Way back in January 2021, just before the Biden administration was taking office, the Air Force announced that the U.S. Space Command, the home base for the military’s space operations, would be relocated. The headquarters has been based in Colorado Springs for decades, but the military decided to move the site across the country to Huntsville, Alabama.
“I single-handedly said ‘let’s go to Alabama,” President Donald Trump said of the decision a few months later, explaining the Air Force’s decision to relocate Space Command, which had just been re-established in 2019 and was temporarily located in Colorado.
Two years and several bureaucratic delays later, politicians from Colorado and Alabama are still fighting, and there’s still no final decision on where U.S. Space Command should be. The reason is simple: At stake is prestige, more than a thousand jobs, and a significant source of economic activity for both states. The squabble is a critical reminder that much of the battle over the future of space, at least in the U.S., will take place between local and state officials.
“When you have a space program in a particular state, the particular senator or the representative sees that as an amazing job opportunity program for the constituency,” explains Namrata Goswami, an independent space policy expert and author of Scramble for the Skies: The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space.
The fight over the future home of U.S. Space Command is far from the first time politicians have bickered over the federal government’s space operations. But as the military continues to expand its own space program, this competition may only become more intense. There are already tensions over who has profited—and who should profit—from NASA’s Artemis program, including the jobs created by the program’s rocket systems and disagreements over the program’s moon lander contract.
There are obvious reasons why Colorado and Alabama are so eager to host U.S. Space Command. It’s estimated that the facility would create about 1,400 jobs. (It employs over 1,000 people in Colorado Springs.) There’s also a status factor: The Space Command brings together representatives of several branches of the military, including the Marines, the Navy, and Space Force, to manage space operations, and hosting Space Command could help spur further economic growth.
Space politics, it turns out, also makes strange bedfellows. Democratic senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper have teamed up with Republican firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert to urge the White House to reverse course and keep the base in Colorado. Some of the state’s representatives have even suggested that moving the base would endanger national security. Meanwhile, Alabama politicians have complained that Colorado’s delegation is needlessly delaying the process, and in a letter to the Armed Services Committee last May, Sen. Tommy Tuberville lamented “sore loser syndrome.”
Now, the Air Force is conducting another review—the DoD’s Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office have already published their own investigations into the decision-making process—and has indicated that a final ruling is imminent. Recent reporting suggests the White House may be preparing to keep operations in Colorado.
Still, while the U.S.’s space infrastructure across the country is certainly good for local governments, there’s some concern that this approach could undermine a unified national space strategy. For example, when NASA handed out a $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX to build a moon lander for Artemis, Sen. Maria Cantwell proposed legislation that would have NASA spend even more to award a second company another lunar lander contract. Notably, Washington, which Cantwell represents, is home to Blue Origin, which desperately fought for, and lost, the first NASA contract.
“While it is seen as a very much politics and state job generation program, I find [what’s] missing [is] very strong collaboration between states in terms of developing the space program holistically,” adds Namrata, the space policy expert. “That’s where the federal government comes in.”
A sci-fi ‘pork barrel project’
But no matter which state wins out in this particular fight, others are certain to emerge.
Colorado’s senators have already proposed a bill that would move some members of the Air Force and Army’s national guards to a new Space Force National Guard—just as members of the Air Force were transferred to the new space-focused branch. The White House doesn’t support the idea (it could be expensive), but the plan would be a win for states like Colorado.
The same dynamic has played out with NASA’s civilian space projects. Maryland Senator Barbara Mulkiski famously pushed the space agency to continue investing in the Hubble Space Telescope—a major project for the state—in the early 2000s. And there’s still debate over the government’s decision to fund the Space Launch System (SLS for short), the rocket that NASA is using on the Artemis program. The SLS system supports jobs in several states.
The system is the most powerful rocket ever made, but it’s not reusable, and the project went significantly over budget and was delayed repeatedly. Funding for the rocket has been controversial, in part because NASA has continued to support its development even as private space companies have built cheaper, reusable technology. SpaceX is planning to launch Starship—its new reusable mega-rocket—for the first this time in April.
“A lot of what the SLS is and became was written by senators who are looking to protect their states’ interest in the space program,” says Wendy Whitman Cobb, a political scientist at the U.S. Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. “I would characterize NASA more as a pork barrel project than I think most people would just given the extent to which NASA has spread out its facilities across the United States.”
Of course, local and state officials will continue to compete as the commercial space race picks up. States are already racing to establish their own spaceports, FAA-licensed facilities that will eventually serve as launch sites. And while places like Florida and California have historically hosted American space operations, other states are coming into play. Texas is now the home to SpaceX’s Starbase spaceport, where the company is testing its Starship rocket. And Pennsylvania politicians are also promoting a Pittsburgh-based startup called Astrobotic that’s focused on building lunar space technology.
This is just more evidence that space is getting political. That isn’t necessarily surprising. Astronauts—and former space industry executives—have already run for Congress, and private launch companies are well-versed in lobbying on the Hill. The space race heading to the states is just the next step.
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