All articles tagged with #tom mueller
Tom Mueller, SpaceX’s first employee and co-founder, weighs in as the company nears a public market debut valued at more than $1.8 trillion, with BBC’s Michelle Fleury exploring Elon Musk’s long-term vision for the rocket firm.
Tom Mueller—SpaceX’s former propulsion chief—founded Impulse Space to build in-space taxis that move satellites and cargo between orbits, with Mira and Helios vehicles designed to cut orbital transfers from months to about a day using in-house methane/oxygen propulsion. Impulse has raised roughly $1B and is valued around $4.3B as U.S. Space Force and NASA funding push a growing space economy; Helios aims for 4-ton payloads with first flight in 2027, while Mira has logged successful deployments despite a recent hiccup. The piece underscores both the promise of faster orbital logistics and the risk of competition from SpaceX as the fiscal and industrial scaffolding for a space economy expands.
Impulse Space, a company founded by former SpaceX employee Tom Mueller, successfully launched its first spacecraft, the Mira, on a test flight during a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket mission. The Mira spacecraft is designed to provide in-space propulsion, allowing satellites to reach different altitudes or inclinations after being released into a basic orbit. Impulse Space aims to make it cheap and easy for customers to access various orbits and destinations within the Solar System. The company has already secured customers and plans to fly the Mira spacecraft on future SpaceX missions.
Tom Mueller, the founder and CEO of Impulse Space and former SpaceX employee, reflects on the early days of SpaceX and his work on the Merlin rocket engine. He discusses Impulse Space's goals of providing precise orbital maneuvering vehicles for last-mile payload delivery in low Earth orbit (LEO) and facilitating better orbital logistics for clients. Mueller also shares his thoughts on the future of the space industry, including the rush for a lunar economy and the potential of building things in space using resources from the moon. Impulse Space's first orbital mission is scheduled for November 2021.