In a remarkable coincidence, the subject of the private space station being worked on by startup company called Vast Space came up in the comments to yesterday's post and today I stumbled across an update on their first launch, which will be the first module of their new, private space station.
The story isn't surprising: it's that they're not going to meet their original schedule. They were working to a launch this coming August and now expect their Haven-1 to launch No Earlier Than May 2026. In my experience, it would be surprising if they met the first date they scheduled when they knew far less about the realities of building what they've been designing.
Even with the delay, it's still an "ambitious timeline," the company said. But Vast remains optimistic: "If all goes as planned, we will have designed, built, and launched the world’s first commercial space station in three years — a pace never before achieved in human spaceflight."
Vast began building the Haven-1 module in July of '24 in their Long Beach, CA, headquarters. They transported the module to the company's test stand in Mojave, CA in January. They've begun a long effort to measure the performance of the module against all of the specifications it was designed to. The latest tests have passed on a very important performance requirement.
Using dry nitrogen, Vast pressurized the module on the test stand twice — the first for a duration of five hours, and the second for 48 hours. According to the company's data, Haven-1's pressure sensors showed an "indiscernible" leak rate, exceeding the vessel's requirements and falling within compliance for NASA's crew-rated spacecraft qualifications.
This test module, currently still on the test stand, is not going to fly, but based on its performance to date, they've begun construction of the first flight-rated module.
Vast's Haven-1 qualification article on the test stand in Mojave, CA. (Image credit: Vast Space)
As we've covered before, the International Space Station (ISS) is approaching retirement, with current plans to deorbit the ISS at the end of 2030. NASA has been eager for companies to get commercial space stations up and running. A handful of private contenders have voiced plans to construct their own LEO destinations — Vast Space, Axiom Space, Blue Origin, Sierra Space, Nanoracks, and others.
As those companies tread water while they gauge market demand or continue their station developments in the background, Vast says it's on track to get Haven-1 to orbit in record time, and has begun actively seeking out customers and scientists with research they want to fly to space.
Another co-inc is this article about a group in Russia having built a prototype plasma engine. This was in comments of yesterday's post.
ReplyDeletehttps://dailygalaxy.com/2025/02/russian-scientists-develop-plasma-engine-capable-reaching-mars-in-30-days/
This article popped up in my feed tonight. I didn't go looking for info on the engine.
DeleteThanks for the link to a cool article. Those Russians seem to have a special nack for rocket engines.
DeleteVast is delayed. Which sucks.
ReplyDeleteWonder what's happening over at Sierra with their inflatables?
The only things I've seen about Sierra have been about Dream Chaser being almost ready for flight, but with no date. Nothing about the inflatable modules.
DeleteThey've done sustained pressure tests followed by burst tests. They've tested 'window' modules to make sure they aren't a stress point. Just... well...
DeleteThey keep saying Dream Chaser is just around the corner. Of course they are also waiting on an available Vulcan launch, or maybe a New Glenn launch. Dunno why they won't consider a Falcon 9. And their inflatables are 'being developed, continuing work, yada yada' a lot.
Vaporous promises, no hard 'by this date' or 'we're having issues with.' Just vaporous promises and statements. Grrrr.
Wonder how well "inflatable" will work when it encounters micro-meteors?
ReplyDeleteSeems like someone must have looked into that because it's got to be one of the first questions.
DeleteBigelow's BEAM 'Bigelow Expandable Activity Module' has been attached to the ISS since 2016 and is doing fine. They had other inflatable demonstrators floating around in LEO for over a year exposed.
DeleteNo issues.
Sierra Space has tested their inflatables to very high pressure and to resistance to puncture and they've been successful.
So the tech isn't really in its infancy. It just needs... something more. Bigelow went dark during COVID and is now dead. Sierra Space picked up where Bigelow left off and they're 'working on it.'
So, well, instead of NASA dumping lotsa funds at Bigelow or Sierra, instead they've spent all our cash on SLS...
Beans, SLS needs to die a horrible quick death. Period. Dot.
DeleteQuestion is, will Jared do it, or Trump. or (not bloody likely) Congress?
