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.
I’m close to Robert (the commenter) in his perspective. Make it safe (probably by just replacing the Zvezda module), then concentrate on training and inspiration. It wouldn’t be stupid to have everyone on a Mars trip do 30-60 days at the ISS first so they can learn how the toilets work.
Then, when they board the actual Mars ship, they can all marvel at how clean and spacious it is, and how much easier it is to operate the SpaceX toilets.
Space stations have a lifespan, limited by leakage, but also frankly hygiene. Imagine living in a camper for 20 years without windows with six people. Mir was the same way – a nasty gas station washroom by the end. But with ISS, there may be a way to make everyone somewhat happy…
Everything on the Western side of ISS is built in phone-booth sized modules that can be clicked in and out of place – labs, bedrooms, life support – everything.
Have a specially constructed crewed starship dock at a full-sized port. Starship has the same payload volume for a pressurized habitat as the entire ISS (1000 cubic meters). Gut the thing and bring the modules back to Earth for clean-up. If you want to keep using them in space, update them as needed and do six-month Starship-as-space station missions with all the supplies on board, a bit like the shuttle and Spacelab. This will also give SpaceX experience with long-term life support prior to Mars missions. You can fully amortize the investment in lab equipment that still works, and add new modules on the same specification to these missions. You can have several going in parallel, actually. You may want a power tower with radiators permanently on orbit for the Starship to dock to so that the equipment can be powered and cooled appropriately, and a docking port for crew-tended and external experiments left on the power platform.
ISS, gutted of equipment, becomes much easier to de-orbit due to the reduced mass. And we aren’t throwing billions into the Pacific. Science often depends on consistent observations with the same equipment, so reusing the hardware has that benefit in that the sensors would not reset out of calibration when replaced until it was necessary to do so.
The ISS costs about $3 billion a year to operate. I’m sure we are not getting anywhere near that in scientific value.
Elon Musk and Jared Isaacman have been working together since at least 2021. Somehow I doubt the ISS subject never came up between them. What Musk is saying may well be a part of Isaacman’s plan when/if he’s confirmed with Musk just breaking the ice to get people thinking about it.
Interesting related article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn93797z2dpo
From everything I’ve read about Musk, Mars has been his goal most of his life. He’s had to work with NASA though over the years and, although he’s learned and profitted, the moon was never his primary interest. Would imagine ISS was a paycheck and a way to test out equipment. But with Starship advancing (currently showing on launch apps with a placeholder/rough estimation date of Feb. 26 at 6:30 for Flight 8) and Starlink financing (I have one myself and love it) he may be getting antsy to get on with his future while he’s still relatively young enough to be part of it. He turns 54 this year and has needed several surguries on his upper spine which may have been behind a comment he made last year about maybe not making it to Mars. With Trump and Isaacman and an engineer’s eye on the old leaky ISS, he may well be as focused on Mars as he says.
He and Bezos have known each other for some time now and both congratulated (and probably commiserated) about their recent flights. But if Bezos can free him up for Mars by taking over the more local stuff as he grows, I don’t think that would be considered a problem.
ISS is in a lousy orbit. Convenient for the Russians, yes, but an orbit closer to the equator would allow for more mass to be tossed up to LEO with every launch. For that reason alone we ought to fly a big, red bow up on the Butch and Suni Rescue Flight and stick it on the ISS, telling the Russians, “From America, with love! Good luck, Ivan.” ISS is old, leaky, creaky, and has used up most of it’s usefulness.
We can build something bright, shiny, and new in a good orbit convenient to our easily reachable orbital planes. Set it up to build things on-orbit. Many small flights can accomplish this. Starship makes it even easier. NASA doesn’t need to build it, only contract for the space on board. Keeping bureaucratic impedimenta to a minimum is important.
LEO is halfway to anywhere. Learning to construct, refuel, and live in LEO are important steps. Such skills would facilitate further goals in space. “Use well the days…”
I hate waste.
To de-orbit the space station after billions spent to put it there and maintain it goes against everything I believe in!
Look at at the opportunities that will be missed. things we can perform on the station once it’s been evacuated.
We have a leaking module that needs to be repaired. How can this be performed in a manner that will last? what can we learn from the experience? When it is moved to a higher orbit, the welding/patch job can be tested under stress.
Methods of repair and testing will come in handy when you least expect it. It’s good to know what works in an emergency.
