SCIENCE LAB: "What Happens After It's Finished? Debate centers on whether the international space station should be destroyed," by Joel Achenbach, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 20-26 July 2009.

Hard to believe that NASA's current plan is to complete construction of the ISS by the end of next year and then bring it down in a controlled crash in 2016.

NASA also considering what it would cost to keep it going deep into the 2020s.

One scientist derides the ISS as the equivalent of flag-pole sitting. You've got to be pretty old to remember that one.