Interested in Moving to Outer Space?

Jon LeSage
VAST SPACE is setting up operations in Long Beach’s Space Beach zone, where the company will be building a space station that creates artificial gravity for up to about 40 human residents.

During Long Beach’s State of the City address given by newly elected Mayor Rex Richardson on Jan. 10, a new resident of Space Beach was announced: Vast Space.

Richardson described the company as, “an aerospace company developing artificial gravity space stations and the necessary infrastructure to enable humans to live and work in space.”

Kyle Dedmon, the company’s vice president for construction and facilities, came onstage to thank the city and provide an overview of what Vast will offer.

“Over the next several years we’ll be designing, building and testing commercial space stations, as the mayor mentioned, to enable long duration human spaceflight, which is pretty cool,” Dedmon said.

“A project of this scale will require us to hire over 700 new jobs, primarily in engineering and manufacturing from now until 2027,” Dedmon said. “A project like this is really only possible in Long Beach because of the talent pipeline, the startup ecosystem, the transportation infrastructure and all the other initiatives that the mayor discussed.”

The company is leaving its 7,000-square-foot facility in El Segundo, where it started up in 2021, over to two buildings at a new industrial complex that was recently completed. It will still be in the city’s Globemaster Corridor Specific Plan, also known as the Douglas Park area of Long Beach.

These two buildings will fill up about 115,000 square feet and will be located at the corner of Spring Street and Orange Avenue. It will first house about 40 employees before eventually reaching the 700 mark by the end of 2027. The move and setup are expected to be completed during the first quarter of this year, according to the Long Beach Business Journal.

Life on a Space Station

The company prides itself on the possibility of developing the world’s-first artificial gravity space stations. Vast says it will be managing the whole process needed to make that happen: testing and demonstration, research, servicing and operations, assembly and production and manufacturing.

Vast will be building a 100 meter-long (328 feet) space station that can house 40 or more people.

The first ones won’t be housing people on the Moon or planet Mars, though that could be possible later – at least in partial gravity. “The station spins to provide Earth gravity at its outer extremities and partial gravity along its length for Mars, Moon, and asteroid analog environments,” the company says.

Vast wants to resolve a severe side effect that comes from living long-term in weightless environments, minus gravity, which happens once you get outside the Earth’s gravitational atmosphere. The human body will deteriorate and experience biological damage.

That’s where Vast comes in. The artificial gravity will come from a large spinning structure creating centrifugal force that provides a “gravity-emulative pull.”

The company will be providing large modules that will be customizable by those clients using them. The spinning stations will provide the needed weightless environment, with the team of astronauts having regular access to amenities and/or other personnel to assist them.

Vast Space is joining an impressive list of companies in Long Beach – including Virgin Orbit, SpaceX, Relativity Space and Rocket Lab USA – that will be tapping into local resources and providing great jobs for many.

”Space Beach is the perfect place for Vast to call home,” said Vast founder and CEO Jed McCaleb in a press release. ”Our mission is to build the first commercial space station capable of providing artificial gravity to support long-term human habitation. This new mixed-use facility will enable us to continue to grow our engineering team, expand research and development efforts and begin the installation of production equipment, making our mission that much more of a reality.”

Jon LeSage is a resident of Long Beach and a veteran business media reporter and editor. You can reach him at jtlesage1@yahoo.com.

Category:

Add new comment

Beachcomber

Copyright 2024 Beeler & Associates.

All rights reserved. Contents may not be reproduced or transmitted – by any means – without publisher's written permission.