You're defending a white elephant. Two in fact. No useful science came from either program but we did manage to kill a lot of astronauts with a flawed design. At least NASA is finally admitting it's gross error and now it may be possible to move forward with a more rational design.
We could recoup some of our investment in the ISS if we de orbited it and sold tickets to the light show. That's about the only useful thing I can think of to do with it.
I don't think that's true. I was involved in some of the potassium-argon studies of the "Genesis Rock" samples brought back from the Apollo 15 mission, and trace element studies of the "orange soil" discovered by Jack Schmitt at Taurus-Littrow on Apollo 17. I can tell you we learned a heckuva lot about planetary evolution and lunar geology from those samples. "Useful science"? You betcha. I don't think we would have gotten those samples without a manned lunar mission to go find them, recognize what they were, and bring them back in sufficient quantities for analysis in a meaningful way.
I also helped with an experiment involving crystal growth in microgravity, which flew on STS-73 back in '95. We got a tremendous amount of data on diffusion processes for various dopants in a variety of media. That experiment could not be done on the Earth, or the Moon, because of the gravity gradient. It was a complex experiment that could not have been automated. It needed a researcher present at the system to make adjustments, take data in real time, and make appropriate changes to the setup and conditions. Very "useful science", I can tell you.
I think a better option might be to send it to one of the lagrange points and use it as a refueling, maitenance and emrgancy saftey pit stop.