Hallerb wrote:

Yeah BUT ISS is never going to produce much science return, it and the
shuttle are co dependent on one another too.

Just how much science return do you expect to get from ISS? Down here on
Earth, most small science labs don't generate large returns. Given that the
ISS is a pretty small science lab, it's unreasonable to expect large,
publicity-generating science returns to come from it. It's the nature of
scientific research.

The thing that the ISS *does* do well is that it allows experiments to
operate in extended periods of microgravity, something that simply can't be
done on the ground. That's the station's niche. We will learn things from
ISS research, but they'll probably be in fields that most people aren't
interested in (or even aware of). That doesn't mean that the research isn't
valuable.

The best thing that could happen is scraping both programs and moving on.

Why?

--Chris