Author Topic: Stoke Space Technologies: General Company and Development Updates and Discussions  (Read 322133 times)

Offline Carlos Course 16

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I understand that Stoke is developing a Methalox engine for its first stage. Why? They should just buy 2 or 3 raptors for each first stage and focus on designing the vehicle and the second stage. Let SpaceX work on the engines. Would be faster and way cheaper than developing your own full-flow methane engine. I guarantee that SpaceX would sell them the engines since they can manufacture them in high volume and Stoke does not compete with Starship. Plus Elon is all about full reuse and has always been about enabling space and not hiding tech. Additionally Stoke could run them at less thrust and make them last longer.

Online trimeta

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I understand that Stoke is developing a Methalox engine for its first stage. Why? They should just buy 2 or 3 raptors for each first stage and focus on designing the vehicle and the second stage. Let SpaceX work on the engines. Would be faster and way cheaper than developing your own full-flow methane engine. I guarantee that SpaceX would sell them the engines since they can manufacture them in high volume and Stoke does not compete with Starship. Plus Elon is all about full reuse and has always been about enabling space and not hiding tech. Additionally Stoke could run them at less thrust and make them last longer.
There's no indication that SpaceX is willing to sell Raptors to third parties. And even if they did, SpaceX wants to continuously iterate on Raptor's design, they're not going to write a contract that says "we will continue to deliver version X of Raptor even if we've moved on to much better versions internally." And no company would want a contract saying "we can change the product we're providing you without warning at any time."

Now, the better question is whether Stoke should consider buying engines from someone like Ursa Major Technologies, which exclusively sells engines. Their Arroway is a 200,000 lbf methalox engine, not full-flow but fuel-rich staged combustion. There are advantages to full-flow, but I think for Stoke it would be worth it to buy a first-stage engine off the shelf. If Ursa Major offered appropriate prices and timelines, of course.

Online matthewkantar

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Stoke has demonstrated some real design chops, build quality and speed, in my opinion. If they can multitask, they will benefit most from keeping the big stuff in house.

Offline TrevorMonty

Usra financial future is bit uncertain. Stoke are better off keeping engines inhouse and have control of their own destiny, especially has they have expertise to design these engine. Few exBE4 and Raptor engineers in the company.


I understand that Stoke is developing a Methalox engine for its first stage. Why? They should just buy 2 or 3 raptors for each first stage and focus on designing the vehicle and the second stage. Let SpaceX work on the engines. Would be faster and way cheaper than developing your own full-flow methane engine. I guarantee that SpaceX would sell them the engines since they can manufacture them in high volume and Stoke does not compete with Starship. Plus Elon is all about full reuse and has always been about enabling space and not hiding tech. Additionally Stoke could run them at less thrust and make them last longer.
There's no indication that SpaceX is willing to sell Raptors to third parties. And even if they did, SpaceX wants to continuously iterate on Raptor's design, they're not going to write a contract that says "we will continue to deliver version X of Raptor even if we've moved on to much better versions internally." And no company would want a contract saying "we can change the product we're providing you without warning at any time."

Now, the better question is whether Stoke should consider buying engines from someone like Ursa Major Technologies, which exclusively sells engines. Their Arroway is a 200,000 lbf methalox engine, not full-flow but fuel-rich staged combustion. There are advantages to full-flow, but I think for Stoke it would be worth it to buy a first-stage engine off the shelf. If Ursa Major offered appropriate prices and timelines, of course.

I would hold off on judging Arroway for the moment . . .

Offline chopsticks

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Plus they've already developed their own hydrolox engine in house. That's no small feat.

Coming up with another engine won't be totally new to them.

Offline john smith 19

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Plus they've already developed their own hydrolox engine in house. That's no small feat.

Coming up with another engine won't be totally new to them.
And TBH there really is Hydrogen and everything else.   :(

It's density, boiling point and remarkable ability to diffuse through stuff means anyone who can deliver a working engine even close to its potential efficiency with a reasonable SL T/W should be able to manage any reasonable propellant combo.

Unless you're planning to go something like H2/F2/Li or something in that line (but no one deals with that sort of stuff without a body parts being left in the test area by the end.  :(  )

The joker in the pack is staff numbers and time. Do they have a big enough team to do both? IDK.

Keep in mind if they did deal with Ursa and were worried about business continuity they could have a deal to have the design docs and key information held in escrow. 

If Ursa goes down the pan they bring the design inhouse but cannot sell to third parties. That means the Ursa team (if it did fail) could restart but wouldn't have to worry about basically competing with their own design in an open market.

And of course various other options along those lines are possible.
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 2027?. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline chopsticks

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Also worth keeping in mind that Andy Lapsa (CEO) was a propulsion engineer for the BE-4 and the director of the BE-3 engines. So he has experience with both hydrogen and methane.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andylapsa

I think they've got this.

