Elon has time on his hands
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In a remarkable statement Thursday, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the International Space Station should be deorbited "as soon as possible."
This comment from Musk will surely set off a landmine in the global space community, with broad implications. And it appears to be no idle comment from Musk who, at times, indulges in deliberately provocative posts on the social media network X that he owns.
However, that does not seem to be the case here.
"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," Musk wrote at midday on Thursday.
This original statement was somewhat ambiguous. Last July, NASA awarded Space X an $843 million contract to modify a Dragon spacecraft to serve as a propulsive vehicle to safely guide the aging space station into the Pacific Ocean in 2030. So in some sense, preparations are already underway to shut down the laboratory.
I asked Musk if he meant that NASA and the US government should commit to the 2030 end-of-life date, or if he wanted to accelerate the timeline for the station's demise.
"The decision is up to the President, but my recommendation is as soon as possible. I recommend 2 years from now," Musk replied.
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President Donald Trump expressed frustration in recent days about the long wait for a pair of Boeing
747s that will serve as the new Air Force One planes.The jets are years behind schedule. Trump negotiated the $4 billion contract for the aircraft during his first term, and it isn’t clear whether they’ll be ready during his current one. Cost overruns have totaled more than $2 billion to date.
Trump advisor Elon Musk is working with Boeing in hopes of delivering the aircraft faster, the manufacturer’s chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, reiterated on Thursday.
“The president’s clearly not happy with the delivery timing. I think he’s made that well known,” Ortberg said at a Barclays industrials conference. “Elon Musk is actually helping us a lot in working through the requirements ... to help us get the things that are non-value-added constraints out of the way so that we can move faster and get the president those airplanes delivered.”
Ortberg called Musk, CEO of SpaceX, which competes with Boeing’s defense and space unit, a “brilliant guy” who can “pretty quickly ascertain the difference between technical requirement and things that we can move out of the way.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/20/trump-boeing-air-force-one-delays.html
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