Lower inclinations have advantages for access and more massive payloads (e.g. science or manufacturing) from many of the other launch sites around the world.

Being at the ISS orbital inclination allows Russia easy access with their Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, which would be their preference. They probably would also prefer to have their own space station, which is their current plan, but that station may not be nearly as good as Axiom’s modern facilities. I don’t recall Axiom suggesting that Soyuz would carry people to their space station, but it is certainly possible.

Starlab is working slower, and this could be an advantage, if they are learning from the experiences of the other space station companies. Can they do that? Not easily, because few of those lesson’s learned are announced in public. Running slower is more likely a problem, because they likely will spend more money than the others before they get their first station on orbit,* and the other companies will likely start revenue service earlier, making money sooner and earning customer loyalty.

Vast’s qualification unit, the one they are building, could conceivably be a proto-qualification unit (a flight unit used for qualification testing), but it looks like it has two different diameters, and their artist’s renderings of their Haven-1 space station is one diameter from end-cap to end-cap. On the other hand, the smaller diameter could be the corridor from the airlock to the workspace, and the reduced diameter is the interior wall of the sleeping quarters, “tubes” located around that corridor. I may be judging what I see based upon an incomplete assembly, with the complete module surrounding those sleeping quarters. (mkent, does this make sense?)

Sierra Space plans to sell their Life modules to other space station operators** as well as use it for Orbital Reef. If the rest of the Orbital Reef consortium isn’t ready, then perhaps Sierra Space can go it alone for a while.

Your suggestion on The Space Show interview, last Tuesday, sounded like a good idea: giving a brief review of all the space station projects when you present the latest press release on each one. This seems similar to your updates on ongoing Martian rover missions. There was a time when you combined the rover updates (Curiosity, Spirit, and Opportunity), and I think that may be a good strategy for the space stations. Please consider giving regular (quarterly or semiannual?) updates on the entire industry, consolidating what is known. The space stations are among the most exciting aspects to America’s current space program, even though one or more space stations are not NASA driven.

Also, from that interview I understand your point on Boeing’s Starliner difficulties. What you think of as a rush to completion I had assumed was the execution of a well-planned design, that Boeing had spent time early-on making the design. You suggested that Boeing did as little as possible, merely meeting milestones (as the Starlab team may be doing now) and not spending money on a good design during the slower early phases. This would be a terrible failure on the part of management. SpaceX, on the other hand, started with a working version of Cargo Dragon, giving them a working system that only needed some careful modification. SpaceX didn’t need to rush and likely was being closely watched by NASA, whereas Boeing may have been rushed and was only moderately watched by NASA, who may have assumed Boeing knew what it was doing. It was about the time of Starliner’s first disastrous flight (as opposed to disastrous first flight) that NASA changed its mind about Boeing, and as far as I know, NASA still is not accepting any bids from Boeing for future projects.

How did your three-line comment turn into such a long rant?
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* “In orbit?” Is “in orbit” more correct than “on orbit?” Some of my colleagues and I have used the phrase “on orbit” to suggest that a satellite is “on station,” in its final orbital location, and “in orbit” to mean it is orbiting the Earth but may still be traveling to its intended station. Even if it was on orbit, it was still in orbit. “At orbit” could be more appropriate, because it is an orbital location to be “at,” not an object to be “in” or “on.”

** This is similar to the airline business model, where companies buy their airliners from manufacturers rather than build their own airplanes. I have heard people suggest that the launch market should do something similar, where Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, SpaceX, and ULA build the rockets but other companies launch them, separating the manufacturers from the operators. Does it make sense? Yes. Should they do it? I don’t see why they should change, at least not yet. However, Sierra Space seems willing to give it a try in the space station industry.

Rocket manufacturers launching their own rockets worked well when the rockets were expendable, but what about when they are reusable, like airliners? SpaceX is showing that they do this well, so maybe it is still an efficient business model. Maybe a manufacturer/operator business model will work well in space stations.

I don’t believe it is. I believe it’s only the structural test article. So I think Vast is still behind Axiom in the race to be first, but at least they’re moving in the right direction. Each Axiom announcement is a pullback from the previous one. If I’m reading things correctly, Axiom no longer plans to occupy their module while it’s attached to ISS. That can’t happen until Hab-1 is launched, and that doesn’t happen until after separation.

Also, at its new location the Axiom module can’t take over orbital reboost and propulsive attitude control from the Russians. Perhaps NASA is planning for the SpaceX deorbit module to have that capability. It can’t do that too much, though, because I don’t think the SpaceX module is refuelable.

