Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Every ninety minutes, the International Space Station orbits the Earth.
Speaker 2: It's about the size of a football fields, and it's
Speaker 2: been hovering above us for nearly thirty years. The station
Speaker 2: is a central fixture in the space industry. After a
Speaker 2: technical issue aboard their Boeing spacecraft, NASA astronauts Sunny Williams
Speaker 2: and Butch Wilmore called it home. For nine months, here we.
Speaker 1: Float at the International Space Station together, having accomplished a
Speaker 1: large part of the mission, a very board part.
Speaker 2: They landed safely back on Earth on Tuesday. Sonny and
Speaker 2: Butch maybe some of the last astronauts to spend time
Speaker 2: on the ISS, because after more than one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: rotations around our planet, the station's time the stars will
Speaker 2: soon come to an end. NASA has said that the
Speaker 2: ISS is scheduled to be decommissioned in twenty thirty and
Speaker 2: replaced with a news station, and now the race is
Speaker 2: on to build it. Several companies have been vying for
Speaker 2: the coveted contract to construct and launch the space station
Speaker 2: of the future, but a four year old startup called
Speaker 2: Vast is betting it will beat out the competition. Thanks
Speaker 2: to the financial support of its space loving billionaire founder
Speaker 2: and not the one you're probably thinking of. I'm Sarah Holder,
Speaker 2: and this is the big take from Bloomberg News today
Speaker 2: on the show the Race to replace the International Space Station,
Speaker 2: Why a crypto billionaire believes his company is positioned to
Speaker 2: win it, and what the competition says about the future
Speaker 2: of the commercial space industry.
Speaker 3: So Vast is well the way they like to describe
Speaker 3: themselves as an aspiring space station company.
Speaker 4: They are looking to.
Speaker 3: Create the world's first commercial space station and launch it
Speaker 3: in a very short timeframe.
Speaker 2: That's Bloomberg Space reporter Lauren Grush. She and her colleague
Speaker 2: Kyle Porter recently traveled to Long Beach, California to see
Speaker 2: vasts rapidly expanding headquarters.
Speaker 1: It's very two thousand and one, a space odyssey. It's
Speaker 1: all white as far as you can see, and on
Speaker 1: the outside, you'd think you're walking into a SpaceX facility.
Speaker 1: It's just Tessela's as far as they can see.
Speaker 2: Lauren and Kyle say, VAST HQ is a constellation of
Speaker 2: gleaming white buildings filled with hundreds of employees, all working
Speaker 2: to expand VASTS facilities and build its first prototype space
Speaker 2: station named Haven one.
Speaker 1: It's twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
Speaker 1: If you went in there a cynic, you come out
Speaker 1: there going well. They're definitely spending the money.
Speaker 2: All of that money comes from one man, the company's founder,
Speaker 2: Jed mcaleb. Tell me more about the guy who started VAST.
Speaker 4: Who is he?
Speaker 1: Jef mcannab was the founder of Vast, and he had
Speaker 1: previously no connection at AOL to the space industry.
Speaker 2: Mcaleb is a software developer from Arkansas who dropped out
Speaker 2: of UC Berkeley and went on to found several tech startups.
Speaker 2: He spoke to Lauren and Kyle on the factory floor
Speaker 2: at VAST and he told them he decided to turn
Speaker 2: his attention to space because he thought people should be
Speaker 2: well living there.
Speaker 5: I think it would be in a much better situation
Speaker 5: if there's billions of people living out beyond Earth, right,
Speaker 5: I think it's better economically. I think we'd be richer
Speaker 5: as a civilization. And then also I think it's just
Speaker 5: people need a frontier otherwise things start to feel very
Speaker 5: zero s And like for human psyche, we need to
Speaker 5: be able to expand places. We need to be able
Speaker 5: to explore.
Speaker 2: From building a commercial space station to sending more humans
Speaker 2: to space. Mcaleb's goals are pretty vast.
Speaker 3: They also have big dreams of creating artificial gravity, which
Speaker 3: if you've watched any sci fi you might recognize it
Speaker 3: as those large rotating modules in orbit that create the
Speaker 3: feeling of gravity but in space.
