Elon Musk calls for America's $150 billion beacon of hope [International Space Station] to be terminated
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Elon Musk is again calling for NASA to scuttle the International Space Station (ISS) after a former engineer of the agency revealed hidden problems with its structure.
Casey Handmer, a physicist and engineer who worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for four years, posted on X that the 26-year-old station's structure integrity is far worse than the public knows.
'We could wake up tomorrow and find, with zero warning, that it has failed catastrophically,' Handmer warned on X Thursday.
Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, quickly responded, saying that even though his commercial space company makes billions from delivering cargo and astronauts to the station, it should be brought down by 2027.
'There are potentially serious concerns about the long-term safety of the [ISS]. Some parts of it are simply getting too old and obviously that risk grows over time,' Musk posted early Friday morning.
The renewed push to decommission ISS came hours after NASA delayed a private astronaut mission by Axiom Space Inc because of a pressure leak in one of the station's Russian-built sections, meaning there could be less air to breathe.
The billionaire leader of SpaceX, Tesla, and X has been calling for NASA to scrap the $150 billion project since February.
At the time, Musk was also the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and recommended to President Trump that the station be brought down 'as soon as possible.'
Posted by: Skidmark 2025-06-14 |