Fighter Jets in Space, with Eric Romo (President & COO of Impulse)

**Eric Romo** (0:00)
Helios is a little broader in the markets of the tax. And for those folks that provides them access to GEO in under a day, time is money. That value of that time can be $50 million plus.
Mira is about precision maneuvering. It's a high thrust, high Delta VA vehicle. The mission set is really about loitering usually in GEO for long periods of time, up to five years, and then very rapidly moving from one part of GEO to another. We want to create the capabilities in infrastructure to enable more and more businesses in Space. And we don't know yet today what those are going to be. We're going to keep looking.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:34)
What is the question that the Impulse team internally most debates?
You've been making your rounds on all the podcasts. I see your face everywhere now.

**Eric Romo** (0:51)
Saved the best for last.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:53)
So does that mean you're in no more podcasts?

**Eric Romo** (0:54)
No, I'm done. I'm done after this.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:56)
Because for a while, you were a little bit more behind the scenes. Now I feel like you're slowly becoming the co-face of Impulse along with Tom.

**Eric Romo** (1:06)
Yeah. Tom has more important work to do mostly, so I get to do this stuff.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:12)
Yeah.

**Eric Romo** (1:13)
I'm a pretty big believer in, tell me what you did, not what you might do.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:17)
Yeah.

**Eric Romo** (1:18)
So we've done a lot more stuff lately, so more to talk about.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:21)
How did you end up at the company?

**Eric Romo** (1:23)
Yeah. So I met Tom in the fall of 2002, I guess. Yeah. So in 2002 So I got an email. I was at Stanford, at grad school. I got an email from one of my professors, and it said some of the effect of one of the guys from PayPal is starting a rocket company. Does anybody want to apply? I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who responded to email.
Then a couple of weeks later, I did a phone screen, which I was such an idiot. I didn't know how to interview for jobs or whatever, and I'm pretty sure I took the phone screen in the car. Mind you, this is 2002, so I have got one of the flip phone and no headset. I'm on the phone, driving down University Avenue, some do a phone screen. I definitely should have not passed the phone screen, but again, I don't think anybody applied.
Then a couple of weeks later, Tom and Elon were on campus, and so I came and I met with them and did an interview, which I was also certain that I had failed, and then ended up at SpaceX in the early part of 2003 I joined in January of 2003

**SPEAKER_2** (2:29)
What was the role you were interviewing for at the time?

**Eric Romo** (2:31)
Well, so I don't actually know if I knew what the role was. I think it might have been called Propulsion Analyst, I'm not sure, but it was just Propulsion Department. So at the time, when I interviewed, the Propulsion Department was Tom, Jeremy Holman, a guy whose name I don't ever remember because he left soon after and does not need to be infamous about the fact that he left SpaceX too early.
That was it. Then Tim Buzza was in test, so he's doing a lot of propulsion stuff. But that was the prop team. So I was interviewing to be the next guy. When I interviewed, I think Tom was trying to figure out, what can this kid do? Because it's 2002, so I just turned 0.4, and I'd never had a practical engineering job before. So Tom was asking me all these questions in his Tom fashion about assembling hardware and testing things. The closest I'd gotten to that was when I was in the lab in grad school, I almost blew myself up a couple of times. That was the closest I got to doing anything relevant with hardware.
So anyway, I think we quickly realized the kid is good with numbers, stick him in the corner with spreadsheets, and I got to figure stuff out to do.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:43)
How many people were at SpaceX at the time?

**Eric Romo** (3:45)
I was the 13th person. So I met pretty much everybody, I think, when I interviewed, I think I interviewed in like November or December of the 2002 on site at the old El Segundo building, which is now like a fish distribution company or something, I think.
And I think at that point, there were probably like 10 or nine people or something when I interviewed, I met pretty much everybody. And again, I did a bunch of boneheaded things in that interview that I shouldn't have not, I've gotten a job.