The head of SpaceX proposed to de—orbit the ISS - and the sooner the better. At first glance, this is a strange idea for a space fan. On the second, everything is different: the Soviet cosmonaut and engineer Grechko was the first to publicly question the usefulness of orbital stations. Both he and Musk have very good reasons for this. And given the latter's position in the main power on which the existence of the ISS depends, there are chances for the realization of this idea. Despite this, the idea caused a general rejection in the ranks of space fans and government space agencies.
When Elon Musk wrote on his social network that the ISS should be de-orbited "as soon as possible," not everyone understood what he meant. It seems that his company earns more than a billion dollars a year delivering astronauts to the station and back. It seems that he will be the one who will be paid good money in 2030 for the flooding of the ISS. Why rush this event?
"It's time to start preparing for the launch from space station orbit. She had served her time. There is very little additional benefit from it. Let's go to Mars."
Journalist Eric Berger asked him a question: what does this mean, as soon as possible? He clarified: "It's up to the president to decide, of course, but my recommendation is as soon as possible. I recommend it in two years."
There will be no replacement space station for the ISS in 2027. Neither Russia nor the United States. The only real American player capable of building an orbital station in the coming years is SpaceX, but it has completely different priorities: the company's first Starship ships with a life support system will be sent to the Moon.
Since these ships are the same size as the ISS, and much better in size, Musk will undoubtedly earn money by renting them as orbital stations that periodically land on Earth. But this is not his immediate business plan, and he is unlikely to get around to it this decade. It turns out that a space fan wants to leave humanity without a single large international space station.
Naturally, this caused the most negative reaction both in NASA and among other concerned citizens. The general arguments of critics of the idea of "sinking the ISS!" are simple. European countries, Russia and Japan do not have any objects in space to which they could fly in 2027. But all human skills that are not used are rusting. The Americans know this very well from their own example: their own spacesuits, which regularly pour water on astronauts on the ISS, are one of the living examples of such a blunted sword.
It is planned to bring the ISS out of orbit with a specially modified Dragon spacecraft.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
It's not surprising that everyone except Musk calls it stupidity in the public space. In a NASA statement on the topic, the agency explicitly said: We are going to use the station for scientific purposes and as a training ground for flights to the Moon and Mars.
But before agreeing with NASA, we note that Musk is far from the first to call for abandoning permanently inhabited orbital stations and instead heading to Mars. Two quotes from cosmonaut Grechko:
1977, cosmonauts Grechko and Romanenko before their flight into space. Upon returning from it, Grechko immediately explicitly stated in his report that orbital stations are ineffective, since the main cost of an astronaut's time on them is related to servicing the cosmonaut himself. This is not the case with manned missions to the Moon and Mars: automata cannot and will not be able to replace humans there in the foreseeable future.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
"In 1978, when we broke the record for the longest flight, I wrote in a report that a permanently manned space station was not the optimal solution. It has the efficiency of a steam locomotive.… The orbital stations have a very low efficiency, a few percent. Why, you can talk about it for a long time."
And the second :
Georgy Grechko
Perhaps Musk's position is a little more meaningful than it seems at first glance?
Why reduce radiation standards many times at once?
In fact, the roots of Elon Musk's dissatisfaction with the space station are much deeper than they seem. To understand them, it is worth referring to the history of NASA over the past ten years. As a reminder: until humanity even had the means of flying to the Red Planet on the horizon, the agency had the same radiation standards as during the moon race. In a year, a person in space was allowed to receive 500 millisieverts for a year and four thousand for his entire career.
But in the early 2020s, the situation changed: NASA dramatically changed radiation standards. Referring to gender neutrality, they were cut to 600 millisieverts over their entire career.
We emphasize that there is no new scientific evidence, however, as well as old, that the previous standards of radar safety were too dangerous. There are exactly zero scientific papers that would show this, both in experiments on animals and in observations of astronauts.
