Elon Musk Urges Deorbiting the International Space Station 'As Soon as Possible' (go.com) 159
An anonymous reader shared this report from ABC News:
Elon Musk called this week for the deorbiting of the International Space Station (ISS) "as soon as possible."
"It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the [ISS]," Musk wrote in a post on X on Thursday. "It has served its purpose. There is very little incremental utility. Let's go to Mars."
In a follow-up post, Musk said he was planning to recommend to President Donald Trump that the station be brought down "as soon as possible" and that the 2030 timeline for deorbiting be moved up to two years from now.
Jordan Bimm, space historian and professor of science communication at the University of Chicago, told ABC News what he thinks was one of the most important findings to come out of ISS research: "that microgravity affects the body in lots of deleterious ways." "That leads to your bone loss, muscle loss, changes in the fluid inside our bodies that are normally being pulled down by Earth's gravity, changes to the eye and vision loss and things like that. We have gotten good data on how that progresses over time, and importantly, we have developed countermeasures for these things as well, including resistance training or running on a treadmill, things like that..."
Jordan Bimm, space historian and professor of science communication at the University of Chicago, told ABC News what he thinks was one of the most important findings to come out of ISS research: "that microgravity affects the body in lots of deleterious ways." "That leads to your bone loss, muscle loss, changes in the fluid inside our bodies that are normally being pulled down by Earth's gravity, changes to the eye and vision loss and things like that. We have gotten good data on how that progresses over time, and importantly, we have developed countermeasures for these things as well, including resistance training or running on a treadmill, things like that..."
So SpaceEx can profit? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So SpaceEx can profit? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that Musk's government work creates a conflict of interest that is so huge that it is blatant, outright corruption. This cannot stand.
Re:So SpaceEx can profit? (Score:5, Informative)
The fail-fast tech used in SpaceX rockets leave it vulnerable low-probability failures than an engineer can imagine but that testing does not reveal because they just don't happen often enough. For unmanned flight that's no big deal: you lose a payload now and then in exchange for a drastic reduction in launch price.
For manned flight, losing a payload means dead people. So of course SpaceX wants to shift the mission ratio further in favor of unmanned missions. He wants the inevitable dead astronauts resulting from the fail-fast design method to come as far in the future as possible.
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Musk needs to back away and stop pretending he's a rocket scientist. Musk isn't a genius. Probably not at anything, upending the fanboy worship of him who believes that rich == competent. Good CEOs do not micromanage, they don't demand that all employees of a company he takes over send status reports to him personally, they figure out who is a good employee or not before the mass firings.
SpaceX is essentially Elon's toy in the same way that Blue Origin is Bezo's toy.
Right now Elon is just mad that NASA d
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Malum Prohibitum - should not be a crime, but should come under heightened scrutiny to ensure fair action.
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Outright and transparently obvious corruption is what Americans voted and gave Trump a super majority to do.
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The majority did not vote for that (or the plurality that is, Trump didn't quite hit 50%). The majority voted for lowering inflation essentially. There may be maybe 30% true believers who want Trump to be dictator and micromanage the country into oblivion, but the majority did not sign up for this. All those undecided voters who went for him assumed he'd be mostly the bumbling guy from the first term, they assumed congress would reign him in like last time, they assumed he'd take actions based upon his c
Re: So SpaceEx can profit? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I didn't know what Musk and SpaceX would do with their commercial Space Program. He talked big about going to Mars, but, talk is cheap.
Re:So SpaceEx can profit? (Score:5, Insightful)
A real astronaut called out Elon on his bullshit, so Elon wants to destroy the ISS because his feefees got hurt.
Not even making that up. The call for deorbiting the ISS came almost immediately after Andreas Mogensen corrected something stupid Musk said [rollingstone.com]. This isn't about profit, this is just pettiness.
=Smidge=
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Re: So SpaceEx can profit? (Score:3, Informative)
Re: So SpaceEx can profit? (Score:5, Informative)
Read your own link. Nations agreed to fund the station until 2030. Now the man with the puppet strings wants it immediately scrapped.
