6 ms·

Stoke Space ignites its ambitious main engine

89 points by perihelions 2y ago

idontwantthis 2y 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 2y 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.
  - sebzim4500 2y ago
    Firefly and Astra have both reached orbit IIRC
    - erikrothoff 2y ago
      Astra is barely holding on by a thread though. Their main hope of survival is their hall-effect propulsion engines.
- vhodges 2y ago
  Not developing a launcher but Gravitics https://www.gravitics.com/ https://www.gravitics.com/ is another company doing something in different way (Gary Hudson, if you know the name, is on the team)
- cubefox 2y 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 2y 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 https://youtu.be/fcLuugmHV90?t=71
- Someone 2y 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.
  - numpad0 2y 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 2y 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
  - psunavy03 2y 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 2y ago
world2vec 2y 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.
- everyone 2y 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_ 2y 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'.
    - everyone 2y ago
      "You believe that Stoke space is somehow the near perfect design" - I said I much prefer it to starship, not that it's near perfect. "The designer or Shuttle and Starship were probably idiots" - I dont know much about the design of Starship, that stuff is not in the public domain atm. But the space shuttle designers were not idiots, they just had to deal with some impossible requirements from higher up. The space shuttle as-built has some clearly bad design elements (eg. the shuttle itself not being on top of the stack at launch, as it was in the original design). It had a famously long and torturous design process with many different stakeholders all wanting it to be capable of wildly different missions. Just one example: https://youtu.be/_q2i0eu35aY?feature=shared https://youtu.be/_q2i0eu35aY?feature=shared So one could say management meddling with the design is what killed the space shuttle. I am wondering is the same meddling happening in SpaceX?
mjamesaustin 2y 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.
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- perihelions 2y 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-flow_staged_combustion_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staged_combustion_cycle#Full-f...
- ikekkdcjkfke 2y ago
  There is no desparate need for competition.. SpaceX was desparately needed however, and they have unlocked whole new industries and inpspired many
- forgot-im-old 2y ago
  [flagged]
- proee 2y 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?
  - DennisP 2y ago
mmmeff 2y 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 2y 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.
  - DennisP 2y 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 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.
    - mmmeff 2y ago
      I hope Tim comes through again soon. It's awesome how much has changed since his last visit.
  - sebzim4500 2y 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.
cubefox 2y 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.
- Gravityloss 2y 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 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...
  - cubefox 2y 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.
iamawacko 2y 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.

89 points by perihelions 2y 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 2y 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.
- sebzim4500 2y ago
  Firefly and Astra have both reached orbit IIRC
  - erikrothoff 2y ago
    Astra is barely holding on by a thread though. Their main hope of survival is their hall-effect propulsion engines.
vhodges 2y ago
Not developing a launcher but Gravitics https://www.gravitics.com/ https://www.gravitics.com/ is another company doing something in different way (Gary Hudson, if you know the name, is on the team)
cubefox 2y 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 2y 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 https://youtu.be/fcLuugmHV90?t=71

Someone 2y 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.
- numpad0 2y 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 2y 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
- psunavy03 2y 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 2y ago

world2vec 2y 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.

everyone 2y 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_ 2y 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'.
  - everyone 2y ago
    "You believe that Stoke space is somehow the near perfect design" - I said I much prefer it to starship, not that it's near perfect. "The designer or Shuttle and Starship were probably idiots" - I dont know much about the design of Starship, that stuff is not in the public domain atm. But the space shuttle designers were not idiots, they just had to deal with some impossible requirements from higher up. The space shuttle as-built has some clearly bad design elements (eg. the shuttle itself not being on top of the stack at launch, as it was in the original design). It had a famously long and torturous design process with many different stakeholders all wanting it to be capable of wildly different missions. Just one example: https://youtu.be/_q2i0eu35aY?feature=shared https://youtu.be/_q2i0eu35aY?feature=shared So one could say management meddling with the design is what killed the space shuttle. I am wondering is the same meddling happening in SpaceX?

mjamesaustin 2y 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.

deleted 2y ago
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perihelions 2y 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-flow_staged_combustion_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staged_combustion_cycle#Full-f...
ikekkdcjkfke 2y ago
There is no desparate need for competition.. SpaceX was desparately needed however, and they have unlocked whole new industries and inpspired many
forgot-im-old 2y ago
[flagged]
proee 2y 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?
- DennisP 2y ago

mmmeff 2y 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 2y 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.
- DennisP 2y 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 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.
  - mmmeff 2y ago
    I hope Tim comes through again soon. It's awesome how much has changed since his last visit.
- sebzim4500 2y 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.

cubefox 2y 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.

Gravityloss 2y 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 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...
- cubefox 2y 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.

iamawacko 2y 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.