But the scientific papers that exist have found something completely different: among the 360 American astronauts studied, cancer deaths are 38 percent less common than "ordinary" Americans (and as rare as professional athletes). However, Naked Science readers are unlikely to be shocked by these figures: earlier we discussed in detail that people who accidentally received moderate (but higher than in orbit) long-term radiation doses in Taiwan died of cancer much less often than citizens of the same state who were not exposed to such radiation.
Animal experiments have shown similar results since the 1950s. Russian scientists have already discovered the positive effect of cosmic radiation levels on the cognitive abilities of rodents. But the works that tried to show the destructive effects of radiation on experimental animals used very crude manipulations for this, exposing them to instantaneous effects at the Hiroshima level, instead of moderate long-term doses of penetrating radiation, as in real space.
Many scientists consider radiation hormesis to be the reason for this seemingly strange effect of moderate radiation: when faced with radiation, the body significantly activates its immune system, which begins to better track and destroy cancer cells that appear in the body of healthy people every day. As a result, death from cancer in humans is noticeably less frequent.
Of course, if the immune system is detoxified by complete isolation in an airtight building, as in some experiments on rats, then there will be no such effect, but real astronauts, like all earthlings, live in a different environment. It is not surprising that after flights into orbit, astronauts die of cancer less often than "ordinary" citizens.
All these long-known scientific facts naturally raise the question: how did NASA suddenly revise radiation standards?
You won't hear the answer openly (apart from the comical official version about gender neutrality). But you can find NASA employees who, on condition of anonymity, will tell you that they consider the reason for such a revision to be a very simple thing: no one in state corporations wants to launch people to Mars.
Flight to Mars: "it's impossible... even with the help of the nuclear engines we are developing for space"
Whether this is really the case is difficult to confirm or deny. But something else is known: the head of the Russian state, for example, is consciously or unconsciously misinformed on the same issue. So, in February 2025, he stated :
"Some colleagues tell me that it is impossible (to send a living cell to Mars. — NS). Korolev once thought about this, said that you need to fly in a water shell, then the cage flies there and back, but this is impossible due to the fact that the device turns out to be so huge that it cannot be launched or transported there even with the help of nuclear engines we are developing for space. It turns out to be a large device. There are no other materials that would protect biological material, a living cell."
In fact, Korolev did not "think", but created a fully working project for a flight to Mars. Moreover, the device for this, a heavy interplanetary ship, had already been tested in full-size ground models and weighed 500 tons, not much more than the modern ISS. And this is despite the fact that there really was an anti-radiation shelter inside, into the hollow walls of which water was poured.
Although in the USSR, on the instructions of Korolev's successors, documents on the Heavy Interplanetary Ship were purposefully destroyed, the workbooks of one of Korolev Bugrov's employees allowed to restore the overall appearance of the structure.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
Radiation levels measured by American rovers on the way to and on Mars showed a total dose for a manned expedition according to the "Mask scheme" (a three— month flight ) of 800 millisieverts (165 on the way there, the same amount on the way back, and 230 per year of stay on the planet). In other words, the NASA regulations until 2021 do not contradict the flight there according to the Mask scheme. Not just for a cage, but for the most natural astronaut.
No matter who is engaged in reducing NASA's radnormatives seven times, no matter who rubs glasses on the head of state about "but this is impossible due to the fact that the device turns out to be so huge that it cannot be launched or transported there even with the help of nuclear engines we are developing for space," it is impossible to defeat them with rational arguments. We have already explained why rational arguments in cosmonautics lose out to the ability to pour into the ears of the authorities, so we will not repeat ourselves.
To take away hope
But what if you deprive people who know how to pour into their ears of their daily bread? What if we leave NASA's manned space specialists without an orbital station? When will the only alternative to going to Mars be to fire them?
This measure, especially in the United States, is very effective. The fact is that thanks to SpaceX, the American space industry has a very difficult situation: all other space players are under enormous pressure and either die or switch to a 12-hour work day and are afraid to die anyway.
So, Boeing has already sent its employees working on the SLS rocket for the flight to the Moon, notifications of imminent dismissal. Blue Origin is expanding the 12-hour working day, while laying off employees and trying to find new ones — but at a lower salary. The reasons are trivial: SpaceX rockets carry cargo much cheaper than any other company in the world.
