Elon Musk recommends that the International Space Station be deorbited ASAP

"There is very little incremental utility. Let’s go to Mars."

See full article...

 

[Sjoerd Verweij]

I counted five in the comments here and brought their posts to the other thread, then a sixth showed up and I updated the list. I didn't restrict it just to those who gave up over this particular article, though.

To ensure accuracy of your records, I unsubscribed over the "doers vs. checkers" article.

 

[Sjoerd Verweij]

The ISS is old and tired. There's not much that can be usefully salvaged, especially since the cost of salvaging ISS parts in LEO is expensive and is not worth the cost.

The ISS is not a monolith; there is absolutely no reason it couldn't have been treated as Theseus's ship and just refreshed partially and on an ongoing basis. Refresh the main module, add more docks, add small prop-only docks (so the Russian side can be ditched in 2028 or so), then start adding commercial labs. If half the SLS budget would have gone to that, we would not be having this conversation.

As it is, yes, it might be too late. Even slapping on the Axiom module might be too late. There's also the space suit fiasco, but, well, you know...

 

[mackanory]

At my local library system, I came across an old list of Elon's reading recommendations collected from various interviews and statements. It's got a lot of classic sci-fi (especially Ian M. Bank's Culture series) on it, but I think some of the themes kinda flew by Musk.

I have very little doubt that, were Banks still with us, he'd probably be demanding Musk took the names of his works off his drone ships. He was the absolute political opposite of Musk. But it's the good ones that die first.

 

[Sjoerd Verweij]

I read their post as saying that Berger is basically keeping his powder dry so that he can maintain some kind of deep cover, getting close, until the time is right and he can release all the secret material that shows us all how bad Elon Musk really is.

That sounds suspiciously like QAnon explaining how Trump is secretly amassing evidence against the Deep State and is about to arrest all the evil-doers.

Although at this point, he may actually just arrest a bunch of people -- he'll just do it without any evidence. Ah yes, when your timeline is shittier than the masturbatory fantasies of QAnon lunatics... where is the manager? I would like for this ride to end now.

 

[Sjoerd Verweij]

Sir, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

 

[Uragan]

You are a paid shill. No doubt about it

Paid by whom exactly?

 

[GreyAreaUK]

Paid by whom exactly?

I bet it’s Soros. It’s always Soros with these types.

 

[Leto_atreides]

There are two articles regarding the contributions of the ISS to mankind.
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/stati...ience-aboard-the-international-space-station/
https://www.space.com/international-space-station-2021-research-highlights
If you exclude the contributions to the exploration of space itself and how humans could survive, there is very little to show for.
On the other hand, the other project that has a very similar price tag is CERN. The contributions to mankind have been much more relevant than the ISS.
https://home.cern/about/what-we-do/our-impact
The ISS became a way to keep the peace during the fall of the Soviet Union, and as a diplomatic tool, it was extremely important. As a scientific tool, it has been rather disappointing. The Apolo missions pushed the frontiers of humanity. The Space Shuttle and the ISS tied humans to low Earth orbit. People drive farther when going on holidays than the ISS altitude. What was the opportunity cost of building the ISS, and what has been the opportunity cost of keeping the ISS. How many programs have been cancelled at NASA that could have been kept if only the ISS had been cancelled a long time ago?
A broken clock shows the right time twice a day.

 

[kdemello1980]

If Elon is so dead set on skipping so many necessary steps, then he can fund the ENTIRE effort himself.

 

[fl4Ksh]

Mr. Musk - NASA has paid Space X over 13 Billion since 2010. If the ISS didn't exist, there would have been no economic reason for Space X to exist. Dragon wouldn't exist.

We still need a platform to test long-term micro- and zero-g environments for equipment destined for Mars -- including yours. The ISS was and is a needed destination, unless you plan on creating a new station yourself. I can only imagine what you'd charge.

To others with an interest in Space X's future, please get rid of Musk. Thank you.