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Read your own link. Nations agreed to fund the station until 2030. Now the man with the puppet strings wants it immediately scrapped.
No ISS, more money for SpaceX (him).
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Par for the course with people in this Administration.
Re:So SpaceEx can profit? (Score:5, Informative)
There doesn't appear to be any other logical explanation and it does fit with Musk's increasingly petty behavior.
The Mars trip requires the ISS, that's where all the "Long periods of time in space" research is done. At worst it doesn't conflict with it. There's no logical reason for Musk to pretend going to Mars means destroying the ISS except him being a petty asshole because an astronaut dared point out Musk was lying in public.
Re:The logical explanation (Score:4, Interesting)
It’s because of the chaos of the people involved. They rely on flooding the zone, so that discussion is hampered.
Did Elon say it because he really thinks that deorbiting will save some maintenance costs? Who knows anymore? He’s moved on to other things and probably wont address it, already saying incorrectly that the astronauts were there for political purposes (he thinks they said NO to make him look bad, not because it was a waste of resources, they had planned for the contingency.
But then Elon had to make some controversy to make him look better in the exchange, and then immediately (probably since he was thinking about it) went to deorbiting the ISS.
This company won the contract to do that. It will take years of planning, I didn’t hear from him “Space-X has a plan already in place to deorbit ISS and reduce costs”, no, he just threw out insults and then an ultimatum. Why should we keep giving him the benefit of a doubt, that his reasons are genuine?
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Musk's problem is that he owns Twitter/X. Owns as in it's a private company now, and he orders his employees like an overlord. He uses "free speech" site to amplify his own deranged train of thought and bans those who disagree with him or who call him names. He claims DOGE is the most transparent department ever and then shouts that someone who is trying to be transparent is a criminal. Are there any fools left who honestly think Twitter/X has more free speech after Elon? Just like Trump used Twitter a
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There is a plan for deorbiting ISS eventually. A plan made by experts. Musk is definitely not an expert. And shortening the plan by three years just because his ego was mashed is not what experts do.
Re:So SpaceEx can profit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Post hoc ergo propter hoc [wikipedia.org] is a logical fallacy, dude.
Argument from fallacy [wikipedia.org] could very well apply your argument as well.
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On the other hand, landing humans on Mars will do exactly nothing for space research which could not be achieved cheaper and more reliable with probes. And "second Earth" is not a good argument either, because people growing up on Mars will be unfit to live on Earth, because they would not withstand Earth
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You were right to point out their use of a fallacy- however, to think that they're wrong because of it, is itself a logical fallacy.
Re:So SpaceEx can profit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Post hoc ergo propter hoc
I'd agree, except Musk's pettiness in similar matters is the stuff of legend. Remember the cave submarine?
A propensity for certain behavior, followed by potentially matching behavior with little indicating an alternate cause, puts the conclusion outside "post hoc" territory.
Re:So SpaceEx can profit? (Score:5, Informative)
Argumentum ad hominem is, "This guy is a jerk, don't believe him."
Repetition of the past is not ad hominem: "This guy has done this thing in the past. He says this time is different. Don't believe him."
Look at it this way: does Trump's history of lying mean that nothing he says should be accepted as truth without further verification? Yes, yes it does. He could be telling the truth the way a stopped clock is right twice a day, but you have to check first.
As for the ISS, it's basically the only manned spaceflight we still do. If we stop it before we start other manned spaceflight we have a break in continuity where we lose the people experienced with manned spaceflight.
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"This guy has done this thing in the past. He says this time is different. Don't believe him."
Strictly speaking that should be "don't believe IT." The repeating past behavior means you should, by default, believe the specific current behavior is the same. Applying it to the speaker (him) rather than the specific speech (it) could be overly broad.
