With another huge infusion of cash, Stoke Space goes even bigger

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Stoke Space announced Tuesday that it has raised another significant round of funding, $1 billion, as it makes a final push toward its debut launch next year. The Washington-based launch company also revealed plans for a larger medium-lift vehicle.
With the Series E funding round, co-led by Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital, Stoke Space brought its total amount of capital raised to $2.3 billion, a staggering amount for a company that has yet to attempt an orbital launch.
The quantity of new funding will enable the company to accelerate work on a larger “Block 2” version of the Nova rocket, capable of lifting 15 metric tons to low-Earth orbit in a fully reusable configuration, said Stoke co-founder and Chief Executive Andy Lapsa.
“We have already started development on a larger vehicle, and we felt like now is the time to pour gas on that fire and really start full-force development of the larger vehicle, and so that’s the reason for the timing,” Lapsa said in an interview.
First up, Nova “Pathfinder”
The initial version of Nova is planned to have a lift capacity of 3 metric tons in fully reusable mode and up to 7 tons in a fully expendable configuration. The rocket’s first stage is powered by seven Zenith engines, with a combined thrust of 700,000 pounds. The novel upper stage features a ring of 24 thrusters that surround a regeneratively cooled heat shield to protect the rocket during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
After completing an extensive set of structural tests earlier this summer on the first stage, Lapsa said Stoke will ship this stage “pretty soon” to the company’s launch site at Cape Canaveral, Florida. After additional testing there, the vehicle will undergo a static fire test before being mated with the upper stage.
As for the upper stage, it will soon be shipped to Stoke’s test site at Moses Lake, Washington, for its own set of structural tests, followed by a hot fire test. Then the upper stage will also be shipped to Florida.

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