Is a Commercial Space Station Possible? These Startups Are Racing To Be the First to Try It

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College and previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

Is a Commercial Space Station Possible? These Startups Are Racing To Be the First to Try It
Image courtesy of Orbital Assembly

No longer content with terrestrial life, a new cohort of CEOs in Los Angeles have turned their focus to the stars, with the ambitious goal of launching space stations that could host tourists alongside astronauts and researchers.

“I've always thought it was really important that people move off the planet and out into the solar system,” Vast Space CEO and founder Jed McCaleb told dot.LA. “There's just way more resources and energy available up there. And also it provides a frontier, and I think that’s important for our collective psyche.”


McCaleb, a billionaire thanks to his prior ventures co-founding cryptocurrencies Ripple and Stellar Lumens, launched Vast Space last year, with the belief that it can be the first company to create a space station for commercial customers that simulates gravity in space.

Why artificial gravity? For starters, the negative health effects zero gravity can have on spacefarers are myriad, including muscle shrinkage, cardiovascular deconditioning and blood loss. Not to mention, simulated gravity in space could ease the transition to low Earth orbit for consumers; allowing them to experience the cool, floaty part of zero G while eliminating the need for full astronaut training.

But Vast is hardly the only company eyeing space tourism. Another is Fontana-based Orbital Assembly, which plans to create luxury hotels in space. According to Chief Operating Officer Tim Alatorre, Orbital Assembly is gearing up for its first launch, which will carry a small portion of Orbital’s first Pioneer space station for research use by 2025. Alatorre told dot.LA “once we've proved that the station is safe, then at that point, we will bring tourists on.”

Alatorre likened the quest to become a space hotelier to the expansion of the American railroads, when transport companies opened up hotels to encourage travel.

“That's why we're focusing on [tourism], because we see that as a step to that larger vision of having thousands of people really living in space, whether it's in [low Earth orbit] or the moon, or Mars,” he added.

Each company plans to rotate parts of the space station to replicate gravity. Basically, spinning the station’s mechanics in opposite directions (roughly one revolution every minute and a half) creates enough centrifugal force to allow the station to remain facing the sun and mimics gravity.

According to McCaleb, Vast plans to have artificial gravity in parts of the station where people eat, bathe, work and sleep, but a central area where passengers can indulge in the zero-gravity experience temporarily. The El Segundo-based company’s plan is to assemble everything on the ground, prior to launch, since in-space construction is still in its infancy. Once there’s more of a demand for in-space construction, McCaleb said other companies could contract Vast to build and launch facilities for them.

“What we're building is an orbital machine shop, essentially, where you can design your thing on the ground, ship it up to the station, like an IKEA-style thing where we can snap it together for you,” McCaleb explained.

McCaleb said he is his company’s sole funder. He wouldn’t tell dot.LA how much he’s invested into Vast, or how much he expects the endeavor to cost. That said, for comparison rival company Orbital Assembly’s CEO Rhonda Stevenson told dot.LA last June the company at the time estimated it would need $200 million to launch by 2023.

McCaleb said he was aware of Orbital Assembly and “a handful” of other competing firms but claimed, “there’s no one else that’s actually trying to do it seriously.” He told dot.LA that initially, Vast won’t target a high-end consumer, but will focus on selling space station access to governments or private companies. Vast wouldn’t provide further details about a target launch date.

“We’re definitely not building some sort of luxury space hotel,” McCaleb claimed. “I think some of the first customers will hopefully be NASA and other national astronaut programs,” he added, hinting at partnerships with other governments.

Tarek Waked, an aerospace investor and founding partner at Type One Ventures, said he’s skeptical.

“Vast claims to be the first gravity-enabled station. I think they won’t be the first to [do] it,” he said, pointing to older companies like Gravitics and its competitor Axiom Space, which is based in Houston and debuted in 2016.

As things currently stand, however, Vast appears better-funded than Orbital Assembly. Orbital has only raised $2.4 million to date. But Alatorre said his company is in the process of raising another round, though he wouldn’t disclose details.

Neither space station project will be possible without launch partners, though. SpaceX’s upcoming Starship rocket and Boeing’s Starliner are two developing projects that could help Vast and Orbital launch both people and cargo to space.

“Elon [Musk] is talking about getting payloads to space for about one to $200 a kilogram, which would be game changing,” Alatorre said. “If we can get people to space for even a million dollars a seat that really starts to open up that market, and that's going to be really transformative.”

According to David Barnhart, director of USC’s Space Engineering Research Center, the real question is twofold.

“Can any of this be done at a cost level that allows a commercial company to make any profit, even if it's only billionaires that can do it?” He asked. And furthermore, once the technology is up and running, how many civilians will take the risk?