Dragon flights to the ISS are lucrative but are few in number. In 2024 SpaceX launched 134 Falcon 9 flights and only four of these were Dragon 2 flights carrying astronauts to the ISS and two uncrewed Dragons hauled cargo to the ISS. So, 6/134 = 0.045 (4.5%) of the Dragon 2 launches went to NASA's ISS. The other 128 Falcon 9 launches that year were a mix of a few NASA satellite launches, military launches, and more than 100 launches with commercial payloads. The revenue that SpaceX made in 2024 from its Falcon 9 launches was $4.2B.

SpaceX has won about $4B in contracts to build the Starship lunar landers for NASA Artemis program. These are fixed price contracts that require SpaceX to deliver those Starships to NASA on schedule and within cost or pay for overruns out of its own pocket.

Those SpaceX/NASA contracts are not cost-plus contracts (handouts) like Boeing and Lockheed enjoy for the SLS and Orion parts of the Artemis program. The $13B in NASA contracts over the past 15 years that SpaceX has received is far less than the $50B that NASA has squandered so far on those two pork barrel cost- plus contracts.

 

[stk5]

As a scientific tool, it has been rather disappointing. The Apolo missions pushed the frontiers of humanity. The Space Shuttle and the ISS tied humans to low Earth orbit. People drive farther when going on holidays than the ISS altitude.

Wow, lazy. I always walk to my family's holiday orbit

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

If you exclude the contributions to the exploration of space itself and how humans could survive, there is very little to show for.

Yeah, stuff with no practical applications for Elon's stated ambitions and his projected future of mankind whatsoever.

 

[Celery Man]

Maybe I missed it, but when did we start using “number of published papers” as the sole metric for deciding the relative value of various scientific endeavors?

 

[Sjoerd Verweij]

Sure, science is great. So let's produce 300 times more science by spending that money down here, right? I mean, we don't have something against science, do we?

It's a good thing there is nothing that can be done in micro-gravity that cannot be done on Earth. I mean, if there were actually something to be learned from doing things in low-Earth orbit, universities would not be lining up for experiments to be done up there, right?

(Checks notes) Oh wait, they all are? Why, that would make your argument really, really fucking stupid, wouldn't it?

 

[Sjoerd Verweij]

Maybe I missed it, but when did we start using “number of published papers” as the sole metric for deciding the value of scientific endeavors?

Since Republicans have denigrated basic research, and promoted the idea that "knowing things" and "figuring things" out are bad things. I mean, really -- the last few times we let a bunch of really smart motherfuckers just run with things, all they did is come up with GPS, the modern computer, GUIs, AI and other some such nonsense. What a waste of money!

 

[Chuckstar]

Wow, lazy. I always walk to my family's holiday orbit

I usually fly to vacations.

And boy are my arms tired!



Thank you, and don't forget to tip your waitress.

 

[Chuckstar]

It's a good thing there is nothing that can be done in micro-gravity that cannot be done on Earth. I mean, if there were actually something to be learned from doing things in low-Earth orbit, universities would not be lining up for experiments to be done up there, right?

(Checks notes) Oh wait, they all are? Why, that would make your argument really, really fucking stupid, wouldn't it?

Most of the orbital science done in first the Shuttle and then in the ISS is done there because the facility is there, so why not. That's not a good way to justify an expensive program: "don't worry, we'll find people willing enough to do some science on our boondoggle."

The important questions answered by the ISS relate to building structures in orbit and people living in orbit. The third-party scientific experiments just give them something to do up there, during the times they aren't actively building/maintaining the facility.

 

[Celery Man]

I usually fly to vacations.

And boy are my arms tired!



Thank you, and don't forget to tip your waitress.

And what’s the deal with the food?

 

[Sjoerd Verweij]

The important questions answered by the ISS relate to building structures in orbit and people living in orbit.

That is an underpants-on-head idiotic thing to say, as a 20 second Google search would have told you. What the hell is going on with you, dude?

