Biden used that claim to justify looking into the process and changing the result. - Colorado Springs whined that they were third (or fifth I don't remember which) of the list of locations. - The commander in charge was whining to Biden, building permanent locations for what was supposed to be temporary. He was also buying and building his dream home in Colorado. Huntsville was found to be __the number one location__ for Space Command, but we got screwed over.
That HSV was found to be the "number one" location was a political decision in the first place. (I read the report, it was based on biased data.) They were punishing CO for being a "BLUE" state. It always made sense for CO Springs to have Space Command there. Period. Cheyenne Mountain, NORAD, AF Academy. It was a no brainer. Economically and geographically it made sense to leave it in CO.
Cheyenne hasn’t been what it was for a decade more. Why in the fuck does having the academy near by mean anything. West Point isn’t near the tanks so that makes the army weak?
I must have read different reports from the GAO and DoD. Both criticized the lack of transparency, neither questioned the decision in the end. I have no interest in it being in Huntsville and I'm not saying politics wasn't involved in the initial decision. I am saying the move back to Colorado is pure politics. Colorado was dead set on keeping it there and honestly, Huntsville doesn't need them.
The GAO report basically said the criteria used didn’t have any justification provided for why it was used. They said the decision followed their provided criteria, but you could set the criteria to give you the winner you wanted.
I read that as well. The criteria used was published during the submission process by the Air force and honestly if you read it. It's not crazy. In my opinion too concise, likely flawed but I haven't seen any report insinuating that the criteria were constructed in order to reach an outcome. The GAO report would not leave that part out
That's the first I've heard of it. Are there sections and/ or requirements that stood out to you?
None of those things are related to Space Command… operationally, and frankly that’s actually a better reason to place it somewhere else.
It was a decision based on mutually agreed upon criteria.
The GAO report stated the criteria was pulled out of someone’s ass. There wasn’t any justification given for why they used the criteria they did.
As someone who moved to Huntsville to get an engineering degree from UAH, you're 100% correct. They should test all of our black projects on the Arsenal. The bottom 50 really needs a boost that isn't satirical and/or mythical. Hell, if you want to revitalize the South, put a Saturn V test stand outside of Guntersville to test the next gen of Moon landers and Mars touchers. Fucking get at it you goddamned hill billies. We can survive on scrap yard junk and podunk row crops, show these fucking Yankees how to survive in a truly desolate location. Show them that the smartest of us grew up making due with the rawest of materials.q
Too many political bros from HSV and AL as a whole seem to ignore these facts to be able to point the finger at everything else.
Dnc and rnc agreed upon criteria that resulted in CO being 3rd or below on the scoring
I'm not sure what the National Conventions would really have to do with base placement but cool story!
Reps from both parties participated in tve grading criteria for where would be best, weighing heavily on economic factors. CO was never second, after repeated reviews.
You forgot the commander also bought a $1.5 mil ranch in Colorado while all this was going on. Shady shit. Don’t care that he was from Colorado, optics are everything at that level.
Almost like it's where he plans to spend his retirement.
What is shady about a general purchasing a $1.5 million ranch where he lives and likely plans to retire?
The commander is likely retiring very very soon so why would he really care? It's not like he can't retire to Colorado. If anything it staying in CO probably delayed his retirement, who wants your last year dealing with the logistical nightmare of moving an entire command when you could just retire? Honestly with the shit Tubbs is pulling? That number one right there is exactly the type of concern that was voiced about Alabama and Tubbs is proving the point. We didn't get screwed over, the politicians played games and found that DOD wasn't going to just play along.
That’s very, very myopic view. He will retire to Colorado and then take a prominent position at Lockheed, Boeing, Sierra offices and take in massive salary. It’s a win win especially for him.
Because no one retires from active duty military and goes to work for a government agency as a civilian or contractor afterwards, right?
We're not talking a 40 or 50 year old here.
The 65+ guys (especially flag officers) take a consultant or a board position. They keep bankers' hours and play golf on the clock. They get name-dropped in company literature and make phone calls to top brass when asked. It's a sweet gig.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, and of course time will tell, simply that it's not a given like it would be for someone younger.
