heat exchanger

Stoke Space’s founders set out to make rockets rapidly reusable, including the upper stage, to lower launch costs and increase access to space. The talk explains how the Nova rocket and its Andromeda second stage use a heat shield, heat exchanger, and thrusters to handle re-entry. It also covers the company’s early backyard engine tests, fundraising challenges, and growth into a factory designed to build seven vehicles a year. The founders describe how in-house manufacturing and the Bolt Line operations software help them iterate quickly and prepare vehicles for repeated flights.