Jed McCaleb, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur and founder of Vast Space, wants to build an artificial-gravity space station in low Earth orbit.
According to McCaleb (via Space News), there will be a lot of humans living all around the solar system in the future.
Since other businesses are assisting in lowering launch costs, McCaleb believes that building substantial buildings for people to live and work in space will be the next crucial step.
Details of Vast Space Artificial Gravity Space Station
In its statement, Vast Space stated that it is working on space stations that can produce artificial gravity to provide "scalable solutions" for people to live and work in space.
Its goal, according to McCaleb, is to make it possible for humanity to live in the solar system in the future while protecting Earth's natural resources.
He said there is more than enough mass and energy in the solar system to support several "Earths." Humanity might expand and prosper in space while protecting Earth's limited resources by accessing those resources with the industry and infrastructure required to access them at scale. This would enable a vast number of people to dwell there.
1969 station concept. The station was to rotate on its axis to produce artificial gravity. The majority of early space station concepts created artificial gravity one way or another to simulate a more natural or familiar environment for the health of the astronauts. After returning from a micro-gravity environment, astronauts find their muscles weak because they have not been using them. Long-term exposure to micro-gravity could generate long-term health problems for astronauts who do not utilize their muscles. This is why exercise machines exist on space shuttles and the International Space Station. This station was to be assembled in orbit from spent Apollo program stages.
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After finding new techniques to send people into space, McCaleb thinks humanity will move on to habitation. He thinks that the cost-to-orbit ratio will decline as launch technology advances, opening the door to bigger buildings and the aspiration of off-planet habitation.
Therefore, civilization must find a technique to produce artificial gravity to maintain people's fitness and health.
A NASA report said that extended zero-gravity exposure would cause bone loss, muscular atrophy, and damage to the eyes and drain due to the body's fluids migrating to the head. Dehydration and increased calcium excretion by the bones put people in zero gravity at an increased risk of kidney stones.
These issues can be resolved because artificial gravity can offset the physiological impacts of zero gravity when astronauts are in space.
How Vast Space Takes on The Challenge
Despite McCaleb's intention to self-finance Vast Space's operations, he hopes to go public to attract outside investment. McCaleb wants to "concentrate on the objective and not become indebted to investors" for the time being.
McCaleb must assemble an engineering team equipped to handle any challenge if he is to concentrate on Vast Space's job. The team's performance is crucial to the business since it determines whether it will succeed or fail.
With only 20 employees at the moment, the business has "wide expertise developing and producing the most innovative cars in the world."
They consist of former SpaceX workers Kyle Dedmon, Tom Hayford, and Molly McCormick. Dedmon served as SpaceX's vice president of facilities and construction, while McCormick previously held the position of human factors engineer. As a systems engineer, Hayford also worked for SpaceX and spent some time at Relativity Space.
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