 

[Chuckstar]

That is an underpants-on-head idiotic thing to say, as a 20 second Google search would have told you. What the hell is going on with you, dude?

Well, for one thing I'm not acting like a total douchebag.

 

[Eroy]

If you work for Musk, quit. If you use X for social media, stop. This will let him know that there will be some pain, but it will all turn out for the better eventually.

 

[Jordan83]

There may be things that can be done in microgravity rather than on Earth (although things like protein crystallization were hugely overhyped).

But when I look at a sampling of papers from ISS research, I don't at all get the impression the science is 300x more valuable than what is done down here. I'd expect it to be extremely impressive to justify its cost. It isn't, not even close.

I know people want to defend their orbital waifu at any cost, but please reconsider your irrational attachment.

My reaction to all this vituperation in defense of ISS is "gee, if people are this adamant about defending this turkey, what other government efforts are similarly overhyped?" It's not generating opposition to Musk in me, but sympathy for him.

Full transparency - I personally don't know or care all that much about the ISS. It may be valuable, it may not be. I don't know. I would tend to think if the overall vision is 'get to Mars', then doing anything/everything we can on the ISS now to learn about what that might entail would be smart. But, not a hill I'm going to die on.

I do, however, know and care that the world's richest person is a giant flaming asshole of a human being, and it's by far the most likely explanation that the only reason he put forth this opinion on the ISS and what should be done with it right now is because an expert had the gall to correct him on something and hurt his feelings. And the article doesn't make a single mention of this. That kinda irks me a little.

 

[marsilies]

My reaction to all this vituperation in defense of ISS is "gee, if people are this adamant about defending this turkey, what other government efforts are similarly overhyped?" It's not generating opposition to Musk in me, but sympathy for him.

For me, it's not so much about whether there's an argument for keeping ISS up until 2030, or if there's a legitimate argument to de-orbit it sooner. It's that Musk's declaration has absolutely zero to do with the merits of ISS itself, and has everything with him making a drastic policy change with large implications on an impulse as petty revenge due to being caught in a lie.

So all these posts saying "well, I think de-orbiting ISS sooner makes sense" makes the same mistake the article, which is sane-washing Elon Musks, petty, childish behavior. There may be a venue to rationally discuss the merits of having ISS, or any subsequent LEO international space station, but this thread isn't it, because Musk made it about something else.

 

[Yagisama]

I checked out after reading "A Nazi recommends..."

Zero fecal matters given as to the rationale behind any garbage that was spewed.

 

[marsilies]

Yup Musk could have brought them back by now, but NO, gotta let Boeing milk the .gov tit

You don't know what the hell you're talking about. Starliner has cost Boeing $2 billion more than they were paid for it. Boeing is losing money on Starliner, and returning empty means it's going to lose them even more money.
https://meincmagazine.com/space/2025/...n-starliner-but-still-silent-on-future-plans/

And the two astronauts took the shifts of two other astronauts that were to fly up, but didn't, to free up return seats in the Dragon. Bringing them back sooner would've messed up the schedule and necessitated an extra flight, for no good reason.
https://meincmagazine.com/space/2024/...ew-dragon-to-rescue-the-starliner-astronauts/

Not to mention SpaceX itself is responsible for the most recent delay in their return, since their newest Crew Dragon isn't ready.
https://meincmagazine.com/space/2025/...butch-and-suni-but-not-for-political-reasons/

 

[Navalia Vigilate]

There are two articles regarding the contributions of the ISS to mankind.
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/stati...ience-aboard-the-international-space-station/
https://www.space.com/international-space-station-2021-research-highlights
If you exclude the contributions to the exploration of space itself and how humans could survive, there is very little to show for.
On the other hand, the other project that has a very similar price tag is CERN. The contributions to mankind have been much more relevant than the ISS.
https://home.cern/about/what-we-do/our-impact
The ISS became a way to keep the peace during the fall of the Soviet Union, and as a diplomatic tool, it was extremely important. As a scientific tool, it has been rather disappointing. The Apolo missions pushed the frontiers of humanity. The Space Shuttle and the ISS tied humans to low Earth orbit. People drive farther when going on holidays than the ISS altitude. What was the opportunity cost of building the ISS, and what has been the opportunity cost of keeping the ISS. How many programs have been cancelled at NASA that could have been kept if only the ISS had been cancelled a long time ago?
A broken clock shows the right time twice a day.

