Colorado

Trump’s move of SPACECOM to Alabama has little to do with national security

Alabama, Colorado, Donald Trump, military space, national security, redstone arsenal, Science, Space, us space command, US Space Force / Kelly Newman / September 3, 2025

The Pentagon says the move will save money, but acknowledges risk to military readiness.

President Donald Trump speaks to the media in the Oval Office at the White House on September 2, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that US Space Command will be relocated from Colorado to Alabama, returning to the Pentagon’s plans for the command’s headquarters from the final days of Trump’s first term in the White House.

The headquarters will move to the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. Trump made the announcement in the Oval Office, flanked by Republican members of the Alabama congressional delegation.

The move will “help America defend and dominate the high frontier,” Trump said. It also marks another twist on a contentious issue that has pitted Colorado and Alabama against one another in a fight for the right to be home to the permanent headquarters of Space Command (SPACECOM), a unified combatant command responsible for carrying out military operations in space.

Space Command is separate from the Space Force and is made up of personnel from all branches of the armed services. The Space Force, on the other hand, is charged with supplying personnel and technology for use by multiple combatant commands. The newest armed service, established in 2019 during President Trump’s first term, is part of the Department of the Air Force, which also had the authority for recommending where to base Space Command’s permanent headquarters.

“US Space Command stands ready to carry out the direction of the president following today’s announcement of Huntsville, Alabama, as the command’s permanent headquarters location,” SPACECOM wrote on its official X account.

Military officials in the first Trump administration considered potential sites in Colorado, Florida, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Texas before the Air Force recommended basing Space Command in Huntsville, Alabama, on January 13, 2021, a week before Trump left office.

Members of Colorado’s congressional delegation protested the decision, suggesting the recommendation was political. Trump won a larger share of votes in Alabama in 2016, 2020, and 2024 than in any of the other states in contention. On average, a higher percentage of Colorado’s citizens cast their votes against Trump than in the other five states vying for Space Command’s permanent headquarters.

Trump’s reasons

Trump cited three reasons Tuesday for basing Space Command in Alabama. He noted Redstone Arsenal’s proximity to other government and industrial space facilities, the persistence of Alabama officials in luring the headquarters away from Colorado, and Colorado’s use of mail-in voting, a policy that has drawn Trump’s ire but is wholly unrelated to military space matters.

“That played a big factor, also,” Trump said of Colorado’s mail-in voting law.

None of the reasons for the relocation that Trump mentioned in his remarks on Tuesday explained why Alabama is a better place for Space Command’s headquarters than Colorado, although the Air Force has pointed to cost savings as a rationale for the move.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation concluded in 2022 that the Air Force did not follow “best practices” in formulating its recommendation to place Space Command at Redstone Arsenal, leading to “significant shortfalls in its transparency and credibility.”

A separate report in 2022 from the Pentagon’s own inspector general concluded the Air Force’s basing decision process was “reasonable” and complied with military policy and federal law, but criticized the decision-makers’ record-keeping.

Former President Joe Biden’s secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall, stood by the recommendation in 2023 to relocate Space Command to Alabama, citing an estimated $426 million in cost savings due to lower construction and personnel costs in Huntsville relative to Colorado Springs. However, since then, Space Command achieved full operational capability at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado.

Now-retired Army Gen. James Dickinson raised concerns about moving Space Command from Colorado to Alabama. Credit: US Space Force/Tech. Sgt. Luke Kitterman

Army Gen. James Dickinson, head of Space Command from 2020 until 2023, favored keeping the headquarters in Colorado, according to a separate inspector general report released earlier this year.

“Mission success is highly dependent on human capital and infrastructure,” Dickinson wrote in a 2023 memorandum to the secretary of the Air Force. “There is risk that most of the 1,000 civilians, contractors, and reservists will not relocate to another location.”

One division chief within Space Command’s plans and policy directorate told the Pentagon’s inspector general in May 2024 that they feared losing 90 percent of their civilian workforce if the Air Force announced a relocation. A representative of another directorate told the inspector general’s office that they could say “with certainty” only one of 25 civilian employees in their division would move to a new headquarters location.

