I couldn’t resist and made a quick video illustration for the news.
The American company Stoke Space conducted successful tests of a reusable second stage prototype. The prototype rose into the air by ~9 meters and landed 15 seconds after lifting off the ground.
The company, founded by former Blue Origin and SpaceX employees, is working on a new concept for the return of the upper stage. Instead of traditional engines with gigantic nozzles optimized for vacuum, their system has 30 relatively small nozzles, fully embedded in a heat shield, creating an effect similar to a wedge air engine in a vacuum. Also, their solution does not have thrust vector control actuators; the effect is achieved due to the thrust difference between the nozzles.
The first stage is planned to be similar in the return scheme to Falcon 9 and Neutron, the entire system as a whole should be able to put up to 1650 kg into GTO in a fully reusable version.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 