Liquid rocket engine development, racecar driver, grandfather, CEO and CTO at Impulse Impulsespace.com
Joined June 2011
- Tweets 1,935
- Following 332
- Followers 92,565
- Likes 2,297
310 Photos and videos
Tom Mueller retweeted
Jun 12
“We blew up a few engines…” 🚀 meet SpaceX employee #1 Tom Mueller — Elon Musk’s first hire when the company was a just an idea, 24 years before it’d be set to make history as the biggest IPO ever.
“I met Elon through an amateur rocket club.” ⬇️
SpaceX is set this week to launch as a publicly traded company, giving ordinary investors a chance to participate in what is expected to be the biggest initial public offering of all time. @JoLingKent explains.
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Tom Mueller retweeted
Jun 12
> you’ll never start a rocket company
> you’ll never build your own engines
> you’ll never be able to use off-the-shelf parts
> you’ll never survive three launch failures
> you’ll never reach orbit
> you’ll never win NASA’s trust
> you’ll never launch cargo to the ISS
> you’ll never compete with Boeing
> you’ll never compete with Lockheed
> you’ll never make rockets reusable
> you’ll never land a rocket vertically
> you’ll never land one on a drone ship
> you’ll never reuse a booster
> you’ll never fly the same booster 10 times
> you’ll never fly the same booster 20 times
> you’ll never fly the same booster 30 times
> you’ll never recover and reuse the fairing
> you’ll never lower launch costs
> you’ll never launch every month
> you’ll never launch every week
> you’ll never launch multiple times a week
> you’ll never carry astronauts
> you’ll never replace Roscosmos
> you’ll never fly civilians to orbit
> you’ll never manufacture satellites at scale
> you’ll never build the biggest constellation ever
> you’ll never make satellite internet work
> you’ll never make satellite internet fast
> you’ll never make satellite internet affordable
> you’ll never serve rural customers
> you’ll never serve aircraft and ships
> you’ll never build a methane rocket engine
> you’ll never make full-flow staged combustion work
> you’ll never build the most powerful rocket ever
> you’ll never build a rocket bigger than Saturn V
> you’ll never build it out of stainless steel
> you’ll never launch Starship
> you’ll never separate Super Heavy and Starship
> you’ll never relight Raptor in space
> you’ll never bring Super Heavy back
> you’ll never catch a booster with Mechazilla tower arms
> you’ll never launch 85% of mass to orbit worldwide
> you’ll never change the economics of space
> you’ll never force the entire industry to copy you
> you’ll never win
> you’ll never IPO
Congratulations to @elonmusk and the SpaceX team. You did what countless people said was impossible, and you did it time and time again.
Today is your day. You deserve this. May it be a glorious one.
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Tom Mueller retweeted
Jun 11
First @SpaceX employee @lrocket reflects on company's journey and future of space exploration @FoxBusiness @GoToImpulse
foxbusiness.com/video/639818…
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Tom Mueller retweeted
Jun 10
"Tom Mueller is driving his candy green Porsche Taycan Turbo S the way he builds rocket engines: with a terrifying amount of instantaneous thrust..."
Before titles like "the godfather of rocketry" were tossed in Tom's (@lrocket) direction, there was an engineer with a penchant for the impossible.
@elonmusk came asking, "Can you build something bigger?"
Tom spent the next two decades answering it, redefining what was considered possible, and helping lay the foundation for a generation of spaceflight that the world is still catching up to.
It's impossible to tell the story of modern spaceflight without Tom's story. And it's impossible to tell the story of its future without Impulse.
Forbes brings it all together ⬇️
forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2…
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Jun 4
Factory tour of Impulse Space!
