You're not stupid. Atmospheric drag drops off rapidly as you go higher. The ISS would deorbit within a few years due to atmospheric drag at it's current altitude, but if you got up to ~1000km it would take thousands of years to decay.
You're not stupid. Atmospheric drag drops off rapidly as you go higher. The ISS would deorbit within a few years due to atmospheric drag at it's current altitude, but if you got up to ~1000km it would take thousands of years to decay.
That could work & would be substantially less crazy like the suggestions to put it to GEO and Lagrange points.
Still, unless actually maintained in some form, there will be a risk of the ex-ISS complex shedding stuff over time - either due to collisions or possibly material degradation, which could still be an issue for anything below or crossing the new higher orbit.