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Let's try the logical contrapositive [wikipedia.org] because it has the same truth or falsity as the original statement. Does someone else's history of telling the truth mean that everything they say should be accepted as truth without further verification?
Both arguments are fallacies [wikipedia.org]. Whether someone has a history of telling the truth or lying may provide some insight into whether they are
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There's already a plan to deorbit, Musk is trying to speed that up but without knowing the facts. He's a bull in a china shop, or a bull in the Twitter source code, or a bull in the social security database. He blunders in and claims to be an expert and screws things up. Now an astronaut has called him out and Musk threw a tantrum - it should be obvious to anyone that Musk does not respond in rational manners to criticism.
At Twitter, he wanted to shut down servers. He thought there were too many of them
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Argumentum ad hominem [wikipedia.org] is a different fallacy than we were discussing, dude.
It's not an ad hominem if the person is themselves the subject of the argument. It's ad hominem when you attack a person *instead* of their argument.
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Dude, give it a rest. We know you’re in line to gargle his balls.
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No, this is pattern matching. Musk has a pattern of being a petty jerk. And now he's a petty jerk who's been allowed to literally run a nation.
Re:So SpaceEx can profit? (Score:5, Insightful)
The amount of money he used to buy Trump will turn out to be a wise investment for him. And a nightmare for America.
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The amount of money he used to buy Trump will turn out to be a wise investment for him. And a nightmare for America.
Trump isn't the type to stay bought.
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The amount of money he used to buy Trump will turn out to be a wise investment for him. And a nightmare for America.
Putin got a far better deal for the money he spent on Trump, as did the KGB [kyivpost.com].
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Let's sail the seas to the new world! We don't have a boat yet but since _this_ boat won't get us there, let's go ahead and sink it.
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I think little Elon is just unhinged because somebody dared to call him out for a direct lie. Such a small person.
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ElonMusk seems hell bent on positioning SpaceEx as the winner in teh commercial space market. Deorbiting ISSS would get rid of a significant reason for Boeing to make Starliner, as well as make it harder for Blue Origin to justify spending money on it's manned vehicles; especially if he refocuses NASA on his current fantasy, going to Mars over further lunar exploration.
Indeed ... I'll translate:
Musk: "It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the [ISS]"
"There is very little incremental utility." (For me anyway. $)
"Let's go to Mars." ([*winks*] Anyone working on a ship for that? $$$)
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No conflict at all, DOGE is the most transparent department ever, and he's doing all these because he loves you. No wait, that's wrong, I was reading from the draft...
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ElonMusk seems hell bent on positioning SpaceEx as the winner in teh commercial space market. Deorbiting ISSS would get rid of a significant reason for Boeing to make Starliner, as well as make it harder for Blue Origin to justify spending money on it's manned vehicles; especially if he refocuses NASA on his current fantasy, going to Mars over further lunar exploration.
OK, so that's the best justification of ISS you can offer? That's the reason for its existence? An excuse to keep funnelling state money to Boeing? OK, you convinced me, I wanted it to stay up there, but now I see it can't go down fast enough.
My post was looking at Musk’s possible motives, it has nothing to do with the reason for keeping the ISSS in operation.
Yeah - let's send Elon to Mars... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can he take his buddy Donald with him?
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Last thing we need is a newtype Donald Trump
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Re:Yeah - let's send Elon to Mars... (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if Kamala had a press conference and George Soros was talking over her. There would be emergency impeachment proceedings that day.
word salad (Score:4, Funny)
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I think we need something like it (Score:3, Interesting)
As much as I totally agree we should focus on going to Mars, I think we need something like the Space Station for just basic research.
It seems really valuable to have something close to Earth that we can do zero gravity research from, either manufacturing or basic biological study.
Now if there's something better than the Space Station to do that from, that's a whole conversation - the current Space Station is getting a bit old now with odd leaks [livescience.com] and smells [whyy.org]... so maybe it is time to put up something new.
