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.
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.