Elon Musk may be the superstar CEO of SpaceX but a lot of the credit goes to the guy who was
instrumental in making the rockets fly. I'm Tom Mueller, I'm a co-founder of the company. Tom
Mueller may not be famous like Musk but he's a big part of the reason the company is as successful as
it is today. As Vice-President of Propulsion and later the Propulsion Chief Technology Officer,
he led the design, testing, and construction of SpaceX's engines. Before joining SpaceX, Mueller
developed engines at TRW, a large aerospace company in Los Angeles later acquired by Northrup Grumman.
As a hobby, he spent weekends testing and flying his own machines in the Mojave desert
with an amateur rocket club called Reaction Research Society. That's how he met Musk almost
20 years ago through the club. The future SpaceX CEO had been looking to recruit a bright team
of engineers to build rockets. The year before, Musk had gone to Moscow to try to buy refurbished ICBMs
but when the Russians wanted too much money, he set out to build his own rocket for less. So when it
came time to founding SpaceX, Musk saw in Mueller someone who knew everything there was to know
about rocket engines. When I met Elon it's like, wow I'd really like to go do this thing. It's high risk but
it's where I want to be. Going to a startup was risky but also gave him free reign to do more.
Mueller is known for developing rocket engines from scratch including the Merlin engine. This
is a 95,000-pound thrust engine. Basically this engine will burn a hole right through concrete.
These engines power the Falcon line of rockets. The 27 in the Falcon Heavy generate over 5
million pounds of thrust at liftoff. And the Falcon 9 gets its name from the nine Merlin
engines in the first stage. They're fueled by rocket-grade kerosene and liquid oxygen.
It's not easy developing an engine that can withstand a 170-second burn -
long enough to send a payload into orbit and then return safely to Earth. Merlin revolutionized
space flight as it's designed to be reused. Building reusable rockets put SpaceX on the map.
It's now a common sight to see the Falcon 9 first stage perform one of its signature landings. Last
year, that rocket launched astronauts aboard the Crew Dragon to the International Space Station.
Mueller also developed the engines that helped the Dragon spacecraft maneuver while in orbit. Well
before these achievements, Mueller was right beside Musk during the company's most difficult days
when attempts to launch its first rocket, the Falcon 1, kept failing. The third time it tried
to fly into orbit, the first stage rear-ended the second caused by a small amount of residual
thrust from the first stage after the engine was cut off. SpaceX had enough money to scrounge up a
fourth and what would have been final flight if it failed. This time, the team told the rocket to
wait a few more seconds after the engine was cut off before stage separation. Fourth time's a charm.
The Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to orbit
the planet which led to a billion-dollar contract with NASA that saved the company.
Mueller has been an integral part of the story of SpaceX from the start but he almost never
became an engineer if it were not for some sage advice. As the son of a logging truck driver raised
in a small town in Idaho, being an engineer wasn't something he considered. He wanted to
be an aircraft mechanic. Then I took a math class when I was a freshman in high school and my math
teacher said to me, "Do you want to be the guy that fixes a plane or the guy that designs the plane."
That was a pivotal point of my life. Of course I wanted to be the guy that designs the plane. No
one had told me that I had the aptitude to be an engineer. I didn't even know what an engineer did.
That teacher changed my life. He spent summers logging to pay his way through college studying
mechanical engineering at the University of Idaho.
After graduation, he set out for California and its thriving aerospace industry but instead
of finding a job designing planes, he wanted to work on his childhood passion: rockets. I realized
that that was a key decision. A fork in the road where I made the right choice to do what I love.
Don't settle. Put yourself on the right path and end up where you want to be.
After a storied career at SpaceX, he stepped back into a part-time advisory role in 2016
as Musk in the propulsion department led the development of new engines for a new rocket.
This could be the first engine to take people to Mars. Raptor engines power SpaceX's fully
reusable rocket, Starship. They're fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid methane.
Methane could possibly be made on the red planet for the journey home. As SpaceX soars
to new heights, much of its achievements can be traced back to the early work of Tom Mueller.
In fact, Musk acknowledged his contributions were critical to SpaceX's success. The man who helped
make the rockets fly officially retired in late 2020, capping off a nearly two-decade career at
SpaceX which has been, in his words, "quite a ride". Ability plus luck equals success. If you have the
ability then luck is your opportunity. Mueller may have met the right visionary at the right
time but it took more than luck to win Musk over. A great engineer requires a solid background in math,
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unlimited access to all the courses. Thanks so much for watching. For Newsthink, I'm Cindy Pom.