A look into Elon Musk's plans to launch a private space station Starlab in the late 1920s

ELON MUSK's mega rocket has been selected to launch a new private space station to replace the ISS.

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

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“SpaceX is the unrivaled leader in high-speed launches, and we are proud that Starlab will be launched into orbit by Starship in a single flight.”

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

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

SpaceX's Starship hasn't even completed a successful test flight yet.

However, NASA wants Starlab to enter orbit and be operational before 2030, when the International Space Station (ISS) reaches retirement age and is decommissioned.

NASA's race to replace the ISS

The ISS is getting old.

And by the end of this decade, it will have to be deorbited 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 would award a total of $415 million (£326 million) to three different companies – Blue Origin, Nanoracks (plus Voyager Space) and Northrop Grumman – to help boost their commercial space station concepts.

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

While Voyager has officially mapped out how it will get Starlab into orbit, Blue Origin, in partnership with Sierra Space, is in test mode for its own outpost.

In September, Blue Origin's ISS replacement exploded during a fifth deliberately destructive test.

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

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

However, the company abandoned its idea to help Voyager Space with Starlab in October.

Spaceship The 33-engine, almost 120-meter-high mega rocket is what the eccentric billionaire predicts will land humans on Mars in just three years.

According to Musk, Starship almost entered orbit in January, but failed due to a lack of payload.

Rockets never carry a payload during test launches.

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

Each attempt will cost SpaceX about $40 million.

From Earth to Mars

Starship is the $3 billion rocket that will land on the moon sometime around 2025 and ultimately take people to Mars.

Musk previously bet that his future Mars missions would take place sometime in the 2030s.

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

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

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

“This is a very difficult problem given the limitations… Earth has a thick atmosphere and strong gravity. It is hardly possible to do this, which 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 journey to Mars will take about seven months, meaning there will be living quarters on board for crew members.

However, SpaceX is first focusing on getting Starship into orbit before starting to design the interior.

The rocket was also designed from the start to carry more than 100 tons of cargo to Mars and the moon.

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

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

That's almost double the current record of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS).

Starship is being developed as part of a $1.15 billion contract with NASA to return astronauts to the moon in the U.S. space agency's Artemis program.

Although it will be a crucial tool in helping Musk realize his dreams of making humans interplanetary – which he believes is the reason for creating SpaceX in the first place.

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