The Utility of Space Stations

There have been space stations on orbit almost continuously since the 1970s. But what are they actually for? Is there a case for building new and bigger ones?

In 1955, before even an unmanned Satellite had flown, Werner von Braun was planning for human spaceflight. In a film made for Disney, he describes an architecture for orbiting the Moon, using a spacecraft assembled in space at a space station