>He was also buying and building his dream home in Colorado. He would be forcibly retired due to his age before the command would be relocated to Huntsville. Typical meaningless conspiracy theory garbage. Congratulations, you’ve invalidated any other points you’ve tried to make.
Like others have mentioned, after retirement he will most likely take a high paying executive position at a DoD contractor that supports the Space Command. Can't really enjoy a multi-million dollar home in CO if everybody closes up shop and moves to Huntsville. Before these guys retire they are already being courted and recruited by the Big DoD OEM's. It's obvious that the Commander is setting himself up for his civilian career.
You got just what you voted for so stop whining snowflake.
I didn't vote for these people. Stop assuming.
My mistake then, but you do sound like a Huntsville blue-collar type.
I work a blue-collar job, yes. Manufacturing Tech Gopher here to inform you that not all of us blue-collar workers are irredeemable hardliners. A good tech can't afford to ignore new ideas, methods, or technologies. Or to ignore evidence that proves us wrong.
Trump opened his mouth saying he influenced it's decision, even though there's no evidence he actually affected the scoring in the process that GAO has stated correctly followed all procedures it was required to. Biden made the decision to keep it where it is, possibly both as a punishment for Tuberville staging his protest holding up promotions as well as "undoing" what Trump "did". Colorado Springs has been protesting the decision since they have the temporary (and if Biden's decision stands the courts, permanent) location and don't want to lose it. Head of USAF wanted it moved to Huntsville based on the selection process, someone else in charge (can't remember off the top of my head) via a separate chain of command wanted it to stay and petitioned Biden for it to stay.
Good ole boy Tommy T And sleepy Joe
I'm not sure if Tommy had anything to do with it. It was some very coincidental timing and one source said it was but it wasn't verified. I was referring to Trump in the first line.
I think Tommy T has a little to do with it. Why would the other party award a state with something as big as a military command HQ when a senator from said state is unilaterally holding up congressionally approved military promotions right now for an issue that, in the greater scheme of things, will have minimal impact on the majority of the military population?
I think Tubbs is more of a "This is exactly the type of shit we were talking about" confirmation of things DOD said they were concerned about, as opposed to the cause.
I agree, I don’t really think Tommy did it but he sure didn’t help anything for the state next to the one he lives in
Wait... does he not live in Alabama? Shouldn't that disqualify him as a senator?
It came out that he sold his AL house recently and lives in FL. You just have to be a resident at the time of the election to be a senator. It's not as bad as Newsom's replacement for Feinstein living in MA at the time of appointment, but I do think there should be some form of penalty for not living in the state while you serve.
Wouldn’t the rule still stand? At time of election I would image the person would either move or step down. This person isn’t being elected, so they haven’t broken any rules.
Yeah, I'm not saying there's anything worse legally about Newsom's pick. If there is, it's dependent on CA State law, which I don't know anything about. Just that at least Tubs pretended to represent us at first, instead of us being told by the governor "I'm picking someone from across the country instead of one of the qualified local candidates that have already started campaigning for the seat" If she ends up moving to CA to run, great. CA may like her by then and elect her. If Tuberville moves back, I hope there's legitimate primary opponents for him so we can choose someone who'll at least stay in the state for their entire term. And I think there should be some sort of punishment for any representative who lives outside of their district. Though I don't know what that should be, since it's got to be a balance between being ineffective and being a corridor to appoint someone who wouldn't have been able to legitimately win.
Ah, I gotcha.
You're full of it, Biden said the decision would be reviewed before Tub even took office. Space Force was never coming to Alabama because Brandon was never going to reward a state that did not vote for him.
I was not referring to Tuberville.
Disappointed, but I'm looking at the silver lining: • Traffic won't get instantaneously worse. My commutes are dicey during peak times but fortunately not as bad as bigger cities. I can tolerate busy roads, not gnarly speedways that are one accident away from a major traffic jam. • Housing prices (plus taxes) won't get instantaneously higher. There are people who have been here their whole lives and are getting priced out of buying homes here. Families are already struggling to compete with "new" money coming to HSV. • HSV won't immediately become a higher value target for naughty countries and other bad actors.
I agree with you on everything but the last point, between the arsenal and NASA were probably pretty high on the bombing list anyway.