Officials at Redstone Arsenal and information technology experts at Space Command concluded it would take three to four years to construct temporary facilities in Huntsville with the same capacity, connectivity, and security as those already in use in Colorado Springs, according to the DoD inspector general.

Tension under Biden

Essentially, the inspector general reported, officials at the Pentagon made cost savings their top consideration in where to garrison Space Command. Leaders at Space Command prioritized military readiness.

President Biden decided in July 2023 that Space Command’s headquarters would remain in Colorado Springs. The decision, according to the Pentagon’s press secretary at the time, would “ensure peak readiness in the space domain for our nation during a critical period.” Alabama lawmakers decried Biden’s decision in favor of Colorado, claiming it, too, was politically motivated.

Space Command reached full operational capability at its headquarters at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, two years ahead of schedule in December 2023. At the time, Space Command leaders said they could only declare Space Command fully operational upon the selection of a permanent headquarters.

Now, a year-and-a-half later, the Trump administration will uproot the headquarters and move it more than 1,000 miles to Alabama. But it hasn’t been smooth sailing for Space Command in Colorado.

A new report by the GAO published in May said Space Command faced “ongoing personnel, facilities, and communications challenges” at Peterson, despite the command’s declaration of full operational capability. Space Command officials told the GAO the command’s posture at Peterson is “not sustainable long term and new military construction would be needed” in Colorado Springs.

Space Command was originally established in 1985. The George W. Bush administration later transferred responsibility for military space activities to the US Strategic Command, as part of a post-9/11 reorganization of the military’s command structure. President Trump reestablished Space Command in 2019, months before Congress passed legislation to make the Space Force the nation’s newest military branch.

Throughout its existence, Space Command has been headquartered at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs. But now, Pentagon officials say the growing importance of military space operations and potentially space warfare requires Space Command to occupy a larger headquarters than the existing facility at Peterson.

Peterson Space Force Base is also the headquarters of North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, US Northern Command, and Space Operations Command, all of which work closely with Space Command. Space Command officials told the GAO there were benefits in being co-located with operational space missions and centers, where engineers and operators control some of the military’s most important spacecraft in orbit.

Several large space companies also have significant operations or headquarters in the Denver metro area, including Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, BAE Systems, and Sierra Space.

In Alabama, ULA and Blue Origin operate rocket and engine factories near Huntsville. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command are located at Redstone Arsenal itself.

The headquarters building at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado. Credit: US Space Force/Keefer Patterson

Colorado’s congressional delegation—six Democrats and four Republicans—issued a joint statement Tuesday expressing their disappointment in Trump’s decision.

“Today’s decision to move US Space Command’s headquarters out of Colorado and to Alabama will directly harm our state and the nation,” the delegation said in a statement. “We are united in fighting to reverse this decision. Bottom line—moving Space Command headquarters weakens our national security at the worst possible time.”

The relocation of Space Command headquarters is estimated to bring about 1,600 direct jobs to Huntsville, Alabama. The area surrounding the headquarters will also derive indirect economic benefits, something Colorado lawmakers said they fear will come at the expense of businesses and workers in Colorado Springs.

“Being prepared for any threats should be the nation’s top priority; a crucial part of that is keeping in place what is already fully operational,” the Colorado lawmakers wrote. “Moving Space Command would not result in any additional operational capabilities than what we have up and running in Colorado Springs now. Colorado Springs is the appropriate home for US Space Command, and we will take the necessary action to keep it there.”

Alabama’s senators and representatives celebrated Trump’s announcement Tuesday.

“The Air Force originally selected Huntsville in 2021 based 100 percent on merit as the best choice,” said Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Alabama). “President Biden reversed that decision based on politics. This wrong has been righted and Space Command will take its place among Huntsville’s world-renowned space, aeronautics, and defense leaders.”

Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement that the Trump administration should provide “full transparency” and the “full details of this poor decision.”

“We hope other vital military units and missions are retained and expanded in Colorado Springs. Colorado remains an ideal location for future missions, including Golden Dome,” Polis said, referring to the Pentagon’s proposed homeland missile defense system.

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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A geothermal network in Colorado could help a rural town diversify its economy

Colorado, geothermal, geothermal energy, geothermal power, Science, syndication / Shannon Garcia / August 21, 2025

Town pitches companies to take advantage of “reliable, cost-effective heating and cooling.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Hayden, a small town in the mountains of northwest Colorado, is searching for ways to diversify its economy, much like other energy communities across the Mountain West.

