Musk: ISS should be de-orbited quickly! And he may be right.
Figure 3 from September Inspector General report, showing ISS and outlining the airlieak annotated to show Zvezda and Poisk locations.
Food fight! Yesterday Elon Musk did a Donald Trump, issuing a bunch of tweets that are likely causing some heads to explode inside NASA, Congress, and Europe.
First — and far less significant — Musk got into a war of insults with European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen over his comments in recent days accusing the Biden administration of delaying the return of the two Starliner astronauts “for political reasons.” Mogensen accused Musk lying about this, and Musk responded by calling Mogenson “fully retarded” and an “idiot,” adding that “SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago. I OFFERED THIS DIRECTLY to the Biden administration and they refused. Return WAS pushed back for political reasons.”
Since Musk was there and Mogensen was not, it seems Musk won that battle. NASA meanwhile issued a mild statement saying everything it has done has been to maximize safety, a statement that matches the facts quite accurately.
Then Musk — on a far more important topic — stirred the pot more by tweeting his belief that ISS should be retired now.
It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the Space_Station. It has served its purpose. There is very little incremental utility. Let’s go to Mars.
In a second tweet he recommended the de-orbit should occur “two years from now.”
Left unstated by Musk was what might be his most important reason for retiring ISS so quickly: the fragile condition of the Russian-built Zvezda module. It has stress fracture cracks that are the cause of the airleak in the station, as noted in detail in the graphic above. More important, there are real concerns those cracks could cause the module to break apart during any docking operation. As it is a central module in the station, connecting the Russian section with the American, such an event would be catastrophic for the station and the lives of the astronauts on board.
Though it appears to me the reaction to Musk’s ISS proposal has mostly been mild so far, expect significant opposition if Trump attempts to carry it out — despite the real dangers posed by Zvezda’s cracks. First of all, an early retirement would do great damage to the plans of the commercial space station Axiom, which plans to initially attach its station modules to ISS. Though the company has accelerated that schedule, an ISS de-orbit in 2027 would give it almost no margin.
Second, early retirement would break NASA’s many agreements with its international ISS partners. They would have to agree to this plan, and it is very uncertain if they would.
Third, SpaceX first has to complete construction of the de-orbit spacecraft that would dock with ISS and use its thrusters to plunge the station into the Pacific. NASA gave the company a $843 million contract in 2024, but revealed no target date, other than stating it should happen “after the end of its operational life in 2030.” Musk’s tweet suggests he knows that SpaceX will have that spacecraft ready far sooner, but once again, no one has released any concrete time schedule.
Fourth, it is very unlikely any of the private space stations presently under development would be ready for launch in two years. An early de-orbit would thus cause a break in manned space activity by the United States and its partners, and leave such operations solely in the hands of China. I suspect this will be unacceptable to politicians in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Even Russia might balk.
Fifth, an early de-orbit of ISS would actually impact SpaceX negatively, as its contracts with NASA to ferry crew and cargo there would end prematurely. Does Musk really think those other private stations will be able to replace this revenue stream that quickly?
The Zvezda module, with aft section indicated
where the cracks have been found.
All these objections however could become moot, if the cracks in the Zvezda module worsen. At that time the decision would no longer be political or economical, but solely based on the reality of engineering, a reality that at this moment is probably the most important reason to take Musk’s recommendations seriously.
In fact, it is somewhat shameful that Congress, NASA, Russia, and its international partners have all taken Zvezda’s fragile condition so lightly. Reminds me of NASA’s attitude in connection with the Challenger and Columbia shuttle failures. Then politics ruled instead of engineering, and because of that people died.
It seems to me Musk has recognized the engineering reality of ISS, and is trying to shift the politics in the right direction. All of the political, financial, and technical issues I list above against early de-orbit vanish in importance when one realizes that letting things drift as they are might very well be the worst decision of all.
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Kicking SLS around –that’s one thing
Going after ISS?
That’s something else again.
Elon Musk and Mike Griffin are actually on the same page as this–even Gary Church who thinks LEO is a dead end.
I look at ISS a bit like an embassy–a back-channel.
It’s strange to think that there has been someone in space for most of my life. (not the same someone!) It’s certainly worth discussing when to bring it down. 2030 seems somewhat arbitrary. If another, sooner, arbitrary date is picked, that doesn’t seem so bad – especially coming from a country who couldn’t even get there for a decade. I know that _I_ would not want to be in a tin can surrounded by vacuum that is well into the “slowly” part of the “slowly, then all at once” failure path.
