Haven-1 would serve as a luxurious tourism destination and research outpost.

A private American aerospace startup Vast Space, founded in 2021 by programmer and crypto entrepreneur Jed McCaleb and headquartered in California, has unveiled the final design of what it claims will be “the world's first commercial space station.”

The 4.4-meter wide and 10.1-meter tall station dubbed Haven-1 is a sleek, cylindrical structure that is compatible at docking with Space X Dragon rockets. It will be suitable for space tourism, in-space manufacturing, and scientific research, "prioritizing the well-being and experience of its astronauts and its vision for making space accessible to all," the company says in a press release.

Haven-1 will extend the on-orbit duration of Dragon spacecraft manned missions for up to 30 days for four astronauts, who will be able to enjoy lunar artificial gravity thanks to spinning, the company assures.

The station will be furnished with "soft and padded" interior surfaces to ensure crew members don't get hurt if they bump their heads on the walls.

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The animation video released via YouTube and X shows a 14-ton state-of-the-art capsule with comfortable sleeping pods, shared area for networking, air cooling, and Starlink internet connection.

A round-trip ticket to the luxurious Haven-1 won’t be cheap, if you take into consideration that a journey to the aging International Space Station (ISS) cost $55 million per seat in April 2022, without much comfort.

Whether this ambitious plan will materialize remains to be seen no later than next year. Vast Space intends to launch the station after August 2025, using SpaceX Falcon 9 boosters. As if not enough, the company announced last week it was already working on Haven-2, an evolved version of its predecessor, which would replace the ISS - which will be retired in 2031 - by 2028.

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Another aerospace company, Axiom Space, has been trying to do the same since 2016. It also promised to operate the world’s first commercial space station by the end of this decade and has not yet delivered on that promise. Blue Origin, too, dreams of its own commercial space station. 

Then there’s an issue with the Vast founder’s reputation as a crypto businessman, which isn’t quite helping him – in 2014, McCaleb’s crypto exchange Mt. Gox Bitcoin was shut down amidst a series of scandals and lawsuits that still keep him in contact with lawyers.

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