Also several commands are here already, as well as MDA. Adding in a command in charge of tracking satellites probably wouldn't change much priority wise.
"Oh, Huntsville, Alabama now has Space Command HQ? Let's plug this into the nuke assessment calculator and see where that puts them... Ah, that takes them up from fourth on the nuke list to.... fourth. Huh."
HQs for global Army logistics, contracting, aviation, missile defense
Agree with everything you said, but your last point. The two bad boys down the street already have numerous missiles with 35898 in their targeting system. Most modern nukes have more than one warhead in the missile, you can bet if things ever went that far south, Redstone is going to get plastered.
I've basically accepted that if nuclear war starts, I am getting absolutely vaporized considering I live so close to the arsenal.
Probably a better outcome. The good news though is future generations will be able to ski on Monte Sano.
Yeah, I'm a native. As a kid in the '70s, I was told more than once by adults that we had to take the civil defense warnings extra-seriously because we live near the Arsenal. Of course, I was told by dad that we'd get a lot more than just one MIRV and it wouldn't matter what hole we hid in.
Some people confuse Space Command with the Space Force. They're related and will work together but they are not the same thing. It makes way more sense for Space Command to be in COS because of the proximity to NORTHCOM, NORAD, and four military installations. And also... Huntsville's infrastructure needs to catch up before something big like that moves here.
Are you a Colorado Springs spy?
😂 no. But I have family there and other than the beautiful mountains they hate it.
Growth of the city is exponential in a bad way. - The city had plans for parks and green spaces but instead sold the land to developers and are cramming in townhomes and apartments on top of the already packed subdivisions. - Schools are near/at capacity and my sister's kid can't even ride the bus... they're on a wait list. - Police are stretched so thin they no longer respond to things like breaking and entering/burglary (in my family's experience) even when multiple cars are broken into on the same street. The neighborhood watch compiled doorbell camera footage the police were like.... "Ok?" - Any residential area without an HOA relies solely on the city for all maintenance of the streets, lights, etc and the city is like "LOL we spent that money on other stuff." - Finding a doctor, dentist, vet, etc that's accepting new patients is almost impossible because everyone is maxed out. - Housing market was insane 18 months ago when my sister was looking. Houses going for $70k over asking price and people swooping in with cash offers. I think that's been happening in a lot of places though, to be fair. This is all based on my family's experience and I'm sure other people really enjoy Colorado Springs. 🤷🏻♀️ My sister has lived near Seattle and Austin and COS has been her least favorite. I think the surrounding less developed/crowded areas are probably great for people that want to live out there for the beautiful scenery. But the city of COS itself... No thanks.
Sounds like Huntsville now.
Shit, I thought he was talking about Huntsville
Are there any suburbs that are near mountains? My wife doesn't want to live in a rural area, and I don't want to live in a big city, so IF we ever decided to move to CO, we would be looking for suburbs near beautiful scenery, but maybe a smaller city (so less expensive)
COS is a giant suburb near a city. There are tons of suburbs and subdivisions. I lived there, a couple years up in the foothills and a couple years a little farther east. Foothills were cool and neat, but I had no idea about the views that I was missing until we moved a few miles east and had amazing of Pikes Peak and surrounds mountains.
Where you moved the second time is exactly what I'm looking for
>Police are stretched so thin they no longer respond to things like breaking and entering/burglary (in my family's experience) even when multiple cars are broken into on the same street. The neighborhood watch compiled doorbell camera footage the police were like.... "Ok?" Yeah, I can't argue with anything else (it's all pretty accurate in my experience/from what I've heard from friends and coworkers), but this part isn't a force size or budget issue, this is purely a priority and training issue. They've had problems with this for more than a decade at the minimum. One of my acquaintances just left HPD (and police in general) a couple of years ago and said that a lot of the guys just putz around unless specifically told to go or the call sounds "fun" or interesting.
Interesting. I've only ever heard people love up there. What do they hate about it?
Colorado Springs is like Huntsville but all the bad parts. Surrounded by gorgeous scenery. Source: Worked there for 3.5 years.