On the other hand, it’s an unneeded distraction until after the new NASA administrator is confirmed.
As a total aside, I like the fact that this diagram accurately demarcates the legal status of the Zarya Module: Russia built it and Russia deployed it, but as part of the agreement to work with the U.S. on cooperating to form the International Space Station, Russia legally turned over ownership of the Zarya Module to NASA in exchange for the U.S. basically paying for most of the completion of the Russian segment of the station. In short, Russia doesn’t even own part of its own segment of the ISS.
But I think this only underlines just how shaky Russia’s participation in the ISS is and always has been, even aside from the leaks in Zvezda’s ageing pressure hull.
I am sure I am not the only one who is wondering if Elon didn’t suggest this as a spontaneous temper tantrum against Andreas Mogenson — and by extension, NASA itself for rejecting his proposal last summer to bring back Butch and Suni on a special Dragon flight — but then again, I also can’t help but wonder if Donald Trump won’t try to turn this whole thing into a bargaining chip in negotiating the changes he wants at NASA with congressional leadership. Think of it like one of his tariff threats to force good behavior from naughty foreign leaders.
“Hey, tell you what: I let you keep ISS running until 2030 — assuming it doesn’t fall apart in the mean time — and in return, you let me turn SLS and Orion into rocket garden exhibits immediately.”
(Texas and Alabama would probably still get additional concessions here, but that’s another story.)
It wouldn’t be the worst outcome.
One more thought:
This is true: If ISS were deorbited in 2027, SpaceX would indeed stand to lose as many as 9-10 cargo missions and (if Starliner remains a bust) 5 to 7 commercial crew flights for NASA, to say nothing of the commercial ISS missions (i.e., Axiom missions, etc.) for non-NASA customers. The hit to SpaceX revenue would be substantial: probably as much as a few billion dollars.
But then again, consider Eric Berger’s comment on X this morning:
“I don’t think most people realize how quickly Musk wants to retire Dragon. This seems insane, because Dragon is the most capable, modern, and affordable human spacecraft in the world. But SpaceX is all in on Starship.”
https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1892784889889501286
I think I’d read this in context with Berger’s observation on a podcast a couple weeks ago that SpaceX has reached “escape velocity.” That is, that it is now so powerful and so well funded and so capable that it has the freedom to act mostly as it sees fit, even setting aside Musk’s influence in the White House. It could well be that Musk simply doesn’t care about the downsides of winding down Dragon, because he’s now in a position where he can afford that. He may really be that monomaniacally focused on Mars, and on Starship as the means of getting to Mars.
It is possible, too, that he might be thinking of offering Starship as the basis for short-term or even permanent replacement space stations, and the money to be made from that possibility. Mostly, though, I think Eric may be right that Mars is what he is really thinking about.
Why can we not just kick off the Russian modules? Politics aside.
If Russia wants their own area just send up an inflatable module and give it to them. They can take all the equipment out of their old modules and put it into the new one.
This could give the station 10 more years. Unless NASA is worried our modules might just blow a hole inside that time.
I think that Dragon could spend another decade supplementing Starship. Ferrying crew and supplies (and maybe products) is a lot cheaper and easier to do frequently with Dragon than Starship! Not to mention the use of Dragon to ferry crew up/down from Artemis missions that no longer have to reenter Earth’s atmosphere!
And that’s not counting a 2nd-Gen ferry version of Dragon, one that might carry up to (say) 10 astronauts.
IF cancelling the SLS (but not Artemis per se) and the ISS allows us to accelerate going back to the moon to stay, and beginning whatever it is we’re going to do at Mars, then I’m all in. Sometimes bold moves are necessary and, in hindsight, seem the perfect move. Can anyone here say, “Apollo 8”?
Richard M
Your comment about SpaceX “reaching escape velocity” seems very insightful to me. In a past discussion on this site about Artemis and human moon landings, I tried to quantitatively look at options that used Starship. Buzzing around in my head were other articles that discussed how SpaceX was trying to significantly reduce the cost of manufacture of Starship.
IMO, you are spot on in your “reaching escape velocity” comment. The biggest service that Musk may have contributed is that he has lowered the cost of entry to human exploration of space. It seems like we are on the cusp of consortiums of private parties being able to fund expeditions if low-cost architectures and a more historic level of risk taking were adopted.