For decades, a coal-fired power plant, now scheduled to shut down in the coming years, served as a reliable source of tax revenue, jobs, and electricity.

When town leaders in the community just west of Steamboat Springs decided to create a new business park, harnessing geothermal energy to heat and cool the buildings simply made sense.

The technology aligns with Colorado’s sustainability goals and provides access to grants and tax credits that make the project financially feasible for a town with around 2,000 residents, said Matthew Mendisco, town manager.

“We’re creating the infrastructure to attract employers, support local jobs, and give our community reliable, cost-effective heating and cooling for decades to come,” Mendisco said in a statement.

Bedrock Energy, a geothermal drilling startup company that employs advanced drilling techniques developed by the oil and gas industry, is currently drilling dozens of boreholes that will help heat and cool the town’s Northwest Colorado Business District.

The 1,000-feet-deep boreholes or wells will connect buildings in the industrial park to steady underground temperatures. Near the surface the Earth is approximately 51° F year round. As the drills go deeper, the temperature slowly increases to approximately 64° F near the bottom of the boreholes. Pipes looping down into each well will draw on this thermal energy for heating in the winter and cooling in the summer, significantly reducing energy needs.

Ground source heat pumps located in each building will provide additional heating or cooling depending on the time of year.

The project, one of the first in the region, drew the interest of some of the state’s top political leaders, who attended an open house hosted by town officials and company executives on Wednesday.

“Our energy future is happening right now—right here in Hayden,” US Senator John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) said in a prepared statement prior to the event.

“Projects like this will drive rural economic growth while harnessing naturally occurring energy to provide reliable, cost-effective heating and cooling to local businesses,” said US Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) in a written statement.

In an interview with Inside Climate News, Mendisco said that extreme weather snaps, which are not uncommon in a town over 6,000 feet above sea level, will not force companies to pay higher prices for fossil fuels to meet energy demands, like they do elsewhere in the country. He added that the system’s rates will be “fairly sustainable, and they will be as competitive as any of our other providers, natural gas, etcetera.”

The geothermal system under construction for Hayden’s business district will be owned by the town and will initially consist of separate systems for each building that will be connected into a larger network over time. Building out the network as the business park grows will help reduce initial capital costs.

Statewide interest

Hayden received two state grants totaling $300,000 to help design and build its geothermal system.

“It wasn’t completely clear to us how much interest was really going to be out there,” Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, said of a grant program the state launched in 2022.

In the past few years, the program has seen significant interest, with approximately 80 communities across the state exploring similar projects, said Bryce Carter, the geothermal program manager for the state’s Energy Office.

Two projects under development are by Xcel Energy, the largest electricity and gas provider in the state. A law passed in Colorado in 2023 required large gas utilities to develop at least one geothermal heating and cooling network in the state. The networks, which connect individual buildings and boreholes into a shared thermal loop, offer high efficiency and an economy of scale, but also have high upfront construction costs.

There are now 26 utility-led geothermal heating and cooling projects under development or completed nationwide, Jessica Silber-Byrne of the Building Decarbonization Coalition, a nonprofit based in Delaware, said.

Utility companies are widely seen as a natural developer of such projects as they can shoulder multi-million dollar expenses and recoup those costs in ratepayer fees over time. The first, and so far only, geothermal network completed by a gas utility was built by Eversource Energy in Framingham, Massachusetts, last year.

Grid stress concerns heat up geothermal opportunities

Twelve states have legislation supporting or requiring the development of thermal heating and cooling networks. Regulators are interested in the technology because its high efficiency can reduce demand on electricity grids.

Geothermal heating and cooling is roughly twice as efficient as air source heat pumps, a common electric heating and cooling alternative that relies on outdoor air. During periods of extreme heat or extreme cold, air source heat pumps have to work harder, requiring approximately four times more electricity than ground source heat pumps.

As more power-hungry data centers come online, the ability of geothermal heating and cooling to reduce the energy needs of other users of the grid, particularly at periods of peak demand, could become increasingly important, geothermal proponents say.