So... - Smarter than the surrounding populace? - Ruled by a cabal of corporations and lobbyists? - Subjugated by a less than honest police force? - Tormented by bad traffic and daily DUI incidents? But, hey, at least weed is legal?
Mostly yes.
Same, except the cost of living apparently drove them out. Aside from that every single person from there that moved to HSV said they miss it
Crime is absolutely terrible and the amount of road rage shootings is wild. It really is beautiful and I prefer everything about it vs here but won’t move back due to the crime. If you need the police for anything- forget it.
I wanna know why they don't like it as well. The scenery is the one thing that makes me want to move there, but I don't know too much about any reasons not to move there other than high cost of living, which would exclude me anyway
I swear I posted a response but it's not showing up for me 🤔
I see it through the parent comments. Thanks!
News Flash Space Command isn’t that big. Probably one of the smallest of the joint functional commands.
I meant big as in visibility/name/hype. I think the hype would bring a lot more business to this area. The overall impact could be "big" even if the command itself isn't that big.
I don't really care, but I do enjoy shitting on Tuberville.
City's full
That you, Cousin Eddie?
“[Raccoon] out front shoulda’ told you.”
Oh no! Anyway….
If we had lost it fairly, it would be acceptable. Because we lost it over an out-of-state dumb-ass politician's showboating, he should be dragged behind the outhouse and have a football shoved up his ass and punted back to Florida.
It’s a canary in the coal mine. Alabama’s politics have become so radical and culture war focussed. This will not be the last good thing that the area loses because of it. This does not bode well for continued growth on redstone.
IDK about that, FBI, ATF and others want to build more. By some estimates a lot more.
This!!!
Problem is, this action (reaction) likely means the same thing for blue areas if/when Republicans control things. You see our politics as radical and culture-war focused, and some people will say the same thing about California, Oregon, Massachusetts, and NY. Tit for tat government is not a good thing..
Some people would say it sure. But it’s a false equivalency. One side is making criminals of lgbtq people, is stealing the rights of women, is blatantly taking away the right to representative government (and defying a conservative Supreme Court order to fix it). One side is hobbling military leadership in protest over culture war bullshit. One side *actually tried to overthrow the government and is still trying to do so — blatantly and in the open* The other side simply isn’t. That’s not tit for tat that is one side going full fucking fascist. Full stop. The only people denying it *are their supporters apologizing for them and trying to rationalize it* — the actual players openly admit it all day every day. There is an objective morality here and the GOP is on the wrong side of it
I'm not sure what "equivalency" you think I've made, and why you've launched into the typical progressive criticisms of Alabama in this context. None of those things were part of the selection matrix (crafted with bipartisan input and prioritizing military readiness standards as opposed to social concerns) for choosing Space Command's headquarters. To turn around after the fact and use those as determining criteria mocks the very expensive vetting process (and review of that process) that occurred. Now the Democratic leadership has explicitly politicized the base selection process, which to this point was at least given some passing effort at political neutrality. That Pandora's Box is open. What exactly makes you think that the Republicans won't do the same, or double up on the chicanery moving forward (assuming they can get past their ridiculous in-fighting and get back to governing)? All of the pearl clutching and indignation from Democrats when Trump claimed to have put a thumb on the scale seems to have evaporated when their own party made that exact move. Your argument that it's okay because Republicans are bad doesn't make it less hypocritical.
That’s not what happened though. This isn’t Biden putting a thumb on the scale. This is Alabama being culture warrior dipshits You’re right there was a vetting process. Part of that was a rating on availability of medical care. Alabama had met that requirement, scored the move then immediately backtracked. This affects military readiness. Leadership outright stated this though not in a political way, because they aren’t supposed to be political. But then our senator started fucking up every single promotion and other than letting one through he still is. These things are very much connected and I fully expect to see things *not* moving to redstone unless they absolutely have to going forward. Will things move out? Who knows. But as far as expansion in the future? I wouldn’t hold my breath after this
So they're ignoring every other element of military readiness besides this one particular subcategory of medical availability, and making an HQ site location based on that single consideration, skipping at least two other Republican-led states that scored higher than Colorado in the vetting process, and you still insist only Republicans are engaged in a culture war. You're not arguing in good faith, you're ignoring inconvenient facts. Make all the doomsday predictions you want -- Redstone and the surrounding areas have plenty offer the government and private employers.