Offline edzieba

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Now, the better question is whether Stoke should consider buying engines from someone like Ursa Major Technologies, which exclusively sells engines. Their Arroway is a 200,000 lbf methalox engine, not full-flow but fuel-rich staged combustion. There are advantages to full-flow, but I think for Stoke it would be worth it to buy a first-stage engine off the shelf. If Ursa Major offered appropriate prices and timelines, of course.
From Tim Dodd's recent tour of Ursa Major: Arroway is actually a full-flow engine, not fuel-rich.

Still a decision to make based on timescales - how soon Arroway or another engine is available vs. how fast an internal engine can be developed (including non-public development that has already occured) - costs  - up-front investment and lower ongoing costs vs. lower up-front costs and potentially higher ongoing costs vs. expected economies of scale if other customers are also buying Arroway - and integration - an internally developed engine will be easier and faster to integrate with a vehicle and fit design needs more exactly than a contract engine.

Offline TrevorMonty

RLV is about 2mt with US recovered, which would put booster thrust around 300mt so 3 Arroways. Which requires high throttle range from landing engine.


Offline Robotbeat

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RLV is about 2mt with US recovered, which would put booster thrust around 300mt so 3 Arroways. Which requires high throttle range from landing engine.
No, it’s 3mT reusable, for the first version. According to the FISO telecon. They upgraded it from earlier plans.
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Online jongoff

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https://www.stokespace.com/stoke-space-series-b/

Looks like Stoke was able to close a $100M Series-B round, bringing their total investment to $175M. Probably not enough to get it all the way to an orbital flight, but still an impressive achievement in this fundraising climate.

Oh and TheRocketThatShallNotBeNamed now has a name: Nova

I like it. Congrats to Andy and the Stoke team!

~Jon

Offline zubenelgenubi

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Cross-post:
https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1710038335840977404
Quote
Stoke Space announced it has raised a $100M Series B round. More importantly, it's named its rocket: Nova.
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Offline deltaV

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1. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/09/stoke-space-hops-its-upper-stage-leaping-toward-a-fully-reusable-rocket/ claims Stoke can lift "up to 7 metric tons to low-Earth orbit". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_launch_systems claims Stoke can do 1500 kg to LEO but doesn't cite anything for that. Do we have any other sources on the payload mass capability of their rocket or other parameters such as rocket dimensions or thrust that we could estimate payload from? [Edit: Robotbeat claims "3mT reusable" four posts ago, which seems consistent with the 7 tonnes if the latter is expendable.]

2. https://www.stokespace.com/stoke-space-series-b/ claims Stoke has $175M of funding so far. That's in between the development cost of expendable Falcon 1 (~$100M) and the original expendable Falcon 9 (~$300M) and their rocket is in between those two in payload capacity too. So Stoke's funding is about what I'd expect it to cost to develop an expendable. It seems unlikely that Stoke will develop a fully reusable rocket for that amount of money, so they either need to get profit from launching an expendable version or they need more funding.
« Last Edit: 10/06/2023 02:03 am by deltaV »

Online matthewkantar

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1. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/09/stoke-space-hops-its-upper-stage-leaping-toward-a-fully-reusable-rocket/ claims Stoke can lift "up to 7 metric tons to low-Earth orbit". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_launch_systems claims Stoke can do 1500 kg to LEO but doesn't cite anything for that. Do we have any other sources on the payload mass capability of their rocket or other parameters such as rocket dimensions or thrust that we could estimate payload from? [Edit: Robotbeat claims "3mT reusable" four posts ago, which seems consistent with the 7 tonnes if the latter is expendable.]

2. https://www.stokespace.com/stoke-space-series-b/ claims Stoke has $175M of funding so far. That's in between the development cost of expendable Falcon 1 (~$100M) and the original expendable Falcon 9 (~$300M) and their rocket is in between those two in payload capacity too. So Stoke's funding is about what I'd expect it to cost to develop an expendable. It seems unlikely that Stoke will develop a fully reusable rocket for that amount of money, so they either need to get profit from launching an expendable version or they need more funding.

Stoke isn’t going to be expending any stages on purpose. Reusable all the way.

There are too many launch vehicle developers to keep track of these days. Stoke, again in my opinion, has the most promising combination of an excellent plan, excellent path, quality builds, and credible testing.

Getting the hopper up and down on the first try, with a novel method of attitude control, is very impressive.

As I’ve said before, they will have no problem whatsoever raising funds, imo.


Offline deltaV

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1. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/09/stoke-space-hops-its-upper-stage-leaping-toward-a-fully-reusable-rocket/ claims Stoke can lift "up to 7 metric tons to low-Earth orbit". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_launch_systems claims Stoke can do 1500 kg to LEO but doesn't cite anything for that. Do we have any other sources on the payload mass capability of their rocket or other parameters such as rocket dimensions or thrust that we could estimate payload from? [Edit: Robotbeat claims "3mT reusable" four posts ago, which seems consistent with the 7 tonnes if the latter is expendable.]

