Inside Elon Musk’s plans to launch private space station Starlab in ‘late 2020s’ with mega-rocket Starship

ELON MUSK'S Starship mega-rocket has been selected to launch a new private space station that intends to replace the ISS.

"SpaceX's history of success and reliability led our team to select Starship to orbit Starlab," Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager Space, said in a statement.

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"SpaceX is the unmatched leader for high-cadence launches, and we are proud Starlab will be launched to orbit in a single flight by Starship." 

The free flying commercial space station is a collaboration between Nanoracks (which is part of Voyager Space), Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

It's unclear when the team behind the Starlab project plan to launch the orbital outpost.

SpaceX's Starship has yet to even have a successful test flight.

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However, Nasa wants Starlab in orbit and in working order before 2030 - when the International Space Station (ISS) reaches its retirement age and is decommissioned.

Nasa's race to replace the ISS

The ISS is getting old.

And by the end of the decade, it will need to be pulled from orbit to meet its watery grave in the ocean.

Fortunately, Nasa has been preparing for this for some time.

In December 2021, the US space agency announced it was awarding a total of $415million (£326million) to three different companies — Blue Origin, Nanoracks (plus Voyager Space) and Northrop Grumman — to help cement their commercial space station concepts.

NASA also has a separate agreement with Texas-based Axiom Space, which is working on its own private outpost as well as a new series of spacesuits.

While Voyager has officially mapped out how it's going to get Starlab into orbit - Blue Origin, in collaboration with Sierra Space, is in test mode for its own outpost.

In September, Blue Origin's ISS replacement exploded in a fifth intentionally destructive test.

The test was designed to tech both companies how to build a space station that won't fatally explode in orbit.

Northtop Grumman had initially had its own plans for a space station when Nasa funded it.

However, the company dropped its idea in October, to assist Voyager Space with Starlab instead.

Starship The 33-engine, nearly 400-feet tall, mega-rocket is what the eccentric billionaire foresees humans landing on Mars in, in as little as three years time.

In January, Starship nearly made it to orbit, according to Musk, but failed because of a lack of payload.

Rockets never carry a payload during test launches.

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Musk now has his sights set on February for a third test launch.

Each attempt costs SpaceX around $40million.

From Earth to Mars

Starship is the $3billion rocket that is intended to get boots on the Moon sometime around 2025, and eventually ferry humans to Mars.

Musk previously bet his future Mars missions to occur sometime in the 2030s.

However, speaking virtually to the IAF in October 2023, Musk suggested the rocket could land on the Red Planet in just three to four years time.

“This is a very difficult programme,” Musk said in May, adding that “the rocket is roughly two-and-a-half times the thrust of the Saturn V, so if or when it reaches orbit it’ll be by far the largest rocket to reach orbit.

“The key to expanding life beyond Earth is a fully and rapidly reusable orbital rocket.

"This is a very hard problem given the constraints... Earth has a thick atmosphere and strong gravity, it is only barely possible to do this, that is why it has not been done before.”

Starship is designed to transport up to 100 people from Earth to the Moon and Mars.

The trip to Mars is about seven months long, meaning there will be onboard living spaces for crew members.

However, SpaceX is first focusing on getting Starship into orbit, before it begins designing the interior.

The rocket was also designed from the onset to be able to carry more than 100 tons of cargo to Mars and the Moon.

This is so it can store everything needed to build off-planet base camps.

Not only is it the tallest rocket to ever be flown, the first stage of Starship, known as the Super Heavy booster, is the most powerful rocket ever built and can produce up to 7.6million kilograms of thrust.

That is nearly double the current record held by Nasa’s Space Launch System (SLS).

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Starship is being developed as part of a $1.15billion contract with Nasa to deliver astronauts to the Moon in the US space agency's Artemis programme.

Though it will be a critical tool in helping Musk fulfil his dreams of making humans interplanetary - which he says is his reason for founding SpaceX in the first place.

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