Starlab picks Leidos to assemble, integrate, and test its space station prior to launch
The Starlab design in 2025. Click
for original image.
The consortium building the large single-module Starlab space station (intended to launch on Starship) yesterday picked the American company Leidos to assemble, integrate, and test its station prior to launch.
Leidos will assemble and integrate the components of Starlab’s space station into a complete system, supporting compatibility and verifying performance through environmental, functional and performance testing in Alabama. Additional responsibilities under the agreement include safety and mission assurance and systems engineering.
Since the consortium’s lead company, Voyager Space, raised nearly $400 million in its first public stock offering in June, Starlab has been signing up a lot of new partners, many of which like Leidos are aimed at building the station itself. First it signed the company Journey to design the station’s interior. Then it signed the Louisiana space hardware company Vivace to build Starlab’s primary structure. Next, a Belgium software company specializing in payload integration joined the consortium. Finally Voyager last week acquired the satellite electric propulsion company Exoterra. Initially I thought this last acquisition was aimed at increasing Voyager’s ability to win military contracts, but it also could provide the station itself with a system for orientation and propulsion.
All in all, this activity continues to strengthen Starlab’s position in the competition to win major contracts and customers leading to the construction of the station itself. Below is my updated rankings of the four commercial stations under development:
- Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch in 2026 for a three-year period during which it will be occupied by four 2-week-long manned missions. The company is already testing an unmanned small demo module in orbit. By flying actual hardware and manned missions it hopes this will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract to build its much larger multi-module Haven-2 station.
- Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched four tourist flights to ISS, with the fourth carrying government passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland. Though there have been rumors it has cash flow issues, development of its first two modules has been proceeding more or less as planned, with the first’s hull completed and presently undergoing testing. It has also signed Redwire to build that module’s solar panels.
- Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman, with extensive partnership agreements with the European Space Agency and others. Though no construction has yet begun on its NASA-approved design, it has raised $383 million in a public stock offering in addition to the $217.5 million provided by NASA. It has also begun signing up a number of companies to build the station’s hardware.
- Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. This station looks increasingly dead in the water. Blue Origin has built almost nothing, as seems normal for this company. And while Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, its reputation is soured by its failure in getting its Dream Chaser cargo mini-shuttle launched.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The Starlab design in 2025. Click
for original image.
The consortium building the large single-module Starlab space station (intended to launch on Starship) yesterday picked the American company Leidos to assemble, integrate, and test its station prior to launch.
Leidos will assemble and integrate the components of Starlab’s space station into a complete system, supporting compatibility and verifying performance through environmental, functional and performance testing in Alabama. Additional responsibilities under the agreement include safety and mission assurance and systems engineering.
Since the consortium’s lead company, Voyager Space, raised nearly $400 million in its first public stock offering in June, Starlab has been signing up a lot of new partners, many of which like Leidos are aimed at building the station itself. First it signed the company Journey to design the station’s interior. Then it signed the Louisiana space hardware company Vivace to build Starlab’s primary structure. Next, a Belgium software company specializing in payload integration joined the consortium. Finally Voyager last week acquired the satellite electric propulsion company Exoterra. Initially I thought this last acquisition was aimed at increasing Voyager’s ability to win military contracts, but it also could provide the station itself with a system for orientation and propulsion.
All in all, this activity continues to strengthen Starlab’s position in the competition to win major contracts and customers leading to the construction of the station itself. Below is my updated rankings of the four commercial stations under development:
- Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch in 2026 for a three-year period during which it will be occupied by four 2-week-long manned missions. The company is already testing an unmanned small demo module in orbit. By flying actual hardware and manned missions it hopes this will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract to build its much larger multi-module Haven-2 station.
- Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched four tourist flights to ISS, with the fourth carrying government passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland. Though there have been rumors it has cash flow issues, development of its first two modules has been proceeding more or less as planned, with the first’s hull completed and presently undergoing testing. It has also signed Redwire to build that module’s solar panels.
- Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman, with extensive partnership agreements with the European Space Agency and others. Though no construction has yet begun on its NASA-approved design, it has raised $383 million in a public stock offering in addition to the $217.5 million provided by NASA. It has also begun signing up a number of companies to build the station’s hardware.
- Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. This station looks increasingly dead in the water. Blue Origin has built almost nothing, as seems normal for this company. And while Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, its reputation is soured by its failure in getting its Dream Chaser cargo mini-shuttle launched.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Why these companies just don’t design a LEO Starship optimized station is beyond me ala Skylab. Launch it, refuel it in orbit for future station keeping and reboots using SS integrated engines. Concentrate on the interior, labs etc, Use Dragon or a human rated SS as a shuttle.
Mark,
Because Starship is being designed as a reusable launch vessel. Take stuff up, deploy it, and return.
Maintaining fuel in it, for the purpose of rebooting would also require cryogenics, to keep it cold, and additional tankage to maintain pressure. The scale of the tanks to the amount of fuel needed for reboost might also be counter productive. That small amount of fuel, post launch, would just slosh and settle anywhere in the tank. It would need to be “settled” to the bottom again for the engine intakes.