Bliue Origin Rocket Workshops. It is the only non-Chinese company in the world besides SpaceX that has a chance of launching a superheavy rocket in the 2020s. However, according to its claimed characteristics, such a rocket will not be competitive against the background of Ilona Mask's company counterpart. This forces the managers of Bliue Origin.force your employees to work longer and harder, and get paid less. This method is quite typical for private companies in difficult situations, but it is unlikely to be useful in the fight against SpaceX.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
From Musk's point of view, it is quite rational to first create a situation where the US private rocket and space industry simply has nowhere to go (except to him), and then put pressure on NASA's manned program staff with the threat of completely eliminating everything they do. In this case, they will also be in favor of going to Mars, because they will have no other ways to get paid in this industry.
Of course, developing flights to Mars is much more difficult and risky than their previous work. People have been flying to space stations for half a century, and there are no fundamentally new technical solutions. And when you're not creating anything really new, it's pretty hard to miss with a new one. But choosing between the likelihood of a miss and guaranteed dismissal, most will still prefer the former.
Is Musk right about the "very little additional benefit from it"?
Well, an experienced space lover will object to us. Indeed, by their own will, the current middle managers at NASA and other government agencies around the world would rather die than engage in manned missions to Mars. But does this mean that flights to space stations should be stopped? Aren't there a lot of interesting scientific experiments being conducted on them? Isn't this an ideal training base for astronauts?
First, about scientific experiments. Grechko also noted rather obvious facts: manned orbital stations are poorly suited for many classes of scientific observations in orbit. Firstly, a person cannot live in zero gravity for a long time without a couple of hours of intense physical exercise per day. Many decades ago, it was found out that vibrations from simulators create shallow shaking at the station, so you can't install a telescope on it: shaking will reduce the quality of images.
Secondly, many types of biological experiments on the station with humans are also unsafe. Biosecurity levels are designated for laboratories for a reason: if something goes wrong, the experimental objects should not get outside. It is difficult to provide good biological protection on an orbital station: there are large weight restrictions. Even without advanced experiments on board the Mir station, overgrown microorganisms once clogged the pipe of the water supply system by one and a half meters, which caused the astronauts to have very unpleasant health problems.
Thirdly, ensuring that a person lives there makes it difficult to work specifically on experiments. People have to spend many hours every day on training, hygiene, cleaning and cleaning all surfaces from microorganisms, and so on. Moreover, all these time-consuming events occur precisely because of their constant presence on board.
Let's repeat the well—known: "inside the station, too, the equipment is not very sweet - constant +25 ... 26. Humidity. Despite all the efforts of the astronauts to clean up, microorganisms still develop and mutate in the modules. For example, they noticeably "pinched" the Mir station and even ate out the cavities on the portholes.
Such temperatures and humidity are very necessary for people: when humidity is less than 50 percent, their mucous membranes dry out. And if your apartment is like this for six months out of 12 (when it's cold outside), then no one is interested. But if astronauts are supported like this, they will have health problems. Naturally, since he is being monitored, no one will go for it.
Such conditions are not particularly useful for equipment: fungi, mold, and most microbes multiply perfectly in them. And where they are, corrosion easily begins. Behind the inner lining of the Mir station, they somehow found a drop of water the size of a basketball, in which not only bacteria, but also, for example, amoebas (protozoa) felt great.
If you ask Russian cosmonauts what they think about flying to the ISS, then, despite the fact that this is their only occupation, the answers will often be critical. There are much fewer experiments per unit of time on the ISS than on Mir, the life support system is much less closed, dependence on the ground mission control center has increased, and flights have become shorter. Now the orbital station is no longer a training ground for deep space flights: in its current form, on the contrary, it is further from such a training ground than the ancient Soviet Mir.
Does this mean that flights on space stations are useless? No. But in order for them to be really something new in the scientific sense, we need completely different stations: those that existing state-owned space contractors will definitely not make .
