Startup Vast Unveils The First Commercial Space Station And It’s Luxurious
Companies have been announcing plans for building commercial space stations over the last several years. Luxury space travel company SpaceVIP is already offering tickets to have a Michelin-star rated meal 20 miles above Earth in a space balloon.
Likewise, Blue Origin has been working toward its Orbital Reef Space Station, after demonstrating to NASA in 2022 that it was both feasible and achievable. It is along the Blue Origin lines of design and functionality that Vast’s Haven-1 has most in common with. Let’s just say, this is not your dad’s space station.
Vast is not waiting around either, as it plans to launch Haven-1 in 2025, focusing specifically on ensuring form and function merge to provide greater comfort and quality of life for long-term missions. The company remarked in a blog post that the exterior will extend the design element by introducing a key new exterior element: a centralized window, which will allow astronauts to experience a full view of Earth.
“Astronauts living in zero gravity pose unique design challenges. Creating an environment that is both highly efficient and naturally comforting leads to totally new results. Haven-1 interiors are unprecedented, precisely engineered and sensitively designed to ensure its occupants thrive in space,” explained Peter Russell-Clarke, a world-renowned designer who helped design some of Apple’s most iconic products.
Vast is also enlisting the help of veteran astronauts such as Andrew Feustel. Feustel has over 23 years of experience, and has logged over 225 days in space on the International Space Station. He noted, “From communication and connectivity, to private space and interacting with others aboard, to advancing human progress on Earth and beyond, every detail has been designed with the astronaut experience at the core of our work.”
Along with padded walls, crew will be able to take advantage of the station’s four private crew quarters for rest and relaxation. Each room features a built-in storage compartment, vanity, and a custom amenities kit. The Common area will have a focus on modularity, as a deployable multi-use table will be available for eating or drafting. Exercise is also a key component built-in to the space station, as the engineers created a comprehensive system to address the challenges of being in space, and allowing astronauts to keep their bodies strong.
Feustel remarked about the process behind designing Vast’s Haven-1, “So much of our learning on ISS explores how living in microgravity affects the human body, both physically and psychologically - and one key takeaway I’ve had is that intuitive design isn’t a luxury in that regard: it’s key to ensuring astronauts can work and live in space seamlessly.”
