We believed it and we did it. So it was really cool.
In 2002, a chance meeting at a rocket club set Tom Mueller on a path that would help transform humanity's relationship with space. As SpaceX's first employee, Mueller helped engineer the engines behind the Falcon 9, turning an audacious vision of affordable spaceflight into operational reality. Now, on the eve of the largest IPO in history, Mueller's reflection is less about personal fortune than about the quiet vindication of belief — that the impossible, when pursued with conviction, has a way of becoming ordinary.
- SpaceX's historic IPO — the largest in history — is set to launch Friday, creating enormous financial windfalls for early employees like Mueller who bet on the company when it was still just an idea.
- Mueller's story cuts to the heart of the tension between institutional caution and entrepreneurial risk — he walked away from a stable path in 2002 because one conversation made him believe something different was possible.
- The Falcon 9's success at dramatically lowering the cost of reaching orbit proved the central thesis, but Mueller warns that most people still underestimate how transformative space infrastructure will become.
- From orbital data centers to lunar mining and asteroid harvesting, Mueller sees the IPO not as a finish line but as a public signal that the next, far larger chapter of space commerce is just beginning.
- Having founded Impulse Space after leaving SpaceX, Mueller remains an active participant in the industry he helped build, suggesting the ecosystem Musk seeded is now generating its own gravity.
Tom Mueller was at an amateur rocket club when Elon Musk found him and made a simple offer: help me build rockets that actually work. Mueller said yes. That decision in 2002 made him SpaceX's first employee and the architect of its engine technology — the propulsion systems that would eventually power the Falcon 9 and make affordable spaceflight a reality.
Now, as SpaceX prepares for what is being called the largest IPO in history, Mueller is among the early employees who hold equity in the company. But what moves him most isn't the financial reward — it's that the vision came true. "We believed it and we did it," he said. He credits Musk's rare ability to identify talent and then push it past what it thought it could achieve.
Mueller eventually left SpaceX to found Impulse Space, a company focused on orbital payload delivery, but he never stepped away from the industry. He sees the downstream benefits of what SpaceX built — GPS, life-saving weather forecasting — as only the beginning. The real frontier, in his view, lies in orbital data centers, lunar resource extraction, and asteroid mining.
For Mueller, the IPO marks a public validation of something he understood long before the world did: that space exploration could be reimagined as a business, built differently and more cheaply, and that the people who took that risk when it was still just an idea were right all along.
Tom Mueller was sitting in an amateur rocket club when Elon Musk found him. It was a chance encounter that would reshape Mueller's entire career. Musk, then building SpaceX from scratch, made him an offer: leave what you're doing and help me make rockets that work. Mueller said yes. That decision, made in 2002, turned out to be one of the best of his life.
As SpaceX's first employee and head of propulsion research, Mueller became the architect of the company's engine technology. He helped design and build the powerplants that would eventually lift the Falcon 9 rocket into the sky—the vehicle that would make Musk's core vision real: a way to reach space that didn't cost a fortune. "Elon really wanted to make a low-cost way to get space, which became Falcon 9," Mueller reflected in a recent interview with CBS News. "And it worked."
Now, on the eve of SpaceX's initial public offering—the largest IPO in history, set to launch on Friday—Mueller is reflecting on what that early bet has meant. He's among the former and current SpaceX employees who hold equity in the company, and the offering stands to be enormously lucrative for him and everyone else who was there when the company was still an idea. "All of us are going to do great in this IPO," he said. "SpaceX has been extremely successful. It's good for all the employees, and myself included."
What strikes Mueller most is not the money, though that matters. It's that the vision actually came true. "We believed it and we did it. So it was really cool," he said. He credits Musk's ability to spot talent and then push that talent to do things it didn't know it could do. The billionaire founder of SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI has a gift for finding capable people and making them believe in the impossible. For Mueller, that belief was the engine that kept everything moving forward.
Mueller eventually left SpaceX to start his own company, Impulse Space, which focuses on moving satellites and delivering payloads in orbit. But he never left the space industry. He remains convinced that what's happening now is just the beginning. The downstream benefits are already visible—GPS systems, weather forecasting that saves lives—but the real frontier is still ahead. Orbital data centers. Mining the moon. Harvesting asteroids. "Space is super important—more than people realize," he said. "I think it's just really going to take off from here."
For Mueller, the IPO is a milestone, a public validation of something he knew decades ago when he walked away from his old life. SpaceX proved that you could build rockets differently, cheaper, better. Now the company is about to prove something else: that space exploration can be a business that matters to the world. And that the people who believed in it first—the ones who took the risk when it was just an idea—were right all along.
Citações Notáveis
Elon really wanted to make a low-cost way to get space, which became Falcon 9, and it worked.— Tom Mueller
Space is super important—more than people realize. I think it's just really going to take off from here.— Tom Mueller
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
What made you actually leave your career and follow Musk into something so uncertain?
He had this clarity about what was possible. He wasn't asking me to believe in him—he was asking me to believe in the problem we could solve together. That's different. That's magnetic.
You built the engines. How much of SpaceX's success comes down to the propulsion work you did?
The engines are the foundation, but they're not the whole story. What mattered was that we kept iterating, kept failing, kept learning. Elon pushed us to think about cost in a way the aerospace industry never had before.
Do you feel vindicated now, watching this IPO happen?
Vindicated isn't quite right. It's more like—we said we could do this thing, and we did it. The IPO is just the market finally catching up to what we already knew.
What's next for space that excites you most?
The resources. We've been thinking about space as a destination. Now we're starting to think about it as a place to work, to build, to extract value. That changes everything.
Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you'd said no to Musk that day?
Every day. But not in a regretful way. In a grateful way. He saw something in me I didn't see in myself yet.