If you talk to employees of space agencies one-on-one and without disclosure, they will tell you that the main benefit of stations is not in the experiments that are carried out on them. The problem is that without them, space agencies will very quickly forget how to fly into space, how to make leak-proof spacesuits, simply put, they will lose their qualifications.
The question is, what is more important for humanity? Invest several billion dollars in making space agencies able to do what humanity mastered in the last century? Or, seditious thought, is it worth investing these billions in learning something new?
It is clear that NASA and other government contractors will inevitably be in favor of the first option. But it is equally clear that Elon Musk will definitely be in favor of the second one.
Where is our place in what is happening?
In Russia, the need for a flight to Mars is still not recognized at the state level. Yes, Tsiolkovsky and Korolev are Russians, and yes, they did it a long time ago. But it's at SpaceX that the conference rooms are named after them — there's no such thing in Russia. The ideals of modern Russian managers are formulated somewhat differently, quote:
"We need to stop projecting. Stop talking about where we will fly to in 2030, we need to work, talk less and do more, actively engage in the commercialization of our space industry and increase Russia's share in the international market."
Readers of Naked Science know that this is the same as naming the Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences after Lysenko.">
If SpaceX is well acquainted with the ideas of Korolev and Tsiolkovsky, then in our country this issue is more complicated. For example, the name of the former Korolev Design Bureau included the word "Energy" in general: As Naked Science readers know, this is the same as naming the Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences after Lysenko.
Of course, there is no question of any serious increase in Russia's share of the international market in the space industry. This share will continue to grow mainly at SpaceX. The reasons are simple: to fly to Mars, you need cheap carriers, and that's why SpaceX created them.
And for those who do not understand why to fly to Mars, new carriers are not needed, therefore, they will build a fundamentally outdated Angara, or better yet copy the Falcon 9 of the same SpaceX, but from the 2010s (we are talking about the Soyuz-7 project ).
Another quote from cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, from 2019:
Gennady Padalka
As we can see, everything is developing along these lines: Russia plans to use the aforementioned modules, which were created for the ISS a long time ago, as the basis for a new national space station. For example, we plan to launch the very NEM that Padalka wrote about into orbit at the end of 2027. It will be the beginning of a kind of new ROS orbital station .
Of course, this deadline will almost certainly be shifted to the right, but that's not the problem. The problem is that the most appropriate time for this step would be "never." Our country has a very small civilian space budget: the funds that will go to space exploration will reduce the funds that we will use to develop reusable rockets that carry cargo into orbit cheaper than disposable ones. Namely, their shortage is the main bottleneck of our entire space program.
Photo from the SpaceX conference hall named after Tsiolkovsky, 2013
Therefore, our place in the flooding of the ISS and the subsequent concentration of the American space program on Mars is a purely passive position. We will wait for the United States to decide, and we will act on the basis of their decisions. Russia alone will not be able to support the ISS. If the Americans decide to sink the station, we will open a "museum of Russian space technology" in orbit. If they don't decide, we'll open the same museum, but a couple of years later.
Theoretically, our solution space is a little wider. The country can certainly do much more technically than in the 1960s, when Korolev tested modules of a heavy interplanetary spacecraft to Mars on earth, which he planned to send there in the 1970s. There's nothing impossible about copying Starship and flying to Mars yourself.
But let's face reality: the leadership of our state is being told absolutely seriously that a living cell cannot reach Mars. Yes, from a scientific point of view, this does not stand up to any criticism. However, a politician is not a scientist, and you can rub other things into him.
Therefore, the most realistic development of events is "on the Padalka." It will be possible to talk about flights to Mars from Russia only many years after the American cosmonaut sets foot on the surface of the fourth planet. Then even the most conservative scientists from the Institute of Biomedical Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences will stop talking about the imminent and inevitable death of astronauts who flew there from cancer.
Most likely, this will happen already in the 2040s. So Russian cosmonauts on Mars, as well as on the Moon, obviously will not even become the second. This is the price that a country that once launched a human into space will pay for its past and current mistakes in this industry.
Alexander Berezin