Please let it happen quickly.
If you had funding, as a business, what product or service you would produce on a space station?
ReplyDeleteIt would have to be something that can only be made in microgravity. The only things I think I've heard of would be some drugs.
DeleteWell, for one thing you could rent space to NASA. Just like SpaceX sells flights to them. Or any other country in the world that wants to brag about a space presence.
DeleteMono crystal wisker filaments is another, super pure alloys and crystals is another, heard exceptionally high quality membranes and reverse osmosis filters are thought to be a high profit low cost product. The one I'm waiting for is somebody to send out either a ship with miners and geologists on it, find a nice metal asteroid, maybe two or three, your out there, and delta v to get there is very expensive, attach thrusters to it, send it on a Homan return orbit back to the earth-moon system, start vacuum smelting using solar energy. Thats when stuff starts hopping.
DeleteMetallurgy. Try melting lead and iron together in a gravity well. The resulting admixture will have totally different properties of the combining metals.
DeleteUltrapure crystals. Biologicals. Stuff that my feeble old brain cannot even imagine.
Remember, "The LASER is a solution in search of a problem". I remember that saying from the early 70's, and nowadays we can't live without 'em!
Ad Astrum!
Thing impressed me was how the VAST fellow in that NASA v-clip interview was not quibbling about making the best station modules physically possible, timelines or not, they have put their money where their mouths are from the looks of their manufacturing plant, they invested some serious bookoo bucks. Anyone see the size of the 5 acis mills for milling the module sections, and the granite and steel inspection blocks, whoo doggy, from Starret those go for large 5 figures, plus they had a mellenite cast iron acorn table of exceptional size, they ain't sparing expense on tooling, the CMC machine they showed is probably near 7 figures, its got a half acre of granite. Those clean rooms are level three, large dollars and you have maintenance costs to keep them in spec. I was highly impressed.
DeleteIgor, good point about the lasers.
DeleteThe Vast guy was mentioning future SpaceX launches and said launching on SuperHeavy, got me thinking, what with the Ship's layout, they could build a stubby Ship, cut off above the methane tankage, add a satellite dock ring, and a super jumbo size fairing, that sucker would be able to loft just about anything within reason, certainly fully assembled stocked Vast modules, put some little stubby forward flaps so it is recoverable. Be quite the workhorse of the launch industry.
ReplyDeleteU Name It We Haul It.
They're practically "U Name It We Haul It" now.
DeleteHave the nose section as a separate 'ship.' Engine and fuel as a separate 'ship.' Cargo section as a separate 'ship.'
DeleteAttain orbit, disconnect nose from cargo from tail sections. Cargo section boosts on it's own to whatever orbit it needs. Nose attaches to tail and 'stubbystarship' does the drop.
Or if the length of Starship is required aerodynamically, then the cargo section has doors big enough to basically barf out a cargo module almost the size of the cargo hold.
Or, have the engine section be 'modular' so that after launching a 'stay in orbit' Starship, the engine section is dismounted and put in an awaiting Cargo Starship and the fuel tank section of the now engineless section is converted from wet storage to usefulness.
Thing is, I'm sure there are people at SpaceX who are basically 'gaming' out all the variations of Starship that they can think about.
And the funny thing is, all the above scenarios, and many more, were thought out during the whole 'what do we do with Saturn' skull-sweat sessions at NASA during the 1960's, even before we made it to the Moon.
Beans, they did it with the Shuttle's Main Tank, as well. I'm old enough to remember ALL these discussions, all the way back to the '60s.
DeleteUsing SST for the rocket bodies makes it fairly easy to modify SuperHeavy, pretty much its a cut and weld job changing configurations, big range of mods are doable, simple use of engineering imagination, lot to like right there. They could make it simple, Starship in a 2 stage config, the "first" stage of the second stage returns to launch pad. Its just a barrel like the booster, some form of moderate heat shield at the separation point, they could possibly re-purpose a set of Falcom Ti grid fins to compliment the lower flaps, (as you loose the top glaps with "2nd stage).
Delete