Forgot to build the rocket. Today, wealthy space entrepreneurs are ambitions to build commercial space stations that can serve as successors to NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) when they retire in the coming years. While a handful of private companies are already developing ISS alternatives, the launch of a vast space has many things that competitors don’t have – a huge connection to Elon Musk’s SpaceX and is willing to lose a lot of cash.
According to Bloomberg, Jed McCaleb, the only large funder, is preparing to sink $1 billion into the company’s commercial space station dream. “Not many people are willing to give my resources, time and risk tolerance,” he told the publication.
McAleb currently has an estimated net worth of nearly $3 billion, known for creating Gox Mt. Gox, an early Bitcoin trading platform that went bankrupt more than a decade ago and co-founded Ripple with the blockchain company behind Cryptocurrency XRP. His other adventures include the early file sharing service Edonkey and the outstanding open source payment network.
In 2021, McCaleb founded Long Beach, headquartered in Long Beach, California, to move from cryptocurrency to space. The company is vying to obtain a NASA contract under the agency’s commercial LEO Destination (CLD) program to replace ISS with Haven-2, a commercial space station that claims to be able to operate by 2028. The station will be a derivative of Haven-1, a multinational company, a huge plan to launch by next year.
Musk, who calls for an earlier retirement of ISS with NASA’s 2030 timeline, is intertwined with Vast’s vision. In addition to lending some of its technology to the vast technology, SpaceX also agreed to transport astronauts to Vast’s station.
Who else is building a private space station?
While NASA won’t be able to choose a new CLD contract until at least 2026, the agency has funded three separate commercial space stations under the program. In 2020, it awarded more than $400 million in bonuses through CLD’s first contract.
The Blue Origin founded by Jeff Bezos is one of them, and he received $130 million to create an operating space station with partners Boeing (BA) and Sierra Space. Blue Origin’s plan is to develop an integrated business park called Orbital Reef, which will host scientists, astronauts and space tourists.
Another big player is Houston, Texas-based Axiom Space, which won a $140 million NASA contract for its commercial space station dream five years ago. The company, chaired by former ISS manager Michael Suffredini, plans to install a power module on the ISS over a two-year period, which will subsequently be unlocked and linked to another module by 2028 to form a free flight station.
The third winner is Voyager Space, a private space company now known as Voyager Technologies. In partnership with Nanoracks and Lockheed Martin, it received $160 million for its efforts to create Starbase, a free-flying station that will be available for viewing its first module as early as 2027.
NASA hopes that becoming a private space station will be more cost-effective than operating an International Space Station (ISS). The agency said the station’s “technical life” is limited, operated by NASA and its partners in Europe, Japan, Russia and Canada.
NASA is currently using the help of the discharge vehicles developed by SpaceX and is currently focusing on ISS’s 2030 retirement date. As it descends back to Earth’s atmosphere, most of the station will be destroyed, with the rest of the debris targeting remote areas of the Pacific Ocean.
