Vast announces first two customer payloads on its Haven-1 space station
Vast Haven-1 station inside Falcon-9 fairing
The space station startup Vast today announced the first two customers planning to place payloads on its Haven-1 single module space station, presently scheduled for launch in the second half of 2025.
The company also revealed that these payloads will be installed on the station in what it calls its Haven-1 Lab, which is essentially a variation of the payload rack system used on ISS.
The Haven-1 Lab features 10 Middeck Locker Equivalent payload slots, each roughly the size of a microwave. Each payload slot can weigh up to 30 kg (66 lbs), is provided with 100 W of continuous power, and has access to an Ethernet data connection. Payloads will be operated by the astronaut crew on Haven-1, as well as commanded and monitored by ground operators via Starlink laser links, providing Gigabit/s speed, low latency connectivity. Partners will have the opportunity to return products and samples from space via a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
In tandem with Vast’s announcement of its Haven-1 Lab, the company also announced Redwire and Yuri as its inaugural partners, representing some of the foremost experts in the development of microgravity payloads.
Redwire has flown numerous payloards already to ISS, including cutting edge 3D printers. Yuri is less well known, but it appears both it and Redwire are taking advantage of Vast’s much simpler paperwork requirements than NASA’s. Vast has taken no NASA funds, so it can approve payloads at its whim. Speeds things up, saves money, and everyone benefits.
These payloads will likely be part of the first Haven-1 manned mission, where four astronauts will spend 30 days in space, ferried to and from the module using a Dragon capsule and launched almost immediately after Haven-1 is placed in orbit.
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Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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Vast Haven-1 station inside Falcon-9 fairing
The space station startup Vast today announced the first two customers planning to place payloads on its Haven-1 single module space station, presently scheduled for launch in the second half of 2025.
The company also revealed that these payloads will be installed on the station in what it calls its Haven-1 Lab, which is essentially a variation of the payload rack system used on ISS.
The Haven-1 Lab features 10 Middeck Locker Equivalent payload slots, each roughly the size of a microwave. Each payload slot can weigh up to 30 kg (66 lbs), is provided with 100 W of continuous power, and has access to an Ethernet data connection. Payloads will be operated by the astronaut crew on Haven-1, as well as commanded and monitored by ground operators via Starlink laser links, providing Gigabit/s speed, low latency connectivity. Partners will have the opportunity to return products and samples from space via a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
In tandem with Vast’s announcement of its Haven-1 Lab, the company also announced Redwire and Yuri as its inaugural partners, representing some of the foremost experts in the development of microgravity payloads.
Redwire has flown numerous payloards already to ISS, including cutting edge 3D printers. Yuri is less well known, but it appears both it and Redwire are taking advantage of Vast’s much simpler paperwork requirements than NASA’s. Vast has taken no NASA funds, so it can approve payloads at its whim. Speeds things up, saves money, and everyone benefits.
These payloads will likely be part of the first Haven-1 manned mission, where four astronauts will spend 30 days in space, ferried to and from the module using a Dragon capsule and launched almost immediately after Haven-1 is placed in orbit.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
It is interesting that the name of Vast’s initial station module includes a number as well. If Vast had no intention of ever building a second or subsequent copy of Haven, it could as easily have named the station just Haven, full stop. Perhaps the medium-term plan is to build and launch more than one Haven, possibly to different orbital inclinations/altitudes within the reach of SpaceX’s Dragon capsules. Building multiple Havens would spread the development costs over multiple articles, allowing usage charges to customers to come down over time while preserving margins and allowing more potential customers to afford Vast’s services. It will be fascinating to see what Vast does during the remainder of this decade – and, of course, beyond.
Dick Eagleson wrote: “Perhaps the medium-term plan is to build and launch more than one Haven, possibly to different orbital inclinations/altitudes within the reach of SpaceX’s Dragon capsules. Building multiple Havens would spread the development costs over multiple articles, allowing usage charges to customers to come down over time while preserving margins and allowing more potential customers to afford Vast’s services. It will be fascinating to see what Vast does during the remainder of this decade – and, of course, beyond.”
Vast seems to be developing and building its space station quickly. Rapid development and deployment appears to be key to the space industry. As with the commercial launch industry, the early birds got the worms (SpaceX and Rocket Lab). Early entry reduces development costs, generates revenue earlier, and gives early market penetration (as Starlink has done). The innovations that went against convention, the newer launchers, were able to do better (Virgin Orbit was doing well, until government red tape killed it dead as a doornail). Rocket Lab does the small satellite launches that Orbital Sciences (now part of Northrup Grumman) used to have, but at 1/10th the price. SpaceX is beating ULA at half the price. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have invented a new market. Four space station companies are currently vying for leadership in manned space.
Vast is on track to have its (first?) space station in orbit sooner than the others, giving them the ability to learn the reality of how to operate a space station at low cost. Their two new customers show us that there is demand from corporations for doing things in space. Axiom has signed on the UK for a manned space mission, showing us that national space programs are eager to do their own things in space. NASA, of course, is eager to do its things in space, and these commercial space stations are proving that they can build for significantly less than the ISS had cost, and the expected operations are expected to be similarly less expensive.
As Robert Zimmerman noted, the commercial space stations will be far less hassle to work with than NASA is. I would be surprised if their rules of use were nearly as burdensome. NASA, having a limited availability for experimentation on ISS, has incentive to weed out the vast (pun intended) number of experiments proposed for the ISS. The commercial space companies will have incentive to find ways to make someone’s experiment or manufacturing (or vacation?) a high priority, going sooner rather than later to their space station(s).
Vast, as Dick Eagleson suggested, can easily expand its capacity with additional single module space stations (perhaps Haven-2, Haven-3, etc.) or to expand into multi-module space stations (Oasis-1? Sanctum-1?) that look and work similar to MIR, Tiangong (China’s space station), or ISS. The Blue Origin / Sierra Space group’s plan (Orbital Reef) and Axiom’s plan are to start big. Vast starts smaller and sooner, giving it an early competitive edge. Vast has expressed an interest in making a space station with artificial gravity.
Speaking of Orbital Reef, Redwire is a partner with that group, yet here they are planning to also partner on the competition’s space station, but then again, Haven-1 is likely to be earlier than Orbital Reef. Redwire, too, wants to get an early start on its own products, and Vast may have the space station to do it with.
Robert noted Dragon as a manned transport, but I expect Starliner (well, at this point it is more hope than expectation) to compete for this service, and when the manned Dream Chaser comes online, it will also perform this service.
I do not expect Starship to run people or cargo to these early space stations, despite its lower costs, because its mass and much larger mass moment of inertia will overwhelm the control systems of these space stations, even if they were designed to accommodate the forces of docking with such a massive transport.