Michael Foale's efforts to save the ISS

Well I mean it's very cool and all, but I'd still rather see the money going in to (manned) exploration, if I had to choose.

Funding by the various space agencies involved is only agreed until 2024. This means in just six years’ time, the most expensive structure ever built will be pushed out of orbit by a Progress spacecraft to disintegrate over the Pacific.

“Year by year, Russia is launching the fuel to fill up the tanks of the ISS service module to enable the space station to be deorbited,” says Foale. “That’s the current plan – I think it’s a bad plan, a massive waste of a fantastic resource. These various projects compete for the money. They can’t go to the Moon or Mars and also continue to supply the ISS with crews, cargo, food and supplies.”

“I’m hoping that commercial space can come up with a business plan that allows part of the ISS to be maintained in space, without sinking it into the Pacific Ocean,” he says. “You have to come up with innovative ways of keeping it in space.”

The ISS already supports some commercial operations. A private company, NanoRacks, operates experiments in equipment racks on the station for private clients. The station is increasingly also being used to launch small satellites into orbit, carried up in commercial spacecraft such as SpaceX’s Dragon robotic supply ship. The Russian space agency takes tourists to the station and has even suggested it might build a hotel module.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180105-the-astronaut-fighting-to-save-our-home-in-space