Stork Space is an ambitious company. The five-year-old startup has attracted attention for its bold plans to develop the first fully reusable rocket, with both its booster and second stage returning to Earth vertically.
Those plans got a major boost a year ago when the U.S. Space Command awarded Stork and three other startups a prized launch pad site at the Cape Canaveral Space Force base in Florida. Stork plans to redevelop the historic Launch Complex 14, home to John Glenn's landmark mission and other NASA programs, in time for its first launch in 2025.
At the center of Stork's plan is a two-stage rocket called Nova, designed so that both the booster and second stage return to Earth and land vertically. The only other rocket in development to be fully reusable is SpaceX's Starship. Stork says the company's reusable upper stage opens up incredible possibilities, like returning cargo from orbit, landing anywhere on Earth, and lowering launch costs by orders of magnitude.
Before any of this can happen, the Space Force must complete an “environmental assessment” of the company's plans for LC-14 to evaluate how repeated launches would affect local flora and fauna. Such assessments are required by federal law and often take months, but they also have the benefit of providing a more detailed look at a company's operational plans.
Stork's goals are bold, but the draft environmental assessment for Stork's launch pad suggests it would be a mistake to expect a test that would even return a booster on its first flight. In fact, the environmental assessment doesn't consider reusable operations at all, only missions in which the 132-foot-tall Nova would fly in a fully expendable configuration. A document released last month calls this Stork's “phased program approach.” Phase 1 would operate a fully expendable vehicle at a relatively low launch frequency. Phase 2, which would require supplemental environmental analysis and isn't considered in the draft, would use a fully reusable rocket.
Image credit: Stoke Space
To begin with, Stork told regulators it is seeking permission for about two launches next year (its first year of operations), followed by up to 10 launches per year thereafter. Stork told regulators that Nova can carry up to 7,000 kilograms of payload into low Earth orbit, the rocket's maximum non-reusable payload.
A person familiar with Stork's plans said the company has no intention of pursuing the reusable aspects of Nova until it has demonstrated the ability to routinely deploy payloads to planned orbits, and that this phased approach has always been part of the company's roadmap.
A phased approach is not unusual: SpaceX, the world's launch leader, first launched its Falcon 9 rocket in 2010 but only returned a booster to Earth in 2015. Stork is apparently seeking to follow a similar path, although the draft plan does not offer a date for when the company will begin testing its reusable technology.
It remains to be seen when reusable flights will begin at the Cape, but Stork has been busy running its own second-stage “hop” campaign at its Washington state facility. In a recent podcast appearance, Stork CEO Andy Lapusa said the company first began developing the Nova second stage because there was no manual for second-stage reuse, but because rocket stage designs are so closely tied together, they needed to understand the second-stage parameters before they could begin designing the booster.
“From a technical standpoint, the entire vehicle has to be designed with the end state in mind,” he said. “You need an architecture for that. Everything we've done from our founding to today is about taking the end state and building for the end state architecture.”
Once reusable technology is fully developed, the Space Force will be required to conduct a supplemental environmental analysis. At that point, the supplemental EA will consider the environmental impacts of landing in a landing zone near the launch pad, on an offshore barge, or elsewhere. Depending on the complexity of changes to the original analysis, this process could take six months or longer.
But Stork is ready to move on to the second stage, Lapsa said on the podcast. “One millisecond after we reach orbit, our focus shifts completely to, 'Okay, now let's show we can land. Once we show we can land, […] And then, a millisecond later, we start to focus on reuse.”