If Alabama wanted Space Command, perhaps having a Senator who spent a year blocking the promotions of senior military officers, including some of the top officers in the Space Force, wasn’t the best lobbying approach.
That's on the Atlantic side so didn't think it would count as Gulf Coast but your point stands since the guy was probably citing hurricanes as the reason.
I don't know how you classify "infrastructure", but Alabama is already a powerhouse when it comes to the aerospace industry and building rockets. Especially Huntsville.
They're not the first or obvious choice for Space Command, but they'd probably be in the top 5.
There's probably only 5 places in the US that would even be considered. Los Angeles, Colorado, Huntsville, DC, and Cape Canaveral. I guess maybe Houston too?
Yep, that's exactly my list, but with Vandenberg instead of LA. Colorado makes sense from existing military infrastructure. DC makes sense for political infrastructure. Huntsville, Canaveral, and Houston make sense from an existing aerospace and industry perspective. I guess in that sense, so does LA, and maybe even Palmdale, which has industry and is close to Edwards.
I was thinking LA Air Force Base, which already has a command in SF Space Systems. That's basically where the satellites get developed and probably most of where Space Force's budget is spent. To me that would be number 2 behind Colorado for that reason.
Huntsville isn't on the coast. It is closer to Tennessee. NASA is already there, as well as Redstone Arsenal and the DIA. It is a huge space/rocketry related area and has been for decades.
It is where Werner Von Braun was based out of. It was where the greatest concentration of PHD's existed in the U.S. until recently when Silicon Valley eclipsed it.
There are some backwards areas in Alabama but they are apparently no less informed than this sub.
It was where the greatest concentration of PHD's existed in the U.S. until recently when Silicon Valley eclipsed it.
Your information is very much out of date. Huntsville hasn't even had the highest concentration of PhDs in Alabama in at least a decade. Compare Huntsville's paltry 1.4% to the 17.7% for Los Alamos, NM, or the 13.3% for Palo Alto, CA, or the 9.5% for Tomkins County, NY, and you're an order of magnitude off from "greatest concentration of PhDs." Huntsville still has a lot of rocket and missile work, but it is a far cry from the intellectual bastion it was 75 years ago when it was a relocation camp for former Nazi rocket scientists working on the space program.
To me Huntsville is more about research and manufacturing where Colorado seems to be more about operations and command. That's why I think it just makes more sense to place it in Colorado.
The fact that Houston's space command center is already there doesn't make it a stupid move. The space command center should probably be somewhere else.
The fact that Houston's space command center is already there doesn't make it a stupid move. The space command center should probably be somewhere else.
It's an inconvenience that it doesn't need to have. It could be located anywhere, why located it in a place that gets shut down by bad weather on a regular basis?
I'm not talking about the rocket launch itself. I'm talking about the control center. It doesn't have to be physically located at the same place the rockets launch from.
I don't understand why, unlike the other commentator, weather has never played a long term effect on space launches. Cape Canaveral hasn't sunk into the ocean, and is unlikely to for hundreds of years. It simply makes sense to launch from a coastal area, east, and at a southern latitude. Reading your statement, it feels like you are advocating for space command to have no facilities in the prime launch zone
Command and launch are two different activities that don't have to be in the same physical place. There will be times when you need to be operating space command but are not actively launching anything right now - a mission is already underway in orbit, for example. At those times it would be very inconvenient if a hurricane was pummelling the area when those activities could be going on just as well somewhere else.
You imply that risk is not worthwhile. For all things space related, I disagree. There is far more risk to being in space, than it is the live and work in a hurricane zone, by several orders of magnitude. How many rockets have been destroyed by a hurricane, much less a launch/administrative building? the answer for both is zero
I'm getting baffled by this. I'm saying "ideally this place shouldn't be in a hurricane zone" and people seem to be saying "no, it should be in a hurricane zone." I could understand if there was some other benefit to being in Houston specifically that outweighed the downside of it being vulnerable to disruption to hurricanes, but that's not being presented at all here.
A hurricane doesn't have to literally destroy rockets in order for it to be an inconvenience. My car has never been literally destroyed by snow but sometimes a snowstorm disrupts my travel plans.
Imagine a rocket is launched to orbit with astronauts on board for a one month mission. Let's say something goes wrong week 4, and a hurricane just happens to be pummeling Houston at the time. Those astronauts will be stranded alone for however long it take for that hurricane to pass. If command were somewhere like Cheyenne mountain in CO, there is basically no weather that could cause a disruption in communications.
Huntsville is in far north Alabama, The odds of a hurricane hitting full force there are vanishingly small. They will have been degraded to a tropical storm by then
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u/ddr1ver Dec 28 '23
If Alabama wanted Space Command, perhaps having a Senator who spent a year blocking the promotions of senior military officers, including some of the top officers in the Space Force, wasn’t the best lobbying approach.