Word is that Russia has informally agreed to remain in the ISS program through 2030. We all better hope the Service Module lasts that long.

Edward: You are right about Axiom’s station inclination. It must be at the high inclination of ISS, which means it could market its capabilities to the Russians. Whether the Russians have the cash or the interest to use that is another thing.

I still think the other three stations will fly at lower inclinations.

The structural test article is an engineering development unit of the station’s habitation module, which is where astronauts will spend most of their time living and working aboard the future commercial destination. An engineering development unit is a physical model that is used to test and verify the design of a project, such as a space station.

I’m not sure that the module that Vast is currently assembling is a flight unit. I am under the impression that it, too, is an engineering development unit set for qualification testing to verify the design, techniques, and procedures of their Haven-1 single-module station ( https://x.com/vast/status/1856799637887488125 ). However, Vast has been cutting metal and assembling their test unit, while Starlab has not. Yet.

This means that Starlab is definitely bringing up the rear in this race to replace the ISS. This press release may just be reassuring us that Starlab is still in the race, and that we should not yet count it out.

Sierra Space has done significant testing with their engineering development units, including testing to destruction. Their Life module is well along. Unfortunately, we do not know how far along the other companies of the Orbital Reef consortium are.

I’m also not so sure that the Boeing strategy is why Boeing ran into its Starliner troubles. Boeing and SpaceX were neck and neck in the race to be the first to be the first non-government company to launch man into orbit. Its problems are less in the timing of the construction and more a matter of failures in the design of the software and hardware, and it may also be in a lack of communication between Boeing and the thruster manufacturer.

Twenty years ago, Scaled Composites was the first company to do what only three governments had had the resources to do: launch man into space. Five years ago, SpaceX was the first company to do what only three governments had had the resources to do: launch man into orbit. In the coming few years, one of the four consortiums or companies will again be the first to do what only three governments have had the resources to do: operate a space station in orbit.

Or was it the resources that were lacking in the free market capitalist companies? Perhaps it was the governments discouraging free market capitalism from working in space. Was the lack of commercial use of space a result of the Outer Space Treaty?
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pawn asked: “I’ve searched and I cannot find any info on the planned orbital inclinations of any of these stations. Anybody know anything?”

The Axiom space station will be attached to the ISS for a while. This means that it will orbit at or very close to the ISS’s orbital plane, as changing orbital planes takes a lot of propellant. The delta-v is proportional to twice the sine of the inclination change multiplied by the speed at that point in the orbit. For highly elliptical orbits, changing orbital planes takes much less at the apogee than at the perigee, because the speed at apogee is so much less. But, to do that, you have to get the apogee to be close to where the two planes intersect.

pawn: I don’t know the actual answer, but my guess is that all will be at lower inclinations than ISS, which has a high inclination so Russia can launch to it. These stations will instead have orbits optimized for the spaceports used by the west, most of which are in the equatorial regions or close to it.

Instead–a T.I.E. Fighter on steroids…

Their website is full of renders now, including of the interior. The design has changed a lot since the early days, and I think that’s why they haven’t gotten to bending metal yet.

https://starlab-space.com/

According to what I’ve read, Starlab’s main component is to be a 8-meter diameter “tin can” module to be built by Airbus. No inflatables. FWIW the central module of the Phase 2 version of Vast’s Haven-2 is also going to be an 8-meter diameter “tin can” which Vast plans to build itself. The entire Starlab station is supposed to launch on a single Starship mission. The central Phase 2 Haven-2 module is also to be launched on Starship. The other eight Haven-2 modules are to be launched on Falcon Heavies.

I hope is is a Starship based megamodule–no inflatable anything.

In a press release broadcast via Starlink from Starbase, Starship inventor Elon Musk suggested that Starlab may have yet another, even more startling strategy, although it was not obvious exactly what it was.

Well, three things stand out about their strategy: 1) They are launching the entire station in a single launch, which means they can start getting a full revenue stream out of it immediately; 2) they are leveraging Starship’s 9m fairing to make that possible (Elon himself singled this out for mention in a tweet back on January 31); and 3) they are aggressively lining up customer interest and support in Europe, so they are not as dependent on a NASA contract to close their business case.

Whether any of that is what Elon has in mind, I don’t know. Like Bob, I like what Vast is doing the most right now; but maybe Starlab is worth keeping an eye on. Still, it would be good to see them start bending metal soon.

In a press release broadcast via Starlink from Starbase, Starship inventor Elon Musk suggested that Starlab may have yet another, even more startling strategy, although it was not obvious exactly what it was.