Keeping the station as a future museum will attract a number of visitors. If nothing else, a lifeboat in orbit will come in handy in a life-and-death situation should any of the other stations fail or become incapacitated from meteor impact. It will also be useful as a training ground/isolation sick chamber/ rent it out for drug research or habitat for a work crew for a larger station construction. Solar panels could charge their tools, EV packs. Test new modules and larger blowup versions.
Move it to high orbit next to the Hubble telescope and do some upgrade repairs at their leisure. Install an ion engine to maintain altitude despite the solar wind.
The alternative is to dump it in the atmosphere and end up with nothing.
Just as what happened with every space shuttle launch center tank which had the internal volume of a 747 fuselage, that was was not moved into a higher orbit for future use, but thrust back into the Pacific to burn up… what a waste when they were already in orbit.
All 135 center tanks! Gone!
Enough to create a high volume space station out of thick/clean aluminum metal was all wasted. What of lack a future planning or vision.
Enough living space for a couple of permanently occupied self sustaining rotating habitats in orbit, and a larger one in a figure 8 orbit ferrying people/tourist and scientist from earth to the moon. Even Mars.
Same should be done with all high-volume first stages that they don’t plan on retrieving, put them in the parking orbit, your grandchildren will thank you if we’re not too late to stop the next dark age…
pzatchok wrote: “This could give the station 10 more years. Unless NASA is worried our modules might just blow a hole inside that time.”
ISS has been operational for 15 years, the longest of any space station. Parts of it have been in orbit for a quarter century. It is definitely aging. Musk’s task is not to make sure that America or humanity have a permanent constant presence in space; it is to find wasteful spending and recommend spending cuts in order to assure a much more efficiently run government. ISS is still costly and old, two reasons that even NASA is committed to decommissioning it. Right now, its productivity is limited to what NASA allows, but the new commercial space stations should have fewer limitations and should be far more attractive for potential users.
Lessons on station longevity should have been learned from ISS, but for now I do not see any of the commercial space stations lasting a quarter century, as they should become obsolete within a decade as technologies and methods improve. These improvements are what competition is all about.
Richard M pointed out that Elon Musk may want to retire Dragon fairly soon in favor of Starship. This would explain the limited production run, but I think this would be a mistake unless Starliner becomes successful or the manned Dream Chaser becomes reality.
Starship has many advantages, but it is not well suited to dock with the commercial space stations that are currently under construction. Can you imagine any of these space stations trying to maintain attitude control with this 100-ton behemoth riding on its back? I can’t. But a Dragon, Dream Chaser, or Starliner would be little problem. Starship has too much capacity for any of these space stations, but the smaller spacecraft were designed with just the right capacity.
Brewingfrog wrote: “ISS is in a lousy orbit. Convenient for the Russians, yes, but an orbit closer to the equator would allow for more mass to be tossed up to LEO with every launch.”
Ah! Someone who gets it. The most efficient orbit is the one whose inclination is the same as the latitude of the launch pad. Yes, an equatorial orbit would be most convenient for the Brazilians, Europeans (launching from French Guiana), and Indians. A 50° orbit would be most convenient for the Russians, Scandinavians, Argentinians (when they get around to launching rockets), and Alaskans (but not as convenient for the Brazilians). A 30° orbit would be most convenient for the Americans, Australians, Chinese, Japanese, and Mediterranean countries. This may not be the most desirable orbit, however, as many modern satellites are launched into sun synchronous orbits, which tend to be retrograde polar orbits,
Edward,
Every time this question has come up in the past, Elon and Gwynne have insisted that they’ll keep flying Dragon and Falcon 9 as long as NASA keeps asking them to. And I see no reason to think they were being insincere in saying that.
But — and this is me speculating here — it could be that Elon now figures he has the power to accelerate the day when NASA would stop asking him to fly ’em. And — this is me speculating again — it may be that the consideration he says he gives to NASA in this regard just does not apply to private companies building space stations, even if they’re run by old friends and colleagues of his (as Vast happens to be).
Maybe this was just a rage tweet propelled by the scrum with Mogensen, and nothing will come of it. But maybe it also may be serving us as a reminder that Elon really does have a monomania about getting to Mars, and he ain’t getting any younger. Dragon was a valuable stepping stone to that objective, but that is all it can ever be; and arguably, its value in that role is diminishing steadily.
