The Loss of Space Command Headquarters Brings an Alabama City Down to Earth | Space

Even as a child in the 1960s, Jan Davis felt a twinge of resentment about her hometown, Huntsville, Ala., being overlooked.

Rocket tests rattled windows and doors across town, and everyone seemed to have a familial connection to the work of building the rockets that powered NASA’s mission to put a man on the moon. Still, it was mission control in Houston and Cape Canaveral in Florida that became worldwide symbols of the space race.

So when Ms. Davis drove with her family to watch the Apollo 11 launch, she made a sign for their car: “Look out moon, here comes Huntsville.”

Ms. Davis would take herself to space — on three shuttle missions as a NASA astronaut — while the city worked to be even more central to the aerospace and military industry. It attracted legions of scientists, defense contractors and federal investment. And in the final days of the Trump administration, Huntsville was selected as the permanent home of the United States Space Command.

But this week the Pentagon announced it had reversed that call, instead keeping the headquarters in Colorado Springs. The decision left many in Huntsville smarting at being cast into the outer orbit of influence and questioning whether their city was passed over for political reasons beyond their control.

“To have our selection taken away is demoralizing,” Mayor Tommy Battle said in a statement.

Pentagon officials said keeping the headquarters in Colorado, where it has been temporarily located on a Space Force base shared with NORAD command, was a matter of maintaining military readiness and avoiding a potentially lengthy and costly move.

But some political observers saw the choice of a Democratic-controlled state both as a rejection of the hard-line conservatism in Alabama and a repudiation of its senior Republican senator, Tommy Tuberville, who has blocked hundreds of military promotions over a Pentagon policy that reimburses military personnel who travel to obtain an abortion or fertility care.

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