re: Next week's manned spaceflight from Cape Kennedy will be historic...

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I would love to hear the opinions of those who downvoted this. What practical use does the ISS serve?

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I have no idea what benefits a permanently manned space station would bring us... perhaps it's we can study affects on the human body for prolonged periods of 0 g. All those science experiments done in spacelab, in the shuttle bay, a year's worth can be done on a permanently manned space station in a month or so. Seems convenient.

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It would be better served in lunar orbit where astronauts could travel to and from the lunar surface, giving them the ability to quickly analyze any samples taken from the moon.

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Probably the biggest reason it's in low earth orbit and not lunar orbit... it's a little easier to do a rescue 80 miles up than over 200k miles away I am also quite sure we did all the lunar surface testing we needed 50 years ago. They brought back hundreds of pounds of material.

My grandpa kinda had a minor role in developing the space station, freedom version not the bastardized iss. Here's a quick look at what he was doing before 1987... director of space station operations, for a company with a 10-11 figure contract for a space station. Considering he was also chief engineer of the only rocket stage to carry people into lunar orbit, his work gets a little more weight than your opinion.