Starlab—with half the volume of the ISS—will fit inside Starship’s payload bay

The commercial space station Starlab will be launched on a SpaceX Starship rocket, officials announced this week.

Starlab is a joint venture between US-based Voyager Space and European-based multinational aerospace company Airbus. The venture is building a massive station with a habitable volume equivalent to half the pressurized volume of the International Space Station, and plans to launch the new station by 2028.

“SpaceX’s history of success and trust led our team to choose Starship to orbit Starlab,” Voyager Space Chairman and CEO Dylan Taylor said in a statement. . “SpaceX is the unparalleled leader in high-frequency launches, and we are proud that Starlab will be launched into orbit in a single flight by Starship.”

Attach to large fairing

Starlab will be approximately 26 feet (8 meters) in diameter. It’s probably no coincidence that Starship’s payload bay can accommodate vehicles up to 26 feet in diameter in its massive fairing. But Marshall Smith, Voyager Space’s chief technology officer, said in an interview that the company is considering several launch options.

“We considered multiple launches to get STAR Lab into orbit, but ultimately settled on a single launch option,” he said. “This saves a lot on development costs. It also saves a lot on integration costs. You can build everything on the ground, check it out, test it with payloads and other systems, and launch it. A lot. One of the lessons we learned from the International Space Station is that building and integrating in space is very expensive. ”

Smith said that once launched on Starship, the StarLab module should be ready for human habitation almost immediately.

Starlab is one of several privately developed space stations that NASA is vying to become a commercial replacement for the International Space Station, which is likely to be retired in 2030. Some other candidates include Axiom Space, Blue Origin, and Vast Space. SpaceX could also configure a human-rated version of Starship as a temporary space station.

NASA provided seed funding to some of these companies, including Voyager Space, to begin design and development of the station. NASA plans to hold a second round of competition next year to select one or more companies to build and test the station.

find customers

The companies are developing space stations to serve both government customers (NASA wants to keep at least a small number of astronauts flying in low-Earth orbit for research purposes) and commercial customers. The challenge for Star Labs and other commercial broadcasters is to develop a customer base beyond NASA to support the costs of flight and operational stations.

This challenge is huge. NASA spent more than $100 billion building the International Space Station and has an annual budget of $3 billion to operate and transport people and materials to the station. The agency will likely fund commercial space stations at around $1 billion a year, so these companies will build facilities relatively quickly at low cost and find a diverse customer base to offset costs. There is a need.

Starlab’s co-ownership with Airbus could give it an advantage in this regard. One of the big questions surrounding the International Space Station’s decommissioning is what will happen to the European astronauts currently flying there. The European Space Agency is likely to be reluctant to fund missions to private space stations owned and operated by American companies. Airbus’ involvement therefore makes Starlab attractive to European countries as a destination.