Vast (also styled Vast Space) is a privately held American aerospace company headquartered in Long Beach, California. It was founded in 2021 by entrepreneur Jed McCaleb with the goal of developing artificial gravity space stations to "expand humanity beyond the solar system".
History
Founded in 2021, Vast was "officially" launched in September 2022 with the mission to develop the world's first artificial-gravity space stations. This was followed up by an announcement in January 2023 to relocate its corporate headquarters from El Segundo, California to a newly-built 115,000 square-foot facility in Long Beach. The new facility, located in the city's Globemaster Corridor Specific Plan, also plans to house the company's manufacturing operations.
Shortly thereafter, in February 2023, Vast announced its acquisition of Hawthorne-based space startup Launcher, with founder & CEO Max Haot becoming president of Vast. As a result of the acquisition, Vast gained its assets, products, and employees. Additionally, former Launcher operations such as the development of its E-2 engine and Orbiter payload host would continue its development within Vast, with plans to start deploying them in the summer of 2023.
In May 2023, Vast announced that it had teamed up with Elon Musk's SpaceX to launch its first single-module space station called Haven-1 aboard a Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than August 2025. Plans were also unveiled for a crewed flight up to Haven-1, called Vast-1, to be launched shortly after placing the station in orbit. Vast plans to sell 4 seats aboard the spacecraft. The crew will then receive training by SpaceX in preparation for the Vast-1 mission.
In June 2023, Vast commenced its SN3 mission by launching its Orbiter aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket on their Transporter-8 mission. The Orbiter was attached to Starfish Space's Otter Pup and would go on to separate from it in the following months. However, on June 21st, Vast president Max Haot stated that the Orbiter SN3 was "improperly" spinning at 60 rpm. As a result, they elected to immediately deploy all the small sat payloads on board and then stated that Otter Pup's primary mission can't be accomplished. The SN3's failure caused the delay of the Orbiter SN5 mission to fall back from fall 2023 to February 2024.
Shortly after the commencement of the SN3 mission, Vast received a Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities-2 (CCSC-2) agreement from NASA to help develop artificial gravity stations a few days later. Although the agreement didn't provide Vast with government funds, it did provide them with technical expertise, assessments, data, and more. Shortly thereafter, Vast announced that it had selected Impulse Space to develop Haven-1's propulsion system.
On July 11, 2023, Vast announced that it had hired former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman to advise the company on its commercial space station efforts. A few weeks later, Vast announced that Jeb McCaleb would be stepping down from his role as CEO, and that Max Haot would succeed him as CEO. Vast also announced that it had hired Alex Hudson to be its first CTO.
Hardware
Rocket engines
Following the acquisition of Launcher, the development of its E-2 rocket engine was continued within Vast. The E-2 engine is a 3D printed staged combustion liquid rocket engine. Originally meant to be used for Launcher's Light launch vehicle, the E-2 rocket engine is now planned to be used alongside the Orbiter space tug and payload host.