STOKE is developing a fully and rapidly reusable space launch vehicle that will provide low-cost, on-demand access to and from any location in orbit. Today they announced the close of a $65 million funding round that the company will use to enable the company to conduct flight tests with its reusable second stage rocket.
Zillionize invested in STOKE’s seed round as part of the Y Combinator W21 batch, eager to get behind the strong team of experts who have huge experience of working in aerospace to make the vision of daily flights into space a reality. We believe it’s important to enable the infrastructure to further forward space travel and tackle issues of population growth and climate change.
Andy Lapsa, co-founder and CEO of STOKE explains “Everything we do is with long-term sustainability and scalability in mind. If we’re going to continue to scale our civilization, space is going to be one of the necessary and major pillars that supports that growth. When we surveyed our nascent industry, we didn’t see anybody working on the solutions that represent its inevitable end-state.”
Their reusable second-stage design eliminates fragile tiles that require detailed inspections and lengthy refurbishments on other spacecraft.
Andy concluded “We’ve already demonstrated many of the core elements of the technology using a small and elite team, and we’re excited to ramp up development with this new funding”.
You can read more detail of the announcement on STOKE’s website.