Thanks - those make sense. I wonder if there is any opportunity to keep it in use or relevant. We spent $140 billion putting it up there, so if its not viable to spend 2% of that per year keeping it going then I understand the need to deorbit.
Yeah, we can keep B-52s flying for 50 years with insane numbers of launch-land cycles, I'm pretty sure the ISS can fly for a very long time. SpaceX can already resupply it. I don't see why they wouldn't take it over.
B52s can be completely disassembled in a shirt sleeves environment and we've barely explored on orbit construction. The ISS can't be stripped down so far which is actually causing an issue with bacterial growth in places that can be reached on orbit to be cleaned. At a certain point things that are hard/impossible to reach will reach the end of their lifespan and the inhabitants are in too much danger.
