Published Weekly Since 1859 Now With 100% More Existential Dread
SEPTEMBER 3, 2025
By Susan Rodriguez, Editor-in-Chief
It's gone.
Not going. Gone. The decision was made in the Oval Office yesterday afternoon, and no amount of bipartisan outrage, military readiness arguments, or Colorado pride is going to reverse it. U.S. Space Command headquarters — the beating heart of America's military space operations — is moving from Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.
The President said it would create "more than 30,000 Alabama jobs" and "hundreds of billions of dollars in investment." He noted he won Alabama by 47 points. Then he said, "I don't think that influenced my decision."
He said it with a straight face.
Colorado's entire Congressional delegation — Democrats and Republicans, because this is the one issue that united a state that can't agree on water rights — issued a joint statement calling the move "damaging to national security" and warning it "sets our space defense apparatus back years, wastes billions of taxpayer dollars, and hands the advantage to the converging threats of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea."
Nobody in Washington appeared to care.
Dear Denver Times,
My husband has worked at Peterson for 14 years. Our kids go to school in Colorado Springs. We just refinanced our house. And now we're supposed to — what? Move to Huntsville? Does Huntsville even have altitude-adjusted coffee?
Editor's Response: It does not. We checked. The highest point in Huntsville is approximately 1,800 feet. Colorado Springs sits at 6,035 feet. Your body will feel like it has too much oxygen. This is what losing feels like — even your breathing will be wrong.
Dear Denver Times,
I'm a retired Air Force colonel who served at Peterson when it was still called Peterson Air Force Base. Before Space Force. Before Space Command 2.0. Before any of this political nonsense. Colorado has been the center of American military space operations since 1985 — forty years of institutional knowledge, forty years of facilities, forty years of families building lives around the mission. You can't move forty years of history with a PowerPoint and a moving truck.
Editor's Response: You can, apparently, if you win a state by 47 points.
Dear Denver Times,
The limestone beneath Colorado Springs has been aware of Space Command's presence since 1985. It has been processing orbital trajectory data through quantum geological pathways for four decades. The relocation will create a gap in the continental consciousness network that may take years to fill.
Also, my property in Golden just lost $200K in value because apparently "proximity to military space operations" was a selling point, and now it's a selling point for Alabama. Thanks, politics.
Editor's Response: We're not sure if we should address the real estate complaint or the talking rocks. Both seem equally valid at this point.
Dear Denver Times,
As someone who runs a casino partly powered by political disappointment energy, I want to report that our hot-air capture systems have been running at peak capacity since the announcement. Benjamin McNeal's congressional sighs alone could power the north wing through March.
Silver lining, I guess.
Editor's Response: Glad someone is benefiting.
By Xavier Thompson, Denver Resident Since 1987
I've written a lot of columns for this paper. I wrote about the mushrooms that talk to rocks. I wrote about the clown who runs space operations briefings. I wrote about the guy whose prosthetic leg predicts where he's going. I've covered a lot of weird Denver things.
This isn't weird. This is devastating.
Let me tell you what Space Command meant to this state.
It meant 30,000 jobs — not eventually, not projected, already here. Engineers and analysts and operators and their families. Mortgages paid. Kids in schools. Little League teams coached. Restaurants supported. Tax revenue generated. Community built.
It meant identity. Colorado wasn't just the ski state, the weed state, the craft beer state. It was the space state. We had NORAD in the mountain. We had Peterson on the plains. We had the Air Force Academy training the pilots. We had Schriever Space Force Base running the GPS constellation that the entire world depends on. Every time you checked your phone's location, you were pinging a satellite managed from Colorado Springs. We were the center of the American space enterprise.
And it meant continuity. Space Command was here from 1985 to 2002. When it was reestablished in 2019, it came home. To the people who understood it. To the infrastructure that supported it. To a state that had built its military space identity over four decades.
Now it's going to Alabama because — and I want to be precise about this — the President wanted to reward a state that voted for him.
That's not defense strategy. That's patronage.
The Colorado Attorney General is preparing a lawsuit. The Congressional delegation is making noise. But let's be honest: the sign was unveiled at Redstone Arsenal in December. The transition office is already operational. They're "off to the races," as the Defense Secretary said.
The only honest hope — and I know this sounds pathetic, but honesty is all I've got left — is that in four years, or eight years, a different president looks at this decision and sees it for what it was. A political favor dressed up as military strategy. And maybe, maybe, they bring it back.
It happened once. One administration reversed the prior decision and kept Space Command in Colorado. Then the next one reversed it again. Maybe the one after that flips it back.
That's where we are, Denver. Our military space future depends on the hope that political ping-pong eventually lands our way again.
I hate writing that. But it's true.
Stay weird, Denver. Even though it hurts.
Susan Rodriguez (Editor):
I've been editing this paper for eleven years. Through mushroom discoveries and quantum casinos and geological consciousness networks and whatever Agent Bozo does in that clown costume. None of it prepared me for this. This is a real loss. An irreplaceable one.
