Tom Mueller
Founder, CEO & CTO of Impulse Space and SpaceX Employee #1, led development of Falcon/Dragon propulsion.
“137 co-led the $500M Series D with BANNER VC at a $4B valuation; founded by SpaceX propulsion veteran Tom Mueller.”
“Tom's the guy you want to use if you're trying to get things to move in space. Right, if you want to put up a constellation, Tom's a good guy to talk to.”
Source→“"Compute needs to move to space... All you need as an input is power, and all you have as an output is data. So you move it to space, you have all the power you would ever need."”
“"Elon's great to work with. Generally, he just energizes you. He's got this infectious enthusiasm and gets you just hyped up to go do crazy stuff... He's also really good at finding and recruiting talent."”
“Participants: Molly O'Shea”
“When I left, I had the plan of launch mostly being solved or being solved. It's like the next big opportunity is to move all that payload, all that cargo around in space. So I started Impulse Space to do in-space transportation as opposed to from Earth to space transportation.”
Source→“We have three on orbit right now. We did a rendezvous last year between two of them. Got within 1,200 meters of each other, which is really damn close in space.”
Source→“The bigger one there is a tank for Vast space station. We provided the whole propulsion system for Vast, including the thrusters.”
Source→“There's actually some commercial companies like LeoLabs that track things and they just tell you, hey, you've got a potential [collision].”
Source→“Tom Mueller — Founding propulsion engineer at SpaceX; creator of the Merlin engine; led Starship propulsion for 6 years; now founder/CTO of Impulse Space.”
Source→“Jared Isaacman said, we're going to build a base on the moon and we're going to stay there. And that's right on, man. That's exactly what I want to do.”
Source→“Elon's great to work with. Generally, he just energizes you. He's got this infectious enthusiasm and gets you just hyped up to go do crazy stuff... He's also really good at finding and recruiting talent.”
Source→“Impulse's product suite reflects this: Mira (orbital transfer/maneuvering vehicle), Helios (high-energy transfer stage), and future lunar landers.”
Source→“building Mira (maneuvering spacecraft), Helios (kick stage), and the Deneb engine”
“"Vertically integrated, hire the best, and move fast. That's what we learned at SpaceX."”
“Impulse Space Raises $500M Series D... Co-led the $500M Series D as a returning investor... Co-led the $500M Series D as a new investor... Participating investors in the Series D round”
Source→“Tom left SpaceX. He was there for almost 20 years... I think without Tom, I don't think that company [SpaceX] goes in the first days.”
Source→“Romo himself was employee #13 at SpaceX; CEO Tom Mueller was employee #001.”
AI-extracted from podcast / newsletter / paper summaries. May contain errors.