I opened both links and did not find a need to scroll further than the first thing listed as discoveries made on the ISS in 2021.

1. Spaceflight improves the ability of stem cells to regenerate​

If genetics is not something you've studied or follow deeply I can see this flying by. But I found this very interesting.

The human body obviously does not do well in deep space, it basically cannot survive beyond the Van Allen belt. That stem cells are more active in space means there could be a pathway to guiding the human body to self repair more actively. This does not resolve the issue of various particles smacking around DNA but it is a way to push back on the damage the body takes in deep space. And it is interesting for a large number of potential medical techniques to encourage the body to repair itself, especially soft tissue.

So I find a single by-line in your first article as very interesting and having potential long term value to further the science of stem cell medical use, in space. Want to give people a good reason to go to space? Send them to a 2001'ish space station where they undergo stem cell therapy. I can think of other research that may turn into something valuable in the future.

By the way, as the cost of sending a kilogram of something to space goes down, these ideas become feasible.

Edit: Corrected use of standard weight with metric.

 

[gsgrego]

There may be things that can be done in microgravity rather than on Earth (although things like protein crystallization were hugely overhyped).

But when I look at a sampling of papers from ISS research, I don't at all get the impression the science is 300x more valuable than what is done down here. I'd expect it to be extremely impressive to justify its cost. It isn't, not even close.

I know people want to defend their orbital waifu at any cost, but please reconsider your irrational attachment.

My reaction to all this vituperation in defense of ISS is "gee, if people are this adamant about defending this turkey, what other government efforts are similarly overhyped?" It's not generating opposition to Musk in me, but sympathy for him.

Have you ever thought to think?

Like maybe how not everything done by, with, or influenced by science done thanks to the iss resulted in the writing a paper?

I mean we just studied the long term affects of being in space and how to do things in space. Not like that's super important if we want to travel beyond the moon.

Or have you given thought to the fact that quantity of papers does not equal impact?


But okay let's go with your idea that it just isn't worth it. Why did pedo elmo and his space company scam the American people for years providing support for the iss?

 

[Yagisama]

I think part of the reason I find reporting on space here so tedious is that the headline completely buries the lede.

Musk threatened to deorbit the station after he was corrected on a factual matter by the commander of the station.

How Berger doesn’t lead with that, I don’t know, but it casts a pall on all the other coverage from him. Musk threatened to deorbit a station after being publicly shamed. The lack of mention of this critical detail and the focus on Musks’s thought process feels performative and ass-covering. I’d welcome an explanation.

Exactly.

"Who knows why he said such a thing. Maybe he really likes Mars. Maybe he just hates space stations. Did I mention NASA's budget was so big and was spent inefficiently. Oh and Congress had nothing to do with that."

 

[InfidelSquirrel]

Fuck Elon Musk. Fuck Donald Trump. Fuck republicans. Fuck anyone who thinks they are doing good things.

100%. And it fills me with joy every damned time the leopard inevitably eats the face of another fascist.

 

[InfidelSquirrel]

You do you.

But let me tell you one thing: I visited Auschwitz once, it was probably around 1988. I was 13-14 years old, quite young for the experience. And yet I saw the chambers, the furnaces. The clothes. The hair. That's when fully realised what man was capable of. Especially the men that followed the insanity that was national socialism embodied by this weird, hateful, insane little man with his Fackelzuege, Parteitage and Sieg Heils. Millions of lives extinguished within a few years all because of a group of immoral monsters that managed to take over a whole nation.

So yeah. I visted Auschwitz nearly 40 years ago and it changed me forever.

