Lyric discussion by Ziggy*dust 

I always pictured it as a song about Space Oddity with all the chaos going on as they lose contact with major tom. but it is a wierd concept because we all know major tom is a junkie not a space traveler but a farewell to ziggy sounds reasonable.

It could still be about space oditty. Ashes to ashes was not a revelation of the true identity of major Tom, the story was that he called earth again to say that he was happy in space, but that he now wanted to come down to earth, but ground control came to the conclusion he was a junkie. I think this is after ashes to ashes, they abandoned him to die.

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