Musk’s threat to decommission Dragon space capsule would leave NASA dependent on Russia to get to ISS

president Donald Trump and Elon Musk also argued on social media on Thursday, threatening the richest man in the world to turn off a space capsule used to take astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.

After Trump threatened to cut government contracts granted to Musk’s Spacex Rocket and Starlink Internet Satellite services, Musk responded via X that Spacex “will start turning off the Dragon spacecraft immediately.”

It is not clear how dangerous musk threat. But the capsule, which was developed with the help of government contracts, is an important part of keeping the space station in operation. NASA also relies heavily on Spacex for other programs including launching scientific tasks, and later in this decade, they return astronauts to the moon.

Dragon capsule

Spacex is the only American company that is now able to transfer sets to and from the space station, using four people dragon capsules.

Starliner capsule flew only once; Last year, the test trip was so badly that NASA’s astronauts had to return to Earth via Spacex in March, more than nine months after its launch last June.

Starliner is still on the basis where NASA decides whether to go with another test trip with goods, rather than a crew.

Spacex also uses a dragon capsule for its own tasks. One of them is scheduled to fly next week on a rented trip by Axiom Space, Houston.

Cargo versions of the dragon capsule are also used to transport food and other supplies to the orbits laboratory.

NASA’s other option: Russia

Soyuz capsules in Russia are the only way to enter the teams into the space station at the present time.

Soyuz capsules carry three people at the same time. Currently, every Soyuz Russian launch carries one NASA spacecry, and each Spacex launch contains one Russian on board under the barter system. In this way, in an emergency requires the return of a capsule, there is always someone from the United States and Russian on board the plane.

By launching its first crew to NASA in 2020 – the first tropical flight of a crew by a private company – Spacex enabled NASA to rely on Russia to transport the crew. Russian flights cost tens of millions of dollars per seat for years.

NASA also used the Russian spacecraft for the plate, along with the American contractor Northvin Grouman.

The launch of the other government in Spacex

The company used its missiles to launch many scientific tasks for NASA as well as military equipment.

Last year, Spacex also won NASA to help get the space station out of orbit when it was no longer used.

The huge missile of Spacex is what NASA has chosen to get astronauts from the moon’s orbit to the moon, at least in the first two tasks to land. Starship took the ninth test last week from Texas, but it was out of control and separated.

This story was originally shown on Fortune.com

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2025-06-06 10:11:00