Luxury and comfort on the International Space Station – mission possible?
Everyone’s childhood dream of being an astronaut might soon become a reality, as technology companies are working on solutions to send people to space. If you can pay for it, of course.
One of the recent examples is by Vast, a private space company headquartered in Long Beach, California. It has been working on a commercial space station named Haven.
“Our mission is to contribute to a future where billions of people are living and thriving in space — a future in which the human population and our resources expand far beyond our current imagination,” writes the company on its website.
To achieve this, the company aims to build artificial gravity habitats to accommodate long-term stays in space. According to the company’s roadmap, artificial gravity stations in Earth’s low-orbit are planned for the 2030s.
However, there's no need to wait long. The first module, Haven-1, is set to travel to lower Earth orbit by August 2025 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. For the inaugural mission, the company is selling up to four seats for private individuals and offering a stay in space for up to 30 days.
Recently, the company provided a sneak peek at the interior design of the space station. Created in consultation with Andrew Feustel, a NASA astronaut who has spent over 225 days in space aboard the International Space Station (ISS) throughout his career, the interior of the commercial space station seems to offer luxurious cosmic stays for visitors.
Luxury in space
The space station will have both research-dedicated and living spaces. Its walls and surfaces will be covered in soft materials to protect guests from injuries while they are floating throughout the station in zero gravity.
Having a quality rest in such conditions is a well-known problem to astronauts – it is quite a hard task to sleep while floating, as there are no gravity forces that the human body is used to.
The newly introduced design of the commercial station has addressed the issue. Vast developed a sleep system the size of a queen-size bed that provides a custom amount of equal pressure on the sleeper, whether sleeping on their back or side.
The private rooms are slightly larger than those on the ISS and feature built-in storage compartments, a vanity, and a custom amenities kit. They will also be equipped with entertainment options and a communication system to keep in contact with those remaining on the surface of the Earth.
The 24 m³ common area will allow visitors have meals and work togerther, while a specially designed gym allows visitors to stay fit and maintain a healthy body in space. The gym will be equipped with a resistance band system, featuring body and station anchors, enabling customized exercise routines targeting bone, muscle, and cardiovascular fitness in zero gravity.
A replacement for the International Space Station?
Following the release of the Haven-1 design, the company unveiled even more ambitious plans for Haven-2. With the planned retirement of the ISS by 2030, the company proposed at the 75th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) that Haven-2 could serve as a successor. The company states that, if selected, the space station could be launched into orbit by 2028.
The first Haven-2 module will be 5 meters longer than Haven-1, offering nearly twice the livable space. Between 2030 and 2032, Vast proposed adding a larger 7-metre-diameter core module and four more Haven-2 modules to scale the size of the space station.
In June, NASA announced it had selected Elon Musk’s SpaceX to “develop and deliver” a specialized spacecraft that will safely deorbit the International Space Station scheduled for 2030.
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