Stoke Space is following the SpaceX path of fast steel prototypes for fully reusable rockets. The will have a steel heat shield and a ring of engines around the base of a second stage.
As of October 5, 2023, Stoke Space has a total funding of $175 million, including a $100 million Series B investment. The funding round included participation from the University of Michigan, Sparta Group, Long Journey, and other investors. Steve Angel, Linde plc’s Chairman of the Board, is also on Stoke’s Board of Directors.
Space ops are still slow, expensive, and unreliable compared to every other mode of transportation…especially if you consider schedule. Rapid upper stage reusability will change the situation.
Stoke Space has only take months to go from computer designs to hop tests and engine tests with real hardware.
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More than 40 years ago I borrowed a book from the library that featured SSO rockets that looked very much like the STOKE’s prototype.
Linde Industrial Gases is the company I wrote about earlier regarding liquid oxygen production and its limits. Liquid oxygen is the main limiting factor for rapidly reusing rockets en masse because there is a severely limited supply of Liquid oxygen for fueling rockets. Building a new air separation plant takes years of planning and permitting and construction.
I find it very interesting that Steve Angel, Chairman of the board of Linde is also on the board of directors for this new space company. As I mentioned earlier, Linde is the only company in the world capable of standardizing and rapidly producing modular air separation units producing liquid oxygen. They have already started:
https://www.linde-engineering.com/en/process-plants/air-separation-plants/modular-air-separation-plants/index.html
Linde is a cash cow, similar to Tesla.
I’m not a stock speculator, but starting tomorrow, I’ll be doing some deep digging with ex-colleagues as to whether Linde will become the de facto supplier of liquid oxygen to new rocket launch sites. If so, I suspect SpaceX has already started making inquiries to Steve Angel and Sanjiv Lamba…
Phil Bono lives