David Caponio
Senior Vice President of Product and Business Development
Vast
David Caponio is Senior Vice President of Product and Business Development at Vast developing the world’s first artificial gravity space station. Having worked for over two decades at notable space startups SpaceX, Virgin Orbit, Tyvak and US government space agencies, coupled with graduate engineering degrees from USAFA and Air Force Institute of Technology, David has been at the fore front of cutting-edge space development.
Vast
Founded in 2021 by Jed McCaleb, Vast is developing humanity’s next-generation space stations and pioneering the path to long-term living and thriving in space. Haven-1, scheduled to be the world’s first commercial space station, is currently in development and is expected to launch in 2026. Vast is also developing Haven-2, the proposed successor to the International Space Station (ISS), designed to serve NASA’s Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) program as a micro-gravity laboratory in space.
PANEL: THE NEW ERA IN HUMAN HABITATION IN SPACE: THE PRIVATE SECTOR WILL LEAD THE WAY
Even as we anticipate the retirement of the International Space Station in the 2030s, the prospects for human access to space have never been brighter. As NASA turns its focus and dollars to Moon and Mars human exploration, it is supporting the development of
