Stoke Space ignites its ambitious main engine

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/stoke-space-ignites-its-ambitious-main-engine-for-the-first-time/

by perihelions • 2 years ago

89 66 2 years ago

I really hope this one works out and scales. The only rocket company besides SpaceX that’s really developing something novel, at least that I’m aware of.

bobetomi• 2 years ago

Rocket Lab and Relativity Space are also doing pretty cool work. Rocket Lab is the only other company to successfully reach orbit, they're the first to make an electric-pump fed rocket engine, and their upcoming Neutron rocket is supposed to be mostly reusable and does several things better than the Falcon 9. Relativity is using 3D printing to manufacture most of the rocket. RFA (Rocket Factory Augsburg) is also interesting, they're not doing anything novel AFAIK but they're using cheap parts from the automotive industry to bring down prices.

sebzim45002• 2 years ago

Firefly and Astra have both reached orbit IIRC

vhodges• 2 years ago

Not developing a launcher but Gravitics https://www.gravitics.com/ is another company doing something in different way (Gary Hudson, if you know the name, is on the team)

cubefox11• 2 years ago

I would say the Stoke Space rocket is in some sense more novel than Starship, apart from its size. We have never seen anything like the Stoke upper stage before. Which might be a financial problem, as developing such an ambitious design is likely expensive, and as a startup their funds are limited. A partly reusable design like Neutron (Rocket Lab) or Terran R (Relativity Space) is more conventional and probably cheaper to develop.

hliyan• 2 years ago

This segment [1] where they mention their ability to deliver assets from any location to any other location on Earth, with vertical, surface landing, makes me wonder whether they're eventually planning to focus on military contracts.

[1] https://youtu.be/fcLuugmHV90?t=71

Someone• 2 years ago

They don’t seem to mention how to get off the ground again after such a landing.

If that requires building a launch platform and/or shipping in a first stage, or moving the vehicle out over ground towards a launch facility, such landings will be expensive (even can end up being one way trips), making them economical for very few jobs.

numpad02• 2 years ago

The punchline is "from many location to any location". They're not saying they can launch from any location. What it likely means is they can offer towing for a broken satellite back to any secret hangars in Nevada, and deposit returned for intact tow vehicles.

I do wonder what it is even possibly useful for. Asset transport from orbit sounds sci-fi.

zippzom• 2 years ago

With the advent of the space force, pretty much every space company is targeting military contracts (at least partially) since that is a huge source of government funding

psunavy032• 2 years ago

The advent of the Space Force is not going to be a watershed in DOD contracting; the services are nothing but force providers who fulfill the requirements of the combatant commands. Demand for DOD space assets is merely going to be managed by the Space Force now in service to already-existing COCOM requirements; the demand signal is what it is.

Jtsummers• 2 years ago

Those contracts were happening pre-Space Force. Space Force's mission existed inside USAF (specifically, but other services and TLAs as well) prior to USSF being created.

world2vec• 2 years ago

Their fully reusable rocket concept is pretty cool. Like a mini Starship.

More competition is always good, glad to see them progress quite fast.

everyone3• 2 years ago

I much prefer their design to starship. It's optimising for the hardest part of the trip: re-entry.. Also re-entering like Apollo and not like the space shuttle is a good thing imo. It doesnt rely on an ablative heat shield or tiles, also it doesnt have extremely heavy / complex / vulnerable actuated fins yet it can get lift and steer itself simply with it's shape and by rotating the whole craft like Apollo.

SpaceX is a mix of mindblowing engineering with sometimes baffling decisions. I can never help but wonder how much input Elon has, and if he is responsible for all those questionable choices, as he honestly appears to be a bit of an idiot.

I've been following Starship's development avidly, but knowing he's involved always makes me cringe a little.

panick21_4• 2 years ago

SpaceX is a mix of mindblowing engineering with sometimes baffling decisions. I can never help but wonder how much input Elon has, and if he is responsible for all those questionable choices, as he honestly appears to be a bit of a idiot.