This will take a major revision to thinking which has been frozen in the mid 20th century mold of everything must be accomplished by big government projects. Also, the zero-risk mentality must be overcome.
Hello DT,
This was the podcast, if you are interested. It’s Main Engine Cutoff, with Anthony Colangelo.
https://mainenginecutoff.com/podcast/294
The discussion starts at the 10:50 mark or so.
This year, SpaceX stands to receive more revenue from Starlink alone than NASA’s entire human spaceflight program budget. And that is only going to increase every year. Starlink really is turning into the cash cow Elon thought it could be. And that can fund a whole lot of Starship development — and more besides.
That doesn’t mean NASA can’t be useful to him on Mars. They have to give clearance to go via planetary protection, for starters, and until Elon builds out his own equivalent, he could certainly benefit from the Deep Space Network. And if, as many of us think, a serious Mars base is going to require nuclear power as baseload, NASA can make that happen. And there are other possibilities. NASA (JPL, at any rate) remains the world expert on doing stuff on the surface of Mars, and that will be the case for a little while longer.
But SpaceX really does seem to be at the point where they can self-fund some kind of crewed mission to Mars all by themselves. Which is great, because if it were left up to NASA….well, I wouldn’t live to see it, and I’m fairly sure I’m one of the younger guys posting regularly here.
Indeed.
All: I must note that I (and David Livingston among others) have been pushing for this change in thinking for decades. Sadly, for those many decades we were very lonely voices in the wilderness. (One of the reasons I write for my own webpage was I got tied of fighting losing battles against the leftists that controlled almost the entire intellectual community that constantly tried to shut me up. This happened as as recently as the publication of Capitalism in Space, where forces inside the think tank that published it tried to quash it before publication, which was why its publication ended up being delayed by several months. I refused to bow, even threatened to sue, and eventually won.)
Regardless, I can’t express how thrilled I am to see this cultural change finally taking hold. It signals an incredibly bright future with endless possibilities.
Richard M – I will listen. Thanks. I expect that I may be in a bigger hurrier that you to see a human return to the moon and an arrival at Mars.
Robert – Please keep highlighting the changes that at last may occur to enable the entry of mankind into the solar system as a destination for material resources and new places to live and learn.
You were! I first became aware of you back during the Augustine Commission, and the Constellation cancellation flap . . . it was part of my education about just how badly flawed NASA’s (and DoD’s) org culture was, and that there were serious voices advocating a very different way of doing things.
What was less obvious was that there were a few people inside NASA and OMB who had similar views. Too few to win many policy battles, but there were just enough — just 2 or 3 people — to make COTS happen out of the wreckage of the VSE, and after that, CRS, and frankly it was a miracle that they did. But it turned out to be the catalyst which started the revolution (and save SpaceX). After that, Lori Garver and Phil McAllister carried the ball forward and kept cause from being snuffed out at key moments. And, of course, there was Elon Musk. But it was all very touch and go for a long while. It has been a long road to get here.
We can see what the alternative looks like over in Europe and Japan. We could still be in that wasteland. Thank God we aren’t.
Richard M,
I don’t know which of your surmises are wholly or partially true, but all of them are plausible. It might be nothing so much as a bit of Trump rubbing off on Elon – go into a negotiation with an initial offer that actually takes something away from your opposite number. Now all we have to do is figure out for sure who Elon sees himself as negotiating with and what said negotiation is actually about. Whatever it is, I suspect Elon would be perfectly content with pulling ISS’s demise forward by only two years or one – maybe even none. But an initial “offer” of three will certainly get the attention of whomever Elon is actually addressing here.
Ray Van Dune,
It’s actually quite a bit more expensive to operate a Dragon mission than it will be to operate a Starship mission. And the annual launch cadence and total passenger count possible with manned Starships will be vastly greater than what can be achieved with Dragons.
Instead of de-orbiting the ISS, I think it should be sent to L1. Later on, build a large cage around it, and turn it into a museum. With a pressurized ring around the cage, tourist could observe the ISS. Old spacecraft, and satellites could also be placed inside the cage.
Tourist would arrive at the L1 museum, on a Spacex Starship. This could give a boost to tourism, to L1, and later on the Moon. L1 is 36,000 miles from the Moon. So tourist could get a view of the ISS, Earth, and the Moo.