Tom Mueller

Tom Mueller (Thomas John Mueller) is an American aerospace engineer and rocket engine designer, best known as the first employee of SpaceX and later the founder and chief executive of Impulse Space. He is known for his engineering work on the Merlin, Draco, Super Draco and TR-106 rocket engines, and he holds several United States patents for propulsion technology. Born in St. Maries, Idaho, he earned a mechanical engineering degree at the University of Idaho in 1985 and a master's degree at Loyola Marymount University in 1992. He spent fifteen years at TRW, where he led liquid rocket engine development and worked on the TR-106 hydrogen engine, and in his spare time built a large amateur liquid-fuel engine that caught the attention of Elon Musk. From 2002 he led propulsion at SpaceX, where his teams developed the Merlin and Kestrel engines for Falcon rockets and the Draco and SuperDraco thrusters for the Dragon spacecraft. He retired from SpaceX in 2020 and founded Impulse Space in 2021.