Let me get this straight. You believe that Stoke space is somehow the near perfect design. The designer or Shuttle and Starship were probably idiots for not coming up with the same ideas as Stoke. But maybe the reason that they are so dumb, is simply because Musk is part of the design team.

Maybe you should consider, just maybe, that if Starship isn't exactly like Stoke spaces design, it could have actual reasons. Maybe, just maybe the most successful rocket company in history had actual technical reason for their design choices. But no that couldn't be it, could it?

But instead of asking the saying 'Stoke Space design seems really awesome, I wonder why SpaceX made difference choices', you just jumped to 'well Musk is cringe and therefore that must be the reason'.

anonporridge• 2 years ago

This comment is an excellent example of ideology superseding real world results.

Just an incredible public display of cognitive dissonance.

numpad02• 2 years ago

To add & also imo, it's probably good thing that it's not designed to mimic old stuffs. Biplanes with train car fuselages and automobiles with horse carriage aesthetics went out of fashion quick. Space transport systems with a cargo plane design didn't work all that well too.

Meanwhile, if we look at Apollo style reentry, it just works. From first time and every time and even for interplanetary entries. Clearly that's something that isn't broken and not in need of a fix.

inglor_cz2• 2 years ago

"It's optimising for the hardest part of the trip: re-entry."

Is it really the hardest part?

I would say that for fully reusable rockets, the hardest part is quick turnaround. For future space activities, it will be a huge economic difference if you can send the ship back in, say, 12 hours vs. 120 hours.

lupusreal2• 2 years ago

Blue Origin was founded before SpaceX by a rich guy that had far more money than Elon Musk did. To cringe at SpaceX leadership is idiotic; the leadership is what made the difference between a company that has dominated the space industry (putting even every single national program around the world combined to shame) and one that has never put a single object into orbit.

Not money. Not timing. Not even the engineers, because Blue Origin had every opportunity to hire the best. It was the leadership.

TeMPOraL2• 2 years ago

SpaceX is a mix of mindblowing engineering with sometimes baffling decisions. I can never help but wonder how much input Elon has, and if he is responsible for all those questionable choices, as he honestly appears to be a bit of an idiot.

Let me answer that for you: it's well-documented and confirmed by many insiders, including Tom Mueller and Gwynne Shotwell, that a) Musk has always had a lot of technical input, and b) he is responsible for the good choices that made SpaceX into what it is today.

Of course the truth falls afoul of the "Musk is evil now" memo mentioned downthread, so you keep believing what you believe.

mjamesaustin• 2 years ago

Awesome to hear this was a successful test of a full-flow stage-combustion engine! The space industry desperately needs competition for SpaceX, and this company looks like a great candidate to eventually offer it.

perihelions• 2 years ago

Is anyone else even considering attempting full-flow cycles, besides those two? There's nothing on else on Wikipedia (besides two, long-abandoned research projects).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staged_combustion_cycle#Full-f...

ikekkdcjkfke• 2 years ago

There is no desparate need for competition.. SpaceX was desparately needed however, and they have unlocked whole new industries and inpspired many

proee• 2 years ago

More competition is always good in a free economy, but what is causing a "Desperate" situation? Is the trajectory of SpaceX on a course where they will certainly become a monopoly, with all other space providers being locked out due to economies of scale?

DennisP4• 2 years ago

SpaceX is already the world's cheapest launch provider by a significant margin, and transports 90% of the world's tonnage to orbit. That's with a launch platform that costs a bit over a thousand dollars per pound. Once Starship is in production, that will drop to around thirty dollars per pound, while their annual launch capacity increases enormously. Everything about the space industry will change, and we'll be able to do a lot more than we ever have before.

Without another company able to do the same thing, Elon will completely control all that. How desperate that is depends on your opinion of him, I guess.

mmmeff2• 2 years ago

Stoke employee here.

These are the hardest working and most intelligent people I’ve ever worked with. I truly believe we are about to revolutionize this industry very, very soon, at a similar-to-greater magnitude than SpaceX has managed.