Speaker 2: And to make it all happen, Lauren says, Michaeleb assembled
Speaker 2: a team of people who have the experience in the
Speaker 2: space industry that he doesn't.
Speaker 3: So Jed's strategy seems to be hiring people that are
Speaker 3: smart and know how to build this space station for him,
Speaker 3: and he's really put a lot of his faith and
Speaker 3: confidence in this guy named Max hot who had originally
Speaker 3: had plans to kind of follow in Elon Musk's footsteps
Speaker 3: by creating a.
Speaker 4: Startup launch company called Launcher.
Speaker 2: Vast acquired Launcher in twenty twenty three, and the company's
Speaker 2: combined forces today Max Hout is Vast CEO. Under him,
Speaker 2: the business has scaled up fast because it's never been
Speaker 2: a better time to be pitching a space station.
Speaker 3: Well, you've likely seen a lot more commercial companies propose
Speaker 3: space stations recently because NASA has been very vocal that
Speaker 3: it is looking for replacements for the International Space Station.
Speaker 4: Now that doesn't mean.
Speaker 3: That NASA wants to stop sending astronauts to space stations,
Speaker 3: but it just doesn't want to be the one that
Speaker 3: oversees the operations of a space station.
Speaker 2: In other words, NASA is over running its own space
Speaker 2: station and it wants to pay someone else to step in.
Speaker 3: What NASA did was put out a call to the
Speaker 3: commercial space industry saying, hey, we will partially fund the
Speaker 3: development of a commercial space station with the guarantee that
Speaker 3: we will send our astronauts to it if you can
Speaker 3: create a space station and in a platform.
Speaker 4: That we could use on a regular basis.
Speaker 3: And so various companies have stepped up to that call
Speaker 3: with plans to send their stations into.
Speaker 4: Orbit throughout this decade.
Speaker 3: A lot of us are wondering if they will actually
Speaker 3: make those deadlines. But there is this race going on
Speaker 3: if you will to create a viable replacement for the
Speaker 3: International Space Station and win some coveted contracts by NASA
Speaker 3: to do so.
Speaker 2: How close is that race right now.
Speaker 4: Well, it's relatively close.
Speaker 3: One thing, having reported on space for many years now,
Speaker 3: is that you know a launch date is always extremely tentative.
Speaker 3: I really don't believe something's going to launch until we're
Speaker 3: maybe like a few days out, to be honest with you,
Speaker 3: But there are various timeframes that these companies have suggested,
Speaker 3: you know, twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 2: Those would be companies like Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. There's
Speaker 2: also Axiom Space and Voyager Space Holdings, which are funded
Speaker 2: by venture capital.
Speaker 3: That's came on with a bit of a splash because
Speaker 3: they were essentially a nobody until all of a sudden
Speaker 3: they burst onto the scene and said, we're actually going
Speaker 3: to launch our space station as our twenty twenty five
Speaker 3: and we have actually a launch contract with SpaceX to
Speaker 3: do so, and we will also launch astronauts on a
Speaker 3: SpaceX Dragon capsule to go dock with the.
Speaker 4: Space station which is up there.
Speaker 3: VAST has since changed that timeframe to twenty twenty six,
Speaker 3: but it's still an incredibly short timeline, especially in.
Speaker 4: The space industry, which often takes years of development.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty six, NASA is expected to hand out
Speaker 2: contracts to just two companies to build the next space station,
Speaker 2: and the reason VAST is moving so quickly is because
Speaker 2: they want to be the only one with a viable
Speaker 2: prototype by then.
Speaker 1: Vasts argument is they'll have to give us one of
Speaker 1: those two spots because we'll be the only company that's
Speaker 1: actually got something in orbit. It's very ambitious. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've you've still got a lot of science projects to
Speaker 1: work out before you can turn it into hard science
Speaker 1: and then turn it into the technology to get you
Speaker 1: up there. I will say, having been very skeptical prior
Speaker 1: visiting the site, I came away thinking, well, there's real
Speaker 1: endeavor here and they're very serious about it. So they
Speaker 1: may revolutionize how you build a space project going forward.
