Stoke’s Nova rocket

We’re from the government and we’re here to help you! The rocket startup Stoke Space appears to be struggling with the same kind of environmental red tape that is hindering SpaceX, though in Stoke’s case the red tape appears absurdly unnecessary.

Stoke is the only company besides SpaceX developing a rocket with both its first and second stages returning to Earth to land vertically and then be reused. Unlike SpaceX Starship/Superheavy, which is gigantic and revolutionary in all ways, Stoke’s Nova rocket is comparable in size to the hundreds of rockets that have launched from Florida since the 1960s. Based on that six-decade track record, it would seem that getting rights to launch Nova (but not for its return) would be considered basic and routine, requiring little complex bureaucracy.

Hah! Fooled you!

Before any of this can take place, the Space Force must complete its “environmental assessment” of the company’s plans at LC-14 [the launchpad used for John Glenn’s first orbital mission and many others subsequently], in order to evaluate how repeat launches will affect local flora and fauna. These assessments are mandatory under federal law, and they can often take months — but the upside is that they provide a closer look at a company’s operational plans.

You can read that draft environmental assessment here [pdf]. Those plans call for Stoke to develop Nova in stages, as did SpaceX with its Falcon 9 rocket. The first launches will not be reusuable, and only after the rocket has launched a number of times will the company attempt a vertical landing back in Florida of either stage. To get to that point the company hopes to do 10 launches per year during this first test phase, during which Nova will be nothing different than the hundreds of rockets launched from Florida since Sputnik.

This very unexperimental plan however is not yet approved. The Space Force must get the draft environmental assessment written and approved by muliple agencies, including Fish & Wildlife, whose bureaucrats don’t like rockets and would love to do whatever they can to block future launches at the wildlife refuge that surrounds this Florida spaceport. And if these bureaucrats can’t block those launches, they certainly act to delay them by carefully requiring far more environmental studies than necessary. For example, the draft environmental assessment is almost 700 pages long, and it isn’t yet approved!

Nor is this all. Even after this first assessment is finally approved (which it will because we know rockets like Nova don’t harm wildlife), once the company decides it is ready to do vertical landings, it will have to then get an entirely new second environmental assessment approved, taking many more months.

This is all ridiculous. Rocket launches — especially those comparable to Nova — are well proven to do no harm to the environment. To force this company to go through this labyrinth of unnecessary paperwork for something that is clearly harmless is stupidity of the most basic sort.

But here we are. American rocket companies of all types now have to jump through hoops with every new innovation or design change. If something doesn’t change soon, we should expect the American rennaissance in rocketry that began about five years ago to fade away as other companies in Europe and India step forward, free from this bureaucracy and able to grab market share as American rocket companies sit idle, filling out paperwork and waiting for Washington bureaucrats to give them permission to breath.