SpaceX's Starship To Launch 'Starlab' Private Space Station In Late 2020s (space.com) 33
SpaceX's Starship rocket has been selected by Starlab to launch its private space station into orbit. "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. "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." Space.com reports: Today's announcement didn't give a target launch date. But NASA and Starlab's developers want the four-person commercial station to be up and running before 2030, when the International Space Station (ISS) is expected to cease operations (though that retirement date is apparently not set in stone). [...] The 400-foot-tall (122 meters) Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, capable of hauling up to 150 tons to low Earth orbit. It will send the fully outfitted Starlab up in just one launch, as Taylor noted above.
"Starlab's single-launch solution continues to demonstrate not only what is possible, but how the future of commercial space is happening now," Tom Ochinero, senior vice president of commercial business at SpaceX, said in the same statement. "The SpaceX team is excited for Starship to launch Starlab to support humanity's continued presence in low Earth orbit on our way to making life multiplanetary," Ochinero added.
"Starlab's single-launch solution continues to demonstrate not only what is possible, but how the future of commercial space is happening now," Tom Ochinero, senior vice president of commercial business at SpaceX, said in the same statement. "The SpaceX team is excited for Starship to launch Starlab to support humanity's continued presence in low Earth orbit on our way to making life multiplanetary," Ochinero added.
I wonder what they are paying for the ride to LEO (Score:2)
Lunar base (Score:2)
When are we going to have a lunar hotel? Earth orbit is cool and all, but doing shit on the Moon is the best. Put a few of these modules on there.
Re:Lunar base (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't work too well on September 13th, 1999.
Those poor souls.
Re:Lunar base (Score:5, Informative)
For those who, like me, didn't catch the reference at first: Space 1999 [wikipedia.org]
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Going to the moon is way more expensive than going to LEO.
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Going to the moon is way more expensive than going to LEO.
Two quotes come to mind:
Robert Heinlein said something similar to "Once you are in orbit, you are halfway to anywhere in the solar system."
Jerry Pournell said "Once you have a space station, you can go to the Moon on half-shifts and weekends."
Build a space station, a reusable "Aldrin cycler", and some landing craft and you can go to the Moon cheaply and whenever you wish. And you might be able to just build a few extra Starship stages and use them a
Re: Too much "Star", not enough "Frontier" (Score:2)
I mean⦠this is the ship thatâ(TM)s going to return us to the moonâ¦
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They aren't exploring the western United States, they are going to space.
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I appreciate your thanks for my insightful input to your redundant and overrated -1 rated comment. I'm glad I could contribute meaningfully to this discussion. I appreciate your willingness to pat me on the head, but I'm good for the moment. That said, I'll be sure to let you know if I need something. Thanks!
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Is it you who's got the multiple accounts and mod points, or one of your equally worthless friends?
Re:Too much "Star", not enough "Frontier" (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course the stated reason for mostly defunding NASA was to "encourage private space operations", the claim was that eliminating funding for the ISS was that private industry would take its place and launch myriad orbital hotels and factories. They were only off by half a century, which is better than pretty much any other claim that I've ever seen from the Supply Siders. Of course that private space station doesn't even exist on paper yet, but maybe it will be launched in time for the centennial of Armstrong and Aldrin's landing.
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Having been modded down by some multi-account trolls and Musk Worshippers, I'm going to do my best to make sure their efforts are futile. So, as I said earlier:
"Starship", "Starlab", "Starlink", "Starhopper", "Starshield": The hyperbole, and the hubris, are tiresome. It has been nearly half a century since humanity set foot on the Moon. Since then, all we've done in terms of manned space exploration is screw around in Low Earth Orbit. If the world's various space programs were kids, they'd be getting cl
Three's company (Score:2)
So there will be three space stations in orbit: The ISS, Tiangong, and Space^H^H^H^H^HStarlab.
And I'm sure it will be self-driving and thought-controlled and not at all vaporware.