If you’re at all interested in joining our mission, please get in touch. We’re still in our infancy and have plenty of seats that need butts on all sorts of teams. Even the Fusion and Data Engineering teams are growing, where prior aerospace experience is not at all required.

echelon• 2 years ago

How do you compete with SpaceX? They're titans. They have the customers, contracts, and revenues, and it seems like they could build your design while still sending off tons of payloads using their existing infrastructure.

What makes your product so different, and how do you grow to anything close to their revenue and volume without them eating you first?

I ask these sincerely and in earnest! You're working on such a fascinating and awe-inspiring problem. I wish you the best of luck, because the field needs competition.

DennisP4• 2 years ago

Everyday Astronaut did a fantastic video of his visit to Stoke Space, that goes into a lot of detail on what makes them so interesting. It's a really nifty design, and they do the same kind of rapid development that SpaceX does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY8nbSwjtEY

Given that Starship is so big, I think it could work out for Stoke to start with a smaller but fully reusable rocket, giving cheap rides to people who don't want to rideshare. Plus, governments tend to be interested in having multiple launch providers.

sebzim45002• 2 years ago

Aside from anything else, if they can position themselves as a clear second in terms of space innovation then that guarantees them billions in government contracts.

The space force is willing to pay a premium to avoid anyone getting a monopoly, we see that with the ULA contracts today.

cubefox11• 2 years ago

"I’ve been around long enough to know that any rocket development program is hard, even if you make it as simple as possible," [the Stoke Space CEO] responded. "But this industry is going toward full reusability. To me, that is the inevitable end state. When you start with that north star, any other direction you take is a diversion. If you start designing anything else, it’s not something where you can back into full reusability at any point. It means you’ll have to stop and start over to climb the mountain."

I wonder whether this is really true in the long term. Their current "Nova" rocket is projected to deliver only five tons to LEO, so I assume they eventually want to go bigger. The question is whether their current design can be scaled up to a significantly larger vehicle. Otherwise they will also need to "start over", just like the other companies that are currently working on partial reusability will need to come up with different designs once they go to full reusability.

Gravityloss2• 2 years ago

The X-prize Lunar Lander Challenge was an interesting alternative way to get to reusable rockets.

There were rules to take off from one pad and land on another pad while hovering 90 seconds. And the higher level challenge had 180 seconds of hovering. And then the rocket must fly back (after refueling).

This doesn't need any complicated launch ranges and permits like "real" rockets. But the delta vee capability needed to hover that long is still significant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lander_Challenge

I think it's a shame it didn't directly lead to viable businesses. Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space and others acted as an inspiration though. You can make rocket flights reliable and relatively routine.

If they could have made that work as a business, say, first for sounding rockets, then they could have scaled that up to orbital.

Back in the 2008 era there wasn't that much VC money floating around either...

cubefox11• 2 years ago

It certainly would have been far more effective for NASA to spend money on private companies instead of spending those billions on their Constellation program. Even today, NASA invests far more money into the in-house project SLS/Orion than into rockets by private space companies.

So there was enough money, it was just spent inefficiently by a government agency.

apendleton• 2 years ago

The whole thing that differentiates this company from the dozen other seemingly-interchangeable new-space entrants is the novel technology they've developed to facilitate reuse. Even if it were the case that there isn't a market for five tons to LEO (and to be clear, Rocket Lab seems to be doing decent business launching a lot less) and all this was was a technology demonstrator, why would you build a technology demonstrator that doesn't show off the thing that makes your company interesting?

panick21_4• 2 years ago

RocketLab isn't doing decent buissness launching less. Launch is a small part of their revenue and the make low or negative profit.

They are developing an 8t to orbit rocket.

The market today cares about constellation. Its about launch rate and cost.

5 tons is more then enough for the types of sats that go into all the constellations.

iamawacko• 2 years ago

I love Stoke (and I sorta really want to work there). It has like a startup vibe to it, but with some seriously advanced technology. Dogs in the workplace, and also two enormous, expensive, metal 3d printers.

Shout-out to Joshua and co for letting me look around.

Stoke Space ignites its ambitious main engine

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