Stoke Space is another of the "new space" companies, founded by former SpaceX and Blue Origin engineers. Stoke is based in the Seattle area with a test site at Moses Lake in eastern Washington. (Moses Lake has an interesting aerospace history, since Boeing has tested various secret government projects there. One was a huge autonomous robot stealth drone.)
Stoke Space says that they hope to build a reusable satellite launcher that can be turned around for another launch in 24 hours.
One of the unique features of Stoke's concept is their use of aerospike engines. These are unorthodox rocket engines that lack a conventional engine bell. With an aerospike, the rocket blast is directed along a surface that acts like one side of an engine bell. The other side is ambient air, which acts like the other side of the bell. At least on paper, the aerospike should be more efficient, but for some reason they have never been used operationally in rockets, despite receiving lots of testing. Until Stoke Space came along.
Well, the news from Stoke space is that they just successfully flew a Hoppy-style hopper at Moses Lake using a ring-shaped aerospike. This design enables them to combine rocket engines and a conventional style heat shield.
Sep 18, 2023 04:12 AM
![[Image: 800px-Aerospikeprinciplediagram.svg.png]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Aerospikeprinciplediagram.svg/800px-Aerospikeprinciplediagram.svg.png)
![[Image: hopper2flight-1400x930.jpeg]](https://www.stokespace.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/hopper2flight-1400x930.jpeg)