Re:I think we need something like it (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed we can barely live and survive in a space station very close by. We are a long, long ways from being able to survive on a trip to mars, let alone returning, or even staying on Mars. It's the height of hubris for Musk to think that we're even close to ready to send people to Mars, as cool as that would be (would that he is on the first mission). As impressive as Starship is, it's a long ways from being any kind of vehicle to get people to mars, or even the moon.
Meanwhile as evil plans from meglomaniac oligarchs go, Bezos plan to build manufacturing in space and extract resources from asteroids is far more utilitarian and beneficial.
The Mars thing is just a red herring (Score:2)
The thing about musk is he's basically king nerd. Just like how Trump is everything a certain class of dumb blue collar guy wants to be Musk is everything a certain class of nerdy kid who grew up playing dungeons & dragons in solitaire mode wants to be.
The overt
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You can MAYBE make the idea that Mars is a distraction from climate change, but walkable cities and public transit? Get out of here with that nonsense! If anyone did colonize Mars, it would be nothing but public transit and walkable cities out of necessity! It's not like we can terraform the planet. Everything would be in underground environments and/or in domes.
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idea = argument, meh
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It's still worth it to call out bad ideas and bogus narratives.
Re: I think we need something like it (Score:3)
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It doesn't matter when you make the taxpayers foot the bill.
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The industrialization of space. It is not just a want, it is a need!
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As a failsafe against asteroid impacts, supervolcanoes, global pandemics (for real this time), Carrington-level events (which, mind you, could also affect Mars), and other madness. Secondarily, there might be some useful mineral resources there. Certainly lots of iron. But we've already got a lot of that.
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I can think of no less interesting conversation about space than Leon Musk would provide and SuperKendall would respond to. The constant firehose of partisan bullshit ruins society.
But let's be clear here, the only reason SuperKendall engages is because he needs to take a side on a topic his hero seeks to profit from. Regarding Mars,.Leon can "go fuck himself", Mars is his private ambition, he can take that profit incentive being used to destroy a valuable resource and shove it deep up SuperKendall's ass.
Re:I think we need something like it (Score:5, Insightful)
The ISS is basically the only manned launches we still do. If we deorbit it before we start doing other manned launches, we'll lose the continuity of experience of all the people involved in manned spaceflight.
If we want to go to Mars or anywhere else, that'd be the height of foolishness.
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At this time, we cannot go to Mars. Cosmic radiation alone would be deadly.
Also, why go there? Mars is a lot less hospitable than in the middle of the largest desserts we have on this planet.
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There will never be conclusive evidence that Mars gravity, and more generally the Mars environment is enough sustain a healthy life, until we send people to Mars. We can say on earth for another 1000 years and still not know. Until we do real testing with real people we will not know. Will sending people to Mars get people killed? Almost certainly. But when did human civilization become so pathetic that we are not willing to risk lives in order to explore and expand into the universe. People risk their liv
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Why is it so super critical to know that Mars gravity and environment "is enough sustain a healthy life"? The answer already is probably no, unless we go to extreme measures to protect the humans there. Your argument that people do dangerous things on Earth sure doesn't convince me that we should spend an enormous amount of money on a Mars manned space program. We can much more easily and cheaply send robots there as we've been doing for decades.
Why? (Score:2)
Elon Musk Urges Deorbiting the International Space Station 'As Soon as Possible'
... so that Musk can pocket hundreds of billions in taxpayer money replacing the ISS with a new one that offers no real advantages over what it replaces while leaving us with a years long gap where there will be no human presence in low Earth orbit while Elon is on the cusp of launching the first module of the new space station, any day now, it's just around the corner, third quarter of next year, maybe in six months, first quarter of next year, ... etc, etc, ad nauseam.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
I'd love to hear how Elon thinks bein in that situation at least two years earlier than planned will in any way help Make America Great Again.
seriously Elon has jumped the shark. (Score:2)
Fuck off Musk (Score:2)
Most Americans
go to mars, first, please (Score:2)
Go to mars, if you can. Probably though, you can't, because there is more basic research and things to discover on the ISS that would be helpful. Otherwise, what's stopping you. You own the launch system, make it happen. Stop being a crybaby.
