Elon Musk doubles down on Mars mission update as he calls for ISS to be scrapped

Elon Musk is again looking to the stars, with the SpaceX overlord setting his sights on Mars.

While the American space technology company has already penciled in a return to the Moon as part of the Artemis program, the world's richest man is looking even further afield.

Even though SpaceX is due to make history by putting man back on the Moon for the first time since 1972, Elon Musk is sharing his hopes of getting the human race to Mars.

As well as offering up his own sperm to help colonize Mars, Musk has previously joked about dying out there on the Red Planet. Musk has already made wild claims that he thinks we could have self-sustaining life up there in the next 20 to 30 years, but there are still plenty of concerns that we can't make it happen...yet.

According to the tech mogul, space companies should be focusing their efforts on Mars, effectively skipping the middle step of the Moon.

When Eric Berger, Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica, posted about Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill act 'gutting' NASA missions, he added: "We are abandoning real, existing assets in space to spend billions on missions a decade from now that may very well not fly."

Musk has been vocally against the bill and even vowed to form his own political party, so pulling it apart once again, suggests that NASA and the likes should be spending their money solely on Mars.

With Trump outlining a chunky $1.25 billion spend for International Space Station operations, Musk mused: "It’s time to retire the Space Station and focus on Mars."

This was reiterated in another post on X, where he shared someone's picture of him, accompanied by the quote.

Those who know anything about Musk will know he's no fan of the ISS. After SpaceX seemed to nab a lucrative $1 billion contract to decommission the ISS, Musk called for the process to be fast-tracked.

That was all before his spectacular falling out with President Trump, which has already led to warnings that Mr. Musk could lose billions in government contracts. It should also be noted that Trump's bill only puts aside $325 million for deorbiting the ISS by 2030.

Musk continues to argue that the ISS no longer offers a return on investment, and with it being put into space back in 1998, the fact that many parts are over 25 years old means it's becoming increasingly expensive to maintain.

On the other side of the coin, scientists say that cutting the ISS off early could unnecessarily end crucial research into the cosmos.

Either way, Musk is firmly standing by his stance that it's time for the ISS to go. Considering Musk's rival Jeff Bezos is supposed to launch a $100 billion ISS replacement, it's no real surprise that the former is keen for efforts to be focused on his own Martian endeavors.