Voyager Technologies raises nearly $400 million in first public stock offering
The Starlab design in 2025. Click
for original image.
The space station startup Voyager Technologies has now raised $383 million during its first public stock offering this week, with the possibility of more investment capital to come.
The six-year-old provider of mission-critical space and defense technology solutions sold 12.35 million shares at $31 each, pricing above the $26–$29 range it marketed last week. The Denver-based company had initially planned to offer 11 million shares.
Underwriters also have a 30-day option to purchase up to 1.85 million additional shares of the company’s Class A common stock, up from 1.65 million, trading under the ticker symbol VOYG.
Of the four private commercial space stations under development, Voyager is the only one to have so far built nothing. Its station, dubbed Starlab, is conceived as a single large module launched on SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket. Though the company has obtained a $217.5 million development grant from NASA, and is partnering with Airbus, Northrop Grumman, and the European Space Agency, it has focused so far all of its work on design.
We must assume the company intends to use this additional public capital to begin some construction. It likely needs to if it is to have any chance of winning NASA’s major contract for building the station itself, since all of its other competitors are doing so. My present rankings for these four projects:
- Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch and be occupied in 2026 for an estimated 30 days total. It hopes this actual hardware and manned mission will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract, from which it will build its much larger mult-module Haven-2 station..
- Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched three tourist flights to ISS, with a fourth to launch momentarily, carrying passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland. Though there have been rumors it has cash flow issues, development of its first module has been proceeding more or less as planned.
- Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Overall, Blue Origin has built almost nothing, while Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building its module for launch.
- Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman, with an extensive partnership agreement with the European Space Agency. It recently had its station design approved by NASA, but it has built nothing. The company however has now raised $383 million in a public stock offering, which in addition to the $217.5 million provided by NASA gives it the capital to begin some construction.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The Starlab design in 2025. Click
for original image.
The space station startup Voyager Technologies has now raised $383 million during its first public stock offering this week, with the possibility of more investment capital to come.
The six-year-old provider of mission-critical space and defense technology solutions sold 12.35 million shares at $31 each, pricing above the $26–$29 range it marketed last week. The Denver-based company had initially planned to offer 11 million shares.
Underwriters also have a 30-day option to purchase up to 1.85 million additional shares of the company’s Class A common stock, up from 1.65 million, trading under the ticker symbol VOYG.
Of the four private commercial space stations under development, Voyager is the only one to have so far built nothing. Its station, dubbed Starlab, is conceived as a single large module launched on SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket. Though the company has obtained a $217.5 million development grant from NASA, and is partnering with Airbus, Northrop Grumman, and the European Space Agency, it has focused so far all of its work on design.
We must assume the company intends to use this additional public capital to begin some construction. It likely needs to if it is to have any chance of winning NASA’s major contract for building the station itself, since all of its other competitors are doing so. My present rankings for these four projects:
- Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch and be occupied in 2026 for an estimated 30 days total. It hopes this actual hardware and manned mission will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract, from which it will build its much larger mult-module Haven-2 station..
- Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched three tourist flights to ISS, with a fourth to launch momentarily, carrying passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland. Though there have been rumors it has cash flow issues, development of its first module has been proceeding more or less as planned.
- Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Overall, Blue Origin has built almost nothing, while Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building its module for launch.
- Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman, with an extensive partnership agreement with the European Space Agency. It recently had its station design approved by NASA, but it has built nothing. The company however has now raised $383 million in a public stock offering, which in addition to the $217.5 million provided by NASA gives it the capital to begin some construction.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Starlab is estimated to cost $3 to 3.5 billion to construct and deploy. That being the case, the cash from.this IPO could get them a good start on fabrication, but will not be nearly enough to complete it.
They are clearly hoping for a NASA CLD contract for at least some of the expense of fabrication. It’s not clear to me how much generosity the administration will have for those award(s), though, given the 2026 PBR. But I assume….Voyager has a plan.
I like the architecture and I like how they’ve aggressively sought out customers and partners, as I have said before. But I am curious just how they will close the business case. That’s true for all of these commercial space stations. Vast’s Haven 1 can likely pull it off, but really that’s only a minimum viable product prototype. Even they have admitted that they need a NASA CLD contract for Haven 2.
Could they work together and use the ISS truss at least?
Get rid of the crummy Russian bits and keep the blamed cupola.
We have shopping centers in a row here.
Hello Jeff,
I have seen discussion, including renders, of detaching the LEONARDO module from ISS for use on the new Axiom station when the time comes, but that is the only part of ISS that seems to be even theoretically considered for reuse on a new station. (I don’t know if they will actually go through with it or not.)
And I think that’s because LEONARDO could be done without any (difficult, expensive) EVA’s. Salvaging and attaching the truss structure or even TRANQUILITY, on the other hand, would be a *ton* of such work. Commercial space station operators couldn’t afford the cost of that even if they wanted to. Starlab’s whole architecture is specifically designed for deployment with *any* EVA activity. Just a single launch on a Starship, and boom, it’s a fully automated deployment sequence.
Anyway, that’s a lot of extra mass to add to a space station, and all the extra mass means more delta-v required for station keeping.
Tha’ts what Starship or a re-purposed Dragon de-orbit package is for.
Sometimes, the goose just ain’t worth the hunt.
The trusses are impressive looking but obsolete hardware that’s been in the harsh environment of low earth orbit for nearly a quarter century. Assembling and attaching them took dozens of difficult and expensive EVA’s, and that would be the same for any attempt to disassemble them and attach them to something else — worse, in fact, due to the difficulty with removing attachments that have suffered material warping and weakening under dramatically fluctuating thermal and radiation conditions for decades. Starlab and Axiom are the only planned stations in the same orbit, and both are planned to have far more cost and mass efficient power systems. They don’t need to mount the cumbersome and power hungry EXPRESS Logistics Carriers or the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.
So the best use of the SpaceX Deorbit Vehicle is to….deorbit the whole thing. Except possibly, just possibly, for LEONARDO and a few odds and ends inside the pressurized modules. But even that is a question mark, since it is unclear if Axiom still wants to pursue even that. Their latest station renders don’t even depict LEONARDO.