Musk visited Auschwitz a year ago and 12 months later he made two Nazi salutes and courted the AfD.

But you do you. Whatever keeps you entertained.

 

[Dontfunkintellme]

If old and leaking is a good enough excuse to deorbit ISS today then I say we subject Trump to the same.

Personally, I would be ok with Musk getting a little richer if he won the contract to launch and deorbit POTUS.

 

[Mario_van_Pipes]

This is the best take I've read about Trump in a long time. Trump is all about the deal - it doesn't matter who he throws under the bus as long as he gets the credit for a successful negotiation.

Not to hijack, but this explains the Stargate announcement with Open AI, Oracle, and Softbank. The whole endeavor was already well underway, ground broken and buildings already in place. Then Trump shows up to say how this was his idea and blah blah blah. Taking credit for something he had no actual involvement in? That sounds quite a bit like the thought above.

Trump's entire cabinet is a nest of vipers who all rode into Washington on the MAGA train, and sooner or later they'll turn on each other. I'm reminded of Nazi Germany and the vicious power struggles in late 1944 when it became clear Hitler's leadership was about to result in the destruction of the German nation.

As much as it pains me to see the US in the situation it is now, I can't say I won't feel a semblance of schadenfreude when they all start turning on each other. MAGA eats their own.

 

[Nemexis]

Peterparker23​

Smack-Fu Master, in training​

4y24
Yesterday at 9:02 PM

• #783
• New

I feel sorry for you. Exploration is the key to human existence

Nice try substituting my actual quote with BS you wrote.

Prick

You really are a fanboy of the reality bending Maggies

But, you see, I have the screenshots

 

[TVPaulD]

Big words for a small man. You also make zero points or arguments other than trivial nonsense to satisfy your ego. You sir are a coward. Unable to engage in conversation with someone who might think differently than you. Glad you got upvotes douchebag. You are also incomprehensibly stupid with zero contribution other than self aggrandizement

Yeah, I'm not a man, chief. I'm an enby.

And I am quite happy and proud to not be willing to engage in conversations with misanthropic shit posters.

Dragon flights to the ISS are lucrative but are few in number. In 2024 SpaceX launched 134 Falcon 9 flights and only four of these were Dragon 2 flights carrying astronauts to the ISS and two uncrewed Dragons hauled cargo to the ISS. So, 6/134 = 0.045 (4.5%) of the Dragon 2 launches went to NASA's ISS. The other 128 Falcon 9 launches that year were a mix of a few NASA satellite launches, military launches, and more than 100 launches with commercial payloads. The revenue that SpaceX made in 2024 from its Falcon 9 launches was $4.2B.

SpaceX has won about $4B in contracts to build the Starship lunar landers for NASA Artemis program. These are fixed price contracts that require SpaceX to deliver those Starships to NASA on schedule and within cost or pay for overruns out of its own pocket.

Those SpaceX/NASA contracts are not cost-plus contracts (handouts) like Boeing and Lockheed enjoy for the SLS and Orion parts of the Artemis program. The $13B in NASA contracts over the past 15 years that SpaceX has received is far less than the $50B that NASA has squandered so far on those two pork barrel cost- plus contracts.

It is, but Starship is also late and still does not work. Even if it did, it is not human-rated, so it has yet to be demonstrated that SpaceX can fulfil those contracts. And the CEO and majority controller of SpaceX is now at the heart of the US Federal Government directly inputting on decisions about how to spend taxpayer money, regardless of his lacking formal authority to do so.

 

[ttheobald]

Anyone still listening to that drug-addled cunt needs to have their head examined.

T

 

[theSeb]

Anyone still listening to that drug-addled cunt needs to have their head examined.

T

Some people are listening, others are resisting. Mass confusion all around


Key federal agencies refuse to comply with Musk’s latest demand in his cost-cutting crusade

https://apnews.com/article/musk-fed...mand-firings-06553df358086db05917d3c50f3699d6