Vast purchases Launcher in an effort to create space stations with artificial gravity

TechCrunch has exclusive knowledge of the acquisition of space tug startup Launcher by Vast Space, a business that came out of stealth last September with the goal of developing artificial gravity space stations in low Earth orbit.

It will be a first for Vast to gain access to Launcher’s Orbiter space tug and payload platform as well as its E-2 liquid rocket engine through this acquisition. According to the terms of the agreement, Vast will also take on all of Launcher’s employees, including Max Haot, the company’s founder, who will serve as President. Both companies signed a Letter of Intent to Acquire back in November, according to the two companies, who told TechCrunch that the deal has been in the works for months.

With the Orbiter tug, Vast will test space station subsystems and components in orbit beginning in June of this year and again around October, according to the company’s founder, billionaire crypto pioneer Jed McCaleb. These two missions, the second and third flights of Orbiter, will also include customer payloads. Vast will keep running Orbiter as a for-profit venture; according to Haot, they have more than five customer contracts and are securing more.

Haot continued by saying that the space tug’s capabilities, including its capacity to approach and depart from other spacecraft as well as host payloads, as well as its technological capabilities, including flight software, avionics, guidance, navigation, and control systems, will support the construction of the space station.

Launcher made headlines last week when it revealed that the spacecraft’s power systems malfunctioned during the first Orbiter mission, which took place at the start of January. Haot told TechCrunch that despite this obstacle, the mission’s outcomes were “well above industry average.”

“We are fully aware of what went wrong. We were fully functional for the duration of the battery, but due to a power problem, we were unable to deploy our customers, the official said. Vast, Jed, and I are all very proud of what we accomplished. This year, there will be two more flights. […] The likelihood that this platform will be stable by the end of the year is very high, if you think about it.

Launcher was also working on its own launch vehicle, but Vast will end that project.

The two businesses declined to offer much more information regarding the upcoming Orbiter missions, nor did they provide any information regarding foreseeable development timelines, partnerships, or station form factors. However, they did state that the company would send a zero G station into space as its first outpost, followed by ones with artificial gravity.

In general, McCaleb stated that acquisitions do not fit into Vast’s overarching business plan. The majority of the time, acquisitions fail, he said. We will be able to accomplish quite a bit with the current combined team plus a few additional people, in general.

When McCaleb said he was driven by long-term thinking about the future of humanity, he echoed other billionaire space founders. “For me, the compelling thing is to push humans out into the solar system,” he said. McCaleb was one of the developers of the now infamous Mt. Gox cryptocurrency exchange and a founder of the protocol Ripple. But whereas SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is attempting to address the launch component of that problem, McCaleb has focused on human habitation in space.

McCaleb has been fully funding the project thus far and will keep doing so until the business generates revenue. Then, he said, you can raise a lot more money under better conditions. He continued by saying that the business also intended to eventually submit a funding proposal for the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development (CLD) program, which NASA established to launch private space stations following the International Space Station’s retirement in 2030.

Vast will have to compete with other well-established players for its share of the market in the rapidly-crowding private space station market. Northrop Grumman, Nanoracks, which is developing a station with parent company Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin, and Blue Origin, which is leading a team that includes Boeing and Sierra Space, are the three businesses that have already received funding through the CLD program. Additionally, Axiom Space has received funding from NASA for its space station through a different award.