The ISS was put in its particular orbit so the Russians could easily access it. Unfortunately that orbit makes the ISS useless for anything other than busy-work low-value science projects (the ISS was intended for this pointless exercise). Many people are saying with some justification that the ISS is a useless, expensive white elephant. They then go on to say that the ISS should be abandoned or de-orbited.

I wonder if the ISS could be salvaged? Why couldn't the ISS have extra solar arrays installed along with an ion propulsion system. Jettison all the "science experiment" hardware and then reconfigure the ISS to run unmanned. Remove the two man crew, fire up the ion drives and let the ISS slowly spiral out of Low Earth Orbit. Have it fly through the radiation belts that shield us from cosmic radiation and then park it at a Libration Point.

All of a sudden, the ISS becomes something that's extremely useful. Not only could studies be done on the long term effects of cosmic radiation and zero gravity on human physiology but the ISS could also serve as a way station for servicing telescopes at the libration points (that's where the next generation space telescopes will be located). The icing on the cake is we gain flight experience with ion propulsion systems moving large cargo (an enabling technology for sending people to Mars) and we never have to worry about the ISS reentering the Earth's atmosphere like Skylab, MIR and Salyut.

Who knows? If the concept worked really well, from the Libration point, we could mount bigger xenon fuel tanks on the ISS and then fly it off to Mars orbit. How's that for a crazy idea? A manned Mars program based upon existing hardware! Seems like a good idea to me!

Gary