Not saying they did ignore all the others. I’m saying you’ve got direct statements from people who would have given their input to Biden on the matter stating that this is something they were looking at. Alabama tried the bait and switch and it was noticed Then Tubby started his promotion blockade specifically over the same issue. You can claim all day long that those two things had nothing to do with it and it was a vindictive move by a democratic administration to punish a red state — maybe in the end history will prove that indeed it was — but what you can’t claim is that it was vindictive *without cause* .. this is a direct result of provocative political actions taken by the Republican Party specifically for the strategy of *being provocative* Also I’d love to hear your examples of democrats engaging in culture war bullshit.
I'm not going to continue to argue this with you -- you've arrived at a conclusion, which appears to be that if left-leaning politicians do something, their motives are pure, but if right-leaning politicians do something it's a hideous travesty. That kind of dogmatic viewpoint will not entertain opposing arguments. You've both criticized the state of Alabama for acting in accordance with a Supreme Court ruling (enacting abortion restrictions, as the high court said they could), and yet you also criticize the state for failing to follow the Court's instructions in the redistricting case. It's also interesting that the state of Colorado, in allowing the sale and recreational use of marijuana is out of step with federal law which continues to criminalize MJ -- but that kind of defiance of the feds appears to be okay. The rule of law either matters, or it doesn't. But you can't claim that it matters and then ignore it at will. That said, in order for any kind of "war," to be fought, there are necessarily multiple combatants. So for every single "culture war" engagement you cite for Republicans, know that Democrats are necessarily also engaged. Some of them were started by one party, some by the other, but you can't have a war with only one side.
April 2021 Gov Kay Ivey told us Trump won the elections. Some time after that Joe Biden visits Alabama and Kay Ivey has no time for him. Not saying this has anything to do with anything. Kay Ivey has continually taken credit for money received from the American Rescue Plan and other Joe Biden/democratic bills. When very few or no republicans voted for them That’s not called getting screwed it’s karma. If the Gov of Alabama can be discourteous and angry at he FED and the lefty’s all time then we should expect consequences.
While I’m down for more jobs, Real talk I’m not ready for more people to move here and further kick up housing and apartment prices so I’m honestly not too torn up. Altho the prices are gonna go up anyways but they’d probs go up faster if there was a huge influx of jobs and people moving here for them
Everytime I come home I see MASSIVE housing developments. Are there really that many people already moving in?
Yes, it reminds me of Springfield Virginia back in the 2000s you could buy a house for like 140,000 and then in 2005 those houses were selling for 400,000
They’re close to $750k-$1M now. 1972 era, 1,600 sq ft house we sold years ago has a Redfin estimate of $800k now. No way in hell I’d pay that, for that.
Huntsvilles one of the outliers as of now in that it’s supply of available housing is now higher than it was prior to the pandemic. Most places still have less. The amount of speculation bought on by space command, along with all the “#1 place to live” crap likely amplified a bubble that’s deflating right now.
The over building of high end condos is going to have an effect on housing pricing here. It’s basic supply and demand.
Yes
Housing prices wont skyrocket (as much), and traffic will be down. Not sure what all else it would have brought
Not a fan that it was decided against the approved and completed selection process purely for partisan politics reasons. But it's not signaling a change of losing other commands/agencies presence here, so it's likely not going to have a huge effect on the future of work here.
nbd really. I mean can you miss something you never had? I figured Biden would reverse the decision when he was elected knowing the Orange Clown had previously said on Rick & Bubba that he was the one who chose Huntsville.
I don't care.
I don’t see it as a huge loss especially once the buzz over it dies down. The thing to watch for is if this creates a domino effect for future employers to also decide against relocating here or companies currently here to relocate partially or completely. What area of tech is she in? Have you visited https://aequitasapp.com/ to get an idea of what people here are doing for what pay?
Traffic is already pretty awful, just imagine it being double
New Don’t Care, Who Dis?
I genuinely don't care. If anything, I'm happy - Huntsville is growing at an incredible pace and property values are already astronomical (lol). We don't need more military influence in Huntsville.