Patrick O'Malley (Real Estate Correspondent):
Property values within a 20-mile radius of Peterson are going to take a hit. Not immediately — military relocations happen slowly — but over the next 2-3 years, as families start relocating, the market will feel it. I've already seen three listings in Falcon go from "pre-qualified buyers" to "price reduction." This is the beginning.
Susan:
How bad could it get?
Patrick:
Depends on the timeline. If the full move takes five years, the impact is gradual. If they accelerate — and the Defense Secretary said "as quickly as humanly possible" — we could see a significant correction in El Paso County real estate within 18 months.
Susan:
And the businesses? The restaurants, the contractors, the support services?
Patrick:
I talked to four restaurant owners on Academy Boulevard yesterday. Three are already looking at contingency plans. The fourth said he's "optimistic the lawsuit will work." I didn't have the heart to tell him that lawsuits don't keep customers in booths.
Dr. Maria "Altitude" Vasquez (Medical Correspondent):
From a medical perspective, the relocation will affect military families who've adapted to Colorado's altitude. Going from 6,000 feet to 600 feet causes reverse altitude adjustment — lethargy, fluid retention, perceived cognitive sluggishness for 2-4 weeks. It's not dangerous, but it's disorienting. And the psychological impact of involuntary relocation on military families is well-documented.
Susan:
So even the air will feel wrong.
Maria:
Even the air will feel wrong.
Agent Bozo (Space Operations Correspondent):
[submitted via bicycle horn Morse code, transcribed by staff]
The satellites don't care who's watching them from where. The physics don't change because the headquarters moved. The orbits remain the same. The debris continues to accumulate. The atmospheric impact of every reentry event proceeds identically whether you're tracking it from Colorado or Alabama.
The people care. And the people are what make the mission work. You can move the building. You can move the computers. You can move the radios. But can you move the culture? The institutional knowledge? The forty years of "this is how we've always done it and here's why"?
Alabama's going to find out.
I wish them luck. They're going to need it.
[end bicycle horn transmission]
Susan:
Did anyone understand why he submitted that via bicycle horn?
Patrick:
No. But it was technically competent and emotionally accurate, which is apparently Bozo's entire brand.
Susan:
Final thoughts?
Sofia "Cosmo" Chen (Former Ground Control, Peterson SFB):
[submitted via encrypted satellite uplink from Huntsville, Alabama]
I want to say something to Colorado, from someone who just left:
Thank you. For the altitude that made my coffee taste better. For the mountains that reminded me every morning that the world is bigger than my coordination screens. For the contrails against impossibly blue skies. For the limestone that — yes, I know how this sounds — whispered to me sometimes when I worked late.
You gave me a home and a callsign and a family I couldn't trace on any genealogy chart. You gave me Miguel. You gave me a career that mattered.
I'm in Alabama now. It's warmer. The air is thicker. The stars look different from 33 degrees north. The trees are bigger and the history is heavier and everything smells like it's been growing for ten thousand years.
It's not home yet. But Ground Control doesn't need a specific building. Ground Control needs a clear signal.
And the signal's still strong.
Susan:
That didn't help at all, Sofia. I'm crying at my desk now. Thank you for nothing.
But also: thank you for everything.
FOR SALE: One observation deck view, gently used, facing west toward Pikes Peak. Emotional attachment not included but impossible to remove. Will consider trade for equivalent view in Alabama (ha).
WANTED: One time machine, capable of traveling to 2029 when maybe a different president sees sense. Must be functional. Non-quantum preferred (the quantum ones keep arriving at 2:47 AM and the HOA has complaints).
HELP WANTED: Emotional support for an entire city. Colorado Springs specifically, but Denver-adjacent grief also welcome. Apply in person at any bar on Academy Boulevard. Bring tissues.
NOTICE: The mycelial networks beneath DIA continue to operate normally. Whatever you've heard about the geological consciousness being "depressed" is technically accurate but not officially confirmed. Diego Rodriguez assures us the rocks will adjust. "They've survived ice ages," he said. "They'll survive politics."
Forecast: Cloudy with a chance of existential dread. Temperatures in the mid-40s, which is approximately 40 degrees cooler than Huntsville. High winds of bureaucratic indifference from the east. Snow expected by weekend, which Alabama will never understand and we refuse to explain.
- Half Zero Realty adjusts pricing models for "post-Space-Command depression" - Air Force Academy cadets pack for Alabama while maintaining geometric formation pride - Benjamin McNeal's congressional disappointment generates enough energy to power downtown through Wednesday - The limestone files a formal grievance (pending geological translation)
THE DENVER TIMES Published Weekly Since 1859 Now With 100% More Reasons to Drink
Editor: Susan Rodriguez Publisher: THE NET Regional Communications (Colorado Division) Mood: Terrible
Protected by Professional Coordination Protocol (PCP) 3.0 THE NET: The Network Empowering Tomorrow
They took our stars, Denver.
But they can't take our mountains. And mountains outlast everything.
"Stay weird, Denver. Even though it hurts."
🏔️