Speaker 1: Well they may not.
Speaker 2: Vast success could ultimately hinge on the decisions made by
Speaker 2: its leadership team and its founder. So what does mcaleb's
Speaker 2: track record tell us about the company's prospects. That's next
Speaker 2: is not the first Moonshot venture. Jed mccaleb has gotten behind.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Kyle Porter says the founder launched his first startup
Speaker 2: in his early twenties.
Speaker 1: It was a venture called e Donkey. For all the
Speaker 1: elder millennials and gen X's, I probably don't need to
Speaker 1: tell them, but it was a means by which you
Speaker 1: could share music and video online for free. They did
Speaker 1: have a premium version of the product, but they made
Speaker 1: them money off advertising. That business later folded after a
Speaker 1: series of lawsuits.
Speaker 2: E Donkeys shut down after agreeing to pay the Recording
Speaker 2: Industry Association of America thirty million dollars to avoid copyright
Speaker 2: infringement lawsuits. Mcaleb's next big swing came in twenty ten
Speaker 2: in the form of a crypto trading platform called mount gox.
Speaker 1: It quickly became the biggest tradocrypto in the world as
Speaker 1: a platform, she had after about a year, sold a
Speaker 1: majority steak, and then a few years later it looked
Speaker 1: quite spectacularly and was the biggest crypto failure until FTX
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: And how did he get over those two sort of
Speaker 2: catastrophic business vendors.
Speaker 1: Well, in the case of mount Gox, he'd already sold
Speaker 1: a majority steak anyway, and he claims he himself lost
Speaker 1: money in the collapse, and he'd already pivoted. By that point.
Speaker 1: He'd started another crypto outfit and trading platform called Ripple,
Speaker 1: which had its own token XRP, which for a time
Speaker 1: was the second most popular form of crypto in the world,
Speaker 1: and he left that company, agreed to a share trading plan,
Speaker 1: and certainly from the reporting that we've done, he made
Speaker 1: billions of dollars on that trading plan over the course
Speaker 1: of neary a decade.
Speaker 2: And much of that money is now funding vast Bloomberg's
Speaker 2: Lauren Grush says that it's not unusual to see a
Speaker 2: billionaire back a space startup. It's becoming somewhat of a trend. Still,
Speaker 2: the fact that micleb is willing to put so much
Speaker 2: of his own capital into this venture is a big advantage.
Speaker 4: Space development is difficult.
Speaker 3: Obviously, it takes many years, and you're constantly iterating and
Speaker 3: changing and designing. Things fail and so that requires more money.
Speaker 3: And so the fact that they have this steady stream
Speaker 3: of income for the first part of this development process
Speaker 3: really is a game changer for a company like this.
Speaker 1: If you think about venture financing in general, what usually
Speaker 1: happens is unless there's a few bootstraps, but think of
Speaker 1: the typical route people have idea, People get seed funding.
Speaker 1: The funders expect at least you to meet a certain
Speaker 1: prescribed benchmark if you do that tick, and if you're
Speaker 1: doing that with software, it's far easier to do and
Speaker 1: to iterate than it is when you have hardware. A
Speaker 1: lot of space companies fail because they get to a
Speaker 1: stage in the process it didn't work, and then one
Speaker 1: or two funders suddenly lose confidence. The whole thing can unravel,
Speaker 1: and at least you have assets that people are like, well,
Speaker 1: I'll get seventy percent of my money back, say if
Speaker 1: we sell this rather than continuing. Vast don't have that.
Speaker 1: They can do it all at once, and then they
Speaker 1: can do it quickly.
Speaker 2: Another factor working in vast favor is a close working
Speaker 2: relationship with SpaceX, pretty much the go to launch partner
Speaker 2: for NASA and for companies launching satellites.
Speaker 3: Vast certainly has signed up a lot of partnerships with
Speaker 3: SpaceX that are pretty key to getting their products into orbit.