Jun 4
BREAKING: Inside Impulse Space with Tom Mueller (@lrocket) (SpaceX's 1st Employee)
FULL TOUR
The famous engineer behind the Merlin engine, now Founder, CEO & CTO of Impulse Space (@GoToImpulse)
ICYMI: Merlin still powers Falcon 9 today, the most reliable rocket engine ever flown & the highest thrust-to-weight ever developed. It's the workhorse behind nearly every SpaceX mission: Starlink launches, Dragon crew & cargo flights to the ISS, & booster landings
Tom walks us through the factory floor, from the avionics clean room to a live rocket engine firing in the vacuum chamber
Impulse is building the in-space mobility layer: the vehicles & engines that move spacecraft after launch, from LEO to GEO, the Moon, infinity & beyond
We cover:
→ Mira: precision maneuvering spacecraft & its saiph thrusters (8 thrusters, ~50 lbs thrust, 5-yr orbit life)
→ Helios: long haul same-day delivery vehicle (12 tons of LOX/methane, LEO to GEO)
→ Deneb Engine: 15,000 lbs thrust engine that powers Helios, ox-rich staged combustion, carbon skirt running over 3,000°F
→ Why 3D printing is "almost a cheat code" for rocket engines
→ In-house composite tanks, Novaloy, & copper liners machined from 700 lbs down to 25
→ 3 spacecraft in orbit a 1,200-meter rendezvous
→ Starlink, iterating Merlin & Raptor, & working with @elonmusk
→ Nuclear propulsion, the Moon, & why compute needs to move to space
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Tom Mueller, Founder, CEO & CTO of Impulse Space
(00:49) Inside Impulse Space
(02:32) Avionics Bay floor
(02:59) Building rockets at home
(03:50) Mira and Helios
(08:00) Why Tom left SpaceX
(09:33) The Deneb Engine walkthrough
(11:42) Testing in Mojave
(12:23) Favorite part of the Engine
(13:30) How it's 3D Printed
(14:21) Why 3D Printing changes everything
(16:54) Finding Talent for COPVs
(17:28) No Modern hardware without software
(19:52) The Mill Turn explained
(22:42) Payload Deck Design
(25:28) Entering the Secret Area
(30:48) Thrust, Flow Rate, & 100 Sensors
(32:13) Collision avoidance in Orbit
(32:57) The Electric Propulsion Chamber
(34:28) Nuclear Electric is the future
(38:49) Data Centers in Space
(40:28) SpaceX & Starlink's Growth
(41:10) Working with Elon
(42:07) If not CEO, then what?
(42:32) Moon matters more than Mars
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Tom Mueller retweeted
Jun 4
From orbit to #TimesSquare... Mira maneuvered in Manhattan to celebrate our $500M Series D 🌠
via @NYSE
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Impulse Space, which is building in-space mobility infrastructure for the space economy, just raised $500M.
We asked founder @lrocket how he's deploying the capital:
"Ramping up production."
"We're hiring more people, a lot of people in the production area — manufacturing engineers, technicians, all kinds of people. Where earlier, we were mostly hiring development engineers."
"We're just starting to move into a much larger facility. So, filling that out with production capability."
"And we're constantly bringing more things in-house. Becoming even more vertically integrated."
"Milling machines, lathes, 3D printers, and building out testing capability."
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Tom Mueller retweeted
SpaceX's first hire, Tom Mueller, was lead designer of Falcon 1's Merlin engine. Now he's building in-space mobility startup Impulse Space, which crossed $1 billion in total funding, including a $500M round announced just yesterday. We've got Tom on an all new TWiST, dropping this afternoon on X, YT, and podcast platforms.
cc: @lrocket, @GoToImpulse, @Alex, @Jason
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Tom Mueller retweeted
Jun 2
wow. it feels like if you want to work on the cutting edge of in-space-propulsion, Impulse is it
Jun 2
We've raised a $500 million Series D to continue solving the next big challenge in space: movement beyond launch.
With over $1 billion in total capital raised, our team and our production are scaling aggressively to accelerate humanity’s future beyond Earth.
Read more: impulsespace.com/updates/imp…
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Jun 2
Enjoyed talking to @EdLudlow and @CarolineHydeTV today on @technology about why I believe the true Space Age is starting now.
Full clip here: bloomberg.com/news/videos/20…
And thanks to @sana_pashankar for the write up on our funding news today
Impulse Space has raised $500 million at a $4 Billion valuation. Very excited to have @lrocket on the show today -- SpaceX employee number 1 to Impulse raising serious capital from 137 Ventures, Banner VC and FF/Linse participated too
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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Jun 2
Space travel's in my blood
There ain't nothing I can do about it
youtube.com/watch?v=ilDD5SeH…
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Jun 2
LFG!
Jun 2
We've raised a $500 million Series D to continue solving the next big challenge in space: movement beyond launch.
With over $1 billion in total capital raised, our team and our production are scaling aggressively to accelerate humanity’s future beyond Earth.
Read more: impulsespace.com/updates/imp…
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May 20
Come join the best team in space!
May 20
The future of space depends on mobility. Mira is built to deliver it.
Follow us into orbit: impulsespace.com
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Tom Mueller retweeted
May 19
The true space age is within reach... And that’s what we’re here for: to make those possibilities real.” – @lrocket, Founder & CEO
Tom discusses his journey from building amateur rockets, to leading propulsion at SpaceX and founding Impulse Space in a new Q&A with @dfjgrowth.
Read his take on the future of orbital infrastructure, and what it will take to enable the next era of space ops: dfjgrowth.com/founders/tom-m…
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May 18
Jet boat races on the St. Joe River near my hometown in Idaho
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Tom Mueller retweeted
May 7
More V3 power in 16x9…these have to be my favorite 4 shots from this SF series.
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Tom Mueller retweeted
Apr 29
Access to space is solved. Impulse is building the highways to everywhere else in the solar system.
Follow us into orbit: impulsespace.com
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