No need for vulgarities.
The ISS does serve some purposes, but it certainly isn't worth the ~$100 billion lifetime development cost. The research and engineering knowhow that it will teach probably isn't worth more than $5 billion. To summarize the ~$5 billion usefulness of the ISS: it teaches us how to build and assemble complex 10-20 ton life-support components that are launched into space with with about 3 Gs of force. This is certainly important, but overrated. It serves three purposes: 1) it helps us with our next generation of 20 ton component space stations (perhaps around the Moon or Mars), 2) it gives us a little technical knowhow if we want to start launching 100 ton components with a 5 G rocket, and 3) it gives us a little knowledge on how to make a life support compartment for an interplanetary mission.
It is useful to acknowledge that when the Ares V program comes online, the US will no longer be required to play with 10 shuttle flights to assemble and provide supplies for 8 15-ton components. A 130 ton (or optionally higher) Ares V rocket could do that in one launch. The final mass of the ISS, for example, could be put up with 3 Ares V rockets. The biggest winners from the ISS program will be the Russians and the Europeans--the ones who are paying less than half the cost.
Thanks for your response. It's not far from the normal responses I get from those employed in this field. But I look at everything you said and ask, "To what end?" We went to the moon. I was disappointed to find that it was not made of cheese, as I'm sure most others were. But what did we really gain? And what do we hope to gain in the future?
I have to agree with Jaysun on the waste. Where is the big wheel with cintrepital gravity allowing for coninuous habitation? Where are the Lunar colonies? These things could be done. These would be real steps into space. What we have is an outrageously expensive low-Earth-orbit program reduced to bragging about zero G high school science fair projects.
I have watched the Shuttle take off, and I have had the fortune to see it come in over West Texas pre-dawn. Spectacular, the latter more so than the launch. Compared to a Saturn V launch...well, ya had to be there.
More than any other factor, the Saturn V was still on the optimistic, we are going there curve. The Shuttle is now on the "let's hold on to our jobs" curve. None of the Apollo astronauts would have believed me if I had told them then that 35 years later we would never have gone to the moon again. I will always remember where I was when Armstrong (sliightly) flubbed his lines. Can you remember with that vivedness any shuttle cruise that did not result in death?
The Shuttle program has racked up a one in fifty fatality rate. We would regard this as unacceptable for fighter pilots on combat missions, I believe the rate there is 2 orders of magnitude better.
I will say this: if I were offered a chance to go up and told my chance of returning alive was 50/50, it would require physical restraint to keep me off that flying bomb.
The United States is the leader for construction of the ISS, but Americans will probably hand over much control over the stations to the other members (Russia and the ESA mainly, but Japan and Canada are also members), as NASA tries to go on with Bush's vision for space exploration.