Inside ‘eccentric’ Ripple founder’s multibillion-dollar space station plan

The serial entrepreneur who founded the Mt. Gox crypto exchange and co-founded Ripple has shared new details about his ambitious space station company Vast, which he hopes will help expand the human race into a multi-planetary species.

In a March 20 interview with Bloomberg, Jed McCaleb confirmed that Vast is on track to launch Haven-1 — a commercial space station still under construction — into orbit by May 2026.

If McCaleb’s startup succeeds, it will be better positioned to win a lucrative contract from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration to replace the International Space Station. Contracts are expected to be handed out in mid-2026.

If Vast fails or loses the NASA contract to a competitor, McCaleb could see $1 billion wiped from his net worth and the commercial future of his space station firm would be in doubt, according to the report. 

“There are not that many folks who are willing to dedicate the amount of resources and time and risk tolerance that I am,” McCaleb told Bloomberg.

Vast’s founder, board chair and tech fellow Jed McCaleb. Source: Vast

McCaleb is known to be a “deliberate risk-taker” with hyperrational tendencies, according to long-time friend and former business partner Sam Yagan, who added:

McCaleb’s aspiration to put humans on other planets draws similarities to multibillionaire and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

“It’s super important that people take this leap from where we are today to this potential world where there’s a lot of people living off the Earth,” said McCaleb, who founded Vast in 2021.

Vast is building its spacecraft with components developed by SpaceX, such as a docking adapter to connect SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to Vast’s station and an in-space internet system that will provide WiFi on the station via Starlink.

Key specifications Vast’s Haven-1 model. Source: Vast

McCaleb’s firm has also booked SpaceX flights to send its hardware into orbit and deliver crew to its station, and SpaceX has agreed to carry astronauts for Vast as long as NASA gives its go-ahead.

Vast’s close ties to SpaceX stem partly from it hiring key personnel who previously worked there, including Max Haot, who now serves as Vast’s CEO and president.

Vast is competing with the likes of Axiom Space, Voyager Space Holdings, Lockheed Martin and the Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin to win the next major NASA contract.

Part of Vast’s long-term plans is to create artificial gravity replicating Earth-like conditions by accelerating or rotating the spacecraft, as many ISS workers who have spent lengthy periods in space have reported organ damage.

The ISS also uses a technology that recycles wastewater into potable water and carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen. Haven-1 won’t feature this due to its short-term crew visits, but Vast plans to incorporate it into its future model, Haven-2, by 2028, which will be designed for longer-term stays.

Both McCaleb and Haot say they’re willing to board flights themselves.

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McCaleb has followed an unconventional pathway into the space industry.

After McCaleb’s first success with the internet file-sharing service eDonkey in the 2000s, his next notable achievement was founding Mt. Gox in 2010.

His time at Mt. Gox was short-lived, with McCaleb selling a majority stake in 2011. Mt. Gox went on to become the world’s largest Bitcoin (BTC) exchange until 2014 when a $400 million hack sent the company into bankruptcy.

Several months later, McCaleb began his next venture — creating the XRP (XRP) crypto token on the Ripple protocol in 2012.

McCaleb owned 9% of the XRP tokens from the onset but sold the majority of them after 2013 when he left Ripple following disagreements with the company’s other founders.

He has netted billions of dollars from those XRP sales and Ripple equity between 2014 and 2022.

McCaleb also founded the Stellar network in 2014 — a fork of the Ripple protocol — along with the Stellar (XLM) crypto token, which now boasts an $8.7 billion market cap, CoinGecko data shows.

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