The ISS has been traditionally shielded from international politics, for the most part. I certainly hope to see it stay that way.

Normally I would agree, but the current situation goes way beyond "politics". Russia's actions would be better described with words like criminality, incivility, and terrorism.

I disagree.

Russia is the media's villain this week, but I've learned not to trust the media with determining for me who is the villain. I've seen very little discussion of Russia's side of the story, and from my naive interpretation I understand exactly why Russian doesn't want NATO missiles on its borders.

The coverage is far too one-sided to make any informed opinion.

Russia threatened to pull out of the ISS a few days ago claiming that the station would fall to earth without them. Then People pointed out it would be straight forward to simply replace the Russian module with an extra SpaceX Dragon capsule and use its thrusters to fill the same purpose the Russian module had been.

https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/elon-musk-says-spacex-c...

At least according to the text in your link, they didn't threaten to pull out. They said that the station would fall to earth if they were expelled.

Elon Musk already said SpaceX can easily handle the logistics and I think it's obvious. Political and economical side however is not so clear. But also if and when Starship launches, it will have pressurized volume of the entire ISS, so why just build ISS 2.0?

There is already a Commercial Station program going on from NASA and they didn't select Starship derived station.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-companies-to...

"The companies that received awards are: Blue Origin".

So Blue Origin is their choice of launcher then? Because Blue Origin is notorious for demanding awards and delivering exactly jack shit in return.

It is very weird how seriously they are being taken before they have even reached orbit, at all. It was a bit of a stretch the investment spacex got when they had just reached orbit once with a small rocket, but at least they had done it.

The Core Modules will have to be lifted on New Glenn (or Starship).

This is the first major award Blue Origin actually got, and it will likely be underfunded for years. So lets see, they have a lot to prove.

> just build ISS 2.0?

With blackjack and hookers

Somewhere Putin can bite our shiny metal space station.