“The most urgent conversation about energy right now is the stress on the grid,” Joselyn Lai, Bedrock Energy’s CEO, said. “Geothermal’s role in the energy ecosystem will actually increase because of the concerns about meeting load growth.”

The geothermal system will be one of the larger drilling projects to date for Bedrock, a company founded in Austin, Texas, in 2022. Bedrock, which is working on another similarly sized project in Crested Butte, Colorado, seeks to reduce the cost of relatively shallow-depth geothermal drilling through the use of robotics and data analytics that rely on artificial intelligence.

By using a single, continuous steel pipe for drilling, rather than dozens of shorter pipe segments that need to be attached as they go, Bedrock can drill faster and transmit data more easily from sensors near the drill head to the surface.

In addition to shallow, low-temperature geothermal heating and cooling networks, deep, hot-rock geothermal systems that generate steam for electricity production are also seeing increased interest. New, enhanced geothermal systems that draw on hydraulic fracturing techniques developed by the oil and gas industry and other advanced drilling methods are quickly expanding geothermal energy’s potential.

“We’re also very bullish on geothermal electricity,” said Toor, of the Colorado Energy Office, adding that the state has a goal of reducing carbon emissions from the electricity sector by 80 percent by 2030. He said geothermal power that produces clean, round-the-clock electricity will likely play a key role in meeting that target.

The University of Colorado, Boulder, is currently considering the use of geothermal energy for heating, cooling, and electricity production and has received grants for initial feasibility studies through the state’s energy office.

For town officials in Hayden, the technology’s appeal is simple.

“Geothermal works at night, it works in the day, it works whenever you want it to work,” Mendisco said. “It doesn’t matter if there’s a giant snowstorm [or] a giant rainstorm. Five hundred feet to 1,000 feet below the surface, the Earth doesn’t care. It just generates heat.”

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Dirty deeds in Denver: Ex-prosecutor faked texts, destroyed devices to frame colleague

Colorado, framed, legal, Policy / Kelly Newman / January 7, 2025

How we got here

Choi was a young attorney a few years out of law school, working at the Denver District Attorney’s Office in various roles between 2019 and 2022. Beginning in 2021, she accused her colleague, Dan Hines, of sexual misconduct. Hines, she said at first, made an inappropriate remark to her. Hines denied it and nothing could be proven, but he was still transferred to another unit.

In 2022, Choi complained again. This time, she offered phone records showing inappropriate text messages she allegedly received from Hines. But Hines, who denied everything, offered investigators his own phone records, which showed no texts to Choi.

Investigators then went directly to Verizon for records, which showed that “Ms. Choi had texted the inappropriate messages to herself,” according to the Times. “In addition, she changed the name in her phone to make it appear as though Mr. Hines was the one who had sent them.”

At this point, the investigators started looking more closely at Choi and asked for her devices, leading to the incident described above.

In the end, Choi was fired from the DA’s office and eventually given a disbarment order by the Office of the Presiding Disciplinary Judge, which she can still appeal. For his part, Hines is upset about how he was treated during the whole situation and has filed a lawsuit of his own against the DA’s office, believing that he was initially seen as a guilty party even in the absence of evidence.

The case is a reminder that, despite well-founded concerns over tracking, data collection, and privacy, sometimes the modern world’s massive data collection can work to one’s benefit. Hines was able to escape the second allegation against him precisely because of the specific (and specifically refutable) digital evidence that was presented against him—as opposed to the murkier world of “he said/she said.”

Choi might have done as she liked with her devices, but her “evidence” wasn’t the only data out there. Investigators were able to draw on Hines’ own phone data, along with Verizon network data, to see that he had not been texting Choi at the times in question.

Update: Ars Technica has obtained the ruling, which you can read here (PDF). The document recounts in great detail what a modern, quasi-judicial workplace investigation looks like: forensic device examinations, search warrants to Verizon, asking people to log into their cell phone accounts and download data while investigators look over their shoulders, etc.

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Five people infected as bird flu appears to go from cows to chickens to humans

avian influenza, bird flu, CDC, Chickens, Colorado, cows, dairy, H5N1, health, infectious diseases, influenza, milk, outbreak, poultry, Science, USDA / DJ Henderson / July 17, 2024

Cows and chickens and humans, oh my! —

High temperatures made it hard for workers to use protective gear during culling.

