Taylor Dinerman worries about sufficient support for the International Space Station in today's The Space Review:

The ISS is humanity’s one toehold in space. It can be used a real “world-class laboratory” or it can be allowed to spin around until, through lack of investment and high-level attention, it is deorbited like Russia’s Mir. That would be more than a tragedy; it would be a stupid waste.

Would the ISS fetch a positive price if it were auctioned off with the encumbrance it had to be deorbited by 2025? Maybe. But that price would likely be far less than the cost of a US commitment to keep the station operational. Keeping the station operational because of its high sunk cost would be a 'stupid waste' too.

NASA can buy a bunch of time on a Bigelow hab for a fraction of the $20 billion or so NASA plans to spend on ISS through 2017 much less another 3-8 years. Perhaps it would be better to privatize the US portion of ISS early rather than support it enough or support it at all.

We should find a way to store hydrogen long term, then pay the Russians to take the risk of getting bulkloads of Hydrogen up to the station where it can wait until Private space gets up there to buy it one gastank load at a time.