Is this necessarily a bad thing? The cost of space exploration is enormous. We now have private companies building rockets. If there were a commercial use for the space station, it would foster more entries into space. To be honest I am not exactly sure what they do on the space station. I am sure there is a lot of experimentation but commercial ventures would generate their own scientific advancement. I realize privatization has the potential for problems and even disaster and maybe the ISS is not the right place to start but at some point the government monopoly on space has to end. I always think of the Moonshot as one of the greatest achievements in human history, something history books will mention about the US in 2,000 years. But going to the Moon was not a purely scientific endeavor. We built the Apollo program in less than a decade mainly due to our rivalry with the USSR. Great things were achieved for reasons other than just scientific exploration.