That money would be better invested in the race to get to Mars, the businessman suggests
The International Space Station is, as its name suggests, an international project. One of the most important and monumental international projects in history, the result of collaboration between multiple countries. Now a businessman wants to speed up its end.
In an ideal world, businessmen would not be able to undo what several countries have built. Much less if the reason is to prioritize the conquest of Mars, for which the businessman’s new rocket will be needed. But this is not just any businessman. He is the richest in the world and has enough power and political influence to make us take what he says seriously.
Elon Musk’s latest idea. “It is time to begin preparations to de-orbit the International Space Station,” wrote Elon Musk on his X profile on Thursday afternoon. “It has served its purpose. Its incremental usefulness is very small. Let’s go to Mars.”
When exactly? “The decision is up to the president, but my recommendation is to do it as soon as possible,” said the businessman. “I recommend doing it within two years.” That is, in 2027, three years before the date agreed by the ISS partners.
An accelerated end. At 25 years old, the International Space Station shows signs of aging. Investments in maintenance have been increasing. Structural fatigue is becoming a concern. The risk of impact with space debris continues to grow.
The plan agreed by the ISS partners was to keep the station operational until 2030 and then tow it with a special ship to a safe place (presumably the Pacific Ocean) for atmospheric re-entry. NASA hired SpaceX to develop this vehiclebefore 2030.
Then, with luck, there will be commercial space stations in low Earth orbit. But by 2027, the year Musk proposes, the continuous presence of Americans in space would probably be interrupted. And with it that of Europeans, Japanese, Canadians… Space would still be inhabited, that’s true, by Chinese astronauts.
Can Trump retire the ISS early? That is the big question. The International Space Station involves five space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), the European Space Agency (Europe), JAXA (Japan) and CSA (Canada).
Canada operates the Canadarm robotic arm, Europe the ERA robotic arm and the Columbus laboratory… but broadly speaking, the ISS is made up of two main segments that belong to the United States and Russia. Just as Russia was threatening to undock its own and leave before 2030, Donald Trump could propose the same.
It is hard to imagine a scenario in which NASA’s European, Japanese and Canadian partners would agree to this abrupt end. What would happen, for example, to the European astronauts who were going to fly to the ISS before 2030, such as the Spaniard Pablo Álvarez? Many plans would have to be changed.
“You’re retarded.” Musk’s statements, of course, could have been written in the heat of the moment. He published them just a few hours after lashing out at former International Space Station commander Andreas Mogensen, who had called him a liar over statements he had made on Fox News.
Musk and Trump have been circulating the narrative for days that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were abandoned by former President Biden in space after the Boeing Starliner spacecraft fiasco. In reality, NASA arranged a return plan for both of them during the Biden Administration: to reserve two empty seats on the Crew-9 mission, which will return to Earth at the end of March (a spacecraft exclusively for them would have cost tens of millions of dollars).
When Mogensen pointed this out to him on his X profile, Musk replied: “You are a complete moron. SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago. I offered this directly to the Biden Administration and they refused. Their return was delayed for political reasons. Stupid.”
