SpaceX CEO and unelected White House advisor Elon Musk unexpectedly said today that he wants the International Space Station destroyed “as soon as possible.”
In a tweet today, the mercurial entrepreneur asserted that it’s “time to begin preparations for deorbiting the space station,” arguing that “it has served its purpose,” with “very little incremental utility.”
Instead, Musk argued, the station should be destroyed within two years — but left the final decision “up to the President.”
It’s a confounding statement that comes at an extremely inopportune time. We can only guess as to why Musk wants to ditch existing plans to retire the orbital lab in 2030 — with the help of his space company, we should note. But exerting pressure to ditch the ISS could quickly turn into a massive headache for billionaire tech founder and SpaceX space tourist Jared Isaacman, who’s in Washington, DC, for his confirmation (a date has yet to be set).
But as Ars Technica‘s Eric Berger reports, the space station has key advocates in Congress, including senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has historically supported the station’s continued operation.
A source with knowledge of the matter told Berger that Cruz was “furious” with Musk over the tweet. The Congressman will oversee Isaacman’s confirmation process as the chairman of the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Those meetings could be thrown into chaos with Musk, who now wields a huge amount of influence in the White House, advocating for the early retirement of the station.
Going forward, Isaacman will have to walk a tightrope: appeasing an unpredictable and hugely influential Musk while maintaining good relations on Capitol Hill.
Why would Musk dump existing plans to retire the space station? In his tweet, Musk renewed his call to “go to Mars,” suggesting the mercurial CEO was looking to shore up the funds to send spacecraft, and eventually humans, to the Red Planet.
NASA spends roughly $4.1 billion on the space station per year out of its $25.4 billion annual budget. Almost half of that goes to Musk’s SpaceX as part of its transportation budget to deliver astronauts to and from the station using the company’s Dragon spacecraft.
Chances are that getting astronauts to the surface of Mars would cost orders of magnitude more than that, as experts have previously suggested — if it’s even possible at all, that is.
Apart from the possibility that Musk is looking to save money to “go to Mars,” his plans to destroy the space station three years sooner than expected could also turn into a huge headache for NASA’s private partners, who are looking to develop their own space stations, as Berger suggests.
Those stations are unlikely to be launched any time soon, which means that China would be the only nation in the world to have a permanent presence in the Earth’s orbit for years if the ISS were to be deorbited on Musk’s new timeline.
Confoundingly, SpaceX had already signed an almost $1 billion contract with NASA to develop a “US Deorbit Vehicle” that could nudge the ISS out of its orbit and push its charred remains harmlessly into the ocean.
In other words, this isn’t some massive conflict of interest that’s motivating Musk — it feels more like a kneejerk reaction in his years-long quest to get to Mars.
Both Musk and president Donald Trump have argued that we should aim our sights at Mars instead of the Moon, plans that could cost NASA billions as it’s forced to dismantle its Artemis program.
Shutting down NASA’s Moon project could also prove extremely unpopular, even among Republican Trump loyalists in Congress.
But whether lawmakers will have the last say as Musk’s DOGE boys rip apart the federal government from within remains to be seen. So far, Congress has largely appeared unwilling or unable to stand in his way — which could spell disaster for NASA’s plans to keep the space station alive through 2030.
More on the station: Elon Musk Calls for Destroying the Space Station as Soon as Possible