It has been 13 years since a new medium-lift rocket debuted in the United States, when Orbital Sciences Corporation's Antares vehicle entered service. The early Antares 100-series was a troubled design, relying on refurbished Soviet-era engines and a core stage built in Ukraine. It exploded on its fifth launch in 2014, a failure that underscored how much the sector had fallen behind.
Nearly a decade and a half later, a new generation of medium-lift vehicles is approaching launch, and they differ sharply from Antares. Four forthcoming rockets all use engines built in-house by their manufacturers in the United States. Most of these companies have taken lessons from SpaceX's Falcon 9, chiefly the value of building as much of the rocket, especially the engines, internally to control timelines and costs.
The stakes are high. SpaceX is pulling the Falcon 9 from the commercial market as soon as 2028, leaving satellite operators uncertain about where to book launches for the 2027 to 2030 window. The larger Vulcan and New Glenn rockets have crowded manifests and are costly for small and medium satellites, and it remains unclear which new vehicles will be ready and able to scale their launch cadence. For commercial space startups, the race is about more than bragging rights; there are fortunes to be made and companies to be saved.
Among the contenders, Stoke Space's Nova is the smallest, with a capacity of 3 tons when fully reusable and 7 tons when expendable. It aims for full reusability with a novel upper-stage thruster and heat shield, and its first-stage engines use full-flow staged combustion, an ambitious choice for a first engine. The first stage is nearly complete in Kent, Washington, and the Cape Canaveral launch complex is almost finished. Stoke targets an early 2027 debut, though a July 2027 launch is considered more realistic.
Source: Ars Technica · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing