Inside Impulse Space's Factory with Founder Tom Mueller (Full Tour)

**Tom Mueller** (0:00)
I was a founding employee at SpaceX. I led the development of the propulsion systems for Falcon and Dragon, and also started the origins of what became Starship. My proudest development was the Merlin engine, which is currently flying on Falcon 9, the most reliable rocket engine ever developed, and also the highest thrust-to-weight of any rocket engine ever developed. I worked on Starship for the last six years at SpaceX. So when I left, I had the plan of launch mostly being solved or being solved. Like the next big opportunity is to move all that payload, all that cargo around in space. So I started Impulse Space to do in-space transportation, as opposed to from Earth to space transportation, which was SpaceX. We feel like the next step is in-space transportation, including to the moon and landers on the moon.

**Molly O'Shea** (0:49)
Tom Mueller, welcome to Sourcery.

**Tom Mueller** (0:51)
Thank you, great to be here.

**Molly O'Shea** (0:52)
Okay, so before we start, I believe we're in a very special part of the office. What are we standing on right now?

**Tom Mueller** (1:01)
Oh, you mean right here?

**Molly O'Shea** (1:02)
Yeah.

**Tom Mueller** (1:03)
Oh, this used to be my parking spot.

**Molly O'Shea** (1:05)
This was your parking spot?

**Tom Mueller** (1:06)
But now we moved to new offices, now I lost my parking spot.

**Molly O'Shea** (1:09)
No. Okay, so I wanna know, and we'll get into Impulse in a second, but could you name every car model that you own?

**Tom Mueller** (1:18)
Oh, I have about five 911s from various models, RSR, three GT3 RSs, two R-race cars, and a 64, like a first year. How many was that? That's like more than five. Two Ferraris, a F40 and a 458 A Lotus, 66 Lotus, Elon.
Three 962s, one in pieces being put back together, a Porsche 962 race cars.
Two Tundra trucks, no, two Raptor trucks, used to have a Tundra. One's in Idaho. And a whole bunch of dirt bikes. I probably missed a car or two. Oh, the one that used to park here, the Taycan, which is probably going to get lemon-lod right now because it's broke for the third time. Love that car except for the braking part.

**Molly O'Shea** (2:19)
Well, I think you're properly warmed up. So we're in Impulse right now. You have another facility here in LA, but right now I'd love for you to walk us through and tour Impulse for us.

**Tom Mueller** (2:31)
Sure, okay. So this is the avionics clean assembly area. So this is where basically all the avionics on our spacecraft get assembled and tested. You can see there's a vault right there that's getting ready to go in to maybe thermal back or electrical test, something going on with it.
So this is set up for high production rate for Mira and the other spacecraft. Let's go talk about Mira. Okay.

**Molly O'Shea** (2:59)
So you also in your garage make your own rockets?

**Tom Mueller** (3:03)
I do. I have been doing that for a long time. Yeah. In fact, that's how I met Elon through the amateur rocket stuff that I was doing. Yeah.
But I like to make prototypes for, you know, just to get some pre-production data on things that we're doing here. So I've done a few things in my garage. Yeah.

**Molly O'Shea** (3:20)
One of the things that I learned from our interview with Eric and research ahead of time was how fast Impulse has for iteration and testing and development.

**Tom Mueller** (3:30)
Yeah.

**Molly O'Shea** (3:31)
It's really core to the business and vertical integration.

**Tom Mueller** (3:34)
Being extremely vertically integrated, having the machine shop right here with the assembly areas, and just really rapid front typing, test area out back so we can build, assemble, test, and iterate.

**Molly O'Shea** (3:50)
So as we walk through, what are we going to see today? Could you just give us a little run-through?

**Tom Mueller** (3:56)
Yeah. The assembly area out here where we'll see spacecraft like these being assembled, and then our next product which is Helios, which is right over there in that area being assembled. Then we'll go back to the machine shop where the actual parts are made, and then in the back is the propulsion assembly area where the propulsion products are put together and then tested back there in the test area. We're going to see a rocket engine test today back there, and yeah, should be pretty cool.

**Molly O'Shea** (4:22)
Amazing.

**Tom Mueller** (4:23)
All right. Well, starting here, this is the Mira. So this is our Mira prototype. So this is one we can have out here that you can actually touch. So Mira is a highly propulsive orbital transfer vehicle. So it's got these thrusters, actually, these thrusters, two on each corner. So it's got eight of these thrusters. They're about six pounds of thrust each. So total of almost 50 pounds of thrust, which for a small spacecraft like this is a lot. That's good enough to move around in space very fast. Inside the chassis, we've got three propellant tanks, two oxidizer tanks, and a fuel tank in the middle that feeds these thrusters. It's got the solar panels, which unfurl and they're stirrable. So you can point the spacecraft wherever you want and still have the power positive pointing at the sun with the solar. The avionics that we just talked about being assembled in there are all in this box down here. We call it the vault. We keep them all in one box. And it's got, these are reaction wheels, which are basically fly wheels with a motor that you can actually very precisely steer the spacecraft with. And then there's a bunch of antennas and stuff that go on this, which you can see on the flight vehicle in there. So they've got red hats on them, red remove before flight covers on them. Those are antennas so we can talk to the spacecraft.