Starlab partners with Journey to design commercial space station interiors

Starlab Space LLC has expanded its strategic partnership network for its next-generation commercial space station project by bringing onboard Journey, a prominent design and experience agency known for its immersive, multidimensional work. The collaboration aims to redefine how astronauts live and work in space by focusing on comfort, utility, and emotional resonance—combining aerospace engineering with hospitality and experiential design. This announcement marks a significant step forward in private-sector participation in orbital infrastructure, particularly as the International Space Station (ISS) nears its planned retirement.

Why is Journey partnering with Starlab?

Starlab’s decision to engage Journey signals its commitment to developing not just a technically advanced platform in low-Earth orbit, but a livable and human-centric one. Journey’s design pedigree includes high-profile global landmarks like the Las Vegas Sphere, the Empire State Building observatory, and the Sun Princess Dome cruise experience. These projects are hallmarks of narrative-based, sensorially rich environments—a creative philosophy that Starlab intends to replicate in orbit.

Starlab CEO Tim Kopra, a former NASA astronaut, emphasized the functional importance of a well-designed environment in extreme settings. “With Starlab, we want to create an intuitive and comfortable environment for astronauts that allows them to fully focus on their mission,” Kopra said. “Journey understands how to merge design and technology in a very unique context. Their work will help make Starlab not just a successful operational platform in low-Earth orbit but also an exceptional place to work and live.”

What is Journey’s role in Starlab’s commercial space station?

Journey will take the lead on designing the overall user experience—focusing on spatial configuration, human interaction zones, narrative design, and digital integration within the habitat. The agency will collaborate with Hilton, which was announced as a hospitality partner in late 2022, and Airbus, Starlab’s spacecraft integrator. The goal is to create an environment that blends scientific functionality with human-centered aesthetics, fostering well-being and productivity in microgravity.

Journey’s Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Lionel Ohayon, noted, “We’re applying our decades of design expertise to humanity’s next frontier: space. We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Starlab to bring this world-shifting vision to life.” The company is expected to leverage its experience designing spaces that optimize sensory, emotional, and functional engagement—principles that are increasingly viewed as essential in extended-duration space missions.

How does this fit into the commercial space station timeline?

The Starlab initiative is part of NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program (CLDP), which aims to transition the U.S. presence in orbit from government-owned to commercially-operated platforms. With the ISS set to retire in 2030, NASA has awarded contracts to companies like Starlab Space LLC to develop replacements that can host astronauts, perform research, and support commercial activities.

Starlab, a joint venture between Voyager Space, Airbus Defence and Space, and Hilton, plans to launch its habitat before the ISS retirement window. The station is designed to house up to four astronauts and will support experiments across biotech, pharmaceuticals, climate monitoring, and material science. The collaboration with Journey ensures that human factors and usability are addressed as rigorously as structural and life-support engineering.

What are the broader industry implications?

Journey’s entry into the space design domain reflects a growing trend where aerospace programs are beginning to borrow from luxury, entertainment, and hospitality sectors to create more holistic experiences for astronauts, researchers, and even future space tourists. This aligns with the increasing commercialization of space, where the focus is not just on payload capacity and scientific throughput, but also on livability, branding, and human comfort.

This trend mirrors earlier examples like Blue Origin’s New Shepard interior mockups, which featured leather seats and panoramic windows, and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, which uses sleek, minimalistic aesthetics and touchscreen interfaces. Journey’s involvement extends that trajectory into full-fledged habitat architecture, emphasizing storytelling, spatial psychology, and modular comfort zones.

From an industry standpoint, this kind of convergence may also influence future investments and procurement decisions in government space agencies. As space habitats evolve from purely utilitarian platforms into multifunctional environments for diverse stakeholders, design sophistication will likely become a differentiator in contract competitions and astronaut selection.

What are investors and analysts saying?

While Starlab Space LLC is a private company and Journey is not publicly traded, analysts following the commercial space economy see the development as a positive signal for the private station market, which is expected to grow significantly by the mid-2030s. Morgan Stanley projects the global space economy to reach $1 trillion by 2040, with a significant portion allocated to infrastructure and human spaceflight services.

The inclusion of consumer-facing brands like Hilton and Journey is also viewed favorably from a marketing and funding perspective, helping drive public interest, attract non-traditional investors, and support diversified revenue models. Early-stage space-focused funds have shown increasing appetite for startups that combine deep tech with lifestyle, tourism, or health components.

Some industry watchers also point to the move as an indication of increasing design modularity in space station development—where elements like interior furnishings, lighting, and display systems can be iterated independently of the core habitat structure, reducing integration risk and cost.

What’s next for Starlab and Journey?

Starlab is expected to enter critical design review stages in 2026, with hardware prototyping and module testing beginning shortly after. Journey’s involvement during this pre-flight phase will include concept visualization, 3D mockups, and simulation-based user testing—ensuring the environment supports astronaut performance, sleep cycles, and psychological health.

By the end of this decade, Starlab aims to become the premier destination in low-Earth orbit for microgravity research, commercial experimentation, and human habitation. Journey’s creative direction may also influence emerging standards in orbital architecture, potentially shaping how future lunar and Martian habitats are designed.

With NASA’s de-orbit plans for the ISS set to begin in the late 2020s, the commercial replacement timeline is tightening. Starlab’s accelerated development, now reinforced by Journey’s experiential design capabilities, positions the project as a frontrunner in the race to maintain continuous U.S. and allied presence in low-Earth orbit. The integration of high-fidelity interior design and modular environmental systems also hints at a broader shift in how next-generation space habitats will be conceptualized—not as cold, utilitarian labs but as human-optimized, mission-supportive ecosystems.

Starlab is expected to support a wide range of user profiles—including astronauts from NASA and partner agencies, commercial researchers, private contractors, and academic institutions. Journey’s human-centric design ethos is likely to extend the station’s appeal beyond government space programs, potentially serving as a prototype for future orbital tourism, corporate off-Earth retreats, or immersive training environments. The design firm’s ability to merge immersive storytelling with digital infrastructure could also create branded or themed modules, allowing companies or institutions to “own” research or hospitality segments of the station in a franchising model.

From a technical standpoint, Journey’s early involvement allows its designs to influence structural decisions at the module fabrication stage, reducing costly retrofitting and ensuring ergonomic fidelity from day one. As NASA continues to fund multiple commercial habitat initiatives through its CLDP program—including competitors like Axiom Space and Blue Origin-backed Orbital Reef—Starlab’s holistic emphasis on livability, user experience, and operational efficiency could prove decisive in long-term contract awards, astronaut crew rotations, and international partnerships.

In the bigger picture, Journey’s collaboration with Starlab symbolizes the increasing convergence of aerospace, entertainment, and hospitality sectors. It sets a precedent not just for how commercial space stations will look, but how they will feel—and more importantly, how they will perform in ensuring crew health, mission success, and cross-sector innovation in the microgravity economy.