Hey, we're going back to the moon again

[AJC5001]

Ive just read over on Next Big Future that Musk's Starship will be converted into spaces stations (apparently the cargo bit of Starship is the same size as the ISS)

I remember the time it took and the number of launches to get the current ISS built and now they can get something of a similar size into space in one launch - at a cost of $20 million ler launch. In fact the author speculated that a space station built from 50 Starship launches would only cost a billion dollars.

No wonder the Chinese are speaking to the Americans again.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/06/n ... ation.html

Back in the days of the Space Shuttle I used to wonder what would be needed to get the big fuel tanks into earth orbit. Once there, they could be linked up to provide a larger space station.

Adrian

[ReformedCharacter]

Back in the days of the Space Shuttle I used to wonder what would be needed to get the big fuel tanks into earth orbit. Once there, they could be linked up to provide a larger space station.

Adrian

They didn't quite get fast enough to reach orbit but they might have been able to if the SS had no payload:

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/264/what-would-the-%ce%94v-cost-of-bringing-the-space-shuttle-external-tank-to-orbit-be?rq=1

But that would have been a very expensive way to build a space station.

RC

[XFool]

There were space stations from the early 1970s, long before the Shuttle.

The first was the Soviet Salyut 1 of 1971: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_programme
The first US space station, rather overlooked these days, was Skylab in 1973: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab

List of space stations

[Tedx]

There were space stations from the early 1970s, long before the Shuttle.

The first was the Soviet Salyut 1 of 1971: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_programme
The first US space station, rather overlooked these days, was Skylab in 1973: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab

List of space stations

Skylab was a bit of Apollo if I remember correctly - much the same idea as the Musk/Starship idea (but bigger). The most amazing thing is the low cost of getting big bits of kit into orbit - and reuse almost all of whats used (one guy in the comments even suggested the engines from the second stage could be packaged up and sent back to earth again.