President reverses a Biden-era decision to keep it at temporary headquarters in Colorado Springs

President Donald Trump’s decision once again to move U.S. Space Command out of Colorado drew immediate condemnation across party lines from the state’s congressional delegation on Tuesday — and raised the specter of a legal challenge.

More than seven months after his return to office, Trump’s long-expected announcement that his administration would move the command to Alabama reversed a Biden-era decision to keep its headquarters in Colorado Springs. A military review previously had recommended the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, but the Republican president also invoked politics by saying one of the considerations was that voters in Colorado largely vote by mail.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said he was planning a legal challenge to try to stop the relocation. And in a joint statement, the state’s entire congressional delegation said the president’s decision “will directly harm our state and the nation.”

Space Command, the lawmakers stated, is “already fully operational” in Colorado Springs and relocating it “would not result in any additional operational capabilities.” The move “sets our space defense apparatus back years, wastes billions of taxpayer dollars, and hands the advantage to the converging threats of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea,” the delegation wrote.

  • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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    19 hours ago

    Quite a few years ago, I worked at an aerospace company. They decided to transfer operations from California to Alabama, and offered people transfers. Due to cost-of-living differences, that was effectively a massive raise. Uptake of the offer was under 5%, and literally none of the best engineers and managers moved, only the low performers. But the whole rationale was to get a couple cracker senators in their pocket, so I suppose talent retention didn’t matter.

    I was working on a project outside the US at the time, so I wasn’t affected until I repatriated a few years later. I walked right out the door, getting a 60% raise when I went (overseas compensation was excellent, but US base salaries were well below market). The work had been technically fascinating, but I didn’t miss the bullshit that went with it.

    • ToastedRavioli@midwest.social
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      2 days ago

      I loved the part of the presser yesterday where they asked him about it and he pretended he had no idea anyone was saying he was dead

      Like yeah, the guy whos been obsessed with twitter for years had no idea that his alleged death was the most trending topic on twitter

      • Javi@feddit.uk
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        2 days ago

        Tbf, I’d imagine trump spends all of his time on twitter writing incoherent babble, rather than reading what anyone else has to say.

  • N0t_5ure@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    This is exactly how corrupt dictators rule. They don’t give a shit about what is best for the country. Instead, they punish their “enemies” (anyone who has an issue with their corruption) and the dip into government resources to bestow favors on those friendly to them. In this case, Trump is punishing “liberal” Colorado and providing favor to friendly Alabama. What is best for the country and/or the cost of moving the command to Alabama is irrelevant.

  • asteriskeverything@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Space Command, the lawmakers stated, […] The move “sets our space defense apparatus back years, wastes billions of taxpayer dollars, and hands the advantage to the converging threats of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea,” the delegation wrote.

    Ahhh. There’s the truth.

  • Lexam@lemmy.world
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    I used to work for a Telecom company that was based out of Denver. Well Louisiana offered a big tax break to move it to their state. They had to offer people raises and bonuses to move there, and lock them into 2-3yr contracts. Once down there a buddy of mine was tasked with training new hires. They could only retain about two weeks of information. A few years later the company merged with another and the CEO of the new company said screw Louisiana and moved everything back to Denver.

        • krashmo@lemmy.world
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          What did you do there if you don’t mind me asking? Feel free to respond in DM or not at all if you’d prefer not to say. I ask because I worked there as well and I’m overly curious by nature haha

          • Serinus@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Be aware that Lemmy DMs are effectively public. There’s no encryption and they have to get federated. So if you run a server…

              • Serinus@lemmy.world
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                There’s an option in your profile for “Matrix User”, which I think is for that reason? But don’t quote me on the security of Matrix. Generally I use Signal.

          • Lexam@lemmy.world
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            Worked in Transport then out in the field as CO tech and then back to Transport. I took my ride when they moved my NOC to Atlanta. Funny enough after a few years they made Bright Speed and hired a several of us back and let them work from home instead of Atlanta. As for me, I had already moved on to bigger and better things.

      • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I see why they ended up fucking people over with price for life deals that suddenly never existed when the time came for price increases to start happening. Seems in line.

  • Ghyste@sh.itjust.works
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    There is a BIG FUCKING REASON that Space Command is in Colorado… But no, let the fucking overgrown pants-shitting toddler make these fucking moronic decisions because he’s throwing a goddamn tantrum.

    Gods I hope they slow-roll this stupid shit until Toadstool Dick is dead.

      • Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 days ago

        Also Peterson Airforce Base and Shrever. Not to mention all the R&D that goes on at the Air Force Academy with students. It’s also the central satellite hub. I think Hawaii is the next closest one.

      • Thorry@feddit.org
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        Yeah, it would be a pretty big task to move the Stargate and the entire Stargate project to another state. It makes zero sense to have Space Command be that far away from our primary access to space.

        • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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          Nah, we know they can move gates. Russia had the second gate and we had to rent it for a while if you remember.

          • Thorry@feddit.org
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            Sure you can physically move the gate. The intergalactic gate bridge proves that in spades. But there’s more to it than just the gate. It’s also all the supporting hardware. Without a DHD you need so much hardware to make it work. Then there’s all the security issues. Being inside a mountain is a huge plus when it comes to safety. Not just from a foothold situation, but also when being connected to a black hole for example. And having a failsafe device is also something easier done inside a mountain. You can destroy the entire base without basically setting off a nuke without warning in the mainland US. Possibly even destroy the base without anybody on the outside knowing about it, or with the option to say it’s an accidental collapse. Then there’s moving all the personnel, who are all stationed at that base. With other programs like NORAD being stationed there, it’s easy to hide what you are doing. This is much harder on other sites, especially to cover up the huge energy hookup needed to establish the wormhole before it can draw power from the other side.

            Bottom line it would cost probably a billion dollars or even more. That’s if a good enough site already exists, otherwise it would cost way more. And in the end be worse off in every possible way. Yeah no, you are right, that sounds exactly like a Trump move.

            • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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              Without a DHD you need so much hardware to make it work.

              Why would we care about this?

              With the BC-304 class ships (or even O’Neill-class ship), we can travel to any random gate (pick any dead planet) and pick up their DHD and take it home. The problem for infrastructure only comes if there’s no ZPM and you need grid hookup to power inter-galaxy dialing.

              I don’t think that there’s any need to worry about the supporting hardware considering the access capable with the intergalactic ships (edit to pick up any needed “real” hardware /edit)… They could even import an Atlantean gate for the automatic irising features to drop that requirement too (and should fix the black hole issue… probably? I guess we don’t know if the new Atlantean gates have the same issues). Actually I would suspect importing an Atlantean gate at all would resolve most of the problems that you’ve outlined. But it doesn’t require a whole mountain to seal a gate closed. We’ve seen that just a small amount of dirt/debris burying the gate will stop a connection from being made, and we also already know that if a connection is already active that dropping a shitton of debris on it doesn’t stop the active connection.

              We’ve also seen episodes “in the future” (alt-timeline nonsense aside) where the gate was exposed for consumer travel. Which presumes that these issues could be solved.

              God I wish the show would have continued to explore some of these other concepts before ending.

              The rest of your post… yeah moving a shit-ton of personnel sucks. But the Military does it all the time. I don’t think that the general population would notice much of anything.

              Edit: I just realized… we only see the Atlantean “iris” on Atlantis itself… It’s probable that the other gates don’t have it. They would have to retrofit/clone that functionality I suppose.

      • Ghyste@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        Yep, although Cheyenne Mountain is only part of it. I believe you got a reply with the others included.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    Following around with the military readiness of your Space Force is how you lose to a Zerg Rush.

    A military review previously had recommended the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama

    Ah yes, the one with all the Nazis.

    • smeenz@lemmy.nz
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      Are we sure this isn’t just weekend at Bernie’s? Strings holding his corpse up ?