A Private Space Station in 2025?

One of the many utopian dreams of the last century was that space travel would become possible not just for carefully selected astronauts, but for the common man. 2001: A Space Odyssey famously depicted a passenger flight to the Moon; the 2004 book Eyewitness: Future promised that by 2020, people would book hotel stays in low Earth orbit. Obviously, the years 2001 and 2020 saw none of these developments. Even so, we are making real progress towards those starry daydreams—the past half-decade has seen the rise of reusable rockets, suborbital tourist launches, and sleek, futuristic space capsules, heralding a genuine revolution in spaceflight. This year we might see another milestone: the first private space station.

A space station, according to Wikipedia, is “a spacecraft which remains in orbit and hosts humans for extended periods of time.” Such a spacecraft doesn’t have to be particularly large or complex. All you really need is life support for a week or two, and some room for the astronauts to stretch their legs. The ISS, assembled in many pieces to create a whopping 388 cubic meters of habitable volume, is an outlier in this regard. A large majority of the stations sent up since the 1970s have been modest, single-module designs, barely larger than the ferry vehicles that came to visit them. Studio apartments in low Earth orbit. And it is in the studio apartment tradition that Vast, headquartered out of Long Beach, California, hopes to launch Haven-1—small, cozy, urbane, and possibly a harbinger of greater things to come.

Vast (or Vast Space, stylized as VAST) is a relatively new player in the private space sector. Founded in 2021 by cryptocurrency billionaire Jed McCaleb, it aims to build a series of successively larger and more ambitious space stations, which will pave the way for long-term human habitation throughout the Solar System. In 2023 the company announced Haven-1, the first step on its roadmap. You can see some concept art of their design below. It has a habitable volume of 45 cubic meters, a crew of four, and power provided by a pair of solar panels on either side. Vast plans to rent out the station to government agencies and private entities alike. You yourself could book a room here, provided you happen to have several tens of millions of dollars lying around.

Let’s take a look inside, shall we? Pretend¹ you’re taking off in a SpaceX Dragon capsule, on a trip to the first private space station. You lift off from Cape Canaveral, endure the g-forces of a swift and thunderous ascent to orbit—and after a day of maneuvering, circling higher and higher around the Earth, you see through the porthole a distant cylinder with solar-panel wings. You are making your final approach to Haven-1. Thankfully, there’s no need for you to test your piloting skills; your ship’s autonomous systems are more than capable of docking on their own, which means you can sit back and enjoy the ride.

The air pressure aboard the station will take some time to equalize with that aboard your craft. Various safety checkouts will need to be completed. Once those are done, you open the Dragon’s forward hatch, and pull yourself through to find yourself in a sleek white corridor, lined with doors and compartments that blend almost seamlessly into the surrounding walls. Beyond, you can make out a large open space: the station’s common room. The far wall is made from wood—real wood! You’ve never seen a space station like this before.

It feels more like a hotel than an outpost orbiting the Earth. The walls here are soft, the lighting is warm, the décor looks minimalistic yet welcoming. You even have your own private cabin—there are four of these, each with a storage locker, a set of toiletries, and a specially engineered space bed. No other astronaut ever got as good a night’s sleep as you are about to enjoy.

This is your orbital home away from home, and you’ll stay here for two weeks. How will you spend them? There’s always the viewing dome, more than a meter wide, through which you can survey the whole sweep of Earth’s blues and greens and whites, looking down on creation like Zeus from Mount Olympus. And if you’re the athletic type, there’s exercise equipment to help you stave off the atrophy of your bones and muscles. Communal meals can be eaten around the table in the common area. Or, more likely, you can get takeout, and eat in your cabin while watching Netflix. Starlink satellites provide Haven-1 with a great internet connection.

It seems like a pleasant vacation spot, no? But it’s not all fun and games—unless, of course, you can afford the price tag to fly to space exclusively for fun and games. Vast advertises its Haven-1 platform for private corporations and the space agencies of small nations; it is supposed to be a hub for research, both on the effects of spaceflight on the human body, and on materials science in zero-g. The smooth maple panels of the common room slide away to reveal ten different micro-laboratories, which can be operated and monitored even while no crew are aboard the station.

Now, all I’ve really done just now is show you a series of fancy renderings. The actual launch date of this space station has yet to be determined. Many previous ventures in the private space sector have attracted hype and headlines, only to vanish into thin air—just look at what happened to Mars One. But I think this is the real deal. For one thing, Vast has already produced some hardware, including the pressure hull of the station and the dome window. You can see some of their progress in the YouTube video embedded below:

It also helps that Vast is starting with something small and bite-sized. Haven-1 masses only 14 tons, which is lighter than some uncrewed satellites, and it is supposed to ride into orbit atop a single Falcon 9, easily the most prolific and reliable of the launch vehicles currently in service. To save on complexity, it won’t even come with its own intrinsic life support; the attached Dragon capsule will provide air, water, and thermal control during the astronauts’ stay.

Haven-1’s projected launch date remains August 2025 or later. My bet is on “later,” but not necessarily much later. There’s a reasonable chance it will fly within the year. If the first station is a success, the next one, Haven-2, could follow as soon as 2028. Haven-2 will have numerous modules, serving as a full-on replacement for the ISS. You can see concept art below. After that, Vast has suitably—forgive me—vast plans: spinning stations for artificial gravity, fleets of orbiting outposts, and perhaps even interplanetary travel, if the renderings on their site hint at anything. Of course, Haven-1 has to be a success, first.

We’ll have to wait and see if Vast can actually pull it off. But if Haven-1 makes it to the launchpad at all, it has a very good shot at being the first space station launched by a private corporation. All the other competitors, like Axion Station and Orbital Reef, are scheduled for 2027 or later. The next step to watch out for will be a more detailed timeline, complete with a launch date—so keep an eye on the news! History might be made before you know it.

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1. Unless you really are a multimillionaire—in which case, go for the real thing! ↩︎