The ISS doesn't belong to the USA (Score:3)
The ISS is a multinational project that does not belong to any single country. In fact, 15 countries have contributed to its creation. The main partners are NASA, Roscosmos and the European Space Agency.
Some countries might not agree with Musk, especially nowadays.
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"Belong to" does not mean the same thing to you as it does to Musk or Trump. Musk and Trump now think the USA belongs to them, so the ISS must belong to the USA since otherwise it would not be theirs. Musk speaks like his opinion on the ISS matters, there's reason for that.
You know what else doesn't "belong to" the USA? The Panama Canal. Except apparently now it does. When talking about Trump and Musk law doesn't apply, only force.
Go for it! (Score:3)
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That was always going to be the case. The ISS is on its last legs.
Work to extend life to 2028 began in 2010 (Score:2)
So... the controversy is replacing the program with something new after twice the initially planned lifetime? And 2028 was the extended EOL anyway?
So this was already planned... outside chance it could be 2030, beyond that would require megabucks investment per public info.
and...
This was never the intended space station and it's not in an orbit useful for anything other than international relations. (
AfD (Score:2)
He's also spreading lies on X last minute hoping it won't be corrected in time before Germans vote in their elections. For example, he earlier retweeted a picture of a stabbing that falsely claimed a police officer was subduing a bystander, when it was actually one of the attackers. Clearly he has dosed up on self-interest. Either doesn't bother fact checking or doing so knowingly. Of course he's gonna want to deorbit the ISS.
48 hours to explain what you did last week (Score:2)
Musk Must Go! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Forget UnAmerican. The ISS is co-owned by 14 different countries. That makes Musk an Inhuman Piece of Shit.
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Musk knows he could never be president so he did the next best thing and bought himself one.
I wonder why ? (Score:3)
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Indeed. Such a small, insecure person Musk is. Cannot even deal with a bit of criticism.
Christ, what an asshole. (Score:3)
Of course the value of the ISS means nothing to Musk the billionaire.
Of course the effort that went into building it means nothing to him.
Of course the fact that 15 countries invested in it means nothing to him.
Fuck Mars. Let's go back to the Moon first, establish a base/colony there, and see if we can survive for 15-20 years. It's RIGHT THERE, not months away.
So in case anyone was wondering (Score:3)
There is a very good reason we do not privatize air traffic control. Sure we can let Bridges fall on poor people all day long and even kill some middle-class people but you don't fuck with the airplanes.
Still his car company is gradually imploding. We're all focused on how he's gutting the government and a bunch of us are finding out that our jobs heavily depended on government contracts without us realizing it but he's still working on moving Tesla's headquarters to Texas so that he can take a $55 billion dollar pay package which is more money than Tesla has made in its entire history.
Mark my words he will get that money and when he does he will cash the stock out and let the company collapse. Better hope you're not holding on to any stock when that happens or it'll be like when GM collapsed.
People forget the major car companies can and do implode. Especially when they're facing stiff competition from better engineers and companies that are better run.
Musk has no integrity or credibility (Score:2)
Musk is an edgelord who repeatedly spews unhinged nonsense. His opinions are worthless.
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Indeed. He probably is on drugs. Again.
He'd know (Score:2)
Let's see his great Starship making orbit and leaving Earth's gravity well first, before we make him the czar of rocketry, and the only source of anything space wise. I mean, why even have NASA, All we need is Musk and his Starship He's not failed at anything yet.
Why are we listening to that immigrant? (Score:2)
This guy really is an idiot (Score:3)
At this time, a trip to Mars is completely survivable for humans, due to cosmic radiation.
