Tom Mueller

Founding propulsion lead (former VP/CTO of Propulsion)

Tom Mueller is a rocket-engine designer often called SpaceX employee No. 1. Before SpaceX he built the world's largest amateur liquid-fuel engine in a garage, which drew Musk's attention. As VP and later CTO of Propulsion he led development of the Merlin engines for Falcon 1 and Falcon 9, the Draco and SuperDraco engines for Dragon, and helped seed the Raptor program. He retired in 2020 and founded Impulse Space. The Merlin engine he championed became the most-flown US rocket engine in history, and its reusability is central to the economics that reset the launch industry. At Impulse Space he is now building in-space transportation vehicles to move payloads between orbits — extending the low-cost-access revolution he helped start at SpaceX into the next layer of the space economy.