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This is the way (Score:5, Insightful)
The orbital platform is a stepping stone. We build the orbital platform because it needs to be there. Launch facilities on every continent make it possible to put Starships into orbit on a regular basis, alongside Dragon capsules. Passengers exit the Starship, take a few minutes to look around, and then board another Starship that is exiting orbit, and they land on another continent in a mere handful of hours rather than the days it would have taken to travel by commercial airliner.
More passengers requires more space and amenities to support their presence in orbit, thus increasing the size of the station and the head count of workers. A larger work force means more opportunity for increased orbital industry.
First, we start cleaning up near-orbit space and recycling the materials we've been throwing into orbit for the last 60+ years. It's cheaper to recycle than it is to lift it from the deep gravity well that is Earth, especially if we have the infrastructure in orbit to make it possible.
Next, we start capitalizing on near Earth bodies (i.e., the Moon, asteroids, comets, etc.). We build and populate lunar bases and move nearby asteroids into orbit for raw materials. We expand orbital habitats and make them as livable as possible, using spin rotation to create artificial gravity. This steps us to the rest of the solar system. In orbit, we can manufacture spacecraft that never have to endure the rigors of orbital insertion, but are imminently suited for interplanetary travel.
This bootstraps us to Mars, Saturn and Jupiter, where we can exploit even more resources on rocky moons and large asteroids, building on our experience manufacturing in near Earth orbit. Sunlight will be weaker, so we will require more efficient solar energy capture - but we are an adaptive and innovative species as long as we don't kill each other and ourselves before we can innovate and adapt. Considering the vast amount of space in the solar system, there is a lot of room for expansion - and a lot of resources to fuel it. But we will take the next leap to extra-solar exploration and, eventually, colonization.
We just need to get off our collective asses and do it. Thank you Elon for being among the first to get up.
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Before we can even start on that anything past your first two paragraphs, we will require a century of focussed advancements in all aspects of robotics.
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It looks like something that came out of the 70s. Only the names differ.
No Starships back then, but the Space Shuttle was in development and was thought to be revolutionary. There wasn't a Starlab, but there was a Skylab, which is very similar in principle. It was the third stage of a Saturn V rocket just like Starlab is planned to be the second stage of a Starship rocket. I don't know about the space debris, but the term "Kessler syndrome" appeared in 1978, so that's a thing they thought about seriously ba
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Massive budget cuts and issues with the space shuttle ruined everything. If the budget had been sustained we'd definitely have lunar bases by now. The lack of a re-useable rocket caused these problems and "justified" the budget cuts in the minds of Congress. It wasn't until the early 2000s and late 90s when Congress foolishly cancelled the DC-X and VentureStar that other companies had to start stepping in to fix the mess.
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The biggest problem is that the venture into space was led by government, which is spastically led by politicians who have to cater to the whims of the uneducated populace and the ambitions of terrestrially-bound corporations led by executives who can't see past the next quarter. The Moon Shot was the big wad spent by NASA and they haven't seen budgets anywhere near that scope again. And the only reason that they got such a big spend was because we were in a penis measuring contest with the Soviet Union wit
A little premature innit? (Score:2)
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You have to have goals. That's like saying why go green when we are not yet 100% able to survive solely on green energy.
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With that said, I don't see any good reason to expect Space-X won't be able to get Starship working. Their method of operation "try something, see what goes wrong, and then fix that and try again" seems disconcerting to those too young to remember 1950s and early 60s rocket development [youtube.com], but it is very effective as long as you have management that doesn't cancel a project at the first failure.
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Yeah - I honestly see it as a good thing that they seem to pretty much throw everything against the wall and see what sticks versus getting stuck in a tunnel vision of one way.
Shouldn't they work on getting it into orbit and (Score:1)
In late 2020s (Score:2)
I'll be married to Taylor Swift
Don't get ahead of yourself. (Score:2)
Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, capable of hauling up to 150 tons to low Earth orbit.
It is? Seems to me the only thing it's been capable of so far is rapidly disassembling itself at high altitudes in a large expanding ball of fire.