Name: SpaceX Isn’t The Only Company Trying to Make Rockets Reusable
Uploaded: 2024-01-17T05:01:00Z
Duration: 5 min 18 s
Description: While SpaceX has made huge advancements in landing and relaunching fairings and boosters, it is yet to create an entirely reusable system. Startup Stoke Space is hoping to change this, but right now its rocket system is still a way off.

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While SpaceX has made huge advancements in landing and relaunching fairings and boosters, it is yet to create an entirely reusable system. Startup Stoke Space is hoping to change this, but right now its rocket system is still a way off.

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SpaceX Isn’t The Only Company Trying to Make Rockets Reusable

George: If you've been following rocket launches recently, you'll have seen this. But also this.

Instructor: Stage one landing confirmed

George: While we've been launching rockets into space for nearly a century now, we're only just starting to figure out how to land them and reuse them. And while SpaceX may be the dominant name in reusable Rockets, it's not the only player trying to make them.

It just doesn't make any sense to throw those away after every single use.

US startup Stoke Space is also trying to build a fully reusable rocket system that it says could eventually be relaunched in as little as 24 hours after landing back on Earth. That's the company's plan anyway, but right now it's not quite there yet. So as always, we're going to look at where Stoke Space is now, where it wants to be, and then explore what it needs to do to get there. But let's start with where the company wants to be. Stoke Space has aims to create a rocket where every part of it is rapidly reusable.

When we started the company in 2019, I was kind of passionate about making Rocket Launch boring. Now it turns out that's not a great headline, but that's what you want. You want it to be so routine that people aren't thinking about it.

And you may be thinking, doesn't SpaceX already do this? And it does kind of.

Instructor: 3, 2, 1.

The company is currently reusing these parts of its Falcon Nine Rocket System, but not these parts. And it's obviously been working towards getting its Starship spacecraft to land and relaunch. And others, like Rocket Labs have also been working on getting this part the first stage that gets you from earth to space to be reusable. But Stoke Space is taking a different approach.

The big puzzle piece that hasn't been solved yet by the industry is reusable upper stage and so that's where we started with our technical development.

George: To be able to get its second stage back down to earth, Stoke Space plans to move away from the traditional heat shields that have been used on previous aircraft.

Traditionally, you use either a system that literally burns away as it reentries. So that's, you know, almost by definition not reusable. This is typically used on capsule style reentry. So think about Apollo, or Soyuz or even Dragon. The other option is ceramic tiles, which were used on the shuttle, are used on Starship now, but those are quite brittle.

George: That's why the company has opted for this metallic heat shield, which it says will be actively cooled on reentry. But placing a heat shield on the underside of a spacecraft that's trying to land upright creates another issue.

How do you now bury a high performance rocket engine into the base heat shield? And so that's where the ring of fire, so to speak, comes from.

Now while the company is launching satellites to begin with, Andy told me there was no reason why the system couldn't scale up to eventually carry human beings. Though he sees a future where the spacecraft are used as service vessels for a space station.

I think Starship helps us lay heavy infrastructure in space. I think it helps us, you know, realize commercial space stations, and I think that's awesome that pushes the entire industry forward, creates new market opportunities.

But space stations could be quite a way off. So where is Stoke Space now? Well, in addition to having manufacturing facilities near Seattle and test facilities near Moses Lake, Washington, the company has also managed to secure dedicated launch capacity at Cape Canaveral in a facility right next to where SpaceX first landed its Falcon nine. Stoke Space also recently announced that it had received $100,000,000 in series B funding, and that's in addition to the over $70 million it had received over previous years. And it has begun testing its second stage propulsion, that ring of fire. It even conducted a short test flight. And while this may have only been a small hop, it was a giant leap for the company.

Hopper was a full scale end-to-end flight demonstration, had avionics comms, flight computers, software, batteries, the whole nine yards were on there. We learned a lot from that as well.

But getting from small test hops to a fully reusable rocket system could be quite a difficult journey. Literally, rocket science. Even after successfully entering the earth's atmosphere, which is by no means an easy feat, Stokes Space, second stage then has to successfully land. Which as SpaceX has proven time and time again, isn't exactly easy to master.

Now the engines are operating at a very, very low throttle and with effectively empty tanks. It's doing telemetry, tracking, positioning, navigation, trying to get it onto the correct ground track in order to land on wherever it's trying to land.

And even if stoke space achieved these milestones, it still has to prove to its customers that rockets that have been used time and time again are just as safe and reliable as brand new ones. So, for Stoke Space to make rapidly reusable full rockets a commercial reality, the company is going to need to complete testing of its reusable second stage, and deploy it commercially, develop all the other parts of the rockets, which is by no means a small feat. Successfully launch, land and relaunch every part of those rockets, and convince customers it's reusable rocket is safe and effective. But even if Stoke Space can achieve all this, the company is still taking on SpaceX at its own game. So in order to find success, it's going to have to offer something that SpaceX isn't. Whether that be faster, cheaper, or smaller rocket launcher.

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