Think of the ISS as any other construction. It has a limited life, even with maintenance. Buildings eventually become hard to maintain, ships eventually become too expensive to repair or operate, and even your car doesn’t last as long as the ISS already has. More than just the harsh environment of vacuum and radiation, there are micrometeors and man-made space junk (e.g. paint chips) that are wearing down the exterior of the station, and the mechanisms within and outside of the station will eventually wear out.

This is a shame of spending so much money building this super station. It seems to me that Congress saw the Soviet Mir space station and said, ‘I want one, too.’ So they started a “keeping up with the Joneses” competition, only to have the “Jones family” fall apart and join in on the project. Plus, in 1984, they thought that it would give the Space Shuttle a destination.

I don’t know how many more decades it can be economically operated, but I suspect that replacing it with other stations, such as Bigelow space habitats, will eventually become a better value than continual maintenance of wearing parts, just as will happen to your car. The next US space station is likely to be placed into a more easily accessed orbit.

Another shame about the ISS is that its original lifetime was designed and scheduled to be 15 years, and it took almost that long for construction and inception of normal operations. It has only been the past couple of years that it has been able to host a lot of experiments. Design changes instituted to save 10% on costs reduced the crew size by half and thus the ability to perform experiments by a factor of two to six, making it even less cost efficient than expected. But then again, now we don’t have the shuttle to carry the experiments up and down, so maybe the lost ability to perform them isn’t the loss I think it is.

The ISS is yet another US space asset that Congress and various presidents have (mis)managed to squander.

Unless you get rid of the old one they don’t think they will get any money for a new one.
Its old NASA thinking. And for the most part its true. If we have the old one still operational then congress will just keep funding the old one and never budget for a new one.
So they will have no need for so many engineers, they could be laid off.
But if we need a new one because the old one fell apart then congress could be pushed just enough to fund a new one and thus everyone keeps their jobs and maybe even a few new ones could be added.

Its just like the SLS.
If we had just dusted off our old designs for the new launch system they would not have needed half the engineers and budget they need now. We would be ahead of the game and would still be lifting passengers.
Its why ULA wants a whole new budget to replace its Russian engines. They claim they will need to redesign the whole system but everyone knows all they need is to copy the Russian engines. We could even do it legally and lease the design or even buy it.

Does anyone involved even consider what this will look like to the public? Do they think that the public will want to pony up another $100 billion for a replacement when the scientist, engineers and other flunkies at NASA come with hat in hand asking for another toy after tossing the ISS the ocean? I’m sure some senators will be eager to shovel the pork into their districts, but 90% of the other senators will not.

I guess I should want to see NASA destroy the ISS as it is probably the quickest way to get the agency out of manned flight. But to destroy the ISS? Sheesh, sell it Bigelow for and let him begin expanding it with a dozen of his modules and turn it into a real operational space station.

But they are way behind on building OM and other modules. Years behind.