Vast, a pioneer in space habitation technologies, announced that Jed McCaleb, Vast’s Founder, has appointed Max Haot (currently President) to succeed him in the role of Chief Executive Officer. McCaleb will move into the role of Founder, Board Chair & Tech Fellow. Also announced today, Alex Hudson will join the company as its first Chief Technology Officer.
“My excitement and financial commitment to Vast continues to grow. With our recent operational acceleration and growth, the time has come for me to take a more strategic role as Founder, Board Chair & Tech Fellow and to empower our leadership to lead the day-to-day operation at Vast. I’m excited to appoint Max Haot as our new CEO to succeed me in this role and Alex Hudson as our first CTO,” said McCaleb.
“Building our leadership team with a focus on proven crewed space flight experience and safety is a key priority at Vast. To this effect, I’m excited to welcome and partner with Alex in the newly created role of Chief Technology Officer at Vast,” said Haot, Vast’s CEO.
Alex comes with a broad array of experience across a number of hard-tech fields, including space vehicles, quantum computing, imaging systems and scientific instruments. Alex earned his undergraduate degree in Physics from the University of Bristol and his Ph.D. in MRI Physics, from the lab of Nobel Laureate Sir Peter Mansfield at the University of Nottingham in the U.K.
Most recently, Alex led the Avionics and Dragon Avionics teams at SpaceX. The highlight of Alex’s career was flying astronauts on the new Crew Dragon spaceship during Demo-2, which positioned SpaceX to commence regular transport of astronauts once more on American hardware, launched from the USA. Significant missions of his Avionics team included the sub-orbital Starship SN8 (“belly flop” landing maneuver), SN15 (first Starship landing), and most recently the Starship Orbital test flight 1 (the first flight of the 33-engine super-heavy booster and ship).
“I look forward to this next exciting challenge – developing an artificial gravity space station with the team at Vast to enable long-term life in space,” said Hudson, CTO at Vast.
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