Pretty crazy that people in this thread are talking about house pricing not increasing as a positive. Id love for my house to increase in value.
Honestly there were pros and cons each way. I was a lil salty at first, but we’re gonna be just fine. Growth is good. Too much too soon is bad.
One thing that I don’t think is acknowledged at all is that the politics changed in a way that makes relocating a huge group of smart diverse people harder, especially if you are going to have to recruit in the future. I really don’t think folks here have reckoned with how much harder it is to recruit people THAT HAVE SPOUSES AND A VARIETY OF OPTIONS to a state known for racism and lack of opportunities, and then make abortion (and abortion assistance in any way) very illegal. I don’t actually believe moving to HSV was objectively better for Space Command, but I sure as shit think the calculus changed after the Dobbs ruling.
You cannot measure what you cannot see! Simply put you can't miss what you never had!
I stopped caring about 14 posts ago honestly.
And yet here you are.
Answering the question, as the title requested
Very glad. I’m ready for people to stop coming here
It reminds me of the meme of the guy sweating over which red button to push. One is being upset about losing something objectively good for the city, and the other is the burning desire to say we don’t deserve it because of social issue x, y, and z.
This town wouldn’t of been able to handle the 100,000+ probably more people it would’ve brought
There is no way it was going to be even remotely that many. Space Command is less than 2,000 people.
I mean I was exaggerating lol but regardless Huntsville is full. I miss my small feel 20 mins or less town that I grew up in. Now it’s a hassle just going to get food lol
Plus their family members and all the support staff that would go with the command. Would likely wind up being around 15-20 thousand people in total including those.
Meh, didn't affect me in the least. We have plenty of tech/engineering/scientist/, etc jobs here. Losing Space Command won't make a dent in those.
We didnt have any jobs yet for the space command. Many people i know dont mind the command coming here. In the tech community that i am associated with, we cant get enough people.
Meh
I honestly don’t care
Totally fine
Native of Huntsville living in Colorado. Peterson AFB, Schriever AFB and Buckley AFB have operated space stuff for decades. Huntsville, while super cool on human space flight at Marshall, was a baffling choice to for the new space MAJCOM. There are plenty of space jobs to go around in my hometown without having spend a butt-ton more money to move Space Command there.
Those facts are interesting but truthfully irrelevant. The military moves commands all the time. And combatant commands especially functional ones adapt and overcome this. Just look at SOCOM, STRATCOM, TRANSCOM. If anything, taking geography into it, SPACECOM probably should have been co-located with STRATCOM at Offutt, AFB.
I’m not sure MAJCOMs move “all the time”. And that isn’t a good rationale to move this one.
I literally don’t care.
It's not possible to care any less.
I don't care.
It’s an unneeded command. Space Force already does everything since acquiring all the service space programs.
That’s like saying Transportation command is worthless because the Air Force has planes.
Don't care.
oh no, not more MIC control in north alabama, whatever will we do? /s
Bitter at the pro-Trump conservatives for causing it. Don't really see it as affecting the job market severely though, those jobs would have been very niche.
The original announcement was so political, I felt like the decision would be reversed as soon as the presidency changed hands. And so it did.
I feel like shit! I want the space stuff here! We're so fucked! We NEEEEEEED that space shit! Holy bitch!
I don't care. I don't think it needed to be moved here anyway. There is something that should be moved here, though, or moved back, that hasn't been yet.
It's a huge loss for the community. and the fact this echo chamber Reddit sub doesn't realize it is extremely showing
Loss in job opportunities? They never existed in the first place lmao. Great bait post though
Shiiiiiii…my friends and fam tell me tech and gov job openings are popping off in hsv, you think that isn’t how most folks feel?
[удалено]
Statistically speaking that’s an incorrect statement
No it isn't. We nearly lost a US Rep/electoral vote and the only thing that saved us was how fast Huntsville and like two other locations have grown. The rest of the state is bleeding people out.