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/05/reusable-rocket-startup-stoke-space-raises-100-million.html says it's "5,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit" (unclear if reusable or expandable). I guess either they keep changing their minds about its capacity or different employees are using different ground rules (e.g. altitude, inclination, reserves)?

Online jongoff

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1. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/09/stoke-space-hops-its-upper-stage-leaping-toward-a-fully-reusable-rocket/ claims Stoke can lift "up to 7 metric tons to low-Earth orbit". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_launch_systems claims Stoke can do 1500 kg to LEO but doesn't cite anything for that. Do we have any other sources on the payload mass capability of their rocket or other parameters such as rocket dimensions or thrust that we could estimate payload from? [Edit: Robotbeat claims "3mT reusable" four posts ago, which seems consistent with the 7 tonnes if the latter is expendable.]

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/05/reusable-rocket-startup-stoke-space-raises-100-million.html says it's "5,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit" (unclear if reusable or expandable). I guess either they keep changing their minds about its capacity or different employees are using different ground rules (e.g. altitude, inclination, reserves)?

I had a copy of their PUG. They're stating for three different conditions: 3mT fully reusable, 5mT with first stage reuse but upper stage expended, and 7mT fully expendable. I can't remember which exact inclination/altitude those were all at, but I believe that's for a mid-inclination orbit of some sort. They did change capacity once about a year ago, but have been pretty consistent since then.

~Jon

2. https://www.stokespace.com/stoke-space-series-b/ claims Stoke has $175M of funding so far. That's in between the development cost of expendable Falcon 1 (~$100M) and the original expendable Falcon 9 (~$300M) and their rocket is in between those two in payload capacity too. So Stoke's funding is about what I'd expect it to cost to develop an expendable. It seems unlikely that Stoke will develop a fully reusable rocket for that amount of money, so they either need to get profit from launching an expendable version or they need more funding.

I largely agree. I do think we should acknowledge, however, that SpaceX was developing in a very different market and time than Stoke is. There's a lot of lessons that SpaceX had to pay for that Stoke gets for free from the modern industry's collective knowledge. Both technical (stainless steel in non-"balloon" tanks is worth consideration) and organizational (how small of a team can launch an orbital rocket?). Not to mention having access to modern manufacturing techniques (modern 3D printing for example). There's lots of ways it could be substantially cheaper to develop an LV today than in the 00s.

I'd still expect another big funding round between here and the first launch though. Probably around the time of their first stage engine's first hot-fire.
Wait, ∆V? This site will accept the ∆ symbol? How many times have I written out the word "delta" for no reason?

Offline yoram

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2. https://www.stokespace.com/stoke-space-series-b/ claims Stoke has $175M of funding so far. That's in between the development cost of expendable Falcon 1 (~$100M) and the original expendable Falcon 9 (~$300M) and their rocket is in between those two in payload capacity too. So Stoke's funding is about what I'd expect it to cost to develop an expendable. It seems unlikely that Stoke will develop a fully reusable rocket for that amount of money, so they either need to get profit from launching an expendable version or they need more funding.

I largely agree. I do think we should acknowledge, however, that SpaceX was developing in a very different market and time than Stoke is. There's a lot of lessons that SpaceX had to pay for that Stoke gets for free from the modern industry's collective knowledge. Both technical (stainless steel in non-"balloon" tanks is worth consideration) and organizational (how small of a team can launch an orbital rocket?). Not to mention having access to modern manufacturing techniques (modern 3D printing for example). There's lots of ways it could be substantially cheaper to develop an LV today than in the 00s.

Not to forget the impact of being able to simulate a lot of things with cheap computing power. I assume at least for engine design this will be a big difference because you can rule out a lot of issues before bending metal.

Offline deltaV

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3mT fully reusable, 5mT with first stage reuse but upper stage expended, and 7mT fully expendable.

Thanks for that info.

Nova's various levels of re-usability cover a similar range of payload masses as Delta II covered by adjusting its solids. With Delta II retired there are no US vehicles with capability similar to Nova - the closest are RS 1 at 1350 kg expendable and Neutron at 13 tonnes ASDS, 15 tonnes expendable (I'm excluding Antares and Minotaur since they're unlikely to launch enough to matter). There are several non-US similar capability launchers, including Europe's Vega family, Russia's Soyuz, China's Long March, and India's PSLV.

If wonder if Nova's lower and upper stage reuse will cut costs enough to out-compete much smaller vehicles such as Electron and Alpha. This could happen if Nova's ability to launch larger payloads gives it access to a larger market and a higher launch rate and that cuts costs by more than its larger size raises costs.

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