We’ve all met a bad sport before. They throw their controller at a wall after losing in a video game or yell at an umpire over a bad call in their kid’s little league game. However, I’ve never seen anyone threaten to plunge a $150-billion space station in the Pacific Ocean because an astronaut called them out on a lie. Elon Musk announced his intentions to deorbit the International Space Station “as soon as possible” after a heated exchange with former ISS commander Andreas Mogensen on X, his toilet-watercooler social media app.
The online spat was provoked by a sit-down interview on “Hannity” with Musk and President Trump. Sean Hannity opened a discussion with the terrible twosome about the two NASA astronauts stuck on the ISS by the fault-plagued Boeing Starliner. The show’s titular deep-state-believing host said he believed the astronauts were abandoned. Musk replied, “Yes, they were left up there for political reasons, which is not good.”
My head is genuinely in my hands attempting to comprehend what in the world they are talking about. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, both also U.S. Navy test pilots, didn’t return to Earth during the Boeing Crew Flight Test because the risks were deemed too high with the spacecraft’s known issues. If astronauts were forced to stay for political reasons, Elon Musk was the largest beneficiary. SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission was touted as their saving grace while direct competitor Boeing was dragged further into the mud.
Temper tantrum on the platform better known as Twitter
Mogensen, a Danish ESA astronaut, quote-tweeted a post with the “Hannity” clip and wrote, “What a lie. And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media.” In a later post, he reiterated that the plan has been to return Wilmore and Williams on Crew-9 since last September. Musk wasn’t launching a different spacecraft to rescue them sooner.
Musk quickly fired back and called Mogensen “fully retarded.” He claimed, “The real issue is that they did not want positive press for someone who supported Trump. That’s it. End of story.” The guy indiscriminately slashing the federal budget believed the Biden administration turned down his offer due to his support for Trump, not the $250 million price tag for a Crew Dragon mission.
Just six minutes after posting, “this so-called “Commander” doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground,” Musk called for the ISS to be deorbited as soon as possible. It’s obviously not an empty threat to the space program. NASA already awarded SpaceX the contract to build a deorbit vehicle for the planned 2030 mission.
Musk’s temper tantrum could jeopardize the future of NASA and the private space industry. There are still plenty of planned missions to the ISS before its date with the seafloor. Axiom Space, a SpaceX customer, signed a deal with NASA to attach a commercial module to the station in 2027. The startup plans on using the ISS as a starter platform before breaking its modules free as an entire private space station. An early deorbit would scrap those plans.