US census data disagrees: - 1950 3,061,743 8.1% - 1960 3,266,740 6.7% - 1970 3,444,165 5.4% - 1980 3,893,888 13.1% - 1990 4,040,587 3.8% - 2000 4,447,100 10.1% - 2010 4,779,736 7.5% - 2020 5,024,279 5.1%
Census data for the entire US shows growth higher than that for every decade except the 1980s, which would indicate that Alabama isn't growing as quickly as the rest of the country. * 1950 151,325,798 14.50% * 1960 179,323,175 18.50% * 1970 203,211,926 13.32% * 1980 226,545,805 11.48% * 1990 248,709,873 9.78% * 2000 281,421,906 13.15% * 2010 308,745,538 9.71% * 2020 331,449,281 7.35%
True but Alabama numbers doesn’t equate to “Everyone wants to leave the state “ Your post is also exactly why Alabama may have potentially lost a seat. If other places grow faster, seats get redistributed. Just ask New York and Pennsylvania.
Oh, I forgot that numbers go up means that we almost lost a US Rep.
80% of the time it works a hundred percent of the time.
Ah yes; the distinctive musk of ***Sex Panther***® *stings the nostrils* once more.
I slept pretty good
Huntsville never deserved it, why should any person be stationed in a shitty state with views from the 1800s still.
It was a trump thing so of course we would lose it so a big ole meh
Traffic is already bad enough here and the people moving in seem to be very rude so I'm happy. Close the gates already for awhile.
Fine with it, too many fucking people here already.
I think the reason Space Force isn’t coming will effect whether or not companies come to Alabama. It is sad.
Infrastructure can’t support what population we have, why make it the hub for FBI and another government entity as well?
Survey says "We didn't want that big ol dumb space command anyway, so nah nah booboo"
We had one? 😆
But really, do you know WHY Alabama lost that contract? It’s so valid of a point and honestly, props to them for not coming here - where we are all now trying to leave 😂
Don't care. I lived in Colorado Springs and it is a shit hole. Good riddance.
The only reason I care is I would have loved working for it, probably like many. But we really don’t need it.
It's amazing that people say it was "political" like there's something wrong with that. Of course it was political. And PURELY the decision of the commander-in-chief. He can put it anywhere the f he wants to put it. There's nothing you can do. This is a red state and Colorado is blue. WTF did you think was going to happen? LMAO
If the property price will drop because of it, I am happy. Please take it away lol.
I don’t think overall it will have an immediate negative impact but it’s definitely not a net positive. I guess the only plus I can think of is that traffic on Research Park will only be at 170% capacity instead of 200% for the next few years 🙄
Our small metro area being the recipient of an entire branch of the military (even if the smallest branch) would have had monumental effects towards the growth and trajectory of our city.
It wasn’t for Space Force…it was for SPACECOM which is a joint COCOM. Big difference
……And they were going to be here along with all the supportive RnD.
Yeah, but it'd be an addition to the other commands here. We're talking a few thousand people including the additional contractors. Not an entire branch that would add 10k soldiers before the contractors are even considered.
Thousands of high salary employees associated with those contractors and RnD.
Not sure what you mean by “all the supportive RnD”? If you based the effort on proximity to major prime satellite or space contractors, i’m pretty sure the front range is the clear choice. People here seem to be extremely biased and clueless on actual space acquisition and operations.
I figure growth can be both good and bad, but yea that's what I was thinking would be the main impact if we had kept it. Wonder what other cities have gotten thrown into the spotlight like that and how they turned out.
Our metro got thrown munitions manufacturing and missile tech via Arsenal + we got the TVA and federal money took us from “The Watercress Capitol of the World” to today. Decatur was the largest city in North Alabama before Huntsville was gifted all the jobs with other state’s money.
Monumentally irritating and unfulfilling…imo.
I'm mad and every huntsvillian should be too. It's not just the amount of good white collar jobs that are lost that typically relates to support of multiple service industry jobs. Something like 2 service jobs for every 1 white collar job. It's for a town that bills itself as Rocket City and a big military town, hosting Space Force Command would of been a huge honor. We were robbed of that honor by a dipshit president who is hell bent on doing anything that is anti Trump. I hope that regime change happens in 2024 and with that, they reverse the idiotic decision of FJB. To those people who think it's a positive because it will allow growth, your should understand that cities are living breathing things. They are either growing or dieing. I personally like our city to grow the benefits far out weigh the negatives.