Speaker 3: For instance, even won their first space station is designed
Speaker 3: to launch within the fairing of a Falcon nine rocket,
Speaker 3: and then once that is launched, a second mission mounted
Speaker 3: by SpaceX will send a crew of four to visit
Speaker 3: the space station to see if it's viable and if
Speaker 3: it's working. They also are going to have Starlink on
Speaker 3: their space station to provide Wi Fi, and then SpaceX
Speaker 3: is also contributing a docking adapter to the Haven one
Speaker 3: space station so that its crew Dragon can dock seamlessly
Speaker 3: with the vehicle.
Speaker 4: So it's a very close partnership.
Speaker 3: Something we also noticed is that a lot of the
Speaker 3: people at VAST have SpaceX on their resume, so they're
Speaker 3: intertwined in various ways.
Speaker 2: But when it comes to SpaceX's founder, mckaleb told Kyle
Speaker 2: and Lauren that he's only met Elon Musk a few times,
Speaker 2: and he said he doubts if Musk would even remember
Speaker 2: his name. Still, there are ways that Musk's growing influence
Speaker 2: in Washington could work out in Vast's favor.
Speaker 3: Elon is actively calling for changes to space policy at
Speaker 3: the moment. Just a few weeks ago, he said that
Speaker 3: we should actually de orbit the space station in two
Speaker 3: years rather than the plan at.
Speaker 4: By the end of twenty thirty.
Speaker 3: Obviously, it remains to be seen if you know President
Speaker 3: Trump will actually take that advice, But you know, given
Speaker 3: Elon's close relationship to the President, it's definitely something you
Speaker 3: shouldn't sneeze at at the moment. You know, his proclamations
Speaker 3: do have a tendency of coming true.
Speaker 2: And could Trump scrap the space station plan altogether. Sure
Speaker 2: he could, but Kyle says, Musk might have a reason
Speaker 2: to defend it. After all, SpaceX has a contract to
Speaker 2: take vast station into orbit.
Speaker 1: If you were being deeply cynical, you wouldn't bet that
Speaker 1: a billionaire would try and cut a project that was
Speaker 1: going to benefit his own company's bottom line.
Speaker 2: What does the story say about the direction of the
Speaker 2: space industry overall?
Speaker 4: Right now?
Speaker 3: I would say that over the last couple of decades
Speaker 3: there's really been a big push to seed control of
Speaker 3: space and access to space from the government, from NASA to.
Speaker 4: The commercial space industry.
Speaker 3: That is kind of like this overarching trend that both
Speaker 3: NASA and the commercial space industry are trying to achieve.
Speaker 3: As NASA kind of takes a step back and plays
Speaker 3: more of a customer.
Speaker 4: Role while the commercial space industry takes the reins on
Speaker 4: a lot of this technology.
Speaker 1: You're very much like the Wild West stage of capital
Speaker 1: going in. There's not too many industries on this planet
Speaker 1: where you can say, we think this is going to
Speaker 1: be three hundred percent growth in the next five years
Speaker 1: and then possibly the same again, and it's only need
Speaker 1: to it cheaper and more attractive for us. So there's
Speaker 1: been this huge deluge of capital that's gone into the
Speaker 1: industry and people are benefiting from that.
Speaker 2: What is the next hurdle for Vast then? What are
Speaker 2: you watching out for as you follow the story and
Speaker 2: watch its progress.
Speaker 4: They have to launch.
Speaker 3: I think at this point, you know, they've talked a
Speaker 3: big game, they have all their chess pieces in place,
Speaker 3: but now they actually have to make that move. And
Speaker 3: you know, that is the ultimate test for any space company.
Speaker 3: You know, at some point you can say you have
Speaker 3: the launch contracts, you can say you have all the
Speaker 3: pieces in place, but your product actually has to work
Speaker 3: in orbit. And so we will definitely be watching the
Speaker 3: first launch of their space station very eagerly when it happens.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by David Fox. It was edited
Speaker 2: by Aaron Edwards and Anne Riley Moffatt. It was fact
Speaker 2: checked by Adrian Atapia and mixed and sound designed by
Speaker 2: Alex Sugia. Special things to Rachel Kessler and Caitlin gross Young.
Speaker 2: Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamsterbord. Sage Bauman
Speaker 2: is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you liked this episode,
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