Roadmap
Vast is developing artificial gravity space stations to expand humanity across the solar system.
Our Mission: Live in Space
At Vast, our mission is to contribute to a future where billions of people are living and thriving in space — a future in which the human population and our resources expand far beyond our current imagination.
The solar system contains a vast amount of resources that, when harnessed, can fuel humanity's growth while preserving our home planet. To tap into these resources, we must establish in-space infrastructure and industry on an unparalleled scale.
We believe that living on moons and planets such as Mars will be key enablers of this future. We also believe that artificial gravity habitats will play a critical and complementary role in humanity’s long-term, sustained expansion into the solar system and beyond.
The Need for Artificial Gravity
Prolonged exposure to zero gravity results in debilitating side effects such as muscle atrophy, bone loss, and even brain damage. Today’s astronauts must limit their visits to space to reduce the toll on their bodies. This is a limiting factor in our ability to expand across the solar system.
By building artificial gravity habitats, we aim to create a more optimal environment for long-term stays in space.
Artificial gravity is not science fiction. The resulting centrifugal force of a large spinning structure in space provides a pull that mimics the gravitational environment human bodies are accustomed to, thus reducing the detrimental physiological effects that extended stays in zero gravity cause.
Funding & Customers
Vast is exclusively funded today by our Founder and CEO, Jed McCaleb. This funding is expected to take us through our Haven-1 and Vast-1 missions. Haven-1 is expected to be the world's first crewed commercial space station.
We are building Vast as a long-term profitable company and aim to service NASA and other US Government organizations, international space agencies, private individuals engaged in research and philanthropy, and institutions and companies needing platforms for in-space research and manufacturing.
Today, Vast has revenue-generating contracts from our space tug, Orbiter, as well as government partnerships and payload customers. We have also begun offering seats on the Vast-1 SpaceX Dragon mission to our first space station, Haven-1.
Making it a Reality
Incremental Steps in Reverse Order
2040s
proliferated station fleet
Vast will be operating dozens of artificial gravity and zero gravity space stations across our solar system, optimized for human physiology and psychology, as well as off-planet business. These will enable every endeavor imaginable as humanity expands across the solar system.
2030s
100-Meter Spinning Stick Stations
Vast will be operating 100-meter-long spinning stick space stations that provide various gravitational environments including Earth, Mars, Moon, and asteroid gravities. The artificial gravity stations will be assembled in space with seven SpaceX Starship-launched modules. Our first spinning stick station will help us understand how humans cope with gravity at varying levels in order to inform optimal artificial gravity levels for extended-duration space travel.
Vast will also operate an ever-growing number of co-orbital free-flying ancillary zero gravity modules. Pristine zero gravity will be available in the ancillary modules for large-scale manufacturing, research, and tourism, while maintaining rapid access to the gravitational assets of the spinning stations.
2028
Starship-Class Module
Vast will be operating its first Starship-class space station module. At seven meters in diameter, the unprecedented large volume will provide unparalleled potential for research, tourism, and more.
2025
Haven-1: Falcon 9-Class module
Scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to low-Earth orbit no earlier than August 2025.
The mission will be quickly followed by Vast-1, the first human spaceflight mission to Haven-1 on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. The vehicle and its four-person crew will dock with Haven-1 for up to 30 days while orbiting Earth.
2023-2025
Orbiter Missions
While designing and developing Haven-1, Vast will launch at least six Orbiter space tug and hosted payload platform missions on SpaceX rideshare missions.
Orbiter serves the following stepping stones to Haven-1:
- Train our team to design, produce, integrate, launch, and operate in space.
- Develop and test in orbit our safety-critical, human-rated space station avionics hardware and software, which will evolve from Orbiter to Haven-1.
- Develop systems and expertise for in-space maneuvers and approaches which are critical to space station assembly and re-supply.
- Test Haven-1 subsystems on orbit, including life support (ECLSS), avionics, software, communication, materials, and sensors.
The Earth has a mass of 6 x 1024 kg. The solar system, other than the Sun, has a mass of 2.78 x 1027 kg. This gives 464 Earth masses in the solar system excluding the Sun. But humans are using at most 2% of the Earth’s mass. This means there are 23,200 times the amount of mass used by humans out there in the solar system. Or roughly enough resources for 232 trillion humans. There is an even greater multiple of the current human energy requirements emitted by the Sun, so the solar system is mass constrained not energy constrained.