This company wants to build a space station with artificial gravity
California-based Vast Space has big ambitions. The company aims to launch a commercial space station, Haven-2, into low Earth orbit by 2028, allowing astronauts to remain in space after the decommissioning of International Space Station (ISS) in 2030. In this way, he tries to intervene of NASA plans to develop commercial low-orbit space stations with partner organizations — but most ambitious of all are Vast Space’s goals for what it will eventually put into space: a station that has its own artificial gravity.
“We know that we can live in weightlessness for about a year, and in conditions that are not easy. Perhaps, however, lunar or Martian gravity is sufficient to live comfortably for a lifetime. The only way to find out is to build stations with artificial gravity, which is our long-term goal,” says Max Haot, CEO of Vast.
Vast Space was founded in 2021. by 49-year-old programmer and businessman Jed McCaleb, creator of peer-to-peer networks eDonkey and Overnet, as well as early and now defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox. Vast Space announced in mid-December a partnership with SpaceX to launch two missions to the ISS that will be cornerstones of the company’s launch plan its first space station, Haven-1, later in 2025. The missions, which do not yet have official launch dates, will fall under NASA’s private Astronaut Mission Program, through which the space agency wants to encourage the development of a space economy in low Earth orbit.
For Vast, this is part of a long-term business strategy. “Building an outpost that artificially mimics gravity would take 10 to 20 years and an amount of money that we don’t have right now,” Haot admits. “However, to win the most important contract in the space station market, which is to replace the ISS, with our founder’s resources, we will launch four people on the (SpaceX) Dragon in 2025.” They will remain aboard Haven-1 for two weeks, after which we return safely, demonstrating to NASA our capability over any competitor.”
Room for one more?
What Vast Space is trying to do by showing off its capabilities is to interfere with NASA’s Commercial destinations in low Earth orbit (CLD), a project the space agency launched in 2021. with a $415 million grant to support the development of private stations in low Earth orbit.
The money was initially allocated to three different projects: one from aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman, which has since exited the program; a joint venture called Starlab; and Orbital Reef from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. Vast doesn’t have a contract with the US space agency, but it aims to outdo its competitors by showing NASA it can put a space station in space before those others. The agency will choose which project station to support in the second half of 2026.
In doing so, Vast is borrowing from SpaceX’s playbook. Vast Space has not only attracted some of its employees and the design of equipment and vehicles Elon Musk’s company, it is also trying to reiterate its approach to the market: to be ready before anyone else by having technologies and processes already qualified and validated in orbit. “We’re falling behind,” Haot says. “What can we do to win? Our response in the second half of 2025. will be the launch of Haven-1.
Haven-1 will have a habitable volume of 45 cubic meters, a docking port, a corridor with supplies for the crew’s personal living quarters, a laboratory and a movable communal table placed next to a domed window about a meter high. On board, approximately 425 kilometers above Earth’s surface, the station will use Starlink laser links to communicate with satellites in low Earth orbit, a technology that was first tested during Polar dawn mission in the fall of 2024.
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