Beth Mole – Jul 17, 2024 4: 58 pm UTC

The highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus that spilled from wild birds into US dairy cows late last year may have recently seeped from a dairy farm in Colorado to a nearby poultry farm, where it then infected five workers tasked with culling the infected chickens

In a press briefing Tuesday, federal officials reported that four of the avian influenza cases have been confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while the fifth remains a presumptive positive awaiting CDC confirmation.

All five people have shown mild illnesses, though they experienced variable symptoms. Some of the cases involved conjunctivitis, as was seen in other human cases linked to the H5N1 outbreak in dairy cows. Others in the cluster of five had respiratory and typical flu-like symptoms, including fever, chills, sore throat, runny nose, and cough. None of the five cases required hospitalization.

The virus infecting the five people is closely related to the virus infecting the chickens on the poultry farm, which, in turn, is closely related to virus seen in infected dairy herds and in other human cases that have been linked to the dairy outbreak. The affected poultry farm is in Colorado’s northern county of Weld, which has also reported about two dozen outbreaks of avian influenza in dairy herds.

Dairy to poultry hypothesis

In one fell swoop, Colorado’s poultry farm outbreak has more than doubled the number of human avian influenza cases linked to the dairy cow spillover, bringing the previous tally of four cases to nine. While officials have previously noted instances where it appeared that H5N1 on dairy farms had moved to nearby poultry farms, this appears to be the first time such spread has led to documented human infections.

The link between the poultry farm cases and neighboring dairy farms is still just a hypothesis, however, Nirav Shah, the principal deputy director at the CDC, emphasized to reporters Tuesday. “It is a hypothesis that needs and requires a full investigation. But that is a hypothesis at this point,” he said of the link between the dairy farms and the poultry farm. So far, there is no direct evidence of a specific source of the poultry farm’s infection, and the route of infection is also unclear.

Throughout the outbreak of H5N1 on dairy farms, officials have noted that the primary way the virus appears to spread to new farms is via the movement of cows, people, and machinery between those facilities. There remains no evidence of human-to-human transmission. But milk from infected cows has been found to be brimming with high levels of infectious virus, and milk-contaminated equipment is a prime suspect in the spread.

In the press briefing Tuesday, Eric Deeble, acting senior advisor for H5N1 response with the US Department of Agriculture, noted the poultry are very susceptible to avian influenza and are easily infected. “It does not take much to introduce this into a flock,” Deeble said. The USDA is now working on a “trace-back” investigation on how the Colorado poultry farm was infected.

Searing spread

As for how the farm workers specifically became infected with the virus, health officials pointed to high temperatures that prevented workers from donning protective gear. The poultry farm is a commercial egg layer operation with around 1.8 million birds. Given the presence of bird flu on the premises, all 1.8 million birds need to be culled, aka “depopulated.” This is being carried out using mobile carts with carbon dioxide gas chambers, a common culling method. Workers are tasked with placing the birds in the chambers, which only hold a few dozen birds at a time. In all, the method requires workers to have a high degree of contact with the infected birds, going from bird to bird and batch to batch with the carts.

Amid this grim task, temperatures in the area reached over 100° Fahrenheit, and massive industrial fans were turned on in the facility to try to cool things down. Between the heat and the fans, the approximately 160 people involved in the culling struggled to use personal protective equipment (PPE). The required PPE for the depopulation involves a full Tyvek suit, boots, gloves, goggles, and an N95 respirator.

“The difficulty with wearing all that gear in that kind of heat, you can imagine,” said Julie Gauthier, executive director for field operations at the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). The industrial fans blowing large amounts of air made it yet more difficult for workers to keep goggles and respirators on their faces, she said.

The CDC and the USDA are both involved in further investigations of the poultry farm outbreak. CDC’s Shah noted that the team the agency deployed to Colorado included an industrial hygienist, who can work on strategies to prevent further transmission.

To date, at least 161 herds in 13 states have tested positive for avian influenza since the dairy outbreak was confirmed in March. Since January 2022, when US birds first tested positive for the H5N1 virus, 99 million birds in the US have been affected in 48 states, which involved 1,165 individual outbreaks.

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