I think there is a big difference between a robot that lasts way beyond its designed lifetime and space module that carries people.
The ISS is in a very hostile environment that undergoes millions of temperature and stress cycles over its lifetime.
Eventually the metal will fatigue and fail. It is no different than what happens with an aircraft over its lifetime.
Once you get past a certain point you can not fully trust the structural integrity with people on board.

I still visit Digg or Slashdot to read the full article description,
click associated links and read comments. So my eyeballs are on the site.

I just will not put up with some site framing the site they are linking to.

I primarily use rss feeds to find new articles. I was tracking digg by rss until they started framing.
I immediately dropped all news feeds from them and avoided using their site. Once I read
that digg made frames an opt-in feature, I added Digg back into my news reader.

If I find some other site(like Slashdot) were to do the same thing, they would have one
less set of eyeballs looking at their site.

There are established procedures for landing with no radio. A light gun with red and green is used so that the tower can signal an aircraft when it is okay to enter final and land.