Protesters block private planes at Hanscom in bid to stop airport expansion

This is one reason I don't joint up with local Extinction Rebellion efforts - they have far too many Boomer NIMBYs and don't pick their battles wisely. Blocking Hanscom expansion is a joke when it would alleviate the burdens of noise and air pollution and traffic in environmental justice communities surrounding Logan Armpit.

Is plane travel an issue in climate change? Yes. Is moving some plane travel to Hanscom any sort of expansion or just getting it out of Logan and thus reducing car travel? That needs an answer. Is this a hill to die on? IMHO, no.

When I see these suburban lorax classists using kayaks and canoes to block fossil fuel shipments to Chelsea I'll be more interested in joining the fun.

* if it is turned into a huge, dense, sustainable housing site. 3 square miles, shoot for like 100,000 people.

Because then there would be 10,000 collective Larry Davids having to decide between airplanes flying overhead and more people living nearby, especially people not like them. And I'd be there to watch!

Now this is going to take some additional infrastructure, maybe extending the Red Line from Alewife out Route 2 and then maybe even up Route 3 to Lowell and spec'ing rolling stock to run faster, probably a new high school (make it its own town?) and a lot of thinking on how to create a community where most people's needs don't require a car within the community (this can be done, just look at [insert other country here]).

"Hanscom's host unit is the 66th Air Base Group, which is part of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center. The men and women of the 66th Air Base Group secure, support and sustain more than 10,000 active duty, Reserve and National Guard military personnel and Department of Defense civilians, contractors who work and live at Hanscom Air Force Base. Additionally, they support approximately 130,000 retired military personnel, annuitants and spouses living in the six-state New England area and New York area.

One of five centers under Air Force Materiel Command, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center is the single center responsible for total life cycle management of Air Force weapon systems. The AFLCMC mission is to deliver affordable and sustainable war-winning capabilities to U.S. and international partners -- on time, on cost, anywhere, anytime from cradle to grave.

Hanscom is also home to three Air Force Program Executive Offices (PEOs): The PEO for Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence and Networks (C3I&N); PEO Digital; and the Nuclear Command, Control and Communications (NC3) PEO. The C3I&N directorate is responsible for more than 2,600 personnel and acquisition execution of a $15.1 billion portfolio developing, producing, deploying and sustaining Department of the Air Force joint and coalition cyberspace capabilities, aerial and terrestrial networks, cryptologic systems, electronic warfare, data weaponization, kill chain technologies and integration, information technology infrastructure, software platforms and factories, cloud services, combat communications, force protection systems, data link systems, and special projects to enable decisive combat operations. The PEO for Digital leads more than 3,500 Airmen, government civilians and support contractors in the acquisition execution of a $19 billion FYDP portfolio of ACAT, non-ACAT, technology transition and Foreign Military Sales programs. The PEO for NC3 Systems executes a portfolio of 17 programs valued at $14B over the FYDP that provide survivable and endurable communications for the nuclear enterprise. Additionally, the directorate is responsible for integrating over 60 individual nuclear command and control communications systems that underpin and enable nuclear deterrent operations."

In other words the US Airforce is not doing a lot of flying out of there. It's mostly inbound traffic Military-wise. I wonder how the whole private plane usage thing started. I have a sneaking suspicion Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States had something to do with it.

Information about Hanscom Field here.

There was a brief passenger flight service called Shuttle America that did short-term flights out of Hanscom, plus two other airlines until 2012; a new service, Southern Airway Express, flies from Hanscom to Nantucket.