No replacement is set for the ISS. Ostensibly, it's to free up funding for the Moon program and the associated launchers that are supposed to replace the shuttle.
That said, I doubt America will ever return to the moon, as broke as we are. There simply is no way it could be funded. And I don't believe Obama cares a whit for NASA. He'd rather divert the comparitively small funding it gets to social programs.
So, enjoy the views of the ISS while you can.
There are ultimately two choices for humanity. Going out into space, or dying.
The old-school NASA is dead. Old-school NASA was inspiring, for damn good reason. Give them an impossible task, they'd salute and hop on it. They'd do so by finding a bunch of really smart geeky engineers (with manditory ugly glasses, no social skills, poor fashion sense, and inhumanly high IQ's) and locking them in a room with nothing but caffiene, nicotine and graph paper. Probably threatened them with the equivilent of "No cheetos or WoW until we get an upper stage booster specifications!" And by the Gods, said geek-engineers delivered!
Now? Any kid that'd try to build a real functioning rocket in his back yard is either going to be medicated to zombie status by his school or a visit from feds and put on a watchlist for the rest of his life. Ask Nuke Boy or that New Zealand guy that made a ramjet engine.
Only way to fix NASA would be to shoot all administrators that are not geeky engineers or organizational geniuses at managing geeky engineers. Round up said feds and their watchlists, take away their guns, give them cheetos, and tell them to mine their watchlists for recruiting anti-social youngins that like blowing stuff up or attempt to build functional nukes in the backyard.
But no. Now we have a NASA that is a bureaucracy and CYA or desk jockey empire building is the mission, not doing the impossible on a daily basis. At this point, I wonder if we'd probably be better off canning NASA and going the X Prize route. I'm not sure, but I'm starting to get that vibe. I know a bunch of smart people that work for NASA, none of whom will ever be allowed to climb the ranks. They love their work and they'd love to go old school. But the brass and the politicians don't care about any of that.
Sigh...