Yeah. The atmosphere is very thin but nonzero at ISS altitude so atmospheric drag causes orbital degradation over time. Whenever a resupply ship docks, if it has extra fuel, they orient the station so the ship is pointed prograde and fire the main thruster to increase the altitude. They plan to leave enough fuel for the supply ship to do its usual retro burn and land or burn up as normal.

The station can also boost itself with the Zvezda module, which has thrusters.

https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station-frequently-...

I am not an astronaut. I prefer knobs. As my comment said, I think of them as a feature. I think the average astronaut would put up with their lack of preferred control schemes to go into space.

There was a decent amount of concern within NASA on the touchscreen design, but the contract type tended to force those discussions to the sideline. In the end, NASA wanted a ride and not to drive the design.

Edit: for those wondering, this is not hearsay or speculation; it is from direct experience (albeit 5+ years ago)

The Dragon Crew has physical backup controls. The touchscreen allows for a more interactive UI that you can try out here:

https://iss-sim.spacex.com/

But the controls themselves have physical buttons in addition to the touch screen.

Also all systems have triple redundancy.

Tradeoffs on the kind of refurbishment needed compared to a splashdown, since Starliner is supposed to be reusable. Plus stuff like faster extraction of time-sensitive payloads and overall cheaper capsule processing operations since you don't need specially fitted boats chasing after the capsule.

Dragon was also initially intending to land on solid ground, but dropped the idea when NASA asked for additional tests to prove that popping landing legs out of the heat shield would be safe. SpaceX had intended such landings in large part because of the plans for Red Dragon, but since by then they had started to shift towards Starship, they deemed it easier to just splashdown and deal with the extra refurbishment than try to prove out a technology they no longer felt the need for.

Landing in water is bad for equipment--the salt water tends to corrode, so refurbishing the capsule after a water landing is a bit harder.

Think the main reason is that sea-recoveries are expensive compared to ones on land. I imagine there's at least some extra risk to a sea recovery as well (one of the Mercury capsules sank during recovery, though happily not with its astronaut inside).

It's faster and more efficient, I think. You don't need a fleet of ships to go out to the sea.