The Stoke Space Factory Tour with CEO Andy Lapsa

Andy Lapsa (0:00)

We do all our own software, guidance, navigation, control, power systems, other forms of avionics, communications, et cetera. And so this was the first incarnation of all of those things in one integrated vehicle. We flew this out at our test facility in Moses Lake.

It was a modest flight, went about 30 feet high, hovered for a moment and came back down. So this is a 100,000 pound thrust engine. We've taken it up comfortably beyond that. We have not fully done, let's say a thrust till you bust test yet, but that's coming pretty soon. We had enormous conviction that full rapid reuse was the future of space travel. It is the thing that takes another zero off the cost structure of launch.

Mo Islam (0:40)

So tell me how much bigger the Block 2 fairing is going to be versus this.

Andy Lapsa (0:55)

Hi, Mo. Andy, welcome to Stoke.

Mo Islam (0:57)

Thanks for having us.

Andy Lapsa (0:57)

Of course.

Mo Islam (0:58)

Excited to be here.

Andy Lapsa (1:00)

Well, we're excited to have you show off what we're working on and go from there.

Mo Islam (1:07)

So well, tell us where we're at right now. Is this HQ? HQ?

Andy Lapsa (1:11)

Yeah. So this is our HQ. We call it HQ2. It's the second headquarters that, second real headquarters. We actually had a small office and then Tom's Garage before that.

So we're based here. We do all of our engineering and manufacturing here. We do as much integrated tests as make sense. And then we have a test facility in Moses Lake and Launch Complex in Florida.

Mo Islam (1:34)

Well, we're here for a very special reason because you have two very big pieces of news. So maybe we can kick that.

Andy Lapsa (1:39)

We do.

Mo Islam (1:39)

Kick it off there. Yeah.

Andy Lapsa (1:41)

So we, number one, we've been working on a much larger vehicle than what we've made public before. So to us, that's the biggest exciting thing to go public with for the first time.

We're calling that our Block 2 vehicle. And then the second piece is our Series E fundraise, which is hand in hand with the Block 2 So we have that funded in green lights on that development process.

Mo Islam (2:11)

How are you feeling?

Andy Lapsa (2:12)

It's great. I mean, it's a mile a minute.

Mo Islam (2:16)

What a time to be alive. It couldn't be any more fun.

Andy Lapsa (2:17)

Yeah.

Mo Islam (2:19)

Well, I think I know what this is.

Andy Lapsa (2:23)

So what we have in front of us is our Hopper vehicle. This was our full scale second stage prototype.

It has our very unique second stage engine on the bottom with an integrated liquid cooled heat shield. And then the rest of it is our first go at our also pretty unique manufacturing methods for tanks. We do all our own software, guidance, navigation, control, power systems, other forms of avionics, communications, etc.

And so this was the first incarnation of all of those things in one integrated vehicle. We flew this out at our test facility in Moses Lake. It was a modest flight, went about 30 feet high, hovered for a moment and came back down, which is super modest. We had a lot of technical objectives kind of packed into that flight plan. And the reason it was so modest is basically, you know, for safety reasons. And with the FAA, in case it goes rogue, you have to imagine the rogue robot doing the worst possible thing. And by limiting the amount of propellant in the tanks, we limit how far it can go and therefore draw a circle around the keepout zone.

Mo Islam (3:42)

And were you able to meet most of those objectives? Just about everyone.

Andy Lapsa (3:46)

Yeah, so if you watch that flight back, you'll see it take off and then you'll see it give itself a pretty hard kick to the left. And that was our unique method for Thrust Vector Control. This is what's called differential Thrust Vector Control, where you basically throttle up one side and throttle down the other to give the vehicle the kick. To my knowledge, this is the first vehicle that's been flown exclusively on differential throttle. There have been other vehicles that used a hybrid kind of form.

So just showing the response rate and the overall control was important. The second thing you'll see when you watch it is it has a nice gentle roll the whole time that it's going. And one of the reasons to do that is to demonstrate what we call roll-in variance of the guidance navigation control.