Agreed. They make a better Customer that draft requirements and RFPs. Exception: JPLs robots.

JPL is managed by Caltech even though funding comes from NASA.

But yes, their robots are truly amazing.

I worked a NASA grant with a few others, combined, we had about 75 years of experience in our fields between the 3 of us. We demonstrated onboard computer vision labeling of geographic features of Jovian ice moons using an emulated BAE RAD750, and a very minimal neural network trained on existing Gallileo imaging data. We were very close to getting into talks to be a Tech Demo on Europa Clipper. Then, a random NASA program manager shut it all down because "I just know, you cant run a CNN labeling on a RAD750," despite the fact that we had easily reproducible hard evidence that it was possible. That was the day I lost a lot of faith in NASA, they are not the organization they used to be.

Getting rid of the ISS would leave Falcon/Dragon, and for some missions Starship nowhere to go. Like it or not, for the moment SpaceX is tied to existing NASA projects. Hopefully that will change as the economics of spaceflight rewrite the rules of what is possible and worth doing, but we're not there yet.

Note my wording - I said sell it not get rid of it. I think Elon ( or Bezos, or a bunch of other people ) could do something useful with it rather than sinking it into the ocean.

I tend to think of the ISS like a PC - it's infinitely upgradeable, and you replace parts as needed to upgrade them, or add on as needed. (ok, so the ISS is much more complicated, but this is HN, not a PhD dissertation).

ISS is a problem that will solve itself. It's showing its age, and Russia and US are in no position right now to work together on extending it.

It's slated for demolition in 2031. Maybe we'd save money by ending it sooner, but given the sunk costs and lack of replacement, we might as well use it.

True. My thinking is to sell it for $1 to someone who could make good use of it.

It has many things that work, and it seems we could build on it and throw the old parts away as they age. Keeping it as is until 2031 means keeping everything running in top notch condition and then throwing it away, which seems dumb. Obviously keeping astronauts on something that is not full working order is even dumber though. That’s why I like the idea of selling it and throwing out parts as they age, but building onto it as well.