Musk is grandstanding... (Score:3, Interesting)
Elon Musk’s push to immediately deorbit the ISS smacks of a big show—a calculated stunt to boost his "disruptor" image. It's a move that plays perfectly into his narrative, even though it undermines a decades-long international partnership. And it’s a win-win for him -- calling for a rapid shutdown of the aging ISS makes him come off as the fearless challenger to outdated government programs, positioning himself as a trailblazer, and he gets to play the martyr if cooler heads eventually prevail.
Musk’s demand isn’t really about safety or efficiency. He’s using this controversy to push his own agenda of private industry taking over. Unfortunately for Musk, space isn’t a one-man show. The ISS is the product of complex multilateral agreements, and any attempt to unilaterally change its deorbit timeline would not only breach these agreements but also erode trust among key international partners. NASA doesn’t have the right to override the established plan.
If other nations push back, they have plenty of options. Diplomatic protests, legal arbitration, and even operational countermeasures are all on the table. The ISS program is managed under intergovernmental agreements that require consensus on major decisions, including end-of-life procedures. Although the US does have considerable influence, these agreements mean that any drastic change (like an immediate deorbit) isn’t solely a US decision from a legal standpoint. Roscosmos, ESA, JAXA, and CSA can and likely will challenge any move that sidesteps the collective decision-making process governing the station. In short, NASA can't just call the shots without risking major international fallout.
For me, Musk’s maneuver is nothing more than strategic grandstanding—a self-serving stunt aimed at keeping the spotlight on his disruptive ambitions, even if it means jeopardizing an essential piece of global cooperation in space.
he's right on this one (Score:2)
While Trump and Musk's random dismantling of the government is both cruel and stupid, and this is clearly a conflict of interest for Musk, Musk is right on this one. The ISS has always been extremely low return on investment and should have been abandoned pretty much every step along the way. If the money going to it was kept in NASA and redirected to more interplanetary probes, OMG, that would be a fantastic thing! But this seems more like a stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day sort of thing.
The biggest th
I'm all for Musk going to Mars (Score:2)
SpaceX has the contact (Score:2)
There's a Tesla waiting for him (Score:2)
Ther is no commerical value in Mars (Score:2)
Elon Musk wants to go to Mars because he wants to "save" humanity ... by living on an inhospitable world which we have no hope of ever terraforming, to which the round trip presently takes between 2 and 3 years. Same reason he fathers so many children (well, if I am hospitable). So colonization, surprise, surprise.
There is no reasonable commercial value in going to Mars. Scientific value? Sure. Space colonization, sure, but that supports maybe scientific study. It's not our escape hatch. Commercial. Maybe i
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Let's have Elon go up and ride it down to make sure it's done right.
I can just picture him doing it like Major Kong at the end of Dr. Strangelove: Straddling it like a horse, hooting and hollering and waving his gray MAGA hat.
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"He has accomplished an incredible amount, and his long-term detractors have been repeatedly shown to be almost always basing their opinions on false news, internet rumors an memes, and (I suspect) an intense jealousy. "
Making excuses for your long term ignorance by spewing more lies? Just take the loss, Musk has proven himself to be even worse that any if his detractors ever argued, and that says a lot.
"This past year has been different. "
No, it hasn't. The difference is that his behavior has become more
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I think Elon should de-orbit from Adderall as soon as possible.
It’s not very easy, time dilation is a major problem for anyone way down a ketamine hole.
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I heard it was ketamine?
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Indeed. Such a small, unrefined and immature person.
Send it to Mars [Re:Translation: "If it's not...] (Score:2)
If you want to deorbit the Space Station, go land it on Mars. It will offer tools, refined materials, and places to shelter in.
I love your idea for its ambition, but I hope you do know that this is absurdly impossible. We can't get the ISS into a trans-Mars injection orbit without literally insane amounts of propellant, we can't stop it once it gets to Mars, we can't enter it into the Mars atmosphere (without melting it in the process), and we can't soft land it on Mars even if we could enter it into the atmosphere..
I'd say that the best we could do it make a crater on Mars plus a large amount of scrap metal on the surface, but we
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It would save us about $8 billion.