Thomas mueller is a name that many will say nothing, but he was the first employee in SpaceX (as well as one of the three founders) and not “any one”. In fact, in addition to his long career in the company of Elon Musk, Mueller was also one of the determining elements that led to the realization of the Falcon rockets, which we now often hear about.
One of the key elements for SpaceX’s success
His adventure with SpaceX started when the same Elon Musk he was looking for the right people to build the company with. After all, Musk had the capital to be able to think of founding a space company, but lacked the specific skills for such an ambitious project.
After Musk showed the business plan and made a speech about how he wanted to transform the space flight market to Thomas mueller and other possible candidates, the latter signed with Chris Thompson and Musk himself to found SpaceX in May 2002. Over time he also became the company’s CTO (from 2014) and then became a consultant from 2019 until today.
Among the works of Thomas mueller include the first rocket engine made by SpaceX is called Kestrel. There are also engines Merlin of the Falcon rockets that have proved very reliable over time. In addition, the Super Draco engines made for the“escape system” of the Crew Dragon manned capsules (now carrying astronauts towards the ISS) are his work.
Finally he was also involved in the construction of the engines Raptor, which are used on Starship. If this week we will see a “jump” from 15 km of a prototype Starship will also be thanks to him (and the same can be said if SpaceX will be able to take his spacecraft to the Moon and Mars).
its Twitter there was no lack of greeting a Thomas mueller from Elon Musk “Thanks for everything you did to help make SpaceX! Some of the best memories ever”. An era is therefore closing for the company that will now have to face increasingly demanding challenges without one of its key figures. As a last curiosity, in the image of “goodbye” you see one Porsche Taycan green owned by Mueller himself (who is passionate about the German brand). But he also owns a Model X and a Model 3 and in general Musk has never been against the fact that his employees have cars of others. brand in addition to Tesla.
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