Elon Musk’s latest space-related hammer throw is to call for the International Space Station to be deorbited as soon as two years from now.

In posts to X, Musk said, “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.”

When pressed for whether or not he meant to up the current schedule that calls for it to be safely brought down after 2030, Musk said, “The decision is up to the President, but my recommendation is as soon as possible. I recommend 2 years from now.”

SpaceX has a contract to build a deorbit vehicle based on its Dragon spacecraft to do the deed, but also has potentially several crewed trips to the space station for both NASA and commercial companies visiting the station as well.

SpaceX also flies cargo missions twice a year to the ISS.

One of Musk’s buddies, billionaire Jared Isaacman, who has flown twice to space with SpaceX, is President Trump’s nominee to become the next head of NASA.

Musk has been stumping to refocus NASA’s energy toward pursuing his dreams of building a colony on Mars, and the future of NASA’s Artemis program with its plans focused in the near-term on going back to the moon have raised questions about where Trump’s plans are headed for NASA.

Boeing, which builds the core stage for the Space Launch System rocket that’s designed for Artemis missions, has already prepared for up to 400 layoffs if Artemis plans change.

Boeing also stands to lose out if the space station is taken down earlier than 2030 as it has its beleaguered Starliner spacecraft supposed to share astronaut taxi service with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

Boeing has a contract to fly up six times if it gets certified, but if the space station comes down by 2027, then NASA would have no need for most of those missions.

To date, SpaceX has flown 10 crewed missions to the space station for NASA as well as three others for commercial company Axiom Space on its fleet of four Crew Dragon spacecraft.

The next flight for NASA is slated for mid-March while another Axiom Space mission is scheduled for later this spring.

The Crew-10 mission is also one that moves up the timeline for SpaceX to fly back home the two NASA astronauts from the Crew Flight Test mission for Boeing’s Starliner who were left behind on the station when NASA opted to send it home without crew for safety reasons.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been on the space station since they arrived June 6 on what was supposed to be as short as an eight-day stay on board, but failures of some of Starliner’s thrusters and helium leaks led to the decision to keep them safe on board.

The duo were then assigned to be part of the SpaceX Crew-9 crew, which flew up to the station last September with only two people on board, which meant the two empty seats could be filled by Wilmore and Williams when they flew back home.

That flight home, though, is awaiting the arrival of Crew-10, which was moved up to mid-March by a couple of weeks recently when SpaceX opted to shift which Crew Dragon to fly up. A new fifth version of the spacecraft had faced delays, which would have pushed the Starliner astronauts’ flight home to at least April.

Musk has been in a spat with a former commander of the space station about the return flight recently as well.

European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen of Denmark, who was commander of Expedition 70 on the station as well as the Crew-7 mission that flew up on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, took to X to call out Musk’s statement to Sean Hannity that the Starliner astronauts were left on the station for political reasons.

“What a lie. And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media,” Mogensen posted.

That prompted Musk to retort by posting, “You are fully retarded. SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago. I OFFERED THIS DIRECTLY to the Biden administration and they refused. Return WAS pushed back for political reasons. Idiot.”

UCF professor and moon expert Phil Metzger weighed in on the exchange saying on X, “I think there’s some nuance here. If you ask NASA I think they’ll say they declined Elon’s offer to bring back the crew earlier because the $250M cost of an additional Dragon crewed flight is outside their budget, requiring a new funds appropriated by Congress.”

Musk then stated, “Price was never even discussed! They flatly refused. We would have made it work within the annual budget. The real issue is that they did not want positive press for someone who supported Trump. That’s it. End of story.”

He also went on to cast further aspersions toward Mogensen saying “this so-called ‘Commander’ doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. Dude has no clue what’s really going on. He’s a passenger.”