politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
This makes sense, from both a manpower and long term stance.
First, Colorado is going to survive climate change much better than Alabama will. Not having to do PT at 2am because that's the only time it's cool enough is kinda nice.
Second, since Alabama keeps rejecting and making things illegal that the majority of Americans want (e.g. Abortion, porn), moving there doesn't make sense for the military. When you have to ship people to other states for medical care, it's better to just build in other states in the first place.
Not to mention the massive civilian/contractor force that supports it. That’s a bunch of highly educated people that probably don’t want to live in Alabama either.
You’ve never been to Huntsville. Alabama has a surprisingly large number or rocket scientists living there.
Yeah, but you're still in Alabama.
Luckily, I’m not. But I did find Huntsville to be surprising—both for the beautiful landscape and clear uptick in IQ points compared to the rest of the state. Great German food—bet you can’t guess why.
As the story goes, the ex-nazi scientists that the US brought in to work on rockets were first stationed in Houston, but they all hated the heat. They requested a transfer to Huntsville because the landscape was similar to the German countryside.
And that is how the US government allowed nazis to decide the primary location for NASA rocket research, which also happened to be in the same state as the headquarters for the KKK. Clearly, nothing could go wrong.
Fascinating.
Yes, and Huntsville is very pleasant itself because of this. But they all assure me that you have only to drive a half hour out of Huntsville to know for certain that you are in Alabama. (The thank-god-for-Mississippi Alabama, that Alabama).
This is going to matter to some aerospace engineers and particularly the ones with spouses and children.
I grew up in Alabama but live in Colorado now. If I were forced to live somewhere in Alabama, Huntsville would be at/near the top of my list. But it's still Alabama, and I'd still waaay rather live in Colorado. It obviously doesn't keep everyone away, and there's a lot of inertia there with all the existing space/rocket/defense industry in Huntsville. But is Space Command even going to be hiring heavily in the engineering fields that are concentrated in Huntsville? (That's a real question- I'd guess they're not hiring primarily engineers that they'd find in Huntsville, but I don't know.)
Historically fo sho.
I wonder how long that'll remain. If you consider, the vast majority of that development @ Huntsville is legacy support or done. New rockets are coming from private companies / conglomerates, sure, Huntsville built the saturn 5, but they aren't building SpaceX or Lockheed or Rocketjet Aerodyne's babies.
IMHO, Huntsville was awesome, but it's time as a giant NASA player is over. We can get rockets elsewhere.
They’ve been transitioning that brainpower into other types of government work up there. The FBI recently opened a large office, and there is still a lot of military development that is going on, even if the space program has wound down.
They still have a rocket on every corner and every school is named after an astronaut though, so it is clearly a deep part of the local culture. Even the baseball team (the trash pandas) has a logo of a raccoon riding a trash can rocket.
Aerojet moved their operations from Sacramento to Huntsville. Blue Origin is moving their manufacturing of their BE-4 engines for New Glenn and Vulcan from Kent to Huntsville. Saying that Huntsville is no longer a major aerospace hub for private companies is off the mark.
I don't think anybody wants to live in Alabama.
I’ve found that most of the Alabama residents I’ve met are somewhat afraid of other (especially non southern) states and they couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.