Stoke Space's Nova launch vehicle. This rocket is fully reusable, with a relatively novel capsule-type second stage atop a more conventional first stage. The second stage uses a single 30-nozzle aerospike main engine, though unlike most aerospike-powered vehicle proposals it is optimized more for reentry thermal performance than propulsion performance, with the heat shield being actively cooled using coolant lines and pumps already present as part of the engine. A clamshell-type fairing on top remains attached to the second stage after payload deployment, and also allows Stoke's rocket to return payload back to Earth. The first stage uses 7 full-flow methalox staged combustion engines. Both stages are designed for propulsive landing
Use of unapplied modifiers and instancing have been used to reduce model size and enable easy editing. All materials and textures are packed into the .blend file, and a zip file containing the needed image textures is also included
Changelog:
April 12 2023: Initial upload October 6 2023: Rocket is now called Nova