Yeah, a waste of money and time is getting bigger. That's not surprising.
"It's a very complex piece of hardware." Of course it is. It's NASA!
It weighs 15 tons, which is pretty close to the limit of what a Shuttle can boost. (Shuttle's payload is around 20 tons IIRC.)
It's an aluminum rock which is "essential" for future expansion of the ISS. The ISS that hasn't gotten any larger since 2001. Yeah. The Shuttle fleet is scheduled for retirement in 2010, which is two years and two months away. NASA hasn't got a replacement booster of any kind yet; any more components will have to be boosted by the Russians, who have been using Energiya boosters since approximately 14 BC. (They're cheap and they work.)
I'm not holding my breath waiting for NASA to do anything. Any faith I once had in NASA has long since departed; I'm expecting the 2010 target to be "extended" as they fap around trying to develop a new booster which will cost more than the Saturn V in real dollars and do less.
And so, in that vein, we have this story.
It's audacious! It's ambitious!
It's horseshit.
There's no there there. They're attaching a module and moving a solar array--big whoop. What's audacious about that? They're not doing anything that's never been done before, except--ZOMGWTF!--having two female mission commanders in orbit at the same time! Alert the media! Stop the presses! (Wait, they did that already. NVM.) We're making history!
No, not really.