Stoked on Stoke?

people have been asking me to talk about Stoke space for a couple of years I long resisted it because I didn't think I had a useful perspective to add and I had no way of answering the question that I thought people really wanted answered but I was looking at it recently and I realized that I had a way to add something to the conversation and do the sort of analysis that I like to do when I'm analyzing a company I'm trying to evaluate the chances that it can be become a commercial success there are a bunch of different ways of doing such an analysis my starting point is usually looking at four things that I will call my pillars of Commercial Success pillar one is a good idea know the emphasis on the word good it's not a cool idea it's not a paradigm breaking idea it's a good idea good ideas are often simple remember that Amazon started with the idea maybe we could sell books using this internet thing pillar two is a team that can execute on the good idea they're the obvious technical skills required to do whatever you want to do but you also need a Founder class entrepreneur you need somebody that understands the technical side and goal deeply somebody who can deal with investors and somebody who can make a dollar scream these people are not surprisingly rare pillar three is a meaningful Market you need people that are willing to pay you cash money this is about having a market where your new company can be competitive enough to make money pillar four is Runway you need time to bring your good idea to reality an idea that is attainable and a management team that can keep your cash burn as low as practical as critical because pretty much everything costs more and takes longer than you expect now let's talk about Stoke we'll start with stoke's idea which is all about second stage reuse SpaceX is working on that with Starship but nobody else has even gotten to First Stage reuse stoke's second stage is a modified capsule shape and is made out of it is fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen their engine uses a traditional expander cycle where the very cold fuel is run through the rocket nozzle and the combustion heat produces a pressurized output that is used to power the turbo pump