Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space has secured a conditional commitment for a $150 million loan from the Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital to build a second launch pad at Cape Canaveral for a larger version of its fully reusable rocket.
The loan isn’t final until Stoke meets a list of financial, legal, technical and due-diligence requirements. The announcement Monday comes less than two months after Stoke raised roughly $1 billion in a Series E round, bringing its total funding to about $2.3 billion.
The new pad would serve Stoke’s Nova Block 2 rocket, which is designed to carry up to 15 metric tons to low Earth orbit. That’s five times the capacity of Nova Pathfinder, which Stoke plans to launch for the first time from its existing pad in early 2027. Block 2 is slated to debut in 2029.
The loan would be paired with private capital to pay for the pad, according to the Department of War. Jordan Sebold, senior managing director for investments at the Office of Strategic Capital, said in a statement that adding launch infrastructure would “enhance the overall capacity and resilience of the commercial space industrial base.”
The Office of Strategic Capital was set up in 2022 to draw private investment into technologies seen as critical to national security. The following year, Congress gave it the power to make loans and loan guarantees to companies in those fields. Space launch is one of the technology categories it targets.
“By expanding domestic launch facility capacity, this investment enables launch service providers to ensure our commercial and defense partners have reliable, high-cadence access to space,” David Lorch, the office’s director, said in the news release.
Stoke is already lined up for military launch work. In 2025, the Space Force added the company to a pool of providers that can compete for national security missions under Lane 1 of the program’s third phase. Lane 1 is the tier meant for newer launch companies and less demanding payloads. Stoke can’t bid on those missions until it completes a successful orbital flight.
The company has other federal ties as well. The Defense Innovation Unit awarded Stoke a $4.5 million contract in 2024 to study rapid delivery of cargo to orbit, and possibly back to Earth. In June, Stoke was one of 37 companies NASA chose for unfunded partnerships. Stoke’s project focuses on returning Nova’s upper stage safely through the atmosphere.
Nova is designed so both of its stages can return and fly again. The booster flies itself back for recovery. The upper stage uses a metal heat shield cooled by liquid hydrogen that circulates through channels inside it, to survive the heat of reentry. Only SpaceX, with its much larger Starship, is pursuing the same goal, and it hasn’t fully achieved it yet. Stoke has yet to launch a rocket to orbit.
Stoke was founded in 2019 by two Blue Origin veterans: Andy Lapsa, the CEO, and Tom Feldman, the chief technology officer. The company has about 400 employees. Most work at its 168,000-square-foot factory and headquarters in Kent, and about 50 are at its test site in Moses Lake, which is expanding from 75 to 550 acres. About 50 more work at Cape Canaveral.
GeekWire reached out to Stoke Space for comment and we’ll update this story when we hear back.
