¶Vast’s first space station. Vast has announced its first launch, a single-module space station. The LA-based startup was founded by billionaire entrepreneur Jed McCaleb to work on artificial gravity space stations and recently acquired space tug, rocket, and engine company Launcher. (Ed.: Andrew previously worked at Vast and still works closely with Jed.) Vast’s Haven-1 will launch NET August 2025 on a Falcon 9, followed shortly after by a Crew Dragon with four astronauts onboard (seats available!) for an up to 30-day stay. Additional crewed missions will follow, after which Haven-1 could be docked with additional modules to form a larger station. Vast’s vision, laid out in its roadmap, is to build progressively larger stations taking advantage of Starship’s launch capacity, with future iterations using artificial spin gravity to enable long-term human habitation in space. (Haven-1 itself may perform test spins up to a lunar gravitational equivalent.) The goal with Haven-1 is to quickly develop a minimum viable space station pressure module launchable on a current rocket. This task is simplified by the omission of requiring resupply (the station will launch carrying consumables for up to four missions) and by relying on the docked Crew Dragon for some traditional free-flying station functions. If Vast can meet its very ambitious timeline, it could be the first commercial station in orbit, potentially beating out Orbital Reef, Starlab, Axiom, and others. Related: The first US space station, the iconic Skylab, launched 50 years ago on May 14th, 1973. (While Salyut 1 has the distinction of being the first crewed station, its singular crew, sadly, did not successfully return home due to the Soyuz 11 reentry depressurization event. Skylab was not without its own issues.) | 