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How the 'Thrift Haul' Boosted Secondhand Ecommerce Platforms

Lon Harris
Lon Harris is a contributor to dot.LA. His work has also appeared on ScreenJunkies, RottenTomatoes and Inside Streaming.
How the 'Thrift Haul' Boosted Secondhand Ecommerce Platforms
Evan Xie

If you can believe it, it’s been more than a decade since rapper Macklemore extolled the virtues of thrift shopping in a viral music video. But while scouring the ranks of vintage clothing stores looking for the ultimate come-up may have waned in popularity since 2012, the online version of this activity is apparently thriving.

According to a new trend story from CNBC, interest in “reselling” platforms like Etsy-owned Depop and Poshmark has exploded in the years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. In an article that spends a frankly surprising amount of time focused on sellers receiving death threats before concluding that they’re “not the norm,” the network cites the usual belt-tightening ecommerce suspects – housebound individuals doing more of their shopping online coupled with inflation woes and recession fears – as the causes behind the uptick.

As for data, there’s a survey from Depop themselves, finding that 53% of respondents in the UK are more inclined to shop secondhand as living costs continue to rise. Additional research from Advance Market Analytics confirms the trend, citing not just increased demand for cheap clothes but the pressing need for a sustainable alternative to recycling clothing materials at its core.

The major popularity of “thrift haul” videos across social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok has also boosted the visibility of vintage clothes shopping and hunting for buried treasures. Teenage TikToker Jacklyn Wells scores millions of views on her thrift haul videos, only to get routinely mass-accused of greed for ratching up the Depop resell prices for her coolest finds and discoveries. Nonetheless, viral clips like Wells’ have helped to embed secondhand shopping apps more generally within online fashion culture. Fashion and beauty magazine Hunger now features a regular list of the hottest items on the re-sale market, with a focus on how to use them to recreate hot runway looks.

As with a lot of consumer and technology trends, the sudden surge of interest in second-hand clothing retailers was only partly organic. According to The Drum, ecommerce apps Vinted, eBay, and Depop have collectively spent around $120 million on advertising throughout the last few years, promoting the recent vintage shopping boom and helping to normalize second-hand shopping. This includes conventional advertising, of course, but also deals with online influencers to post content like “thrift haul” videos, along with shoutouts for where to track down the best finds.

Reselling platforms have naturally responded to the increase in visibility with new features (as well as a predictable hike in transaction fees). Poshmark recently introduced livestreamed “Posh Shows” during which sellers can host auctions or provide deeper insight into their inventory. Depop, meanwhile, has introduced a “Make Offer” option to fully integrate the bartering and negotiation process into the app, rather than forcing buyers and sellers to text or Direct Message one another elsewhere. (The platform formerly had a comments section on product pages, but shut this option down after finding that it led to arguments, and wasn’t particularly helpful in making purchase decisions.)

Now that it’s clear there’s money to be made in online thrift stores, larger and more established brands and retailers are also pushing their way into the space. H&M and Target have both partnered with online thrift store ThredUp on featured collections of previously-worn clothing. A new “curated” resale collection from Tommy Hilfiger – featuring minorly damaged items that were returned to its retail stores – was developed and promoted through a partnership with Depop, which has also teamed with Kellogg’s on a line of Pop-Tarts-inspired wear. J.Crew is even bringing back its classic ‘80s Rollneck Sweater in a nod to the renewed interest in all things vintage.

Still, with any surge of popularity and visibility, there must also come an accompanying backlash. In a sharp editorial this week for Arizona University’s Daily Wildcat, thrift shopping enthusiast Luke Lawson makes the case that sites like Depop are “gentrifying fashion,” stripping communities of local thrift stores that provide a valuable public service, particularly for members of low-income communities. As well, UK tabloids are routinely filled with secondhand shopping horror stories these days, another evidence point as to their increased visibility among British consumers specifically, not to mention the general dangers of buying personal items from strangers you met over the internet.

How to Startup: Mission Acquisition

Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.

How to Startup: Mission Acquisition

Numbers don’t lie, but often they don’t tell the whole story. If you look at the facts and figures alone, launching a startup seems like a daunting enterprise. It seems like a miracle anyone makes it out the other side.

  • 90% of startups around the world fail.
  • On average, it takes startups 2-3 years to turn a profit. (Venture funded startups take far longer.)
  • Post-seed round, fewer than 10% of startups go on to successfully raise a Series A investment.
  • Less than 1% of startups go public.
  • A startup only has a .00006% chance of becoming a unicorn.

Ouch.

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From The Vault: VC Legend Bill Gurley On Startups, Venture Capital and Scaling

Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.

Bill Gurley in a blue suit
Bill Gurley

This interview was originally published on December of 2020, and was recorded at the inaugural dot.LA Summit held October 27th & 28th.

One of my longtime favorite episodes of Office Hours was a few years ago when famed venture capitalist Bill Gurley and I talked about marketplace-based companies, how work-from-home will continue to accelerate business opportunities and his thoughts on big tech and antitrust.

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