I am not a rocket surgeon, but I am guessing my concerns are just scratching the surface.
sippin_bourbon: Your response to Mark underlines a point that I and others have made repeatedly: You don’t want to build a single catch-all spacecraft or rocket to do everything. You want many options, all different, all specifically focused to their proper task. This is much more efficient.
For example, Orion is overweight and too expensive because NASA made believe this ascent/descent capsule was also going to be an interplanetary spacecraft. Thus it needed more radiation shielding and a full scale bathroom for longer flights. Yet it is ridiculously too small for interplanetary flights. No one will ever spend six months in it, and if they do, they will be crippled with weak bones and muscles once they exit.
In other words, design different spacecraft for different purposes. Don’t try to make one size fit all.
@ RZ: Don’t you mean to refer to Orion as an “interplanetary” spacecraft, instead of “interstellar”? (And yes, I know Orion isn’t fit for purpose as an interplanetary spacecraft, either.) Surely no one at NASA ever envisioned Orion sailing to Proxima Centauri?
Clark: You are correct of course. I type faster than I think. Now fixed.
Robert, Orion is a capable craft–it wasn’t that long ago Orion bashers talked up a Dragon Mars fly-by mission
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=29004.0
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/02/moon-lockheed-orion-346952
Mark,
Not saying that will never happen, but s_b makes goods points anent Starship’s sub-optimality as a space station.
If one or more Starships ever do become components of a space station it might not be SpaceX who does the project. Some second party might arrange to buy one or more near-end-of-life Starships for such a purpose at some point in the future. I don’t think this is likely to happen, but one cannot rule it out.
Robert Z’s point is also a good one so long as not carried to extremes. Starship, for example, will be readily adaptable to a number of roles, but most will involve it being a spaceship.
That said, Starship will also be suitable as long-term base habitation on either the Moon or Mars. It is much more suitable as a ground-based station than as a space station.
Jeff Wright,
That discussion of a Dragon-based Mars fly-by mission you link to was an unmanned concept. Even stuffing a Dragon trunk full of consumables, Dragon 2 is completely inadequate to support even a single human occupant on a journey all the way to Mars and back. SpaceX and others spitballed a number of Mars mission concepts involving Dragon 2 back in the day, but none were conceived as missions carrying crew.
Orion also falls farcically short of being able to be the living quarters for any notional Mars expedition with a crew. All of the Mars concept mission designs involving Orion – such as that by Lock-Mart some years ago – just called for dragging one or two Orions, empty, all the way to Mars, then all the way back to Earth where it/they would act as crew return vehicle(s)-only for Earth EDL.
The only place Orion can reasonably go to, and return from, while carrying crew is lunar orbit. And just how suitable it is for even that mission is still very much open to question.
Mark wrote: “Why these companies just don’t design a LEO Starship optimized station is beyond me ala Skylab. Launch it, refuel it in orbit for future station keeping and reboots using SS integrated engines. Concentrate on the interior, labs etc”
At some point, SpaceX will have to do a Mars-mission dry-run test for 6½ months with a crew in low Earth orbit, or maybe lunar orbit. To keep the crew busy, they may perform various science experiments, looking much like a space station.
Turning Starship into a space station is not impossible, but it is not practical on a long-term basis. Starship may be capable of many things, but it is designed only for a few tasks. Its best use as a space station would be one that returns every few months, maybe a year, but that is not sufficient for longer-term experiments. In the long run, dedicated space stations are a better way to go, especially with Vast intending to make one that rotates for some amount of artificial gravity. It is time to study space stations and artificial gravity.
“Yet it is ridiculously too small for interstellar flights.”
Half fixed.
Call Me Ishmael: Now fully fixed.
Mark,
As I recall, a company called Ixion* had proposed converting rocket upper stages into space habitats, repurposing expended upper stages that were already in orbit. The idea was to turn the propellant tanks into living spaces by putting docking ports and airlocks into them and adding a hatch between the tanks. So this would be something like Skylab.
It may be easier to do this to a Starship, because it already has the enclosed payload section (no fairings to jettison) that would already be built for manned occupation. Launch with a construction crew that performs the conversion and, voila, a cheap space station with a huge internal volume. Like the ISS, it can be boosted and reboosted to a higher orbit by visiting spacecraft.
Put two of these converted Starships together, perhaps nose to nose, and they could conceivably be spun up for some amount of artificial gravity.
__________
* I looked up my notes taken to track space companies. However, I can no longer find any reference to Ixion space company in a web search. Even the press release link in my notes is broken, and it is to Maxar.com, a page not found. Maxar seems to have turned into Lanteris Space Systems last month. There are now far too many space companies to really keep track of them all.
This is nothing new; anyone remember all of the proposals to carry STS ETs to orbit and somehow refurbish them into space stations?
The difference with StarShip, of course, is that SpaceX plans to build so many of the darn things that if somebody wants to pay to have one outfitted as a space station and placed into an appropriate orbit, they should be able to buy exactly that. Whether doing so makes more sense than building a station (particularly if it’s an inflatable one) that fits inside the Chomper StarShip variant is a valid question.