This discussion about whether SpaceX will retire Dragon sooner or later I think is missing two factors:
1. Musk has always been focused on making money by providing good products to his customers. As Edward noted, Dragon is much better suited to ferry crew and supplies to the upcoming commercial stations. Thus there is a need for Dragon, and thus a profit center for it. Musk will not abandon a viable money-making product, even if his focus is Starship and Mars. Remember: profit pays for those latter goals.
2. In any transportation industry, one size does not serve all. The orbital space industry that I think the U.S. should focus on post-SLS (see the two-part essay here and here) will need taxis, big trucks, tankers, mail trucks, UPS vehicles, etc. The more the merrier. If SpaceX abandons Dragon, I guarantee others will fill that gap with something similar, because as I note in #1 above, there will be a need.
Planning on something being obsolete just because you think technology will improve in the short period of 10 to 15 years is wrong. Its not logical or economical.
Design and build it to last far beyond your expected time of use and update parts as time goes on.
Even if it just ends up being an empty pressurized can it can be used for a short time as a test area for in orbit patching and sealing. It eventually has to be done for the future of space flight.
I also hate to throw out something that works fine just because the technology passes it up.
I for one have never and never will buy a new car. My daily driver is 15 years old and looks pretty good and drives like new. My pickup is 20 years old. And I have a 1956 Victoria that I totally rebuilt and updated. And those upgrades are even 30 years old technology. It runs drives and looks better than new. And cost me less than a new car.
The money I have saved on cars alone could have bought me another house.
pzatchok wrote; Planning on something being obsolete just because you think technology will improve in the short period of 10 to 15 years is wrong. Its not logical or economical.”
It may seem wrong, but that is how companies stay in business; they keep ahead of the advancements being made by the competition. Vast is working on exactly that principle with its Haven class space stations. Haven 1 is intended to be the first commercial space station on orbit, but Vast knows already that the other companies will make it obsolete by 2030, so they already have plans for Haven 2. How long they can find customers for Haven 1 is a good question, but they may be able to use it for actual space tourists after it is no longer used by researchers and and manufacturers.*
High throughput geostationary satellites become obsolete before their 15-year lifespans end, and their operators plan for that obsolescence, The satellites that are having their lives extended by Mission Extension Vehicle spacecraft are of the type that do not become obsolete as quickly.
SLS may have its uses, but it suffers from designed-in obsolescence, in that it was obsolete by the time Congress finished its dreadful design of the rocket.
______________________
Robert makes a good point, that Dragon is now more cash cow than cash sink, so it should not distract from Musk’s Mars Mission. However, if they stop manufacturing Dragons, how long can the fleet last? We have a limited number of companies working on commercial manned spacecraft, and perhaps Boeing will leave that business soon. I am not hearing of many (any?) companies willing to improve on the Dragon or Dream Chaser designs.
I like Robert’s idea of long-term thinking. We know that SLS has distracted us from other projects that could have been productive, although we do not know whether Congress would have funded NASA to perform such projects. We know that commercial space companies can only find funding for projects that are — or could be — productive, but we don’t know in advance whether or which of those projects will or could succeed. We are doing things in the commercial sector that are untried. We have seen successes in the launch industry (Falcon and Electron), and we have seen failures, too (ABL and Virgin Space, each for different reasons).
We have been launching men and materiel into orbit for two-thirds of a century, and only now are we beginning to see any space manufacturing of the kind we, way back then, had expected. When we start getting products made in space back here on Earth, what would be the effect on the population and the attitude toward space? If the Space Shuttle or the ISS had been allowed to produce products that make our lives better or increase our expected life expectancies, how would that have affected us? When Apple added internet access to cellphones, that made a huge change in human cultures, some for the better and some not. What would space manufacturing do?
I am inclined to side with Musk, that we would be better off with the ISS retired sooner rather than later. It is expensive, has hampered our use of space rather than enhanced it, and has not made the populace see that space is far more useful than it thinks.
ISS has been a distraction. SLS is a distraction. Going back to the Moon will be a distraction, unless we do it right. These have all been short-term projects with short-term goals, but we need to start preparing for the long-term in space.
________________
* Please note that all of the commercial manned flights so far have been made by people doing research or development testing. So far, the only actual tourists have all flown on government spacecraft.