Because big news is hard to find
Very Little News on Test Flight 7
Very little new News seems to have come out today beyond what Beans commented about last night at 11:33PM from an X posting by Elon Musk.
Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity.
Apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and probably increase vent area. Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month.
There are stories that the FAA might or might not require some more involved investigation than usual, and links to videos like this one posted by people who looked up and saw the RUD.
The outcome is a disappointment to SpaceX and observers. It's the first time a Starship has failed to complete its mission since the second test flight in November 2023. This was going to be the year that SpaceX worked on getting their mission cadence up to pretty much a flight every other week - 25 launches is the goal for the year - and that depends on not getting tied up in more delays.
The Super Heavy booster coming in, seconds before the catch Thursday at Starbase, Texas. Credit: SpaceX
Keep Your Eyes on Stoke Space
Stoke Space is a well-funded startup space company from Kent, Washington working on the design of a fully reusable orbital rocket. How well-funded?
The Washington-based launch company announced Wednesday that it had raised $260 million in Series C funding, a significant capital raise at a time when it has become more difficult for some space companies to attract funding, Ars reports.
More details on Stoke Space are in a blog posting here from September of 2023. Stoke Space is aimed at getting a completely reusable medium lift rocket called Nova and test flying it this year. Nova's first stage will land vertically, similar to a Falcon 9 rocket, and the second stage, which has a novel metallic heat shield and engine design will also land back on Earth. The engine design is shown and explained in that September '23 blog post.
This is their upper stage engine:
Every other vehicle out there has engines that are gimballed to steer the vehicle - thrust vector control is achieved by changing the direction the engines are pointed. The engines are bigger and their large engine bells cover the entire area of the base, or close to it. Stoke, on the other hand changes the thrust of the engines to change the direction of the thrust vector. With the engines being farther from the center of the stage, the engines have more leverage and that makes room for their regeneratively cooled heat shield. The engines themselves are said to be conventional liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen engines with their nozzles implemented in that one large circular structure. The control must be in feeding the fuel and oxidizer to the engines.
Stoke says they aim to fly the first Nova this year. At this point, I'd like to believe but I'm going to lean in the direction that Eric Berger has in the Rocket Report. Historically, it is unlikely for a company to move from engine testing to a first orbital launch attempt in the same year, so a Nova debut in 2026 seems more likely.
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