Nothing new under the sun.
The idea of using spent booster tanks as space station starting points goes back a long way. Krafft Ehricke and Convair Company proposed in the late 1950’s turning an Atlas booster into a small space station. I had a plastic model of the idea as a kid.
https://dustyoldthing.com/1958-atlas-space-station/
You may recall that the original Skylab idea was a “Wet” lab. Using the S-IVB booster on a Saturn IB launch vehicle. Residual fuel had to be purged and the tanks scrubbed down before turning into a lab. Of course it was eventually abandoned for the “Dry” lab version of Skylab launched on the Saturn V.
Agree with A. Nonymous that the (by aerospace standards) ridiculously low cost of Starship that someone may choose to use it as a space station.
I also think that for specialized research it might be cheaper to configure it on the ground (like Skylab) for the research and fly it. When done with the research, return to earth to reconfigure for another (maybe different) specialized research mission.
Robert said: “For example, Orion is overweight and too expensive because NASA made believe this ascent/descent capsule was also going to be an interplanetary spacecraft. Thus it needed more radiation shielding and a full scale bathroom for longer flights. Yet it is ridiculously too small for interplanetary flights.”
This completely demoralizes me. No one technical leader had the courage to say “Those requirements are ridiculous”
I think there is another explanation that can be used that you have pointed out before. That is the excuse of “safety”. I am sure someone made the point that you could reduce radiation exposure on moon trip and another yelled “Safety!” and thus a requirement was born.
Ugh
Doubting Thomas wrote: “I also think that for specialized research it might be cheaper to configure it on the ground (like Skylab) for the research and fly it. When done with the research, return to earth to reconfigure for another (maybe different) specialized research mission.”
This was my first take on this thought, in my first comment, above. This is the most practical use of Starship as a space station, but it does not remain on orbit for very long (six months, a year, or something), so long-term experiments are not within the scope of this kind of temporary space station. It would be more like a long-duration Space Shuttle mission with a super-sized spacelab module. My second comment, also above, came after a little more reflection on the topic, where a dream had become an idea, funded by NASA as a study for practicality.
On the other hand, SpaceX has a tendency to turn the possible-but-uneconomical into the economical (e.g. reusable first stages), and the impossible into the possible (e.g. catching a flying object with chopsticks). I would not discount anything that SpaceX sets its mind to doing, even with the knowledge that not all of their ideas have panned out so well (e.g. the level concrete launch pad without acoustic suppression*).
So, I guess, the question is: Would SpaceX want to set its mind to repurposing the propellant tanks of one or more Starships to make an improvised, jury-rigged, long-term space station, or would they prefer others to design purpose-built space stations that perform as designed?
______________
* It was reasonable to expect that not to work out, but it is also reasonable to be surprised at the failure mode. Instead of the acoustics being reflected back onto the rocket, causing the rocket to fail spectacularly (expected failure mode), the acoustic reflector disintegrated, throwing large chunks of concrete upward and outward (not the expected failure mode).
SpaceX’s Starship engine controller worked much better than the Soviet N1 engine controller, handling multiple engine failures all the way to the end of the boost phase — to the separation phase. At the time, many people had been worried that the Starship controller would be just as dysfunctional as the N1 controller and that having a large number of engines was a bad idea. This non-dysfunctional controller would count as SpaceX turning the practical into the practical.
Edward – I see your point about SpaceX ability to turn impossible into possible (or at least maybe). I still think that scrubbing out a LOX or Methalox tank would be tough.
I have often wondered about an inflatable structure that is staged at top of tank and after venting, it is inflated onto the fuel tank to provide a “clean” environment in the tank.
The interesting thing about Starship is that the relatively low manufacturing cost would allow organizations to give ideas a go in space.
I agree with you that a returning Starship is more like one of the shuttle science missions. But a mission in a volume almost as large as ISS habitable volume and one can get a lot of science done in 6 months or a year, while testing out Starship Life support capability for a Mars Trip.
Doubting Thomas,
“I still think that scrubbing out a LOX or Methalox tank would be tough.”
Not too tough. Vent them to space, and most of the dregs/ullage will eventually vaporize away. The remaining O2 would be at a much lower pressure than Earth standard (1 atm.) and wouldn’t be dangerous. The methane may need more work, such as charcoal scrubbing, but also is not dangerous until the tank is filled with air for occupation.
Inflating a “balloon” into the tank could be a help, but remember that molecules also stick to the walls (vacuum chambers have to work on these molecules as they vaporize into their vacuums). How a layer of molecules on the tank wall affects the inflated living area is a nice question, but that may work. The un-inflated inflatable structure/balloon may protect a hatch that is pre-installed, making the rocket a most interesting device.
The point is that with 8 billion people on the planet, a lot of creative ideas can be tried on a variety of tasks. SpaceX has tried a few thinking-out-of-the-box ideas already, sometimes successfully.